Monthly Archives: January 2009

George arrives in Les Gets

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My friend George, his son Graham and friend Ian, arrived somewhat earlier than anticipated at 3.30am this morning :-(

I met George when I was working at the Renishaw Iron Works in 1962. He was the assistant instructor to the redoubtable Fred Smith on the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme operated out of Parkgate Steel Works (both companies were owned by Tube Investments.

They had driven from Sheffield in 15 hours plus a 2 hour wait at the chunnel. George had a Eurotunnel frequent traveller deal were you can make 10 trips in a year for £390 so a pretty bargain crossing.

George being George meant he was up making tea at 7.30am and we were heading to the slopes at 9am (Matthew & Andrew take note :-) )

It was a glorious day on really excellent pistes here in Les Gets. We did 28.7miles in 3hr 16min + 2hr 30min of stops with a vertical descent of 3miles or so.

The trail and pics are here:

George, Graham & Ian in Les Gets – Day 1

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Les Gets powder day

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After yesterdays total wash out (Although I did spend the day transferring blogs to my account at webfaction and learning about host files in windows, including using the rather cool HostsMan programme).

It was great to wake up to a massive dump of snow (which killed the apartments power from 3am to 8am). Thierry reassured me that Mont Chery doesn’t do avalanches so you can guess who was the first in the bubble lift this morning :-) :-)

First ride was down the red chamois back to the village which was a bit easy, since it had been bashed earlier and the snow was only a few inches deep. So on my next trip in the bubble I met another snowboarder who suggested we went down off-piste underneath the bubble. After a couple of face plants with one of them had me disappearing underneath the fresh powder totally, I was beginning to wish I hadn’t bothered.

After some hot chocolate I did the black gazelle which was AWESOME, although by the end of the day it was totally churned

Afternoon was a few runs of the top of Mont Chery but the cloud level was low so visibility was not to good plus the ice was coming through the powder.

Here’s the pics and runs on Evertrail:-

Powder boarding day in Les Gets

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Tomorrow’s looking even better it hasn’t stopped snowing since 4pm :-)

Update: There was an avalanche on a more remote part of Mont Chery yesterday with 45 years old, Jean-Michel Delavay owner of a sport shop in Les Gets dying http://cli.gs/WyeQMS

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Eating in or out?

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Spurred by reading this on CNET “he heard Google’s Marissa Mayer whisper that in these times of infinite woe, more people were googling “recipes” than “restaurants.” I thought I would give it a try using Google Trends, and for the UK it seems correct:-

As you can see there a been a definite reduction for the search term restaurants compared to recipes commencing around 2008 for the UK

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Boarding in Les Gets

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Today has been glorious here in Les Gets, bright sunshine helping to offset the -8 degrees temperatures.
I took my board out for a 28mile ride going up 13 lifts totalling about 3 vertical miles of ascent :-) Top speed recorded on the GPS was 34.7mph. I felt really comfortable motoring along, either I’m getting better or the snow is real good. The LH K2 binding is still a bit of a struggle to clamp in – maybe I need more stretching exercises to get down there easier!

Here is the Everytrail and photos. :-

Boarding in Les Gets

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Out here I’m using my old Toshiba Tablet So I’ve had to install GPicSync to geotag the pictures from my Olympus SP560UZ.

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Back on the Les Gets slopes

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Today I managed to get my first 2009 ride on the slopes of Mont Chery.
View from top of La Grande Ourse chairlift

I had to stop for my coffee at the La Grand Ourse restaurant to say Hi to Gary and Theresa. They reported that last week was the first time that the whole Les Gets lift system was running at full capacity! No wonder Kevin was complaining about the queues when they rented the apartment over the New Year. Although, it must be very good news for all the local shops like Nevada Sports who have had a couple of poor years.

I’m here for the next 24 days :-) Oh the joy of retirement & owning an apartment in the French Alps!

Sally and the boys are out with me next week followed by my long time friend George and his kids. If you are out here, or want to come over, please twitter or call me.

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Spam and overnight success

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After reading the excellent post “Overnight success takes a long time” by Paul Buchheit on the history of gmail it stirred my memory into why I use gmail. The answer is this prominent  button:

Before gmail came along. Spam was a real problem for me, as you can see from the last  10 MINUTES worth hitting the gmail spam filter.


and its totally relentless, a 10 minute snapshot any time day or night is the same!

So full marks to Google for letting me use gmail on all my email accounts and also to be able to access them by IMAP and POP so I can read them on my iPhone and Thunderbird.

Oh and I’m sure FriendFeed will eventually be a huge success! Follow me there as geofones.

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Cambridge -Anglesey abbey circular walk

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Today’s walk was a 17 or so mile circular tour from Cambridge along the tow path to Baits Bite lock and then across to Horningsea. We then ventured across Quy Fen to Anglesey Abbey to see the Himalayan Siver Birch trees resplendent with their jet washed bark :-) We returned alongside the lovely mill stream to Quy had a pint & cuppa at the Quy Mill Hotel before going under the A14 to return home via Teversham and Cherry Hinton.

I was experimenting with the new iPhone GPS application called Trail, this worked very well even with the iPhone stuffed in the breast pocket of my jacket! Once completed you can email the gpx file or send it directly to Everytrail.

Missing track

Problems are battery life – my estimate is 4 hours – although apparently you can trick it into shutting the screen down by having the music playing :-)

The second problem is that you can lose significant bits of trail by the software automatically connecting broken tracks together. See the purple trail I’ve added in the image.

Definitely worth having the capability as my Garmin Etrex batteries ran out during the walk! Trail also allows you to view your Everytrail tracks. Overall pretty neat and impressive that it works with the iPhone in my pocket. Thanks Euan for the tip

Here is the completed trail with photographs :-

Cambridge to Anglesey abbey circular walk

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