Rest Day in Beaufort

June 5, 2025

It was still raining or raining again this morning (this isn’t the BC coast so maybe it didn’t rain all night), though the forecasts were for the rain to stop sometime this morning. We had talked yesterday about riding up to Hauteluce today and even worked out how much distance and climbing would be involved, but this morning neither of us was raring to go. Of course, tomorrow’s ride was at the backs of our minds, the biggest loaded ride so far on this tour—with a hoped-for big day ride the following day.

So we loafed around our room after breakfast until Al said he needed a walk and I decided I did too. We found a trail from town on Gaia in a direction we haven’t ventured yet and set off. We walked as far as Le Grand Mont and decided that was plenty for a rest day.

Our hotel is across from the church (pink star on the right) and we walked up the pink trail to Le Mont, the hamlet in the lower left of the screenshot.

It actually wasn’t raining after dinner last evening so we went for a short stroll. This is Le Doron, which runs through the town.

Flowering against the wall of the church, still in town.

It took us a couple of tries (we weren’t trying very hard) to find the one bridge across L’Argentine, a tributary that joins Le Doron on the edge of town.

We’ve been noticing a fairly constant odour of woodsmoke in town and could clearly see the source from the trail. No idea what it might be.

Wild strawberries by the trail! I’ve never found wild ones this big before.

The ruins of the Château de La Sallaz or de La Grande-Salle. The “maison forte” was built in the 13th century and hosted Henri IV in 1600 when he (and his 8000 men) made a reconnaissance of Cormet d’Arêches. It was in ruins by 1939 but no idea when or how that happened.

A slightly better photo; we only had our phones with us.

We watched it for a while and wondered if it were a tiny hummingbird. But no, there are no hummingbirds in Europe.

Hummingbird Hawk-moth in a photo by Ervin Szombathelyi, found on butterfly-conservation.org

Looking up the Argentine valley toward Arêches

The public path crosses rural properties

And there’s a little chapel dated 1660, but the murals are much newer; see the painted cornerstones

The door and its (working) hardware might be original. The lock works.

The chapel wax surrounded by the same mobile electric fencing as all the pastures. The fencing is removed for the winter and set out again before the herds are released to graze.

A few flower pics from today…

In Beaufort, heading for the bakery we ate at yesterday

We shared a pizza-bread thing for lunch but Al ate most of it. We didn’t realize when we ordered that it had anchovies, which he likes and I prefer to avoid. I made up for that by having another slice of the same tartelette aux noix we had yesterday.

I had this again too, a dry local cider flavoured with Génépi, a liqueur made from génépi, a member of the sage family that grows in the Alps. Photo turned out weird!

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