Le Franco Phoney

After some rather dodgy pizza boxes, including this one from Geoff, and this one from me, I bring you the perfect pizza box.

It has everything you want in a pizza box: the idea that your pizza has been made in a wood-fired oven; an aroma that the pizza maker himself is loving; written confirmation, if there was any doubt, that you have a pizza inside this box; and a tasty-looking pizza to get you in the pizza mood while you’re driving back from the pizza shop or paying the deliverer. There are no toothless urchins and no young girls with cleavage in bikinis. This picture has a cartoon feel about it, so if you’re imagining the cartoon man salivating over your pizza, that’s okay too: cartoon saliva isn’t real.

Even better, the size of this pizza box was almost double the size of the last few pizza boxes I’ve had. Its size dictates that the pizza inside is a serious pizza, and not some poor attempt and covering some dough in some canned tomato sauce and hoping it won’t taste too bad.

My rating of this pizza box is a ten out of ten! Have you had a better or worse pizza box experience? Feel free to send me a photo of your loved or hated pizza box and I’ll post it up.

I’ve been meaning to write about a few final places from my summer road trip which simply can’t be missed, or that at least deserve some comment.

First of all, Lascaux II. If you’ve ever seen a prehistoric cave painting, chances are it’s from Lascaux. The cave was discovered when four boys and a dog found a hole in 1940 that led to a large underground cave, covered in artwork. The original cave is now closed to visitors because human traits such as breathing and body temperature were damaging the paintings, but a replica has been made using the same techniques as the original. I wonder if it too will suffer the same fate in years to come. Of course, photos, even without a flash, are not allowed, and since this was the start of our trip, we obeyed.

However, we then moved onto the Gouffre de Proumeyssac, where photos were also forbidden (just like in the Gouffre de Padirac). The slide show below has some photos from inside. Yes, by this point, the ‘no photos’ thing was boring, and we clicked away without a flash. This gouffre, or cave, features lots of squid-like staligtites and a very rare triangular rock formation which only occurs in the stillest of waters and with the right chemical conditions. Photos of that are also below.

Since we had already visited La Roque St Christophe and a few smaller rock-shelter villages, we only stopped at Les Eyzies de Tayac to take some photos of the giant man overlooking the town. He’s pictured in the photos below too. The museum does look good there, but we had no time to stop. We had a quick home-made icecream and drove away.

After a long, hot day, we picked a fantastic town to stay in overnight: Sarlat-la-Canéda. The town was full of activity well into the night, with street performers, an open-air theatre, all sorts of restaurants and really narrow, pretty alleyways in the largely pedestrianised town. Famous people have been born in asymmetric houses there, and the medieval feel of the place really adds to the relaxed atmosphere there.

Last, and for me, least, is Collonges la Rouge. This is a tourist town purely because all the buildings are made of red stones. For me, it wasn’t anything special, but my travelling companion loved it, so some photos appear below from that too. Don’t get me wrong, it was very pretty, but the whole ideology of a town being a tourist attraction because they happened to have a lot of red rock to use up makes me feel as if the inhabitants have really just cashed in on the population of non-colour-blind people. Minus points also for a less than tasty sandwich-based lunch with not much choice left at 2pm.

From my place, I can hear the mountain bikers zooming down a green piste in summer. But have I ever tried mountain biking? No. I almost hired a bike a few months ago, but I would have been out with two very experienced, competitive boys, so I chickened out and let them go off without me holding them up.

You see, even on the ’summer luge’ (a couple of metal toboggan tracks on a hill), I used my brakes constantly and watched three of my friends go past me in the faster track next to me. I am cautious. I don’t like hurting myself. I am a wimp.

So, I was very pleased when a girl I met recently asked me if I’d like to go mountain biking with her. She had been a couple of times, but felt like she was holding up the boys she’d ridden with, and preferred to go with someone, well, wimpy, like me.

Yesterday was the big day. We got driven to the top of a green piste, then, after one small incline, it was a gentle decline. At least, on a snowboard or skis, it’s a gentle decline. On a mountain bike, it felt more like an out-of-control roller coaster that just got faster and lower. I hadn’t ridden a bike down a hill since I was a kid, and yesterday I felt that gravity and age were both against me. We skidded over slippery, wet tree trunks, small and large stones, and piles of autumn leaves that sheltered hidden traps such as holes, creeks, and more stones. I did see one stone jutting out loosely on the piste and tried my hardest to miss it, but of course, no matter how hard I aimed away from it, my bike was drawn to it and I was grateful I didn’t fall. I was going at around the same pace as a power walker and the stone was maybe 15cm high, so it’s hardly surprising that I wasn’t catapulted into the air. But at the time, the rock was ten feet tall and I was going faster than an English car on a French toll road. For wimpy me, it was a moment.

Good news for the girl I went mountain biking with: I think my constant braking and howling has given her much more confidence and proved that there is, indeed, someone much slower than her.

There are lots of cool stories about wildlife in the alps, like the dahu, pictured to the left. The dahu, now extinct, had four legs and looked a bit like a mountain goat, but it had one important difference. As it grew to full size, two of its legs grew longer than the other two, allowing it to walk on steep mountains and stay completely upright. They became extinct because they were too easy to catch. The French folk loved the taste of the dahu, so they would creep up behind one and say, “Dahu, dahu…” and the dahu would hear its name and turn around. However, with the two longer legs now being the uphill legs, it would fall over straight away, allowing the hunters to catch them very easily!

By now, you may have guessed that the dahu is not a real animal. It’s a legendary story, but sadly just a story about a mythical creature that never existed. There’s even a piste here in La Clusaz called ‘Dahu’, which is odd, as it’s a pretty flat access track.

And then there’s the marmot. Now, I first learnt of the marmot during my first season as a ski bum. I had seen these plush soft toys in the shops that looked like an American gopher, and just presumed that’s what they were. Then people started talking about marmots. They sleep through the cold part of winter, waking up in April to bask in the sun on the rocks re-emerging from the melting snow. I spent four seasons looking for a marmot. I heard they hung out under one of the chairlifts in Meribel, and I checked each rock beneath the chair every time I was on it. I never saw a marmot.

By my fifth season, I was well and truly convinced that the marmot was a made-up animal — a marketing ploy by the French tourism board to sell plush toys (see photo to the right, above) to unsuspecting tourists who were destined never to see a marmot in real life, since they didn’t actually exist.

And then, it happened. I saw a marmot. Actually, I saw two! Some friends and I had headed over to Chamonix late in the season. When we stopped for lunch, one of them pointed out the marmots, busily arranging some scraps of food that the chef must have left for them. They were a level below our outdoor eating area, which was surrounded by perspex. So, I tried to take a photo. The result, sadly, is lacking clarity due to reflection and distance, but here it is (pictured to the right). I decided it needs this red star around the marmot just to make it clear.

So, last summer, I decided to go on a marmot mission. I put my walking shoes on and armed myself with my (pre-SLR) instant camera and food supplies and I walked to the hills! I walked and walked and never saw a marmot. I sat on a rock and ate my packed lunch, waiting for a marmot to poke its head out. Nothing. I had already waited for a few hours and I was getting bored. Lots of other people were wandering around so I presumed that the marmots had gone into hiding until everyone went away. Resigned to not seeing a marmot, I descended the rocks and hills. And then — in the distance — I saw one! It hadn’t seen me and it was sitting on a rock right next to a path. My luck was in! I got my camera out and took a photo from afar. Alas, the zoom on my old instant digital camera was hopeless and I knew the photo would be like a Loch Ness monster sighting — kind of small and blotchy and a little bit blurry (see photo to the left). Taking small, slow steps, I honed in on the marmot. Too late! It saw me and scurried under a rock. “No worries,” I thought, “I can wait a bit longer: it’s a sunny day.” So I sat on a close-by rock and waited. And waited. And waited. The camera was propped by my eye so I didn’t have to make any sudden movements when it did return. Finally, its little nose emerged, followed by the rest of its body. And just as it did, a family of tourists approached. It was a catch-22: if I had asked them to wait, the marmot would have heard me and run away again, and if they got any closer, the marmot would have heard them and run away again. And it did. So, I sat and I waited again. And I waited. My arm muscles grew sore from holding my camera by my eye, so I put my arm down for a moment. And of course, the marmot returned before I had put the camera back near my eye. I moved my arm slightly, in an effort to fluke a photo without it being by my eye, and the marmot saw and ran back in. So I gave up and went home.

I decided today that I would not let the marmot beat me. I wanted to take a proper photo of a marmot now that I had a proper camera and a few hours to spare. So, I set off late in the afternoon and headed for a different area, which is normally a lovely piste on the way down from the La Balme ski area. I passed some cows that were roaming un-fenced near their farm and watched as a dog herded them. The cows were running to avoid his wrath and I continued up the hill. I passed some giant, man-made rock sculpture. I spotted a gardening glove — odd for an area of rocks and cattle, but perhaps it was a left-over the man-made rock sculpting. I spotted a disposable camera. I guess someone fell over in the snow during winter and lost it. I stepped over a variety of types of poo. I spotted a bone, which to me, looked like the remains of a goat’s tail bone. Perhaps one of the wolves I’ve heard about had eaten it when it strayed from its herd. I had reached as far as I wanted to go and still hadn’t seen a marmot. I decided to return home, defeated again by the marmot. As I walked towards a rise, a little red-brown slinky thing appeared from the other side of the rise. A marmot! We both froze and stared at each other. As I raised my camera, the marmot turned around and slinked away to another rock and watched me cautiously. There was grass in the way and it was much further away than the other marmot had been, but I snapped a photo as it contemplated climbing another rock (see dodgy photo to the right). As soon as I did, it ran out of sight. I went past the rock it had been on and found one to sit on, hoping it would emerge. Alas, the marmot stayed in hiding and I eventually gave up again.

So, that’s three photos which all look a bit like the dodgy Lock Ness monster photos we’ve all seen. If I hadn’t seen the little buggers scurrying around each time I took my dodgy photos, I would still be thinking a marmot is as mythical as the dahu or just a French marketing ploy to sell plush animals to tourists. And of all my friends who have seen marmots, none of them have photos. Coincidence? I think not. Google has images of marmots. Here’s one of them (see left). But Google also produced images of dahus and they never really lived. So, the marmot: fake or real? Judge for yourself.

So…Candide Thovex. He’s a local hero here in La Clusaz, having won many freestyle skiing competitions and attaining the title of world champion a few years ago. He’s been holding the Candide Invitational freestyle competition — four days of bling, baggy-panted riders and wannabees taking over the otherwise sleepy French family-style resort of La Clusaz — for the past six years. But will he be holding it here this year? The Tourist Office’s calendar doesn’t mention a date, and when I asked them, they said that no date has been decided. So I asked them if it had been cancelled and their rather cagey response was: “No decision has been made yet. Sorry.” So, are the rumours that Candide fell out with the La Clusaz authorities during the last event true? And is that why I haven’t seen his face featured in any of the tourist brochures or on the La Clusaz winter website, even though he featured prominently in past winters?

Candide is a genuinely nice guy (he let me jump in front of him in the chairlift queue last year, not to mention the YouTube video showing him saving a girl from falling off a chairlift) and almost every kid in town loves him. Almost every female in town would like to love him. It would be a shame if the Candide Invitational did not happen this winter; and besides, it’s the only time in La Clusaz that I can check out the pro-riders to see what ridiculous patterns, colours and/or styles of clothing they think they can get away with.

Following on from yesterday’s craziness, the snow is still falling. Weather reports last night said it was due down to 800 metres, but it’s falling even lower than that. This morning’s view out the window looked like this (click on image for full size):

This is what was out my window when I awoke this morning (click on image for full size).

Glorious!

I have nothing else to add.