As Everly brothers say........The party's over my friend

Little by little as you are away from home base, the pressures build up. Apart from the major impacts of separation from family, friends and the things you do in your 'normal' living mode, the 'administrative' aspects of living come into play. Delayed appointments, the increasing amount of mail banking up and yet to be dealt with, a home to maintain.

Travel excitement drifts a little towards dealing with new places and people and a certain amount of 'normality' evolves. That is when it is best to fold the pack and head off home. And for us that point is now.

We have had a great and varied trip this time around and one which we will remember for a long time. A well planned and executed 10 day walk along the Chemin de St Jacques followed by a few rest days in Paris. A two week separation as Yvonne discovered the Scottish west coast and Randall did his Rhine walk part II. A week or so together exploring the Rhine and Moselle River areas followed by a sensational WWII POW re-union trip into southern Austria.  At this point Yvonne had moved from graduate travel planner to first degree, almost major.  She looked fantastic and happy as she drifted down the exit ramps at Frankfurt airport.

A short connecting few days in Parma Italy and then an August holiday with the French. Our love affair with France has grown again as we now sit high in the Haute-Savoie contemplating life here. La Clusaz has just seen the last of the high season and is relaxing before Autumn arrives. This is just the perfect time to be here and the whole place is picture card perfection.

But perhaps too soon we will take the one hour pre execution drive to Geneva. We will return our now 8,000 kms old Renault Megane and await our turn to be returned to where we came from just about 3 months ago. This is a time of very mixed emotions.

On Monday, Yvnone could not understand why Randall, for once, was behaving negatively. She suggested a morning walk through the once a week local market in La Clusaz. The village is extremely pretty and set out around a lovely little church. The market stalls wind along the narrow streets around the church and alongside the plentiful supply of small shops and cafes. Some really great looking stalls with cured meats - but not something you can eat in only a day and a half before taking the plane home. Some great looking cheese stands with fine slabs of gruyere, reblouchon, cantal and other local cheeses - not that we could buy much of that either. The biggest fruit and vegie man had slabs of raspberries, myrtilles, strawberries and blackberries and a few others, especially good for jam making - but we could not have any of that either. How can anyone be happy walking through a great little market with no capacity to buy and eat all the goodies there.

Here, as we found on a previous trip to Chamonix, there are plenty of fit looking and well tanned people getting around. These people obviously walk a lot more than we do. Almost everywhere and up and down mountains.
 

Suitably motivated and after a light lunch we took the telecabine to the mountain top where we looked across towards Mt Blanc and enjoyed a liesurely walk through the highland countryside, listening to sheep and cow bells clanging all along the way. The cows enjoying a late afternoon milking whilst Randall continued to count off the few hours remaining.

Today we enjoyed another summer day and a great walk up to the plateau overlooking La Clusaz.  Quiet in the forest then walking along with cow bells.  Not a bit like home!

So it is now time to close off the blog for now and head home. It has been terrific here, especially to be away from the nonsense of Australian politics and the endless 'entitlement' moans that reach us even here. We have learned a lot about other places, cultures and living. Even a bit more about ourselves, so that must be a good thing.
 

Slightly poo faced we stiffen our backs, stand up straight and face up the long trip down under.

Maybe time to start planning for the next gear change.