At Mont Tremblant

“Very nice, very civilised,” commented Elva as we were being served supper at Gray Rocks last night and Carol used the exact same phrase to describe tonight's meal. The iced water had a splash of lemon in it. Gray Rocks resort on Lake Ouimet dates back to 1905, with an old fashioned lobby, sitting room with striped armchairs (where I'm writing this) and a concert grand in the corner. In the opposite corner are French windows opening onto the lakeside lawn, through which a squirrel came scuttling in across the carpets on the wooden floor. Our bedroom windows also slide open onto the lawn where, beyond the pine trees that border the lake, we have an unobstructed view of the whole of Mt Tremblant, in perfect autumn weather. The dining room has a similar outlook, lake and mountain at sunset, which aptly rounded off our day that had begun with a view of the early morning mist rising from the Gatineau River from our breakfast table in Maniwaki.

Mum, reading the hotel's Répertoire des Services, says you can have a white clay body wrap for $105, if you want one. Or an algae and marine sediments body wrap for the same price, she says. She doesn't like the sound of that one. She's giggling away now about the Polynesian massages for $215: “That's over a hundred pounds!”

No extra charge for swimming in the hotel pool though, as I did before supper on Monday evening.

We spent most of yesterday in Carol's car, driving through the hills between Maniwaki and here via Mont Laurier, the mountain of that name to the north of us, and Nominingue where Le P'tit Train du Nord cycling trail has a couple of attractively landscaped stopping places, converted from the railway stations and signal stops they used to be. We found Nominingue's municipal beach too (closed since September 3rd and therefore beautifully deserted). Butterflies fluttered around over the seed popping milkweed (the fluff from which was used by the early settlers to stuff their bedding), the asters and the black-eyed Susans. Above the shore of Lac Nominingue the gîte, Chez Ignace, where we enjoyed a stay in 2002, is still in business, its Belgian flag still flying from the flag pole, so it can't have changed hands either.

We ended the day by star gazing again at the foot of the same steep slope (grass covered ski slope) that we climbed earlier so as to see more of the view.

Today we went up a much higher mountain, Mt Tremblant itself, cheating, by taking a ride in a gondola from the "village" where after another walk along the track of the P'tit Train du Nord, this time along the shore of Lac Mercier, I challenged my mother to a game of Mini Golf. Note the cable car in the sky behind the putting green. We rode on that one as well.