Competition for French roundabouts

<An Italian roundabout - similar to a French roundabout>The French love their roundabouts, such as this one in Méribel, this one in Saint-Jean-de-Sixt, this big chicken roundabout, and plenty of others too.

Who knew there was such competition in neighbouring Italy? I snapped this photo at a roundabout in Pont-Saint-Martin on the way to check out an Italian ski resort in the Aosta valley. It has a stained glass centre with a fair bit of detail. The stained glass — an art form often associated with churches and old buildings — was encased by some odd ‘modern’ structure that reminded me of a giant cooking utensil. I’ve no idea what it’s all meant to mean and it makes me appreciate the simplicity of the Morbier roundabout a little bit more.

I suppose I should mention the actual visit to the Italian ski resort. It was great! Fresh snow, perfect pistes, tasty food, no crowds, and no way I’m telling you where it was! I can, however, tell you that it’s a resort that ski chalet company Mark Warner has no chalets in, yet one of the guys who started the company was heli-skiing there. How on earth do I know that? Because I got chatting to the guy in a packed ski lift who leant his backpack into my lady lumps rather too forcefully, spurring me to nudge him back. This somehow led to a conversation about running chalets, and he eventually spilled who he was and that he was off to meet his helicopter. There you go: I’ve boobed one of England’s biggest chalet company dudes in the backpack.

But it could have been worse: I could have been my friend Dave, who had just finished telling him how lovely La Clusaz is without any large tour operators ruining it just prior to the founder of Mark Warner mentioning who he was. Neither of us were invited to go heli-skiing with him. Yeah…look, a roundabout!

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About

I'm a technical author, journalist and writer from Australia who has been living in Europe since 2000 and exploring the world from there. My passions are writing, snow sports and travel.

3 Comments on “Competition for French roundabouts

  1. I’ve been taking photos for a post on the roundabout competition for a while. Some of them are so incredibly naive that you wonder who could have thought them up! I hadn’t noticed them in Italy though.

  2. How rude. He should have offered you a free trip after man-handling you. 🙂

    I really like that roundabout! I guess I like modern art and design and I think it is lovely.

  3. Fraussie, they’re amazing aren’t they. I think all countries should have roundabout art.
    Emm, I think he was annoyed that I had the clout to push back! Can you please tell me what the roundabout means? I’m at a total loss to figure out the metal bits.