Quelque temps en France

Keeping up with Kilian Jornet  We are settling into something of a rhythm. We are being shouted at less in swimming pools, and are becoming more accustomed to the simplest of tasks being associated with vast amounts of bureaucracy. We spent a couple of days preparing for Rosie's parents' (Peter and Allison’s) visit after mostly neglecting our house during the heatwave. We spent a couple of afternoons gardening, which involved hacking at the spiky, nettle-y vegetation and unearthing some 200 year old pavement. We then tried to plant some grass seed, which was instantly consumed by huge numbers of ants. The house, it seems, is reluctant to be tamed. We don't yet have a car, relying on our bikes and an electric car share scheme to get around. The cars can be picked up at any time, rented by the minute but cannot generally be booked in advance. This set of rules encourages you to drive to a place and release the car back to the system, but it gets you some looks. Our...

I seem to have become a serial blogger, mostly enabled by staying up in the middle of the night with a supply of cheap brandy while Rosie and Sam have adopted a more conventional (and arguably healthy) sleeping timetable. Rosie is thus slightly resentful that I am solely responsible for the depiction of of our lives, and even more so that I am writing down and stealing her jokes, threatening to stop telling them altogether (which I duly noted down and stole for my blog). We have returned to the city. The last week involved staying in a mountain hut which we had traveled to while simultaneously renting a campsite emplacement and a house in Toulouse as well as owning a house in America, a financial situation which was not particularly sustainable in a month where I don’t yet have a job. We were then greeted by a huge mobile phone bill from America, which acted as a suitable incentive to attempt to get a French sim card and home internet. This seems to be a relatively advanced level...

There was a time when I could have been accused of setting unrealistic goals for adventures in the mountains, but the tables have turned. Seemingly easy hikes are transformed into substantial epics when provided with a squirming, occasionally uncooperative, 35 pound backpack to carry. The morning of Rosie's birthday, we set out (at her request) from our tent on the Spanish border for the town of Porte Puymorens, an arbitrary destination about 25 minutes away by train, but a full day's hike (at baby-carrying speed) with about 4000ft of elevation. Sam alternated between engagement, sleep and frustration and so we modified our progress accordingly - moving fast while he dozed and feeling mildly concerned when he shouted out "DOG!!" in wolf country. We stopped for lunch in an unmanned cabane, stocked with ancient furniture and emergency packets of cigarettes. A cabane We walked for hours through tiny villages and high pastures, eventually to a pass with a long steep...

It could be Colorado. The view from our campsite is a high plain at about 4000ft, the twinkling lights of a small town and a cascading skyline of peaks beyond, lumbering and massive with the familiar horizontal grading of vegetation transitions from agriculture to forest to the desert of the high alpine. We're escaping the heat of the city in the village of Enveitg - a tiny intersection of worlds, with a few trains a day leaving for Paris, Barcelona and along the eastern flank of the Pyrenees to Perpignan. We spent yesterday mostly underestimating the scale of the mountains, still falling victim to the fact that meters are a remarkably big unit of altitude. After cycling to the wrong trailhead, going back down to the valley, and then the right trailhead, Sam was already pissed off. After I misread a sign which said the lake was 3 hours, rather than 3km away, Rosie was also pissed off.   All this was significantly ameliorated by Sam learning the word for flower, which he remi...

It’s so very hot. We spent some time today discussing whether this was because cities in the south of France in August are stupid sweaty places to hang out, or whether it’s more because climate change is making everywhere awful. Either way, we need to leave town before the weekend when the temperature indefinitely rises above 37C - our vague plan to head into the Pyrenees and simply stay there until the numbers look sensible again. The heat has largely suppressed our attempts both to create a functional French existence and to tread water in the academic world, in addition to the combined efforts of an increasingly uncooperative 15 month old and, of course, the endless tortuous bureaucracy. Following advice from those who have done this before, we have been trying to do only one thing a day. Yesterday was trying to join a car-share scheme, but in every online form, it seems there’s one trick question which is impossible to pass. The car share scheme required a proof of address, whi...