Written by When I first had the idea of taking a winter road trip through the Alps, I imagined snowy walks followed by fondue in the comfort of our van, feet warmed by 25kg of auburn fluff (it was to be our Irish setter’s first encounter with snow). Waking up to snowflakes on the skylight and the […]
Street lights strobed through the window, sending shadows sweeping across our faces as our train followed the River Seine through Choisy-le-Roi. Ten minutes earlier, we had pulled out of Paris’s Gare d’Austerlitz. Departing at 9.40pm, the Intercité de Nuit was due on the Spanish border just after 10am, where we would connect to a Barcelona train. It’s […]
On the terrace of a brasserie on Rue Cler, a chic Parisian market street, I’m chatting over a tongue-lubricating glass of Sancerre with Sébastien de Lavalette, 33, a French travel company head and my language exchange partner. Sébastien compliments my French accent, or at least I think he does: “You don’t have that mouth-full-of-bread accent […]
I first learned about the Écrins national park in relation to a specific nature reserve within it. The réserve intégrale du Lauvitel was established in 1995 to “monitor the natural dynamics of ecosystems” with all human influence removed. This so-called wilderness area was one of the first of its kind in Europe. A video showed […]