I can honestly say that I have no idea where I am.

We drove from Geneva up through Chamonix to a town named Sion and from there a further hour deep into the mountains, we arrived at 9 and ate till midnight before retiring to our beds.

As I look out of my hotel window, I look across a steep valley, clouds cover the tops of the slopes like a duvet.

Below are the signs of mighty rockfalls, scree and the traces of watercourses above, trees below, a river at the bottom rushes hundreds of yards beneath me. It is the kind of scene that greeted Shelley as he gazed up at Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:—the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them:— Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind’s imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?

Silence and solitude have been mine for some hours, as I watch the dawn arrive.

A day “offsite ” to follow, how to concentrate in such a place!