It’s hard to believe, but the snow-line is now lower than it was a month ago. Yesterday it was down to the 1600m (5,250ft) mark in our valley compared to around 1,900m (6,235ft) in mid-April, when I did this walk.
It was with this in mind that I drove down to Fully (pronounced to rhyme with Huey, Dewey or Louie) in the Rhone valley yesterday to do another steep walk, or training hike if you like. My aim was to reach a point called S̩ Carro* at 2,092m (or 6,864ft), though I expected to hit snow as some point. And so I did РI turned around about 100m (330ft) below the summit, when the snow got a bit deeper and the going was still very steep. (See pic 20).
I again tried my best not to be distracted by the views and various butterflies fluttering around, but when several Cardinals are about you just have to stop. Like any photographer, I’m always looking for that ‘perfect shot’ and so I stopped quite a few times – mainly for the Cardinals. And it was while reaching up to capture one, that another landed right next to it! (See pic 13). In the end, I was glad I did stop so often, as the weather turned decidedly grey and cool and there were not many butterflies around on my return (along the section of the Chemin du Vignoble which I failed to finish a few weeks ago).
I’m often surprised by some of the things I see in Swiss villages, but the trompe l’oeil in picture 28 is just amazing.
*Note that Sé Carro is spelt a number of different ways… The Sé can be seen written as Sex or Scex (all three pronounced like ‘say’ btw). I even saw it as ‘Six Carro’ on one, albeit handwritten, signpost. But I decided not to use the most common, Sex, version in the title of this post, just in case it offended the internet police or attracted the wrong type of reader!
Alittlebitoutoffocus 
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