Auvergne

On Saturday we headed east, with a 2+ hour drive across some extremely winding roads (no expensive motorway this time!). It's a beautiful day and we're headed for one of the first places that we marked on the map when planning this trip - Puy de Dôme. This is a lava dome in a chain of relatively young volcanoes, between 10,000-11,000 years old. Once parked at the bottom there is a 3-hour hike to the top.... or the handy rack and pinion train that takes about 20 minutes to ascend. Guess which option we chose!

It's absolutely freezing at the top, with pockets of frost and ice on the ground and a sharp wind blowing, but the views were spectacular. We spent a little over an hour walking around the steep paths to various different viewpoints over the volcanic chain and the city of Clermont Ferrand.

There were also a group of paragliders taking off from the summit so we stopped to watch, although our hands almost froze trying to capture the lift-off.

After that, we headed to Clermont Ferrand for our night's accommodation. We were staying in an Ibis Budget about 10 minutes out of the centre with a very convenient tram stop nearby. At the weekend the public transport is all free, which meant the tram was absolutely packed - imagine the scenes in Japan where they push people into the carriages with long sticks and you wouldn't be far out.

Clermont is initially disappointing as everything seems to be closed, but we cheer up once the bars open at 5pm!