Framedlight

A few days of enforced idleness took place while we waited for the van to be mended. The garage was expecting a new radiator to be delivered from Fiat. Italy was only the other side of the pass but it seemed to be taking forever. We took Hettie for a walk down into the village, taking it slowly so she could manage. The snow was gone at lower altitudes and the ski run into Montchavin was only being kept open with snow cannon. Hettie enjoyed eating some of the snow, ice cream for dogs. The following is a miscellany of shots from around the chalet.

The road was covered in radiator fluid the next morning so Alan took the van to a garage in Bourg-St-Maurice. We had been due to leave Montchavin but we extended the rental on the apartment for a few more days. Fortunately no one was coming in or we might have had to take up residence in the garage! Alan had plenty to do skiing and cycling but I was pretty well stranded at the top of the mountain with the elderly dog. I had finished my book and the internet signal was sporadic as the owners turned off the router when they weren't using it! So I spent time taking pictures around the chalet, getting to grips with my tilt shift lens and processing pictures. Here are some taken the day the van went (none of them are tilt shift). The end ones are of Derek's cat, Colnago, reacting to Hettie. The cat actually didn't seem that scared of the dog and quite often swaggered past her with a 'catch me if you can' smirk. ...

Getting up and going down to the van in the morning I noticed that there was a patch of liquid under the bonnet. A quick taste test identified it as radiator fluid. Thinking that this may be serious we topped up the radiator, filled an empty milk container with water and set off down the mountain to do some shopping in case the van had to go into a garage. We stopped off by the Isère river in Aime as there is a park that runs next to the water. Alan took his bike out for a while and Hettie and I walked next to the river. I took some shots, mainly intentional camera movement ones.  On arriving back in Montchavin we parked up and decided that we should see how much liquid we  would lose overnight and act accordingly. In the evening we went back down to Aime, this time with our friends Steff and Derek, in their car to watch their daughter play flute in the local orchestra. The village hall was extremely spacious and we were provided wi...