Italy - France part 6

I've just finished bathing myself and washing my clothes so I let the heater do the drying and decide to walk the village of Valmeinier since weather seemed to postpone rain. Cute little one with nice buildings like this:

Only a few steps away from my door I find a small monument from Europe's blood stained history:

I wonder what's the point in monuments and history lessons since people keep doing the same mistakes over and over again. Was this dog sharing the same question while staring from the window rather moody at the people passing by?

Some houses have quite inspired decorating details:

The local climb wall:

A pool with view to the Alps. Kids swimming in it are not so unlucky:

I return to cook something and see what weather will allow me to do the next day from all the places I had in mind. The cons of being in gorgeous areas - so much to see!

Next  day at Valmeinier was much worse giving a weird sense of heavy winter in the heart of summer - Alps are notoriously generous like this on any month of the summer. This forced be to follow the forecast on a bunch of sites every few minutes so that I could see which of the 200+ km of the initial optimistic loop plan I could do. When you have lots of km ahead above 2000 meters the last thing you need is a thunder on your face and this day offered lots of them. Needless to say how joyful it is to ride those hairpins when rain turns them to rivers. The dense low clouds covering the slopes made them look as if they were on fire:

To have an idea, here's the view outside my door:

At some point I see that weather coming from the West was OKish so I decide to head this way instead of East as initially planned. After the first km I face fog just like the picture above. When it cleared up I had an amazing contrast in the sky between the clear blue of the West side and the dark clouds above my head. First stop at Montvernier intending to do this almost absolutely vertical slope there which makes the road among the most winding and narrow I've ever done. Weather was bad enough to keep the traffic low there which was very welcome as its hairpins can barely fit a medium sized vehicle. Obviously a good chance for some pictures:

See how steep it is:

View from the top:

I go down the same road to continue West and then North to ride up to Pussy. Yes, that's how French decided to name this place. Fuck yeah! Literally :) As I go up the next mountain weather gets aggressive again. As soon as I reach a kinda short but open straight I stop to have a better look on the weather. Dense rainy clouds. Knowing that the next pass was above 2000m I decided not to risk it. At 1200ish conditions were already not good enough - who knows what was going on up there. I admit I loose and sadly make a U turn. Back to Valmeinier, Pussy can wait till another time and I will do a North deviation next day on my way to Milano in order to do Val d'Isere. Long deviation but it's a crime to leave such places unseen. Besides, you have the little St. Bernard pass waiting for you as well the Aosta valley in Italy to ease your pain.

Some more rain on the way back and I return at Valmeinier half happy. This village is a classic ski destination in winter therefore there's various shops with ski gear. Obviously I skip them and go straight to the mini market to do some shopping for my stomach because I wasn't patient (or happy if you prefer) enough to cook.

Here's my food enjoying its last view before the battle against my hunger:

Here's the video from the harvest of that day: