A Beautiful Sunset Hike With My Wife
It’s the summer holidays here in France at the moment. This means that my two children got to spend a few weeks in Southern France with their grandparents. They absolutely loved it, and my wife and I got to recharge our batteries as well. The only thing we struggled with a bit was the scorching heat. This summer has really been hot, regularly reaching 35 °C, which is quite hot for our region. Especially when you live in a wooden house without air conditioning.
So one Wednesday evening, when I came home from work, we decided to hike up to the top of a local mountain and watch sunset from there. As usual, I thought that I had prepared everything and that everything would go well. Let’s just say that have a tendency to get a bit excited and forget some crucial details…
We left our village around 7 pm when it was still 35 °C and drove up to a little plateau called Solaison. It’s very pretty and close to where we live, so I know the area quite well. So well that I assumed that it would be like a walk in our back garden. Well, I keep forgetting that my wife grew up in the flat region around York/England, whereas I spent my childhood scrambling around the German mountains.
I felt like I had to show that I knew exactly where I was going and charged ahead, until my wife asked me why we were starting to walk around the mountain… that’s when I decided to check the GPS just to realise that we had veered off the main path straight from the beginning.
Half an hour behind schedule already, we managed to find our way up again. But somehow the path was much steeper and slippery than I remembered. It was never dangerous, but we still had to walk slower than anticipated, which made me start to wonder whether we would get to the summit on time for the sunset.
Suddenly, I heard a loud whistling sound in front of us, and some stones rolling off the mountain. I looked up just to see the “smiling” face of a mountain goat! They are called “bouquetins” in our area, and they have unfortunately become quite rare. So I was pleasantly surprised when I realised that there was not just one, but a whole family of them walking around us. We made sure not to disturb them and slowly continued our hike.
The sun was getting lower in the sky, and, when we entered a little forest, it started to be quite dark already. Thankfully, the temperature started to drop a bit as we were gaining some altitude.
As it’s often the case in the mountains, each time we thought that we were reaching the summit, another hill appeared behind. After a few of these false “summits”, the path suddenly became flatter and I caught a glimpse of the wooden cross at the summit of the mountain. We arrived just in time with barely a few minutes to spare before sunset. I ran ahead to take a few photos of my wife as she reached the top of the mountain with the setting sun behind her silhouette.
While we ate our food and watched the sun finally set, we had a short, uncomfortable discussion about who had packed the headtorches and if we had forgotten them at home. Just because I had seen them at home, I assumed that somebody must have packed them… but I wasn’t so sure!
I reassured my wife (and myself!) that it surely stays quite bright for a while after sunset in the summer, even though I should have known better. I’m glad that we eventually found our head torches at the very bottom of our rucksack. Just as well, because it got dark very quickly, especially in the forest. It was magical to walk and see the milky way above the silhouettes of the trees lining both sides of the path.
My wife had to dim her head torch because she got attacked by moths that got attracted by the light. Soon, we heard the sound of the cow bells, and eventually found our car again.
We were surprised to see that it was close to midnight, so we quickly headed home.
The next day, I felt a bit tired at work, but the experience was definitely worth it!
