Relaxing Ceillac

We have just spent four days in the small mountain village of Ceillac in the Queyras National Park near the French/Italian border. Heather and I came across this tiny village by accident ten years ago when we were driving/camping around Europe and thought it would be a nice place to return to. It is a very quiet village situated towards the end of a mountain road that dead-ends further up the valley. The final stages of the drive to Ceillac follow a very windy, narrow road with tunnels cut through rock and huge drop offs into the valley below - it is quite a spectacular drive. We had some mixed weather during our stay, but it didn't really worry us too much. Just being in the Alpes, spending time as a family was relaxing enough for us.

We stayed in a self-contained apartment, a welcome change from hotels as it allowed us to cook our own meals and have a bit more flexibility on how and when we do things with Matthew. It was a huge complex with about 100 rooms but nearly desserted now that school holidays had finished in France. We found a really nice cafe in the village which we visited every day for coffee. We enjoyed Tarte Tatin for morning tea. The picture of the three of us was taken inside the cafe (it was raining that day) just before Matthew threw his favourite music-playing nursery rhyme book he has in the photo onto the tiled floor. Needless to say, it smashed and the singing sounds little dodgy now - whoops. Looks like we'll need to find him another when we get back to Australia (no point buying a French version).

Although Matthew is much better and his cough just about completely gone, he developed the habit of waking up 4 or 5 times for a cuddle and feed. Before we left Australia he would sleep through the night about every second night so this is quite a change for us. For Heathe,r it results in several extra feeds during the night and this doesn't help her CFS, or recovery from her cough. By the end of our stay in Ceillac, Heather changed a couple of things with the night wakings, and Matthew responded nicely, now only waking twice a night. Let's hope it continues to improve!

By Thursday the sun was shining and the rain gone, so after Matthew's morning sleep we went down to the centre of the village for market day. This was definitely the smallest market we had ever seen! There were only six stalls and not many people around, although we still managed to buy from three of them - nut balls/biscuits, saucisson and some sort of deep-fried pastries. Heather thought she deserved the indulgance of a thick Spanish hot chocolate at the cafe that morning - they had about 35 different varieties to choose from. Hazelnut (noisette) was her final choice. I enjoyed my usual cafe au lait while Matthew slept in his pram as we soaked up the sun and the mountain views. We also went for a bit of a drive around the area and even had a look at the campground we stayed at 10 years ago. It was still as basic as it was back then and brought back some good memories of that trip.

On Friday it was time to leave, and with a strict 10am check out time, we had to be as efficient as ever in packing up our bags (we are getting pretty good at it by now). Although we didn't actually do a lot while we were in Ceillac, we did enjoy the most relaxing four days of the trip so far - sitting at our favourite cafe, eating from the local boulangerie (bakery) and enjoying lots of family time in the Alpes.