Tourbiére du Peuil

This past Saturday, Kate and I went on a little adventure to Seyssins. It is a suburb of Grenoble and gets pretty into the mountains, but I know it's not part of the Alps themselves. We started walking from the tram stop up windy roads, fields, and paths. Luckily, Kate "borrowed" a book on Grenoble trails from our CEA office so we could keep referring to the map and directions in the book. However, it wasn't much help.

In the U.S., trails are clearly marked, signs are positioned at regular intervals, and you always know which direction to go at forks in the path; however, this is not the case in France. We had to constantly switch paths, take a different road, try to look for a sign, and just kind of wander sometimes. It was totally worth it though, because once we got to the top (about 7 miles uphill) there was a beautiful tourbiére. A tourbiére, our book explained to us is a marshy piece of land on the top of a hill or mountain. It was very lovely to be up so high and just be really exhausted from the climb. Snow covered the ground even though it was not very cold that day in Grenoble itself. We could seriously feel the temperature change as we got to the top where we quickly tried to bundle up and put on all of our layers. I would love to go up there in the summer when there are flowers everywhere too!

This is the church we found from the 11th century on the way up the mountain!

It was unfortunately a very foggy and misty day; we couldn't really see Grenoble from the mountain. It was very nice, however, to get out of the city and out into more of the country. We paid for this hike with sore legs and calves the whole week!

Bisous! Plus bientôt!