Skip to main content

Evian-les-Bains

Evian is beautifully positioned on the French (south) side of the lake, midway along that shore. It is a little like Buxton, in that it has natural waters that have attracted people for well over a century and it has the imposing buildings to match. I think Buxton’s Crescent beats anything that Evian has though.






The Evian waters have apparently taken 15 years to filter through from rainfall to outlet. Buxton claims their’s takes a ridiculous 5,000, which is bizarre and crazy and can’t be correct.  Can it?

Just as at “The Springs” in Buxton, people have free access to the constant supply, 24/7, which is 24h/24 and 7j/7 to use the longhand French approach. I do think though, that Evian people appear to be a little more greedy than Buxtonians when it comes to “taking the waters”.


The highlight of our morning visit, was a journey on their funicular, from the street parking at the top, down to the bottom station. It is a pleasant ten minute ride, free of charge and great fun, although there’s little scenery to look at.

Two cliff-rail type carriages move in opposite directions, each driven or braked from the top by a single steel cable.

You can either stand or sit for the ride but it is clear from the signs that seated passengers are to be super chilled, whereas standing passengers need to be alert for possible danger to their personal well being.







We stayed overnight at a site at Brise du Leman, run by Glenn and Frances who, as people often seem to do, told us their life story before we had hardly got settled.

It was very handy for the lake beach, with wide grassy areas behind and also for a lake bar but I found it noisy at night, not the campsite but loud cars and motorbikes.





It served a purpose, it was much warmer in the evening than the Abondance valley and we have realised just how good Lake Geneva is. The local kids really appreciate it and were doing acrobatic dives off the ferry jetty, This isn’t yet in use, as it’s not high season for obscure passenger ferries across to Switzerland. The bigger towns do have a service though.




A quick tourist visit followed to Yvoire, a little to the west of Evian. This is a rather twee old village which appears to cater just for tourists. We enjoyed a walk and a coffee and pastry.






Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On y va

Hooray. We are off. The ferry was booked a few weeks ago and the pressure was then on to get all sorts of jobs finished on the house and Landy. Major cosmetic work was to cover the grey front doors with paint that matches the rest of the vehicle. On the engine a coolant leak had developed behind the water pump and so the P gasket and adjacent core plug were renewed. Also a cheapy head unit from those Chinese people replaced the old Sony fm radio. Now we have opened up the wonders of Car Play and all that comes with it. Finally the 9th gen iPad with WiFi became a 9th gen iPad with WiFi and ‘cellular’. This means we can use OsmAnd Maps which need no data and get their gps position off the ‘cellular’ chip in the iPad. More on this useful map in subsequent posts. We headed towards Portsmouth for a mid morning ferry via our old neighbours in S-I-V. There we had a great few hours updating each about our families and then proceeded to save the NHS, the country and the world too. I mean why no...
Post a Comment
Read more

Burgundy

We thought that after the descent from Col du Galibier, we would be done with cols. They are brilliant to drive but hard work. The narrower the road the harder it is, especially at hairpins. These are almost always steep and so the vehicle speed and engine revs need to be correct before the turn. If it’s a right hand bend then the driving line is obviously on the right part of the corner which is always the steepest. It’s all about teamwork, especially as those bikers love the roads and like to be close to the middle. A Land Rover 110 needs a wide turning circle and so we have to look out sideways and either up above or down below to see what’s coming. After Galibier the road finally descends to the ski area of Valloire and on to Col du Telègraphe, which from the south isn’t much but those ascending from the north will feel the height gain. Then down to the Maurienne valley and we think we are done with hills. However there’s one last surprise as we turn right off the motorway route to...
Post a Comment
Read more

Onwards

You can’t visit a classic car enthusiast without admiring their car and we got our timing right, as it was the monthly club meet on Sunday. This was held at the Hippodrome in Maisons Laffitte, so it was just up the road. The definition of ‘classic’ here is 30 years and so many of the vehicles there looked very familiar to us 😳. TR5 and TR6, MGB, RR, BMW, Maserati, of course the Jensen Interceptor that our host drives, 2CV, Caterham 7, a beautiful Austin Healy 3 litre and then this… This is identical to mine, a Fiat 850 Sport Coupé, that I owned from 1978-81. Seeing it, brought back memories of welding, brazing, stripped driveshaft splines, clutch on the M1 and many miles of amazing touring. We drove around France on a camping road trip for all of September 1978 and the following year did the Ardennes for a month too. Here’s Nige’s Jensen… Maisons Laffitte is a very nice area to the west of Paris centre. The mansion is now owned by a trust I think and is a beautiful building. All we ne...
Post a Comment
Read more