Au revoir Alan Baker – walk and lunch – 3 May 2024

It is always sad saying goodbye to good friends, and this time it was to say au revoir to our good walking buddy and organiser Alan Baker. Unsurprisingly, many members of GIN, and not only those in the walking group, showed a wish to join in all or part of the day’s activities and others sent their regrets.
The planned walk took place in Versonnex, France and consisted of about three kilometres around the “mighty” Oudar, a tributary of the Versoix. In view of the limited parking in Versonnex, most walkers met in Divonne for car sharing to the parking by the church in Versonnex where they joined the others, and in all 23 walkers set off at 10h40.

The beginning (and end) of the walk was on level tarmac and with a relatively rapid early pace, people remarked that we would be at the restaurant well before noon. A herd of bullocks (?) came trotting out to look at us before we turned in through the woods on an earth path by the side of La Lillette, a tributary of the Oudar.

Those with a good sense of smell noted an abundance of wild garlic before we crossed a bridge over La Lillette and into the sunshine with fields on either side of the path. It was the turn for horses to be entertained by our passing with at least one rolling about on his back, no doubt trying to get to that itchy spot that he couldn’t otherwise reach. In noting a wild animal in a field in the distance, there was a short discussion as to whether it was a deer or a hare; in the end we decided that cataract operations were a good thing as we could at least see there was a wild animal in the distance. After walking by some farm buildings, with woods on the left where La Lillette merged with the now “mightier” Oudar, we reached a small clearing by the river for photographs.

The return walk was on level pavement and only had one small incident that required a car to collect one of our number who had an issue with one of his toes that hindered his walking.

The lunch at Sur l’Ardoise went extremely well and they catered for the now 27 people most professionally. We were in a partitioned section of the restaurant on three tables. Also, the acoustics enabled us to have conversations easily. Thank you, Richard, for setting this up. It is certainly a restaurant to be considered for future GIN lunches.

We all said our fond farewells to Alan, with our thanks for his having organised the walks over so many years. Good luck to Tim Goodyear, his worthy successor (we hope, not yet confirmed).

Present: Alan Baker, Peter Taylor, Mervyn Powell, Tim Goodyear, Larry French, Gerry Swart, David Gwilliam, Ken Forrester, Ray Fiander, Trevor Davies, Robert O Riordan, Ian Cappin, Paul Sochaczewski, Steve Long, Mark Watts, Mike Price, Wouter van Ginneken, David Colledge, Alan Peters, Philip Jenkins, Rob MacKenzie, Norman Eatough, Hubert Pettingell, Bryan Clark, Ralph Wares, Richard Saynor and Mark Warren.