Tag: France

Little and Large

Another long hop (for us heading south) of 300 miles-ish from La Brenne to Millau, home of the magnificent Norman Foster designed viaduct. Apparently, Norman Foster also designed that so-called Gherkin building in London but everyone has their off days.

Posted in 2011 Autumn Tagged with: , , , , ,

Surprising Afternoon

As it turned out, the weather wasn’t anything like as bad as we were led to believe. In fact, the afternoon was quite pleasant. So pleasant that, once again, we returned to our local, small (no) fishing lakes. Once again

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Morning Barrage

Jeudi noir [black Thursday]. Meteorologically, the newspaper we purchased a couple of days ago had tagged today as Jeudi noir because of the clouds and storms expected to afflict much of La Belle France. Yesterday evening the sky was full

Posted in 2011 Autumn Tagged with: ,

Etang de Cistude

Today we thought we’d try and find some wildlife habitats further from home and drove a few kilometres to the Étang de Cistude. (Cistude is, apparently the European Pond Tortoise which, I assume means European Terrapin in proper English.) Here

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Exploring Bellebouche

We are camped beside the étang de Bellebouche, one of the larger lakes in La Brenne, which lies in between Vendœuvres and Mézières-en-Brenne. What I didn’t realize on our first visit here seven years ago was that there are a

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Le Parc Naturel Régional de La Brenne

Rarely do I use such long titles but in this case it’s pretty much enforced since that is the glorious full title of this, our first main stop. The tail end of our first week has been advertising bad weather

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What a Difference A Wind Makes

The last serious journey we made towing Guillaume was returning from the New Forest in the middle of August. On that journey we managed a blissful 30 m.p.g. That was about the best we’ve ever done. Today, having crossed the

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The Pinail Trail

Last year, whilst trawling a few fellow dragonfly enthusiasts’ websites, I discovered an interesting looking nature reserve in France called La Réserve Naturelle du Pinail or the Pinail Trail for Anglophones. Of the 90+ species of Odonata in France, this

Posted in 2011 Spring Tagged with: , , , ,

Beer o’Clock

The press is on strike. Now there’s a thing. We have been unable to buy our French newspaper, Aujourd’hui, with the weather maps for the coming four days. Quite why the press thinks that a strike would adversely affect many

Posted in 2011 Spring Tagged with: ,

Space at a Premium

Last year farmer Luc’s lake was not looking healthy enough for his liking. Most of the fish in it had died and much of the lake’s surface was covered with weed. Mind you, it did support a large population of

Posted in 2011 Spring Tagged with: , , , , , , ,