The second photograph (below) shows the view from outside the shrine on the morning of our return. The movement of the clouds across the front of the mountain facing the shrine made this a fascinating view to watch, with its change of mood accompanying the changes in the clouds. Believe it or not, a small aeroplane had landed and taken off again from the slope that you can see left-of-centre in the photograph, and just above the trees on the slope. The third photograph should enable you to see the sloping landing strip more clearly - look just above the sloping tree line at centre-right in the photograph. The main shoulder of hillside that you can see was, for one day of our stay, home to a flock of sheep and goats - and their shepherd who lived in a house hidden from view.
This fourth photograph (below) was taken in the side valley to the right, where you can see thin cloud along the right hand edge of the photograph above. Two things do not show up well on the photograph. Spread across the near hillside is a flock of some 100 or so sheep and goats - you can see them if you look closely. They had been brought up the valley from their sheepfold (see above) by the shepherd and his three dogs, and they continued on towards the upper left corner of the photograph to spend a day grazing on the upper most part of the mountain. The second thing that does not show up well is the sound of the alpine bells attached to the flock which, literally, filled this valley with a steady musical sound. It could have been a different century!
The representation of the apparition at the entrance to the cemetery was made by students from a school in the Vosges region of France, using wreckage of the crashed aeroplane recovered from the mountain side. It was constructed to mark the 60th anniversary of the accident in 2010.
As you will see from my photographs, we were at La Salette at a most beautiful time for colours. I think we were able to see just about every possible colour of leaf as autumn seemed almost frozen at its most colourful.
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