Toutes Les Bonnes Choses Doivent Finir

Toutes Les Bonnes Choses Doivent Finir

It ends as it started – sitting on the balcony in the sunshine, drinking kir royale. Well, why not? This will be my last post until we come back in February, unless I get the urge to write a race report for the ultra I’m running in November.

We’re almost at the end of our 5 weeks and as expected, it’s flown by. The past couple of days have been a mixture of work and cramming as much as possible into the time we have left.

I hauled my tired legs up to the top of Ranfoilly yesterday. It was a beautiful day and I sat at the top for over half an hour, making the most of the view and the sunshine.

We’re hoping to get a walk up there tomorrow but the weather forecast isn’t great, so a chance to sit on what I consider to be my bench and contemplate life under the gaze of La Dame Blanche was too good to resist.

We’ve spent the past few days on the hunt for next summer’s accommodation. The more time we spend here, the fussier we get about location but after an intense couple of days of negotiations, a deal has been struck and my credit card is about to melt. We’ve found a great apartment for me to look forward to for the next 10 months.

Today took us out of the mountains and down to Yvoire, a mediaeval town on the edge of Lac Leman. It’s quite pretty, for a flat place.

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We had a wonderful lunch of local perch and frites, bought a present for one of our cats – as you do – and thoroughly enjoyed our last day of being tourists.

Tomorrow will be a day of packing, covid tests, a last run and some work. On Friday we start the two day journey home, to be reunited with family and cats, who will pretend they’ve forgotten who we are, despite the lovely present we bought them today.

I’ve run/hiked over 300kms, climbed over 10,000 metres, drunk countless glasses of Roussette, chosen to forget my dalliances with Get 27 and génépi, been licked by far too many goats, consumed my bodyweight in cheese, spent time with some of my favourite people, done plenty of work, made plans that hadn’t entered my consciousness before I left home and it’s been wonderful.

Les Gets you have, as always, been an utter joy. It’s a wrench to leave but I’m already looking forward to coming back for 5 weeks in the spring.

So long, farewell, Auf Weidersehen, goodbye.
A bientôt.