The Yurt Alpine Retreat King Valley

Hello dear friends.

I’ve been trying to savour experiences lately and grasp little opportunities for adventure. Going carless (no, not careless autocorrect) at the beginning of last year helped, as our adventures became centred around trains and bikes like when we were overseas. Hiring a GoGet is a really exciting treat, now we appreciate the speed of four wheels. Those 170 life changing days on foreign soil have been hard to shake, ordinary days seemed like pale cardboard cutouts when we were grounded again. Perhaps I’m only truly appreciative of the pleasures of ‘grounded’ now, years later, writing this standing in my full garden bathed in morning sun, with just a hint of the bite 34 degrees will bring.

The Yurt Alpine Retreat

A recent gift of a night in a yurt in the King Valley was a visceral return to my year of travelling. I lay in an exotically draped bed infused with incense, door open on blue skies and a vista dropping onto treed valleys with mountains beyond. It was new Mexico, it was Utah, Arizona, Boulder and Lake Tahoe. Ah wide open spaces how I missed you. A delicious slideshow of experience called up in a moment of expansion.

So, with a clear head, free of the dull buzz of worry and to do lists, I had time and energy to dabble in watercolours again. Although painting a banana was perhaps an incongruous choice, mountain landscapes would be too overwhelming to render. Hooray for the everyday juxtaposed against the divine. That is the essence of the place. An exotic Mongolian yurt alpine retreat adjacent to a tin shed outhouse with a poem, in a style best described as “Aussie bush humour” on the door. Vineyards sparkling in the afternoon light, grown wild and neglected as the farmers aged. Slightly spooky, wandering through the endless rows at dusk stumbling upon nettles and thistles and old bones. What a full body tingling experience! The exotic only 3 hours from home, what a thrill.

Where do you find the spark of adventure close to home?

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fin

nothing lasts forever, be grateful that you were there at all

When I greeted Melbourne she bashfully hid her parched fields and warehouses behind a dense fog. At 5am, mine was the last plane to touch down in Melbourne, all the others were diverted to Sydney.

I was tanned and air freshener fresh as I was greeted by mum and the crisp cold air. Dressed in shorts and emboldened by adrenalin I didn’t feel a thing, except happiness to see my family again. This faux alertness faded of course, it masked the deep exhaustion of jetlag, but not before an exhilarating ride through the deserted early morning streets, home made special by fog and the ungodly hour.

Working on Le Tour for the last 10 days had left no room for contemplation, 5am to midnight of bikes, support vans and photography and official blogging. The results can be seen here. When it all suddenly came to end, after two weeks of itineraries and guests, I was cast adrift. On a train by myself watching Grenoble disappear, leaving Dylan behind for the first time in 6 months.

Of course it rained in Paris, just how I remembered it, a grey sky over a tapestry of roofs and chimney pots. I wandered aimlessly, filling in time until my friend Dakshinee arrived on the Eurostar from London (what a relief to not be friendless in a foreign land).

I found myself retracing old steps, the Eiffel tower evading my view, the walk much longer than I remembered. Then there it was, I sat there eating lunch, not feeling like a tourist, but an observer of them. Then just when I felt it was all rather boring, lacking the magic of first acquaintance, the skies opened, thunder and lighting split the sky. Running for cover, huddling under trees, there was something that bound us all together. It was more exhilarating than any perfect sunny day under that metal tower could ever be.

Rain cleared and began to walk away, a man fell into step with me. “You are a photographer?” he asked “you were taking photos of people, weren’t you getting wet?”. This was the kind of conversation that never spontaneously happened to me back home, perhaps for the very reason I am rarely alone. It was nice, and I’ll admit a little bit flattering that this Frenchman wanted to walk me all the way to the metro, and expressed regret I couldn’t spend the day with him. An experience, and a seamless escape as I went to meet my friend. Although it might sound strange, I never imagined that Parisians would choose to walk to that tourist trap of a tower, but I guess even they aren’t immune the romance of Paris.

After a late night Italian meal and a sickeningly sweet cocktail with Dakshinee (the French don’t seem to do cocktail bars), we had half a day before my flight back home. The end. We did some more aimless wandering and then settled on a walk to the Sacre Coeur for a picnic, and to catch a glimpse of that view. I needed to drink it in, there was nothing like it in Australia. Sunday streets were quiet and closed, even in Paris, bus as we climbed upwards, past the Moulin Rouge, the tourists thickened and so did the shops of plastic Eiffel towers and Paris kitsch.

At the top a sea of cameras and tourists, a steep slope of grass dividing them down the middle. Why was no one sitting on the grass? Was it forbidden? We saw no signs so we clambered up for our picnic. As so often happens, this emboldened others to follow suit. And then another magic memory, what I’ll hold as my last memory of the trip even though there was walking and packing, trains and airports after, this is the last thing that touched a string in my heart and kept resonating.

There were loads of men pushing their wares on tourists, buskers and performers taking advantage of the crowds, but amongst them all universal attention was on one. He pressed play on his CD player and mounted his stone pedestal. He lazily began twirling his soccer ball on his finger, then the tricks really began, not once did he drop the sphere, he rolled it over his back, up and down his legs, span and balanced on one hand, the ball never loosing its orbit. The climax, which was not lessened by a second watching was when he began to climb a lamppost, ball spinning on his head, then holding himself horizontal by the arms, began kicking the ball and twirling it on his feet. The crowd went crazy, he had earned his tips. People came up to shake his hand after it was all done. Then the rains began again and washed them all away. Then there was the quiet journey home, just me, the end of something special.

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les marches

The tempo has changed, a mad orchestral crescendo replaced by the scratch scratch scratch of a record needle. That’s how every holiday ends for me, there’s a moment when I tire of exploring, I become retrospective, my petals curl inward and I wait for the nurturing touch of home. I’m surrounded by origami flowers, I sketch a thousand ideas in my notebook, they wait for my return to come to life too. I am content just being in this place rather than feeling that visceral itch to document everything. Missing a photo of that french clockwork or that sweeping vista no longer worries me. I have seen so much, my mind is full, it will digest and I’m sure soon after my return I will want more, but for now I have been a glutton for experience and I need to rest.

There is one finally destination before we commence work on the tour. A hair-raising descent that leaves my fingers aching from applying the break then we hit the silent Sunday streets. The only person we see is a man walking his cat, that heightens the uneasiness of a deserted city.

As we draw closer to the trainstation more people emerge but almost everything is closed. The train is packed though and it is a relief to be deposited in montmélian. The mountain rears up before us with a geometric pattern of vineyards so steep it feels like a birds eye view.

We ride, the asphalt sizzles with heat. The horizon waves in a haze of cornfields squeezed between houses. My ears begin to ring and my vision closes in, I need to rest in shade with a drink before deciphering the tangle of french instructions that have come with every airbnb in this country. No one seems to have an address, they have a treasure map.

We enter a French housing development, so different to one in Australia, contemporary techniques hidden in a skin of the old world. Our host has that right amount of English for me to improve my french. Not so much that I am complacent, not so little that we don’t bother to communicate.

They welcome us for a family meal, and their cheeky youngest sun puts on a snorkel for dessert. Earlier his entire face lit up when Dylan skirted him with a water pistol in the pool, it was game on! The other boys have already reached the self conscious age where something as silly as language is a barrier.

The humid air produced a rainbow before even a drop of rain fell. Then it rolled over and we were glad that our tent days were over for this trip and there was a soft bed waiting for us.

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somewhere in the alpes

Welcome to the mountains.

The pizza oven is roaring, stones sucking up heat. The sun bakes and all manner of bees have been visiting the lavender flowers, one particularly alarming specimen with giant dark fighter jet wings whisks by my nose as I finish off the morose tale of Heathcliff and Catherine, after my trip to Scotland the world of moors and gorse are vivid.I blink to a reality of bright sunshine and a backdrop like a painted stage set from the sound of music. How can a view of such rolling fields and a dainty town below (replete with cemetery) exist out of fairytale? The constant grumbling of farm equipment and the swaying powerlines eliminate the need to pinch myself.We’re in the Alpes, and I am resting after a few days of niggling earache that hopefully diminish only to reappear as healthy as ever at dinner time to spoil my chewing. It is a good place to heal, all the more so as the nearest shop is an arduous bike ride to Grenoble so we have cut down on the temptation of patisserie treats. Although I may eat our hosts out of house and home of tiny fake toasts. (By a Grenoble grocery store we saw a man dressed as a pirate asking passers for money, I don’t think his garb helped his cause any)

The church bell rings in the hour and the grape vine above glows as it waves the breeze welcome. Tour de France commentary urgently murmurs from within, our neighbours laugh and every now and again the owner of the constant jingling of bells beats.

I’ve been preparing myself for home, dreaming up schemes and projects so the shock of return isn’t winding. In a handful of days we’ll be working on Phil’s tour group, holiday mode over. How shocking it will be to see a familiar face after all this time!

But for now I’m soaking up the present, I better run the barefoot gauntlet of deliciously soft but bee covered clover lawn to check the fire Dylan entrusted me with so we can have our first proper woodfired pizza since New York! After a barrage of honking horns, merry accordion music has begun floating up from the valley below. Looks like someone’s wedding will be providing a soundtrack to our delicious dinner.

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vinyl backdrops

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