Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Lac d'Aiguebelette - 28th April

Today our mission was to visit Lake Aiguebelette and see where my nephew rowed at the 2015 World Rowing Champs. At this regatta they qualified the New Zealand 8 for the 2016 Rio Olympics. We called into the rowing area and saw crews out training for the coming season. We could drive right around the lake and stop at various lake access points, however other than the rowing facilities, railway stations and a tourist office there are only campgrounds, restaurants and a few small housing areas. We arrived at midday so priority was lunch. Stroke of luck the very small town of Aiguebelette had a bakery, ever better luck it was open. They offered a Menu formula, which is a combo deal including a quiche, a tartlet and a drink. I got spinach and feta quiche and citrus tart and Roger just got a ham and cheese quiche.

The temperature at lunchtime was 28⁰ so madly we went off geocaching to fill in our day at the lake. 1st cache needed a ladder, Roger improvised with a stick, 3rd needed the ladies (and gecko’s, snails and ants) to leave the free library, 4th cache needed a better translator: apparently aimantee is ‘magnetised’ not ‘loving’, 5th needed some clues. The 2nd cache was pretty clever - that I have to share. You go to a carpark and find a bottle with a treasure map drawn on transparent plastic hidden by a compost heap. You then look at the map and give up and visit the Jewish war memorial. There is a map board there, you race back get the transparent map, place it over the map on the board and yahoo the hiding place is divulged. You go there, now 31⁰ and trains are racing by, and then Roger crawls down some smelly drain to retrieve the cache, just so we can write our names in the book as finding it. Photos below are: Jewish memorial tree, each leaf has the name of a local Jewish person who was killed in WWII.

The transparent map before we realised what to do with it and....

Cheese Experience No.7 Cheese is addictive. It contains casein which is a protein that breaks down in the digestive system and produces an opioid called casomorphine. The quantity is not enough to make you drive erratically but is enough to give you an addiction to cheese. If it wasn’t enough that we had cheese in our quiches today, we had four cheese ravioli for tea (Ricotta, Edam, Emmental, mozzarella) with additional Blue Creamy of Beaude cheese sauce.