Kristin's visit in February and early March

Hospital Cow Dwight Peck's personal website

Winter 2008-2009

The best snow we've had in the Jura in a decade, and we're in danger of missing it.

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

Kristin's visit in February and early March

How kind of Kristin -- coming along to make the chicken soup. We've been convalescing contentedly in northern Italy for some days, and now we're home and stepping out for bracing walks in the villages and working back up to strapping on our snowshoes again before the summer comes.

We've started out in Begnins, 24 February 2009, and that was the village of Luins in the first photo -- this one is Vinzel. Both of them distinguished for their wines, especially for their white wines, which you're unlikely to find for sale anywhere else in the world, 'coz we drink most all of it right here.

The château of Vinzel, here in the middle of the vineyards

Vinzel, and probably time to turn around pretty soon, lest we "overdo it"

Back to Luins, with the church just up the hill

26 February 2009: Kristin logrolling on a meadow in the Bois de Chênes, a sizable "Oak Forest" between the villages of Genolier and Begnins on the western side of the Serine creek. It's a lovely little wood, nearly 130 hectares evidently, leased as a protected area and half of it used for protected-area scientific research.

The Ferme du Bois de Chênes

A literature rack outside the Bois de Chênes farm. The woods are presently leased as a protected area, but the lease is running out soon, so the forest's many friends are drumming up citizen participation to prevent horrific residential development. Grab a pamphlet.

The news on Raw Story is not good today.

We're back on snowshoes today, at last, and back at our favorite carpark near the forest of Grande Rolat. Dieter the VW is going to have to sit it out here, next to that French KIA Rio, just for an hour or two. 27 February 2009.

Kristin is impatient to hit the trail, or create one.

Out of the carpark, like so many before us.

Good snow in the forest of Grande Rolat, as we're beginning to make a circle back again

Tolerance for the stragglers

The stragglers

Grand Cunay up on the horizon, and the farm of Pré Denens in the centre, about 2 km away

Leaping stone walls with only a few bounds

It's a wonderful day, the weather is brilliant, the air is crisp and clean . . .

. . . but we're coming back down now, and despite a certain sense of well-merited fatigue in some of us, it looks like we've only walked about two kilometres today in all. Tomorrow -- three kilometres!

Dan queuing at the cheese wagon whilst Kristin and Katie are inside the farmers' market at Château Blanc near Gingins, stocking up on farmers' market stuff. And jams.

We're back down in the villages again, striding along purposefully from Le Vaud to Longirod and back. 28 February 2009.

A good-natured tolerance for the stragglers

The farm at Les Salles (881m) between Marchissy and Longirod

The village of Longirod, zoomed, still some ways off at this point

Gazing at Longirod, and anticipating an early spring this year. It's February after all.

Longirod agricultural infrastructure

Coming into Longirod (900m), where we'll touch the village church (far left) for points, to show that we made it here, and dash back out again on the homeward track.

Downtown Longirod

Kristin, still encouraging the stragglers, as always

Happy stragglers in the brilliant sunlight

Kristin needs to go back to the USA soon, so she's made an enormous quiche for the occasion.

-- Put the camera away or you don't get quiche.

Hospital Cow, smiling smugly

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