Annecy Aire – Hopeful Cure for Insomnia

Zagan the motorhome needs sleep man! He’s been rocked about by winds while sat teetering on the edge of a rather steep hill, unsure if his ill-trusted master has pulled his handbrake on. Cars have arrived during the wee hours, their occupants falling out the doors and ooohing and aaaahing at the view, unnerving the poor lad. We’ve brought him down to the free municipal aire at Annecy for a rest (N45.89078 E6.13875), and hopefully a good night’s kip. Although a general ‘don’t go back’ rule guides our movements in Zagan, and we’ve been to Annecy before, last time we stayed somewhere else in the town, so we’re claiming compliance with our own daft rule.

Zagan in the free motorhome aire at Annecy. It’s filled up since, and only 2 of the 10 spaces are left at 6pm on a Sat night.

Swiss van ahead of us has hydraulic self-levellers. As you can see, the aire in Annecy is on a slight slope…

Yeah, about last night’s kipping spot. Like Italy (sweeping generalisation alert), it scored massively highly on the aesthetic, while coming in with the wooden spoon on the practical. It’s as much a reflection on us as the little car park itself, but we both spent long periods of the night eyes wide. Ju fessed up this morning she lay there working out a strategy for dealing with masked knife murderers wanting to ram us off the hill. My waking hours were spent wondering if the combination of handbrake (which I’d checked about 20 times), chocked front wheels and gearbox-in-gear would stop us being blown over the edge of the hill. At 7:30am the mini-ordeal came to an end. Or should I say ‘micro ordeal’ since both of us noted the other was kipping while we were awake, so we probably got 8 hours in all told! Anyway, this is what presented itself to our rapidly-adjusting eyes:

Sunrise over the Mont Blanc Massif

Sunrise over Mont Blanc

The sight was stunning, and we got to enjoy it sat in Zagan’s cab seats supping a cuppa. Wow. Clouds hid the sun, or it would have perfectly crowned Mont Blanc, but we’d scored a big hit with the pre-dawn bloodied sky, and set about heading off the hill.

Having spent a couple of years avoiding snow and ice, we’re now making an attempt to face down our fear of the stuff, or more specifically driving a 3.5 tonne bedroom-kitchen-bathroom-and-lounge about in the stuff. Elephants being eaten in bites though, we opted to head off our perch as the forecast predicts mucho rain in Annecy tonight, which we assumed means a heap of snow over 1000 meters. This morning the road back down was still slick in places with ice, so I’m notching up a nibble of elephant hide as we tip-toed down miles of is-it-slippy-under-these-trees switchback at 25mph.

Rolling into Annecy, all the world is here. A cycle-path on the edge of town was end-to-end packed with cars and vans. The reason revealed itself to be a market! A later attempt to find it failed miserably though, as did our aim to find somewhere reasonably-priced to eat.

Eventually we gave up, and Ju popped into Quick Burger to acquire a stash of skinny chips and never-seen-a-cow burgers. Famished, we scoffed them alongside the lake with a view no restaurant could match, among other similarly tight-fisted couples clutching bags of bagels, see-through Subway sarnie bags, more Quick Burger boxes and, of course, baguettes being self-filled with cheese and ham. Stay classy Annecy.

What’s next? Rain. The forecast for everywhere below 1000m says it’s going to honk it down for the next week or two. Above 1000m, the white stuff should be floating down like a duck down duvet. At some point we (I) need to get Zagan in among that lot. Quite when it’ll happen, we dunno. As Ju pointed out earlier on “we have all season, there’s no rush”, which I’m trying to twist my head around (the fact we could stay in the Alps for a month or two – bonkers).

OK, time to crack open a cheeky Sat night bottle of vino. The silver screens are on, the heating is primed, the dog is snoring and the aire is now full. Happy days.

Dragon Boat Club of Annecy?

Chains. I want to use ours, and I don’t want to. Man’s Inner Conflict rages.

Spotted: teeny weeny version of Ju.

Cheers, Jay