GUEST post by Shirley Curran

A hike in the Jura mountains

It is very quiet up on the Colomby de Gex during the week but, today, we saw 13 chamois. It is difficult to know what they are eating on the barren cliff side but they are very busy.

The green woodpeckers, jays and cuckoos were noisy and we saw a rare sight, an eighteen-inch long Jura viper. Sadly he was dead; he had probably been dropped by a predatory bird.

However, the most spectacular sight was, as it is every year, the vast fields of wild daffodils.

There are thousands of them up there and today they were in full flower and at their most beautiful, just below the last vestiges of snow.