The “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” is apon us.
1st. With the cloud heavy sun rises, to-day’s also heralded another return, that of the con trails, which have been conspicuously absent since the beginning of Covid.
9th. A wonderful evening at Martine’s for Aperos with Anna & Salomé; Catherine; Francine and Chantel. 11 year old Salomé is not in the picture because she arrived later with a wonderful chocolate cake she had made.
11th. Son, Jon and his wife Nikki arrive this evening in time for dinner. Such a long awaited and welcome visit.
12th. What started off as an abortive mission to view the Brocant at Mortange ended in a lovely walk in the Marais.
After the walk we headed on to St-Dizant-Du-Gua to take a gentle walk in the gardens of Chateau Beaulon.
After which we drove the short distance to Port Maubert to have a picnic dinner as the sun went down,
a sunset that we captured spectacularly at Barzan Plage
13th. Lucky again with the weather we did a lovely long walk along the beach at St Georges de Didonne where Jon & Nikki treated me to a lovely lunch at Café des Bains.
14th. The morning had us taking a walk along the cliff tops at Talmond followed by a picnic.
In the afternoon we had a longer walk through the village at Meschers, to the Port and then up onto the cliff tops where we got some good views down to the cave dwellings below.
This marked the end of the visit, they leave tomorrow. All too short but wonderful non the less.
19th. Set of reasonably early to visit Patti in Nontron by the most direct route possible. What is normally a four hour drive took five hours on the road due to numerous road works with traffic light systems, deviations and delays. I compounded the problem by briefly deviating from the most direct route. I did take a break to have some lunch and give Cassidy a break but that is not included in the five hours. I chose the riverside outside Aubeterre sur Dronne which was very attractive.
After the visit I started the drive home as the Aire near Nontron that I usually use was blocked off due to more road works! This did give me the opportunity to stop at Bourdelles which I had noted as a place of interest on the way through last visit. Another town on the river Dronne with an Aire in an open field beside the river.
Access to the town is via a pedestrianized medieval bridge.
In the town there is a large castle with a Donjon.
The lower part of the castle is built into the limestone and there are interesting marks on the outer wall next to the entrance to what is probably catacombs.
Other handsome buildings in the town include the Town Hall, a mansion on the hill and the church.
The view over the weir show how the greater part of the town is perched up on the limestone cliff. An opposing cliff is across the river valley. These indicate a more alluvial period when the river was many times larger than it is today.
This is obviously a tourist trap in season but it was lovely and tranquil on this mellow autumn evening.
The drive was through a lot of deciduous forest and the colours were amazing.
On the way home I couldn’t resist a stop to photograph this amazing modern water tower!
22nd Took Cassidy for a good run on the beach at St Georges then met up with Michelle for a gentle walk prior to taking her for tea at Le Café des Bains. The sailors were enjoying a stiff breeze.
26th. I have just listened to a program on BBC4 called “The Life Scientific” where a scientist is interviewed about his/her specialty. This week it was the zoologist Tim Clutton-Brock, who will be known to anyone who watched the early “Meercat Manor” program on BBC TV. I had the good fortune to meet him when I was in the Kalahari about 30 years ago at the start of his study. When I asked him how well habituated his meercats were he showed me how they (almost) lined up to jump onto the scales for him to record their weight.
I was in the Kalahari with a young zoologist friend of mine who was habituating a group of Bat-eared Foxes in preparation for filming. When he told me that Tim Clutton-Brock was in the camp I was immediately interested, not by Tim who I had yet to meet, but by his surname. Clutton-Brock is an unusual name. I had met and been hugely influenced by a Guy Clutton-Brock when I was a school girl. I must have been about 15 when my Headmistress chose me to be part of a small group to go to a local church hall and hear him speak. He had come from what was then Rhodesia to give talks in support of universal suffrage and to raise money for the Freedom struggle. When I met Tim a good 35 years later and asked if he was by any chance related to Guy I learned that he was his nephew and Tim was able to tell me how Guy had passed his last years.
Hearing Tim on the radio this morning bought back a stream of memories of my encounters with Guy and the impact they were to have on my life.
capetocarpe 