Julien's fuzzy blog

Yesterday I acquired some videos of me moving around, aiming to reconstruct a 3D model. In order to get the camera parameters, I also acquired a couple of sequences with a grid for further calibration.



By the way, you can also see a bit of my "fashionable" red tight T-shirt. Theoretically used as a hiking underwear, I found it suitable to contrast with the background... but also to get lots of comments !

I can't wait getting the full-size pictures... So hereafter some of the mini official photos.

Beginning	Middle	End

Also I forgot to thank Yoyo for his blog full of advice and the nurse at the refuge Bertone.

I told you Bayswater was pretty more animated than South Ken. Well this week-end was really animated, with the Notting Hill Carnival nearby...


Photo: Reuters

A couple of pictures of the flat as promised. Twice my room (green) and Marcus' one (red)

   

On Saturday was organised a last-minute trip to Oxford with Mommas and Ludo to visit Lily, William & Co. The weather was really nice, so 8 of us took two punts (detailed description on Wikipedia). We spent a couple of hours on the river and had great fun, trying to collide with the other ship, etc ... All the pictures are available on Wiliam's web site, and even a video of Philippe in the water



It's actually quite funny how the region looks like the Ried in the South of Alsace, and how punt boats and poles techniques are similar to the boat we used to drive with Arnaud ...

Once back to Nice, we didn't stop hiking anyway, we went to the Parc National du Mercantour in the Southern Alps too, for a long day hiking.
To summarise this day, I would say that the animals were really numerous and not really afraid of the humans ! We saw around 50 chamois, some of them from as close as like 3m ! We saw some young ones too, some of them still drinking their mother's milk ! And I didn't have my camera and my 300mm lens . At lunch time, a marmot came to us and stole Bastien's chunk of bread ! Then ate it proudly in front of us and came back to get the last pieces under Bastien's knees, touching him ! We also saw an ermine in summer fur, and a peacefull ibex showing an impressive 50cm-long pair of horns...

 

2 weeks ago, Bastien and me went to the Parc National des Ecrins in the Southern French Alps to hike the GR 54 "Tour de l'Oisans" with a tent. This path is told to be one of the widldest and most beautiful GR (long distance hiking). It's around 200km-long for +11,000m ascent, highest point over 2750m. The region is rather dry, so the glaciers are generally quite small and hanged on the clives. This presents a great contrast between the white snow and the black rocks.
We got different kinds of weather: very hot and heavy, warm, cold but sunny... and rainy. We saw lots of marmots. In particular, Bastien achieve to approach 2 very young marmots near their hole (at around 2m) with his camera. It was great fun to watch them playing, fighting together but also kissing, hugging. We also saw a couple of chamois, king of the place. Scenery was great in many places, just to mention the best: The Meije glacier from the Plateau d'Emparis: powerful, the Sirac, the end of the amazing valley of Jaz-la-Croix and the lake of Vallonpierre.
One morning, we saw a camp "devastated" by a group of cows... The hikers there only achieved to save quickly bags and tent, leaving the cooking gear in the middle of the cows, tasting some pasta ! They looked really pissed off, and didn't know what to do. Bastien and me went in the middle of the cows to get back their stove, and other gear from under their legs. Bastien even hit one in the nose with his bag. Some crockery was "slightly" crushed, but the stove was ok. For their first night out, they made a great start !
One camp at 2500m was rather cold, even though the weather was nice: there was some ice in the tent ! The gas stove didn't burn properly, so I had to help it by heating the bottle with the lighter.
Unfortunately, after 6 great days, a heavy rain with low clouds prevented us to pass the 2500m-high Col de la Vaurze (really slippery slopes and clives). As the schedule was rather tight, we had to cancel the last 3 days. This was quite a hard decision, I can tell you. We were nearly locked in a small village (Villard Loubière) when a guy offered to give us a lift to the nearest city (Gap): 35km and the way back alone just for us ! We always meet great people in the mountains !

     

Bastien is supposed to create a complete web site, much more detailed about this trip, with lots of pictures. He's going to tell you objectively how he was about to die many times, how I was nasty to him, etc Don't hesitate to spam him to get this site quickly online.

On Sunday we saw Tower Bridge open for a rather small ship, but with a high mast.

As promised ...
   

Pictures by my father, cheers !

You can find some more pictures and videos of the ride on Charlee's website. On the pictures labels I'm called "carot" or "le carotte" (*) for some reason - unknown to me. At least it's not "the nazi" and nobody's called "the rabbit"

(*) in French we say "la carotte".

Rachel's pictures of the BHF London to Brighton Bike Ride. Enjoy !

             

Thank you Ray !

Yesterday the VIP team (Andy*2, Fani, Julien*2, Karim, Rachel) went to cycle the BHF London to Brighton Bike Ride - 86km of pure pleasure ! Rachel designed and printed out some really fancy T-shirts (girlie flowers vs boys stars) with our nicknames that most of the team was very happy to wear:

 

The first 10 miles were quite annoying. Imagine 25,000 cyclists launched on the road in just 3 hours... That's a pretty nice mess, believe me ! We had to stop very often and even to push the bike in the first slope... Little by little things went better. The sun was shining (over 30°C), roads started to melt and skin to get red. The route was slightly hilly all the way long and there was a very nice steep uphill portion at the end, frightening people in advance but that was only psychological, of course .

We didn't stop for a big lunch meal as planned, but we took quite a long time to complete the route anyway. We started at 9:30am, and finished late in the afternoon. All this time eating only a few cereal/energy bars ... Unfortunately we couldn't really cycle all together, because of the crowd and split up in smaller groups. Karim fell down of his bike in undetermined circumstancies (to my knowledge). He was pretty hurt and couldn't really keep on cycling. But I've been told that he recovered quite quickly in the first aid tent...

It was a nice ride for a first test of my new bike ! Everything went fine. As I'm more used to moutain bike, to break down and turn hard, I was not very confident at the beginning which such tiny tyres. Especially full speed in downhill sections while trying to avoid the small button lights in the middle of the road. But at the end I was fine, even maybe a bit over-confident...

Pictures should come very soon.

Many thanks to Andy for the organisation of this great trip !

Miscellaneous hiking pictures that I've scanned today.

   

First one from Lake District, I particularly like the perspective with Andy's head Two last are from North Wales - Ogwen Valley - introducing my new tent.