La grande chartreuse

The mother-house of the Carthusian Order lies in a high valley of the Alps of Dauphine, at an altitude of 4268 feet, fourteen miles north of Grenoble. Medieval writers were awestruck by the desolation of the spot, and Martene, who visited it in 1760, writes: "One cannot conceive how it could enter into the mind of man, to establish a community in a spot so horrible and so barren as this."

The spot is far from horrible or barren, but the life of a Carthusian monk sounds excruciatingly hard - spent almost the whole time in solitude, in his cell or his little patch of garden.