Gnome-Trek Series 2 (2021) Episode 1: The Gnome in Chains

France, the Final Frontier. 

These are the voyages of the Flying-Brick ‘Gnome’. Its continuing mission: to explore our world, to seek out new life, to avoid Washington DC, to boldly go where no gnome has gone before...

Episode 1 (Series 2): The Gnome in Chains.

It will not have escaped your attention; the world is in chaos. While the UK shows its world-beating ability to evolve new viruses and climbs mightily the 2021 Eurovision Death Contest leader board with jingoistic aplomb, and while civil war breaks out in the USA in support of an orange child in control of a big red button, France puts all its energy into debating the best way to deliver a vaccine to its ungrateful citizens. Debating it. Not actually doing it.

Instead of giving in to the genius of vaccines, France is relying upon curfews to protect its people from the virus, while America tries out curfews to protect its people from its people. 

The world has truly gone mad and we needed to exit stage right. 

To flee the heat of this insanity, we plunged into the cold of the Pyrenees. And to our first attempt at chaining down our noble vehicle.

So whilst the world’s gaze flitted between the US and Europe, we attempted to find a few days of peace, quiet, and bleedin’ cold.

After a day of chillin’ in the chill by encircling the wood stove, we sallied out to the lower reaches of the mountains to walk in the snow covered forest of Antichen-de-Frontigne, just above the Col des Ares. For those more anal-minded comedians among you, the French do not pronounce their s’s at the end of words.

After throwing together at least three different culture’s cuisines, we headed into the deep dark woods...

Noticeably, there were a few trees...

Strangely, some trees were missing their baubles.

Here is Sky, bauble-hunting.

After an hour of slip-sliding away along the frozen forest path,  (you know your destination when you're slip-sliding away)...

...we finally reached a view point...

...before rapidly returning in advance of the setting sun. 

To coldly go where no baubles had gone before... to the warm embrace of the Gnome.

The following night saw temperatures plunge to new lows, seemingly taking along with it the entire democracy of the United States. The only thing going up was the death rate. 

We had planned a long hike the next day, but the sub-arctic temperatures and Sky’s arthritic knees persuaded us to stay more local. Much more local. Like, next to the wood-burner local.

We did sally out to an isolated neighbour for lunch. He had been in solitude there for several months, so he was as likely to have become the local super-spreader as I was to have relocated my baubles, so we felt safe and managed to spend a happy few hours denigrating man's great political failures while demolishing a couple of bottles of one of man’s great achievements.

The following day we were to return to our slightly warmer homestead. I was up with the lark to assist in Sky’s morning routine (only three sacks full...). The temperature was, however, not up with the lark. Minus twelve Celsius and falling. Sky’s usual gay abandon was quickly abandoned.

We reached the usual halfway point of our morning walk to watch the once gurgling stream gradually freezing over. 

This was no place for a nudist colony.

By now I had realised that my companion was way behind me, clearly thinking of returning to the fireside with or without me.  

As my fingertips were clearly thinking the same thing, and my mind was turning to arc-welders, I thought perhaps that I would not retreat, but would advance in a different direction...

And so we fled the mountains back to a reality that has changed much in the short time we were away. 

And not for the better. The calm serenity found in that distant valley was, once more, to be replaced by calm insanity.