Detour

Usually when we have been driving we have gone where the road leads us - we have never been anywhere around here, so everywhere is new and interesting. But on the weekend we got our Tom Tom GPS system set up with a map of Western Europe (the Australian map we had didn't help us much around here...). So we planned a trip for today, while the girls were at school. We wanted to see what was on the other side of this mountain called Chartreuse. So we planned a route which avoided toll roads and took the scenic way around the mountain. Not exactly around, but a little bit over too, with a couple of passes being at about 1300 metres. It had snowed overnight so the scenery was very picturesque, with chalets and pine trees covered in snow, and clear mountain streams cascading down the mountainside.
Mountains are extremely exciting and picturesque, but I am not a mountain girl. I grew up on the farm at Pingrup where you can see for miles and miles - with not a hill in sight, let alone a mountain. I was hoping to get to see out over some sort of flatter countryside on the other side of the mountain. But it was not to be...
During the night some of the mountain had fallen onto the road. And the rockfall had closed the road. So we had to program an alternative route into the Tom Tom and we arrived in Grenoble rather sooner than we had thought.
But not before I had snapped a photo of the scene and of the workers, hanging from ropes, who had drilled holes into the rock to insert bars which would hold the hillside together. Like sticky tape I was told.