Manigod

 

The mountain towns and villages have lots of colourful hanging baskets and planters full of flowers. This one is on the wall of the old church in Thônes. 

Our last day here and it has been very nice. Consistently fine weather has meant we have been able to plan our days without consideration to the weather except of course when it gets too hot. 

The gusty wind last night had affected an outside light fitting so much that it pulled away from its wiring and fallen to the floor. I can just about remember a few things from my previous life so I set about repairing it. Straightforward except the light shade was so big and my arms not long enough to fit it, I had to get Robyn to hold it whilst I virtually climbed inside it. The photo shows this better than I can explain it.  

After our usual breakfast we headed into a town not far away called Thones. A pretty little village quite typical of the towns in this area. We had found a walkway nearby which promised excellent views and most of it shaded in a forest. 

Whilst searching for a park we saw a market in fill swing amd so we spent a couple of hours wandering around the wide variety of stalls. Robyn scored some nice travel shorts and Chris found a 2nd hand wetsuit for 10 euro. 


We finally sett off on out walk and it was very pleasant but it was 500m elevation over 2.3km with no flat areas at all. The view from the top was very nice.


 The walk is named for a significant tree which is larger than most of the trees in the forest. A bit underwhelming I have to say as all that was left of it was about a 2 m stump cut into the shape of a chair. It had obviously died many years ago and it only lived for 250 years anyway. 

We then tramped back down the hill and found a little table and bench seat in a clearing so we had a picnic lunch. 

It was really hot luckily we found a lovely grassy area by a stream and soaked in a  pool of lovely mountain spring water. This is also the site of a perfectly preserved Roman bridge. We could only imagine the Roman armies crossing this bridge and camping in the spot where we were picnicking now. 


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