Marais de Chilly

Our nearest geosite in the Chablais Geopark, only 5 km away. Really well signposted until you get to a tangle of stables at the end of an industrial estate and realise that the parking area you had just passed was where you should have stopped. From there just follow the neat Geopark arrows!

Dry grass looking golden in the afternoon sunshine

There are plenty of information boards about the wildlife to be found here but, although we could hear birds in the trees, they were hiding! What we might have seen (and possibly heard) Red-Backed Shrikes, European Water-Rails,  European Stonechats, Yellowhammers and Eurasian Reed Warblers. We might also have seen Amphibians and reptiles such as the Fire-Bellied Toad Bombina variegata, Alpine Newt Mesotriton alpestris, European Green Lizard Lacerta viridis as well as insects Long Winged Conehead Conocephalus fuscis, and Yellow Spotted Emerald Dragonfly Somotochlora flavomaculata. There are orchids too (in season!), and butterflies. 

As it was we just enjoyed the sunshine and fresh air!

 The marais in this area are in glacial drainage channels from the Rhone glacier, and wind between low mounds of moraine on which many of the villages are situated.

A viewing platform with information boards; the vegetation is controlled to prevent the entire area becoming overgrown and choked.

The boardwalk winds through the wetland area and then a trail goes through fields and woodland back to the car park

Although not rounded enough for a bona fide erratic, this boulder isn't local but a coarse conglomerate with clasts of quartz and schist

Juniper berries

 A lovely pm so we moved on to another local geopark site - the Pierre a Martin.