A beautiful day in the mountains

We woke up to a perfect day - blue skies, hot weather and clear mountain air. After breakfast we went for a walk up a path around the back of the mountain near the house. The path takes you along a stream so there were lovely little waterfalls to photograph, butterflies in the wild flowers and views of the majestic mountains. When we got to the top of the path there is an outdoor cafe that has become quite popular on weekends. It has grown over the years, I remember when it first opened they never had electricity and could not make any hot drinks. Today they were hosting some kind of American themed day - they were preparing a BBQ for lunch, there was a rather excellent country and western live band playing, and some people were arriving in old American Chevvies and other classic cars.  There were quite a few Stetson hats being worn too! We only stayed for a coffee and listened to some music for a while, but then we walked back down again as we needed to go buy groceries. 

Hardly anyone is wearing a mask here, we have only seen one old couple wearing a mask, and life seems pretty normal here. No queuing for the supermarket and you can quite easily forget all about the virus here which is a relief after living so long with the tension it brings. I don't think they had many cases here at all. 

After the usual eye wateringly expensive visit to the supermarket we went home to unpack everything, then headed back into the village for a light lunch on the outdoor terrace of one of the hotels. After lunch we set off on another walk, this time it was only about 5km but it involved a very steep path up to the top of the mountain. There was a girl on her horse on the path and she had to get off to lead her horse as it was too steep for her to ride. I took these photos on the walk. Although it was very hot there are streams everywhere so Xena can get plenty of cold mountain water to drink.

Luke, Adam and Meriel have now left to drive to Switzerland to join us - they are staying overnight in France and will arrive here tomorrow. We have very good weather forecast for the next few days so that will be a treat as the weather can be very mixed here.