Another Victory for Automation

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Remember those halcyon days in shops when the shop keeper would look at your item, know the price of it and ring that price straight into the till/cash register? That system was very quick and efficient for the paying customer. What happened? Along came computer geniuses armed with bar codes and automated stock tracking and re-ordering systems. (Mea culpa, except for the genius bit.) Now what happens? Either :

  1. Spotty oik at the checkout passes your pre-packaged item over a bar code scanner but the bar code label is creased or badly printed.
  2. The scanner fails to beep its recognition of your item.
  3. Spotty oik tries again … no beep … and again … still no beep.
  4. There follows a laborious process of manually keying in the 12 or so digit numerical equivalent of the item’s unreadable bar code. 
  5. Finally the bloody computer system recognizes your item and adds the appropriate amount to your bill.

Alternatively,

  1. You’ve inadvertently picked up one of the items on the shelf that hasn’t actually been bar coded and spotty oik now has to call for someone in authority to go and retrieve another identical item with the bar code.
  2. Wait two minutes. The queue [line, in Amerispeak] is getting antsy behind you.
  3. Go to #1 above.

Admittedly this doesn’t happen with every item but it is certainly not an infrequent occurrence, is it? Is this quick and efficient for the customer? No, of course not. This whole system is designed to help the shop/store in streamlining its stock control and re-ordering. It is not designed to help the paying customer.

France is now inventing something equivalent in regard to its autoroute tolls. When you enter an autoroute section which is péage [carries a toll], you take a ticket. When you leave the autoroute, you are charged according to how far you have travelled. Simples! Well, it was. Up until recently there was a warm body, sometimes smiling and cheery, at the exit point. You handed them your ticket and a price appeared. Some people, notably the French, seem to insist on juggling with cash but the warm body made it all pretty quick and easy. Sensible people handed over a credit card along with the ticket and you were on your way in no time flat.

[Aside: You never had to sign a credit card chit or enter a PIN at an autoroute toll booth. How’d that work?]

Enter: the ugly face of automation once again. Many of the autoroute toll booths are having automated machinery installed. The warm body, sometimes smiling and cheery, at the autoroute exit point is being replaced by an impersonal machine/computer system. Here’s how it works:

  1. Several cars in front of you, a driver inserts the ticket into the machine the wrong way round. The machine fails to read the magnetically encoded data and spits the ticket back out.
  2. The driver re-inserts the ticket the right way round.
  3. A price appears.
  4. Being French, the driver shuns the use of credit cards and begins fumbling for cash. (The price is such that we are generally talking paper money here, BTW.)
  5. The machine miraculously accepts the driver’s creased and soiled Euros and discharges the correct change (coins) into a tray.
  6. The driver starts scooping out his/her change and insists on storing it in his/her purse before continuing.
  7. The driver then fumbles a scooping motion and drops his/her remaining coins on the ground in between the car and the fancy toll machine.
  8. The bottom of the sun’s disc gracefully touches the horizon.

Or:

  1. You’ve stored your autoroute ticket next to your bankers card in your wallet/purse and the magnetic strip is now knackered. When you insert the ticket, even if your bright enough to get it the correct way round, it can’t be read.
  2. The ticket is spat back out and you have to press the “warm body for assistance” button. (Wait one minute.)
  3. Now you are instructed to read some of the digits from your ticket.
  4. A price appears.
  5. Go to #3 above.

Meanwhile, another six vehicles have formed a queue [line, in Amerispeak] behind you.

This marvellous new system is, once again, several times slower than the original, even when things go smoothly. Trust me, we’ve tried both many times. On busy autoroute toll booths, the queues [lines, in Amerispeak – get it?] are noticeably longer.

Is this new system better for the paying customer? No, of course it isn’t. This system does absolutely nothing for the paying (and paying dearly) customer. This system is, of course, designed entirely for the autoroute companies who can now make redundant a good percentage of their employees.

Unemployment in France is already high enough.

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Lac d’Ourrec

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We’ve scored two strikes on walking up various high bits of the Pyrenees so far. A trip or two ago, we decided to strike out for Andorra starting at one of our favourite mountain locations, the barrage de Soulcem. We struck out – failed; we started too late in the day, underestimated the severity of the route, didn’t have enough water and should have left our heavy cameras and lenses at base camp. Just two days ago on this trip, we fell short of success again. We’d set off from an altitude of 1000m/3000ft to “walk” up to le Lac Bleu at 1900m/5800ft. This is a bit like starting from the top of Snowdon and walking up Snowdon again. We had enough water and time but Franco’s left thigh decided to go on strike [Ed: how very French!] about 300m/1000ft from the summit. I think Franco was suffering from his winter of inactivity. Blast! Discretion being the better part of valour, especially in serious mountains, we returned slowly to base camp.

P1010734_Lac_d'Ourrec_start Today, Franco’s left thigh hopefully having recovered from its earlier difficulty, we decided to try for the slightly lower target of Lac d’Ourrec, the ascent of which begins at the same base camp as le Lac Bleu but was supposedly at a mere 1700m/5300ft. The French time estimate for the route was 2 hours, whereas their Lac Bleu estimate had been 2½hrs. We started earlier to be on the safe side.

P1010741_Lac_d'Ourrec The day was cooler and all went well. The walk was very irregular in that some sections were quite steep whereas others were a gentle ramble along a relatively level path. We crossed the mountain stream tumbling down the valley twice over strategically placed footbridges. Eventually we came upon a plateau with grazing cows and … about six four-wheel drive vehicles parked beside mountain huts. It’s irrational, I know, but there is something slightly demoralizing about having walked for an hour uphill only to come across motorized vehicles. That was the end of civilization, though, we were now on a path across a steeply wooded slope that hardly had room for two feet, let alone a Toyota Landcruiser.

P1010746_Francine_looks_for_the_lake P1010750_Lac_d'Ourrec We broke the tree-line and worked our way towards a ridge with noting but blue sky visible beyond. Expectantly, I crested the ridge to see … more grass and another ridge. There’s always another ridge. We continued. We crested the next ridge to be faced by no lake but a small decent to something of a plateau. We continued, thinking we could deduce where the lake might be – across the further ridge before us. Wrong! The path rounded a bluff and there, finally, was the Lac d’Ourrec. We’d made it. I’d been thinking we should stop this mountain walking nonsense in favour of something with a higher success ration.

Hmm, that may still be the case!

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Fêtes des Mariolles

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All of our exploring here at Bagnères-de-Bigorre has begun by driving up the Vallée de Campan. Campan is a large village/small town a few kilometres east of us which we had to pass through to get to the climbs up the Col du Tourmalet and the Col d’Aspin. Negotiating the relatively narrow streets through typical French villages is not made any safer by sights that cause the driver, moi, to do a double-take.

P1010702_Mounaques Campan was littered with such double-take-inducing sights. Driving past a street cafe where one of the two outside tables appears to be occupied by a couple of life-sized rag dolls can be a little surprising if you aren’t expecting it – and who would? Campan was actually littered with a whole collection of life-sized rag dolls in a series of intriguing poses, including two sapeurs-pompieres [firemen] apparently with an audience on a balcony above. There was a Romeo and Juliet balcony scene with Romeo clinging to the top of a street light. Even the church courtyard featured a display of a rag doll wedding party. Very inventive!

P1010690_Mounaques P1010700_Mounaques P1010693_Mounaques P1010708_Mounaques

10th July had been something called the Fêtes des Mariolles. Mariolles doesn’t feature in any of our dictionaries so we remain in the dark. However, the rag dolls display at Campan was an exhibition of mounaques from the Fêtes des Mariolles. Mounaque doesn’t feature in our dictionaries either but it sounds similar to mannequin, to me. So. for the moment, I’m going to postulate that the Fêtes des Mariolles is something to do with puppets etc. and that mounaques are mannequin-like things. Very curious but bless them for doing something so inventive and amusing.

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Col d’Aspin

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Having driven up the giant Col du Tourmalet yesterday, we thought we’d try another of the Tour de France cols, the Col  d’Aspin. The most important quality an organizer of Le Tour can possess is that he or she be a complete and utter sadist. It is completely insufficient to make cyclists ride 200kms/125mls finishing at an altitude of 2115mtrs/6900ft after a 17kms climb at an average gradient of 8%/1 in 12, you have to give them a couple of leg-loosening climbs before they get to “the big finish”. One such intermediate test is the Col d’Aspin: a climb of a mere 12kms/8mls to an altitude of only 1489mtrs/4500ft. It’s pretty close to our campsite so off we set.

P1010684_Cows_in_road Whereas the climb up to the Col du Tourmalet is relatively drab, marred by the ugly scar on the landscape of the La Mongie ski resort, the road up to the Col d’Aspin was completely delightful. There is another ski resort at Payrolle, Nordic skiing this time, but the buildings are in keeping with the mountain atmosphere rather than featureless slabs of concrete. Being a Sunday, we had to negotiate the swarms of bicycles making the ascent through wooded hairpin bends; there was even a tiny tot, about 6 years old, gamely wobbling up accompanied by his father riding shotgun behind him. If the cyclists weren’t enough of a hazard, we rounded one hairpin bend to be faced by a small herd of cows wandering down the road. Cows have little idea of which side of the road they should be on and tend to use all of it as and when they wish. [Ed: Same as driving in Kenya, then.]

IMG_2024_Col_d'Aspin IMG_2033_Col_cows Cleverly avoiding a bullfight, we soon arrived at the summit where the normal weekend crowds were enjoying the expected magnificent Pyrenean vistas – and more cows. The cows, as may be seen from my picture, are normally placid if treated with a suitable amount of respect. One complete idiot of a father, his young son sitting astride his neck, very nearly got the bullfight that we had so carefully avoided because he approached one cow too closely. The cow, armed with two sharp horns, went for him horns down and complete with small tossing motions of her head. There were calves around and, with a kid sat on his shoulders, he probably looked like a two-headed monster to the poor beast. Monsieur Idiot rapidly backpedalled, mercifully avoiding stumbling on the rough ground with his child six feet above it. The child, not unnaturally, was scared witless and began screaming. Where do some people leave their brains and why are they allowed to reproduce? (Incidentally, the tall peak to the left in the cow photo is the Pic du Midi de Bigorre.)

P1010687_Payolle Rather than doing a circuit this time, we did a there-and-back. Since the ski resort of Payolle had looked pleasant on our way up, we called in on our way down in search of a spot for a pique-nique. Lo, a lake was signposted, the Lac de Payolle and a very pleasant spot it turned out to be, too. Being Sunday and the fête des grand-pères to boot, dozens of French families together with about 30 motor vans  had had the same idea. Those who weren’t indulging in a pique-nique were mostly intent on fishing. Nonetheless, the area was large enough not to feel crowded.

IMG_2047_Common_Hawker_femaleOther than our pique-nique, we were the odd ones out. There was a flush feeding the lake where a few dragonflies were buzzing about which just had to be stalked. Eventually a hawker female became relatively cooperative and began ovipositing where the camera could just about see her – my 9th new species for this trip, a Common Hawker (Aeshna juncea).

What a good way to end a most enjoyable and cloudless day in the mountains. 🙂

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Col du Tourmalet

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When we were camped in Fanjeaux last week, we visited one of this year’s Tour de France mountain top finishes, the Plateau de Beille, and very pretty it was, too. Now we’ve moved west we are in the high Pyrenees and several other notable mountain stages of the world’s greatest cycle race are within easy reach. One such is the (in)famous Col du Tourmalet topping out at 2115mtrs/6900ft. Prompted by the fact that we could reach it without dicing with the centre of Bagnère-de-Bigorre and noting that we could drive a circuit, thus avoiding a “there and back” situation, we set off.

IMG_1993_Cyclist_statue Saturday morning isn’t the best time to drive up such a mountain pass since you seem to be sharing the road with every cycling maniac for miles around. The climb up the road to the col is 17kms/10mls at an average gradient of around about 12% (but don’t quote me). It’s worth reiterating that an average gradient means little; the gradient on hairpin bends ramps up dramatically. The French don’t think they’re cycling unless they’re going up hill and here, they’re cycling, with a vengeance – seemingly all of them. For the Tour de France the road is closed; there’s no opposing traffic to avoid on the hairpin bends as you overtake a cyclist struggling uphill and the only vehicles able to knock cyclists off and into barbed wire fences are the press and support vehicles. [Ed: well, someone had to say it.] Negotiating almost constant strings of gasping, occasionally wobbling cyclists with frequent blind bends was nerve-racking but we made it to the top without getting thrown in jail. Here, there is a statue commemorating the first ascent in Le Tourin, I think, 1910.

IMG_1994_Col-du-Tourmalet Being in the high Pyrenees, the Col du Tourmalet is part of a skiing area. The French have a utilitarian approach to skiing resorts which are generally far from attractive. (Take a lesson from the Austrians, France – beauty and function combined.) The ski town of La Mongie near the top of the col, is no exception. In fact, La Mongie is depressingly ugly with slab upon slab of featureless, tall accommodation blocks scarring the otherwise picturesque landscape. Fortunately, ignoring the buildings, both the views of the countryside on the way up and the ultimate vistas of the majestic Pyrenean peaks themselves once reaching the top make the journey very worthwhile.

IMG_2001_Lourdes_road_sign IMG_2006_Pyrenean_llamas We eventually continued down the other side, intending to do a complete circuit returning via the Cirque de Gavarnie, a massive horseshoe rock formation at the head of a glacial valley, and Lourdes, where St. Bernadette drank too much booze and had a “vision” (I’d call it an hallucination) thereby creating one of the biggest religious tourist traps on the planet. What I didn’t expect to bump into, fortunately not literally, on the way down of the col, was a small herd of Pyrenean llamas.

We negotiated further cyclists on the decent, made it to the Cirque de Gavarnie where the light was pants (he cirque faces north so is in shade whilst cameras face south directly into the sun), bypassed Lourdes this time in favour of returning for a desperately wanted drink to see if we could rustle-up our own mystic hallucinations.

No cyclists were harmed in the making of this journey. Phew! 😀

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To the Mountains

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In our experience, you can’t plan a trip to the mountains (in Europe, at least). We are not beach people, we are much more at home in the countryside and there is no more majestic countryside than mountains. The trouble with mountains is that they attract weather. If there is any unstable weather floating about in the vicinity, the mountains will be the first to feel the effect. A couple of times in the last few years we’ve thought, “oh, it’d be nice to go to the Alps/Pyrenees” but, come trip time, the weather on the peaks has collapsed. We went elsewhere since, even with time on your hands, there is little point deliberately driving into bad weather. To capitalize on the mountains, you need to be flexible enough to react when the circumstances (i.e. favourable weather) arise.

Today, all our friends were leaving Fanjeaux. One other thing that we’ve learned is that staying on in a campsite after having been in the company of friends is a mistake; in the aftermath you feel like Billy No-mates. That’s depressing. Much better to make a clean break of it and move on so that’s what we wanted to do.

Time for our two lessons to come together. We’ve been lucky enough to hit a real Indian Summer. Luc clearly thinks rain is some way off ‘cos he’s watering his fields. For the weekend at least, the weather looks set fair all over France including over the Pyrenees. With cloudless skies, there are few sights more impressive. We’ve decided to head for Bagnère-de-Bigorre at the foot of the high Pyrenees within easy reach of several of the most impressive cols regularly featuring in the Tour de France.

Back in the mists of time, Franco and Bagnère-de-Bigorre have met before. My only memory is a frustrating one. It was 20-ish years ago. On that occasion we had first visited the Marais de Poitevin where I enjoyed taking some of my finest photographs (on a real film camera, of course) of the misty marais mornings. Then I snapped my way down the western side of France to Bagnère-de-Bigorre, nestling below the high Pyrenees. We made our way up the imposing Col du Tourmalet where I continued snapping away at the Pyrenean vistas from the highest road pass in the range (2115mtrs/6900ft).

I always loaded films of 36 exposures in my camera. It was quite usual to get 37 shots, occasionally even 38 shots from a roll of film. 39 seemed most unlikely and by the time I hit 40 exposures I knew something was wrong. I feared the sprocket holes had ripped through and the film itself was not advancing, only the frame counter. Heart in mouth, I steeled myself and opened the back of my camera. There was no problem with the sprocket holes. Actually, there were no sprocket holes at all; the camera was embarrassingly devoid of film – completely and utterly empty! What a wombat!! Gone were all my prize-winning [Ed: dream on.] shots of the misty Marais Poitevin. Gone were my high Pyrenean vistas.

IMG_1991_Pyrenean_moon The digital equivalent of having no film might be running out of battery power. I’ve checked it; this time should be more successful. Our first evening on our chosen new campsite provided an interesting test shot: a reasonably new moon just touching the top of one of the lower peaks adjacent to us.

Fingers crossed that this weather holds for our last week. 🙂

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The Canal du Midi

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One of the attractions for us here at the Fanjeaux campsite is that it is run by the friendliest, most welcoming French family we’ve ever met. A regular visitor soon feels like a personal friend. The aspect that makes it a good base for a lengthy stay, however, is that it is well placed for several attractions not too distant. To the South, about 90 minutes distant, are the Pyrenees towering above Ax-les-Thermes where there are some very attractive valleys, both for walking and nature enthusiasts. About one hour away to the east is the Mediterranean coast around Narbonne for those keen to sample a little beach life or simply to enjoy a fishy lunch at the attractive little town of Gruissan. For the shopping enthusiast (i.e. women), the bustling town of Toulouse lies about an hour west. To the north, about 45 minutes away, are Les Montagnes Noires [the Black Mountains], source of the water that keeps the famous Canal du Midi “flowing”.

One stretch of the 240kms/150mls long Canal du Midi passes beneath Fanjeaux to the north only about 15 minutes away. An engineering icon, the canal may not be the most scintillating place in the world but, with it’s mostly flat, famously tree-lined banks, it certainly provides a calm and shady environment for those wanting a relaxing stroll or bike ride. Its boat traffic varies from the most numerous plastic bath-tub-like tourist rental boats (I swear they’ll have Armitage-Shanks written on them somewhere) through the gin palace cruisers, the big boys’ toys, to the much more appealing and interesting converted large barges that used to ply their trade along the canal. Now, of course, many of these erstwhile working boats are also rental boats but they are v. expensive, come with a skipper who knows how to drive them, and have much more character than all the others put together.

With large boats plodding up and down the ecluses [locks] naturally have to be large. They are permanently manned so that grockels can’t mess up the water usage (sensible decision) and power operated rather than manual. Oddly, considering the tourist traffic, the canal is not over-commercialized and there seem to be relatively few places to get fed and watered.

IMG_1942_Canal_du_Midi P1010642_Canal_du_Midi P1010647_Canal_du_Midi Here’s a few pictures to give a flavour of a short stretch of one of the worlds more famous waterways.

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Plateau de Beille

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Francine and I have become fans of the Tour de France. I think one of the main reasons is that, after a 6-ish-week trip around France in June and early July, the three weeks of Le Tour when back at home lets us down gently; the television coverage is a great way to enjoy some of the finer sights of the French countryside.

This year, one of the mountain stages of Le Tour finished at at the Plateau de Beille in the Pyrenees. It is very close to one of our favoured Pyrenean haunts, the barrage de Soulcem, about 1½ hours drive away from our campsite. On the TV it had looked very attractive so, to try somewhere new on a fine day, we popped off to have a look.

The road up the mountain to the plateau was interesting from a number of standpoints. Firstly, as is the habit on Le Tour, the road surface was still colourfully painted with the names of various of the star riders as a sign of support by adoring fans. That somehow made me feel closer to the real action, albeit past.

Second was the gradient. The TV coverage tends to talk of “average gradients of 8% (1 in 12) or 10% (1 in 10)”. This doesn’t do the efforts of the riders justice; some sections feel dramatically steeper, especially those turning a hairpin bend. It was hard enough to drive up let alone cycle up … and at some speed, too. My admiration for the professional cyclists’ fitness increased tremendously.

IMG_1975_Plateau-de-Beille P1010658_French_parking Thirdly there were a couple of related sights that just left us wondering, “how the hell did that get there?”. Yes, there’s a decent road up to the plateau but, even given the French flare for parking, there are certain places that I don’t expect to see vehicles parked. Here’s a couple of photographic examples, hopefully demonstrating what I mean. Goood views, though!

The plateau de Beille is a winter ski resort. In summer, such places can be very drab, dead places but not the plateau de Beille. Here we found several sentiers [footpaths] with circular routes of various lengths for walkers of varying fitness/abilities. We chose one that claimed to be 1¾ hrs long and facile [easy]. “Lazy tykes!”, you might say. Well, yes, I’d trend to agree but, in mitigation, I’d offer our knowledge of other European walking grades, notably those in Spain. We were a little wary first time out.

P1010666_Plateau-de-Beille Everything started well and, as we thought, facile meant quite a lot of uphill gradient to begin with. About half way around, the other typical French problem struck: we lost the balisages [waymarks]. Stumbling around we came a cross a French lady and her dog; she went to great lengths in French to tell us that the path was not well marked. We could but agree. We had been follow some other walkers (those in the photo), clearly on the same route. They had disappeared into some trees though we could see no obvious path. As we were stumbling around searching for way markers, this same group of walkers returned. They happened to be English, had lost the path, had given up searching and were going to make their own way back to the start point. Curiously, one of the ladies claimed to have done that route before.

Eventually, after determined searching, I did find the intended path and we continued making our way back to the skiing station from which we had begunb along the official route. There was a lot more up and down. However, even allowing for our going around in a circle or two searching for the track, the walk took only a little over an hour.

Maybe if we went slower we wouldn’t get lost. 😀

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Satan’s Little Disciples

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I spotted farmer Luc down cleaning les sanitaires on Wednesday so I went for short natter, largely as an opportunity to voice my concerns about the effect the intensive fish farming was having on the wildlife of his site, in which he had previously seemed genuinely interested. I had trouble gauging his reaction, much of which consisted of rather typical Gallic shrugs. As if my heart weren’t already heavy enough about Satan in Heaven, he told me that, on Thursday afternoon, a school trip of 40 children would be camping here but for one night only, he stressed, and that they would be  camped at the far end of the campsite away from us. He also jokingly asked if we’d be spending the night in a hotel. This is no joking matter. Unfortunately, children the world over seem to regard a sanitary block as play area so the distance would be no safety barrier. I don’t think he had any problem gauging my reaction.

This bunch of Satan’s Little Disciples actually numbered 43 and were aged between 11 and 13. They were in the company of just three adults which, given the environment, felt to us like insufficient adult supervision though, for all the supervision they appeared to exert, frankly there might as well have been just one adult. I’d have expected school teachers (from a private school, BTW) to at least pay some heed to the fact that they were on a public campsite and to show some consideration for the peace and sanity of members of the public camped here. Not a bit of it, they appeared to allow the little noise machines to treat the entire campsite as their own school playground.

When we returned on Thursday evening, the kids were running about all over the digue [dyke] unsupervised which struck as as somewhat foolhardy in a drowning-children kind of way. I managed to miss every one of them as we drove back in across the digue.

On Friday morning the so-called adults unhelpfully organized a treasure hunt which had the effect of actively forcing the screaming brats to run about the entire campsite looking for the “treasure”. Two of the little monsters had actually secreted the treasure just a few yards/metres from our caravan, right on the lakeside corner of our pitch. Franco struck back; if they’re spoiling my fun I feel the right to spoil theirs. After a suitable interlude (i.e. not too long), Franco took one little brat aside and revealed the location of the treasure bringing the “game” to a swift conclusion.

The irresponsible adults had another trick up their sleeve, though. One of them proceeded to organize some kind of lesson on the lawn, the lawn in question being away from their camping area in front of the sanitary block and close to the area where the sane adults were camped. Quite outrageous!

We left for the day again hoping they’d be gone by the time we returned. When we did eventually return at 4:30 PM, the brats’ coach was only just leaving thus returning the campsite to some semblance of serenity. The “just for one night” evidently meant for a complete school day as well.

We do not expect Nadine and Luc to turn down money; this is, after all, a commercial venture. 43 kids plus 3 so-called adults is a reasonable amount of income.  We would, however, expect those organizing the trip to show some respect for others surrounded by this unfortunate invasion, especially bearing in mind the rules of the campsite we stayed on at Maussanne-les-Alpilles earlier in the trip [do not disturb neighbours with noise of radios, TVs or voices even during the day]. Expecting people to camp in a school playground for a day is utterly unacceptable.

This is the third time we’ve suffered a group of children here in September and this one was by far the largest tbhough not, perversely, the noisiest. It is still a very pleasant campsite but September will have to be avoided. Lesson learned.

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Emerald Sunset

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Amongst the poor showing of dragonflies remaining on farmer Luc’s lake this September is the Willow Emerald (Lestes viridis). Willow Emeralds are interesting critters in that they do not oviposit in water. Rather, they lay their eggs in the thinner, younger branches of trees overhanging water. Here, the egg develops and the resultant larva then drops into the water and continues to grow as other damselfly larvae. This means that the Willow Emeralds’ eggs, at least, will not form a part of the enormous fish population’s diet. Of course, the freshly emerged larvae may still suffer heavy predation.

IMG_1867_Willow_Emerald_close-upThere are still a few Emerald Damselflies flitting about the bushes surrounding our pitch and grabbing the odd passing small fly. One evening, as we were eating our evening meal, a couple of Emerald Damselflies were on the lookout for their evening meal in the last rays of the setting sun. Willow Emeralds are a wonderful irridescent green colour which the golden quality of the light was enhancing irresistibly. I thought I’d try to see how close I could get with my new(ish) macro lens. The damsel in question proved to be unusually co-operative and allowed me about as close as the lens can get. This shot is full frame, uncropped – as the camera saw it. 😉

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