Not very many - it's been a busy month in work and I had a couple of family events on.
I appear to have no photos from last August - again probably because I was still in the thick of dealing with my aunt's house and that was taking all my time and energy and days off.
The hummingbird is a ruby-topaz, from the book of kirigami paper birds I bought in France a few years ago. The head and breast are base layers covered with tiny punched circles - but it went faster than I thought it might.
Sunsets and the beach... sunset was about ten o clock, and most nights we went and watched it from the beach. There were a couple of rainy nights when we didn't bother - one night there was a tremendous storm with the whole sky lit up by lightning for the best part of an hour. I was glad we had re-waterproofed the tent last summer. The bird is a bin for rubbish, there was another one shaped like a fish, and one which was modelled on the traditional fishing cabins.
The bathing huts weren't there for the first few days and I missed them, but then one evening we saw some wooden foundations being put down, and the next morning the huts were there. They were fairly cheap to rent for a week, and would have been great if you were staying further away from your home base than we were.
Talmont-sur-Gironde was founded in 1284 by Edward 1st of England (two years ago we visited a castle in Normandy built by Richard 3rd - one forgets how much of France used to be held by the English. It's a very small town (cited as having 100 occupants), and is totally pedestrianised which made it very pleasant to wander around. A little romanesque church dominates the town, and hollyhocks spring up all over the place.
As I said, this was our laziest holiday for a long time. We walked plenty - it was about a 2km (1.25 miles) walk along the beach into town, and we did that most days and twice a couple of days, and I swam most days. But we really only visited a couple of places, a small town about 10 km down the road, and another town where we went on Sunday morning hoping to find a car boot sale. I think it was probably rained off - I checked a couple of websites before we left the campsite, but there was no update and we decided to risk it. What we got instead was a lovely walk upstream along the river into the countryside, and then a walk downstream along the river into the centre of the town. But as it was raining all the time, I only have a couple of photos from there, and none of them made it into my Google album (Charentes Maritime, June 24) . We really enjoyed the fact that all along the length of the river there was a trail with reproductions of paintings by Gaston Balande, who was born in Madrid but grew up in Saujon. As it pretty much rained all that day, we also went to an exhibition in Royan, an interpretive centre of the architecture and heritage. There was a very informative video - the town must have been beautiful in its heyday in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it became popular as a seaside resort. But it was seriously bombed in WW2, destroying over 80% of the buildings, so it is now a very modern and (to our eyes) rather soulless town. There were some very interesting models of some of the classic buildings that survived and some of the major new ones, and a reproduction of a Seventies kitchen and sitting room which we enjoyed.
So I guess in this post I'll add a couple of Gaston Balande's paintings and a couple of photos from the interprative centre, and save the rest for two more posts. The next post will be the other town we visited - Talmont-sur-Gironde, listed as one of the most beautiful villages in France. It was founded in 1284 by Edward 1st of England - and the rest can wait till later in the week...
Picture trail along the river Seudre, paintings by Gastone Balande.
 |
Model of Japanese-style house in Royan
 |