Author: Franco

B-Day

Many years ago, I mused about the fact that there was one law in England that you had no way of knowing that you were breaking – the drink driving law. It’s legal to have <80mg/ltr of alcohol in one’s

Posted in 2012 Spring

Un Printemps Catastrophique?

In other words, “a disastrous spring?” We arrived here in the Marais Poitevin, just inland from La Rochelle about half way down France’s west coast, on Monday. On Tuesday we went on a very pleasant, mostly sunny 15mls/24kms promenade à

Posted in 2012 Spring

A Grand Day Out

About 18 months ago, one of my UK dragonfly enthusiast contacts helped me out (not for the first time and certainly not the last) with the identification of a (to me) confusing specimen in France. At the same time, he

Posted in 2012 Spring

Les Tourbières de Vendoire

Les tourbières de Vendoire lie in the Périgord vert region, north-west of the gastronomically famous town of Périgueux – truffle country. La tourbe is French for peat and les tourbières are peat diggings. Those near the village of Vendoire were

Posted in 2012 Spring

Fanjeaux: Considered Impressions

We’ve been ensconced here for three weeks now, almost long enough to take root and it’s beginning to feel like home. To be perfectly honest, because we like the place so much and are so familiar with it, it feels

Posted in 2012 Spring

New Butterflies All Round

One section of the GR7 – Grande Randonnée 7, one of the French long distance footpaths – passes along an edge of the farm on which we are staying. This section of the path looks like a good habitat for

Posted in 2012 Spring

Offally Good Lunch

Or, at least, it would have been had we bought a better example of the main ingredient. After several pleasant, sunny days, this morning dawned dull and overcast. A few spits of rain fell. As a diversion, Francine decided to

Posted in 2012 Spring

Lovely Weather for Frogs

We awoke to Guillaume’s roof echoing the sound of the water droplets of our morning shower. There is perversely something vaguely cosy about the sound of rain on a caravan’s roof. After stirring ourselves into lethargic action, our morning shower

Posted in 2012 Spring

The Kees of the Missing Orchid

We have another wild flower lover on our campsite in the form of Kees (pronounced “case”), a regular visitor here from Holland. We’ve known Kees and family for several years as a result of our paths crossing, as they frequently

Posted in 2012 Spring

Lots of Guts

For some reason best known to a psychologist (probably), at the beginning of this trip I had a hankering for French gastronomic speciality called andouillette. Every time we went shopping, I scanned the shelves and boucheries [butchers] for this particular

Posted in 2012 Spring