Our Saturday newspaper, Aujourd’hui, predicted une canicule [scorching heat] of a weekend. The little weather maps on the back page showed Bordeaux suffering the full ferocity of our nearby celestial nuclear fusion reactor with temperatures peaking at 39°C/102°F – not…
Tag: travel
Agoraphobic Sheep
Our very amicable hosts, Luc and Nadine, run a dairy sheep farm. They have a troupeau [flock] of about 300 ewes whose milk is used for the production of Roquefort cheese. The farm land is used to grow food, largely…
La Prise Reprise
About 32kms/20mls north of us in the Montagnes Noires is la prise d’eau d’Alzeau, literally the place where water is captured from the river Alzeau. It is the beginning of La Rigole. We’re familiar with the word rigole from the…
Pêches Plats
Mirepoix lies 18kms/11mls south of Fanjeaux where we are currently enjoying a very mixed bag of southern French weather. Mercifully, on market day (Monday) the weather was fine and hot. In addition to most French street markets being colourful affairs,…
Pyrenean Picnic
Mountains make a useful escape from days which may be getting hot and sticky in the valleys but you have to pick the right day. The valley may be hot and humid but mountains tend to attract weather and if…
Manual Dexterity
Many years ago we visited an area of France called La Brenne which is noted for its breeding population of Purple Herons. Still using the excellent but very slow (50 ASA) Fuji Velvia film in those days, and not having…
Damsels in Distress
In an attempt to avoid our local breezy, cool, overcast weather this morning, we went to investigate a new-to-us stretch of La Rigole, the cleverly constructed small canal that feeds the Canal du Midi with water from les Montagnes Noires.…
Express Delivery
We are not normally given to reserving pitches on campsites in France. In fact, in close to 30 years, we simply hadn’t ever done so. That was largely because we never really knew where we would end up or when.…
Castres and Lautrec
Now we come to the second reason why we chose to stop for a few days at Réalmont. The first was Albi, about 20kms/12mls to the north. The second is Castres, lying a similar distance to the south. The weather…
Bunting Hunting
Small birds are tricky to photograph. Something the size of, say, a Golden Eagle gives a photographer a fighting chance, especially if it sits still, stares at you and says, “aren’t I pretty – why not take my portrait?” [Ed:…
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