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 do, at Fanjeaux. In the same way that Odonata fans swap dragonfly stories and share locations, Francine and Kees have been nattering about orchids and their  locations. Fortunately, since our Dutch is none existent, Kees’s English is excellent and communication is usually no problem.

A few days ago, Kees returned from a day out and, via the rear screen of his camera, began showing us photos of orchids he had found. One in particular was not in Francine’s collection and was naturally of great interest to her. Armed with a Michelin map, Kees tried to show us roughly where he had been hunting but his description, despite his excellent English, was less than precise.

A day or so later, we set off in search of his treasure trove to try to add to Francine’s orchid catalogue. We found a small cross roads with likely looking rough meadows on either side of the main track, found somewhere to park and bailed out. Francine began scanning one field while I looked in another. I found Lizard Orchids and Pyramidal Orchids but nothing new. Francine joined me and added a Bee Orchid which I’d missed but again, nothing new. Kees had mentioned “seeing them beside the road” but there was nothing matching that description here. We weren’t convinced we were looking in the right place and returned to try and explain to Kees what a Wild Goose Chase was.

After a second cross-examination in the Kees of the missing orchid, it transpired that we had been in the right location for the flower meadow but that the main target of Francine’s quest was in a different location, some way earlier along the road and beside it on the verges.

Today looking suitable, we set off once again to try and find the missing orchid. After once again reaching the meadows without spotting our quarry, we spun around and tried looking from the opposite direction.  We stopped more or less on spec. and Francine went off scouring the verges à pied [on foot]. Sure enough there were Helleborine orchids scattered all along the verge on the shady side of the road. Francine thinks these may be examples of the Broad-leaved Helleborine (Epipactis helleborine) and very attractive they are, too. [Yours truly finds them easier to remember as Haliborange Orchids.]

Francine’s third addition to her catalogue – the Kees of the missing orchid solved.

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 delicacy but found none. On market day in Bram (Wednesday), I did spot a larger cousin of andouillette, andouille, lurking on the counter but thought it was too big so decided against it. Finally, in the Bram Carrefour, I found a pack of three [insert own joke here] andouilletes on the shelves and snuck them into our chariot [shopping cart], much to Francine’s disgust.

Andouillette and andouille are sausages made of chopped up chitterlings – the small intestines of pigs. Since a proper sausage skin is actually made from pigs guts of some form, these sausages amount to pigs guts inside pigs guts. Yum! For lunch, I was intent on stuffing one of my pack of three inside my own guts, which must result in guts cubed. This picture shows my long sought after andouillette beginning to spill its guts after a darn good grilling.

Having introduced these as French delicacies, I should point out that the name andouille is actually also used in the Cajun cooking of Louisiana, USA. I have a cookbook by Paul Prudhomme, a well-known exponent of Cajun cuisine, which mentions andouille. However, I believe the American andouille is a pretty conventional pork sausage. I assume that this is because offal, or variety meats as I think offal is known Stateside, is about as popular to most Americans as a bacon sandwich would be at a bar mitzvah.

My andouillettes were similarly unappealing to Francine so she opted for a rather less gastronomically challenging galette made of lardons with some goats cheese. I don’t suppose her choice would have gone down too well at the bar mitzvah, either. 😀

A few kilometres to the west of us, between Fanjeaux and Castelnaudary, is an area called the Lauragais, named after what I’d call little more than a village, Laurac. Laurac is overlooked from the south at a height of about 400m/1200ft by an impressive escarpment. We saw it first as part of a strenuous walk some years ago when farmer Luc offered to drop us off in the middle of nowhere to walk back to Fanjeaux. It’s called the colline des vents, or some such phrase, and with good reason; life can get decidedly blustery up there.

Not only are the views impressive, though, but the wildlife can be also. Once here we watched in awe as a Short-toed Eagle (Circaetus gallicus) gracefully hovered in the up draught above the escarpment, dropped to catch a lizard or snake (we couldn’t quite tell which), then rose back up again and proceeded to devour it on the wing. In the bushes atop the escarpment is also where we spotted our first Spanish Gatekeeper butterfly (Pyronia bathseba) and where Francine has enjoyed playing David Bellamy – rummaging around in the undergrowth for flowers. It’s always worth a visit, even if a little windy.

This is one of those parking spots where a four wheel drive vehicle comes in handy. This being a nice a dry day with firm ground, we didn’t actually need four wheels driving but the ground clearance is necessary crossing the dip that you have to get over to get off the road. In our previous, rather more low-slung vehicle, I’d grounded the car’s tow bar. Ouch! This time, apart from the effrontery of a local being parked in the same spot, all went well.

Francine began her search and I started looking for butterflies. Spanish Gatekeepers were around again but didn’t pose as well, even when encouraged to find a new perch. Francine soon became excited at a new find and set about recording it for posterity. Fortunately it was posing much better, being in a rather more sheltered spot and keeping relatively low to the ground in the grass. It was an orchid, the same shape as a Bee Orchid, but with very pale, plain “wings”. Indeed, nearby was an example of the Bee Orchids (Ophrys apifera) with which Francine is already familiar. The newcomer was not in the wild flower books that form part of Guillaume’s library. However, with a nifty bit of research grâce à McWiFi, Francine thinks this beautiful new flower may be a White Bee Orchid (Ophrys apifera var. clorantha).

Confirmation or otherwise will be needed back at home base.

We hear that the accursed Jet Stream, that high velocity, high altitude wind that circles the northern hemisphere is messing things up again by being misplaced. As it sweeps from west to east it also oscillates north and south, in sort of sinusoidal wave. It should be (whatever “should” means in a meteorological context) oscillating up above Scotland but is apparently zooming straight up La Manche [English Channel] delivering wave after wave of decidedly stormy weather to much of Europe. Friends of our camping neighbours have been deluged during their first week near Troyes and, with the forecast expecting much the same for their second week, have bailed out and decided to return home early. At the same site, three camper vans had to be towed off waterlogged pitches. Terrific!

The only area that is currently escaping the current spate of weather is the area around the Mediterranean. With the dawm of another grey day, we decided to try and escape the gloom by visiting Gruissan a little south of Narbonne on the Mediterranean coast. Our camping neighbours were looking similarly gloomy so we invited them to come along.

Good decision! After driving for about 20 minutes the solid grey mass above our heads began fragmenting and bits of blue sky appeared. After another 10 minutes, the sky had transformed from grey studded with blue to blue studded with grey. At Gruissan, 30 minutes later again, the great majority of the sky was clear and folks were walking about looking cheerful instead of gloomy – including us.

Gruissan is an attractive little fishing port overlooked by Redbeard’s tower. We’ve been here once before on another trip but that was on a Sunday and considerably busier. Today life was considerably calmer with a street market in full swing. I’d thought we’d been lucky to bump into the market unplanned but later we saw a sign implying that it happened on three days of the week so perhaps lucky would be overstating the case. After browsing the market and my buying some colourful casual trousers (seen on male model, right), our companions treated us to lunch in a fish restaurant to thank us for taking them on an escape to an interesting, new (for them) territory.

While walking off our lunch, we came across an preserved historic settlement, the “Pech du Moulin”. At least, until we manage to find pech in a dictionary,  I’ll assume it was the historic settlement. Here, as well as this old donkey-powered well, there was a stone shelter with yet more filming going on as in the Pyrenees earlier. This time, though, everyone was wearing clothes.

It really is quite amazing how often the Mediterranean manages to punch a whole through what elsewhere is a solid mass of grey. We refer to this as “the Mediterranean effect”. It isn’t foolproof, the Med. does get deluged sometimes resulting in catastrophic flooding, but it seems to work much more often than not. Even the French forecasters comment on “ the sun being put under a cloche in the southeast” and “the sun being cloistered away in the southeast”.

Unfortunately, when the weather is set thus, Fanjeaux is about 30 miles too far west to benefit from the Mediterranean effect. Maybe I could move Luc, Nadine and their farm east to the Corbières?

Dateline: 11th June, 2012

Guillaume had to have his heating switched on!

What’s going on? This is unprecedented; here we sit in the south of France in the middle of June and we’ve had to put the heating on. Staggering!

We seem to be in the grip of a particularly un-summery spell of weather à ce moment. The last two days have been decidedly unsettled and this evening the skies blackened, a thrashing wind began bending the poplar trees like long bows whilst rain lashed the farm, campsite and lake. We could do little but join our neighbours for a glass or three of reality correction fluid.

During a brief respite, Nadine (Mrs farmer) popped in to invite us to a soiree the following evening and told us the farm had measured 10mm of rain. She left and the rain began again.

During another brief respite we returned to Guillaume to cook our dinner and decided Guillaume was decidedly too cold. On went the heating. Thank farmer Luc for 16amp power supplies. The rain recommenced.

Fortunately, the trees and hedges between our pitches are protecting us from most of the wind which continued to batter the tops of the trees, other wise some lucky individual would be outside trying to take down the awning in as much of a controlled fashion as such weather conditions allow, which is almost no control at all.

Let’s hope conditions improve soon – this is neither Odo– nor flower-spotting weather.

Footnote: Last year I wrote about The Garden Effect  whereby, whenever someone occupied le jardin (the garden – the small triangular pitch adjacent to ours), it rained. Today, somebody pitched a tent in le jardin.

Yesterday, after our enjoyable visit to the market at Revel, we stopped in at the Lac de Lenclas for our picnic lunch of aligot [a regional potato and cheese goop mixed with a rowing oar] and some chiffonade [paper-thin sliced ham]. The lake itself is a dammed fishing lake nestling in a bend of La Rigole, the purpose built canal that feeds water into the much larger Canal du Midi. There is a restaurant and rugrat play area on site but our attraction is the population of Odonata. We’re in an irritatingly unsettled weather system à ce moment but the day was half way reasonable so we thought we’d see who we could find.

As we were working our way through our aligot lunch, a man appeared to be having some kind of bonfire. We couldn’t actually see the fire, which was behind his car from where we sat, only the rising smoke and heat haze were visible. Adjusting our viewing angle, we could see that he was setting fire to some seriously sized pieces of ex-tree in a large metal trough. Curious, we thought, then, having finished our lunch, set off around the lake in search of Odos leaving him to his fire. When we returned, the fire was well under way and the man had been joined, not only by another man together with a couple of glasses of beer, but also by an entire pig – well, entire except for the head – which was now rotating slowly on a spit about 1m/3ft above the fire. Hog roast French style – how splendid!

One useful technique when watching Odos, particularly in an Odo-rich area, is, rather than chasing them ,which can tend to scare them off, is to stand still and wait for them to come to you. Though this wasn’t the conscious thought involved, one did settle on the track near Francine’s feet as she was standing still during our tour of the lake. Fortunately, not only did she have the correct lens mounted (the longer one, 75-300mm) but she’s just about tall enough for her feet to be a little beyond the lens’s minimum focus distance. Snap; snap, snap, snap, she went.

The first snap was the best shot, as it so often is. Her visitor was the most interesting spot of the day. It’s a female Common Clubtail (Gomphus vulgatissimus). I’d snagged a male before on Le Loir at Luché-Pringé but I hadn’t got a shot of a female; this was our first.

Once back at Guillaume and able to study the photos a little more closely, our female Common Clubtail’s abdomen looked a little more curious. Here’s a blow-up of the tip of her abdomen. Something is clearly clinging to the underside of the abdomen tip. I’d remembered reading something in the Dijkstra/Lewington Field Guide to the Dragonflies of Britain and Europe concerning the Two-spotted Dragonfly/Eurasian Baskettail (Epitheca bimaculata), which we affectionately refer to as the European Basketcase:

Females carry an egg mass under their up-curved abdomen tip while searching for a suitable oviposition site. The ball of eggs unravels into a gelatinous strand when it is deposited in flight on floating plants.

I assume that this habit of carrying an egg mass on their abdomen is the very reason these dragonflies are called Baskettails. I can’t find any similar comment concerning Clubtail dragonflies but could this be what is shown in our picture? We suspect it is an egg mass, though I’ll need to consult other authorities at a later date.

Interesting day.

Fortunately, although France is full of both supermarchés and hypermarchés, the French still love a proper, old-fashioned street market. Market day seems to be quite a social occasion with friends meeting and nattering whilst wandering around the vast array of foodstuffs and prepared foods on offer. Shopping for food is a very serious affair not to be hurried. Here are a few customers discussing the finer points of olives with this particular vendor. During their market marathon, folks will sit at a street cafe and re-invigorate themselves with a cup of coffee or maybe even a pastis. It’s all great fun.

The market at Sarlat-la-Canéda in the Dorgogne region has a reputation as “the finest market in France”, at least in some circles. It is certainly enormous; to my mind it is actually a bit too big and can seem somewhat daunting. It is undoubtedly, though, a great place to buy the specialities of the Périgord region.

In this neck of the woods the market at Mirepoix is very good, albeit a little a touristy, often with English voices outnumbering the French voices once the season is underway. Our favourite market in this area must be the market at Revel, which is held on Saturdays and is very well attended by real, local French people. Revel has a magnificent square in the middle of town housing the old market hall constructed of some very impressive, clearly ancient wooden timbers. Doubtless, the woodworm think it’s market day every day. This shot shows about a quarter of the covered area.

The four streets surrounding the outside of the old market hall are crammed on both sides with more stalls dedicated to gastronomy in one way or another. On this occasion there were also a number of people attempting to give away young kittens, though not for the pot, I imagine. Oh, I don’t know, though, they’ll eat pretty much anything in this country. 🙂

As well as raw ingredients, meat, fish and vegetables etc., several stalls sell prepared food. Here’s an example of a stall with at least six meals available, all cooked on the day in large paellas. [I desperately wanted to type “paella pans” but since paella means this type of pan, saying “paella pan” would have been like saying “pan pan”, if you see what I mean. Anyway …] On offer here, amongst others, are brandade (closest – a salt cod concoction), paella (the meal, not the pan) and moules (furthest away – mussels).

There are stalls selling clothes and table cloths, etc. but they are in another nearby section of town. One more reason why I like this market at Revel – I can avoid that section completely. 😀

We bought ourselves a sample of a local speciality called aligot which seems to consist of cheese and creamed potatoes stirred together into a stomach-cuddling, gooey mass with a large wooden paddle in un unfeasibly large pot. This made a change from our usual purchase of a poulet roti [rotisseried chicken] and we retired to one of our dragonfly lakes for a picnic.

Have you noticed that sometimes in life you may learn or bump into something new and, as soon as you have, that something seems to keep re-occurring for a while making you end up wondering how you ever missed it for so long? No? Stop reading now. 🙂

At the end of our 2011 autumn trip to La Belle France, we arrived back in Normandy a day ahead of schedule and, with a day to occupy before our ferry, decided to visit Dieppe for the first time. All I knew of Dieppe prior to that concerned an abortive military invasion by the allies during the second world war. Now I know more. Dieppe has a magnificent Saturday street market and an attractive harbour surrounded by several popular seafood restaurants. We called in to one of the restaurants for lunch and noted that we were lucky to have arrived early; most tables were booked and we had no reservation but we did get in. [Note: in future, make a reservation.]

The spécialité de la maison [house speciality] as a starter at our chosen restaurant was foie de lotte [monkfish liver]. The first thing I do at my relatively rare visits to restaurants, particularly in a foreign country, is to scan the menu for main ingredients that I’ve never eaten before. Here was a grand example of just that; other than cod liver oil capsules being forced down my neck as a child, I’d never come any where near eating fish liver. Francine fancied it too; we both ordered it. It was served cold and tasted unlike anything we’d previously eaten. It seemed to me to have a very slight hint of vinegar in the flavour. I’ve no idea how it had been prepared but we both liked it a lot. [lotte – get it?] 😯

Earlier this year in Spain, our UK neighbours arrived while we were house-and-dog-sitting and invited us to dinner at their hacienda. Dinner was to be a Rick Stein [Ed: all hail!] recipe involving rice, grilled red peppers and monkfish – essentially something like a monkfish and red pepper paella. Our neighbour bought a monkfish from the local Mercadona supermercat [or supermeerkat, as we like to call it]. Unlike in England, where many foodstuffs are painfully sanitized, said monkfish came complete with (ugly) head and liver. In sensible Spain, one is expected to make stock from the head and eat the liver. Naturally, these expectations were not set by anyone hailing from England. Mr. Neighbour froze the accessories and just used the monkfish tail, which is all we ever get to see in our sceptred isle.

During previous trips here, we’d noticed foie de lotte on sale in the Super-U supermarché down in Mirepoix. Today we saw it again. “Oh what the hell”, we thought adventurously, and went and bought some. Being a “spécialité de la maison” in Dieppe, I was expecting something relatively pricey but no, it was dirt cheap at a mere €7.xx per kilo. Having discussed various methods of preparation, still not knowing the Dieppe restaurants secret, we decided to serve it as a salade tiède [warm salad] with lardons over lettuce. Quite good it was, too, though I think I’d cut it thinner next time. I’ll stop short of claiming it to have been very good; calves liver is very good and has one gasping for more. Calves liver is also much more expensive and rightly so.

I’d still like to know how the foie de lotte had been prepared in Dieppe. 😉

Beside the beginning of the narrow, local road which is the final approach to our Fanjeaux campsite, is an area which is used as a gravel storage area, presumably for road works and the like. Sometimes it is piled so high with gravel that stopping there would be ill-advised, to say the least. This time, however, the stocks of gravel seemed to be very low and the area was largely clear. As we were returning from today’s shopping and blogging expedition and entering this last road, Francine excitedly asked me to stop. I pulled in to the now largely clear gravel repository.

Francine clambered out, crossed to the opposite grass verge and began peering at the ground. She returned saying that she’d found a new orchid – new to her, that is, not to science. 😉 Where’s your camera when you need it? Back at the campsite, of course. We’d return later after lunch.

As usual, lunch included sharing a carafe of vino so we weren’t about to drive before giving our metabolism a chance to work on the offending alcohol. At about 5:00 PM though, I reckoned a return trip complete with camera gear was safe enough so off we set. The previously largely empty gravel storage area was now full of large articulated lorry [truck in Amerispeak] manoeuvring to dump a huge load of fresh gravel. We parked elsewhere and returned to the new orchid on foot. As we did so, a second large lorry arrived with a second, equally huge load of gravel.

Francine’s new orchid (left) is, she thinks, a Man Orchid (Aceras anthropophorum). It was in the company of a few of the probably more often seen Pyramidal Orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis). Lorry driver stepped out of his cab, presumably eventually intent on discussing the finer points of gravel dumping with his fellow driver, and first wandered over to us asking what we were looking at. “Orchidae”, we replied in our best French, whereupon he switched into stilted English and told us he had five or six orchids at his home in Quillan, which he was careful not to cut down with his mower. If only other Frenchmen were so considerate. We’ve seen municipal verges containing many orchids decimated by municipal fauchage [grass-cutting].

Being on a roll, we continued searching other rough ground near by at the same road junction. Here we discovered a few examples of two of our favourite orchids, the Lizard Orchid (Himantoglossum hircinum) and Bee Orchid (Ophrys apifera).

After a slightly disappointing trip in search of Pyrenean flowers, we find four different orchids within a few metres of each other a mere kilometre or so from our campsite. I think this served as a reasonable consolation prize for Francine. Happy camper.

[Note: the scientific names used here are from old reference books and may have been changed.]

[With humble apologies to Mussorgsky.]

The main reason for our making this trip basically begin at Fanjeaux instead of the more normal end at Fanjeaux, was for Francine to investigate the mountain spring flowers in the Pyrenees. Mountains being what they are, such excursions must be planned to coincide with clear weather, of course. Today’s forecast was grand and looked like our best chance yet so we set off early to maximise our time at our chosen first likely spot and one of our favourites, the plateau at Soulcem.

After a 90-minute drive we arrived and parked. On the last 30 minutes of the drive climbing up the valley to the barrage [dam] we’d both been thinking, “don’t seem to be masses of flowers beside the road” but saying nothing. Once at the plateau and while we were getting our cameras ready, there didn’t seem to be masses of flowers either; how disappointing for Francine.

Neither were there masses of people, though there did seem to be a little activity around the loo area, the building for which seemed to have a large curtain affair draped over one side of it. I spotted something, some rapid movement, in the left periphery of my vision and then thought, “no, it can’t possibly have been”. After all, with a cataract developing in my right eye, visual acuity isn’t my strong point. As I was doubting my own 1½ eyes, Francine piped up with, “there’s a naked woman running down that hill over there.” I used my camera’s telephoto lens as a telescope and saw a woman return up the hill but she was wearing a gown. Shortly she removed the gown, threw it to an accomplice and, sure enough, ran naked down the hill again. My telescope became a camera again. 😉

Along with the disrobing assistant, whose job it was to deposit the robe at the end of the lady’s run, a short way down the hill were some chaps armed with a variety of cameras and microphones. There were other men standing around dressed in what appeared to be period mountain garb: knee-length leather boots, smocks, rifles etc. – and there was clearly some location filming in progress. I assume that the curtain draped around the small building served as a dressing room for the cast, though quite what a woman about to run naked in public would need with a dressing room eludes me.  😀

Streaking female actors aside, here’s what we really came here for. The flowers may not have put in a appearance en masse but the trip wasn’t a complete blank. After naked lady excitement, we wandered off up the valley to the high pasture and Francine was very happy to see several stunningly blue Gentians, probably Southern Gentian (Gentiana alpina). Francine’s other floral find was this rather delicate-looking Alpine Clover (Trifolium alpinum).