Dwight Peck's personal website

Winter 2018-2019

Let's see if we can squeeze through another Year of Trump!



You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

A few Christmas Day snaps of the Grand Canal of the Rhône at Lake Geneva (Léman)

First, a look at the Christmas crèche, carefully assembled over the years with handmade artisanal bits from Naples and a worthy thing from Latin America added on

Here's the Grand Canal of the river Rhône as it joins Lake Geneva on its long journey to the Med. We haven't spent the Christmas morning opening gifts under the tree, because the kids are all grown and we haven't got a tree, but a brief contemplation of Kristin's crèche and a snappy chilly walk along the sunlit canal will make a perfect holiday observance.

That would probably look better with the summer leaves on it.

Here, along the canal, is a mysterious installation that turned up a few years ago and sat there for a while, and has recently begun expanding.

Rumors have associated it with the dreaded 'fracking' technology that has multiplied the numbers of earthquakes in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, etc., by an order of magnitude, but no new earthquakes here so far.

One could speculate that it all has to do with slant drilling for natural gas under Lake Geneva . . . but, though somebody must know, it's not us.

A look from the 'fracking site' up to the Col de Chaude, between the Rochers de Naye off to the left and the Pointe d'Aveneyre in the right-centre.

A mini-marina along the canal -- we're walking along the boundary of the protected wetland called Les Grangettes, designated by Switzerland as a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance in 1990.

The view across the end of the lake to Montreux on the left and the Viaduc de Chillon, completed in 1969, 2km-long bridge over the narrow shoreline past the Château de Chillon.

A nicely sunlit building at the end of a drainage ditch near Noville. The entire Rhône delta into the lake was once a vast marsh that was channeled into its present course in the 18th or 19th century, but the entire agricultural flat between the mountainsides is still crisscrossed with ditches draining into the Grand Canal and the river.

Back to the car parked near Noville, with the Dents de Morcles on the southern horizon

Driving along the Valaisan side of the river, with the Grand Muveran on the horizon

Not much sunlight over this way in winter. We're based in Ollon near Aigle on the other side of the valley, the Vaudois side, and used to live in Leysin above Aigle, once famed for having the most hours of sunlight annually in Switzerland.

And that's our town, Ollon, sunlit.

Some more photos of Les Grangettes, in April 2014, and February 2016, and May 2016, and that's just for starters


Feedback and suggestions are welcome if positive, resented if negative, . All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 14 January 2019.


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