France - part 5

The campsite in Eygalières was a lovely place to stay. It was small - only 30 pitches, 15 each side up a long avenue, but once you came out the front gate and turned left, you were only about thirty metres from the crossroads in the centre of the village, and it was lovely to have not just a bakery but also a butcher/deli, cheese chop, wine shop and general stores all within 5 minutes walk. I took a lot of photos around the village, so I'm going to spread them out over several posts. There is the main part of the town, and then clustered together up on a hilly peak is the old town - some of which is still in ruins, some has been beautifully renovated and some is on the way to being restored.


We were lucky enough to be treated to a free outdoor concert on our first evening. I don't usually take candid shots - being a private person myself I'm not very comfortable about taking them - but I couldn't resist taking a few of other members of the audience.

This photo and the next are the vew into a courtyard through the gate, the house beside the campsite.

Cafe at the central crossroad

Looking up to the old town

This month's blog header says it all for an Irish summer. Apparently I only saved and edited about 8 photos in August last year.

Enjoy the small things in life...

I had a bad cough and cold over our holiday weekend and have fallen behind in my photo editing. The only time I miss not having a laptop anymore is when I'm stuck in bed!

Anyway, today I was up and tidying a little. I threw out some old flowers, and was about to sweep up the gerbera petals and seeds when I stopped to think about how pretty they looked.
And luckily, the macro lens was on my camera.

Rabbits, Rabbits

When I think about it, it surprises me how many superstitions my otherwise very rational mother subscribed to - throwing  pinch of spilled salt over her left shoulder, greeting magpies to avert bad luck, and saying "Rabbits, rabbits" on the first of the month,  before speaking to anybody else. Even luckier, "White rabbits, white rabbits".

So here are some lucky rabbits  from Art Neko - white and brown - for the first of the month.
I used the Hiroshige Moon Viewing Rabbits, and some beautiful fabric paper for the first one. C was very impressed with the paper thinking that I had carefully stuck all the little gold leaves on myself - I had to disillusion him. Simple masking and sponging.

The second one isn't strictly a design team card, as I used stamps from various companies to create the retiform background. This time they are enjoying a harvest moon! Other stamps used were Timeless Textures from Stampin' Up! and an old Hero Arts script stamp.

My new blog header says it all for an Irish summer - wet. Apparently I only took 8 photos last August that I considered worth editing and keeping.

Beautiful Blue

We visited my dad today. He's moved from Waterford, so no more Waterford photos...
The hospital he is in now has a community garden beside it, maintained by volunteers. It has a hen run with a couple of ducks and several hens (and a couple of tiny chickens today, too), which apparently he really enjoys visiting so we spent most of our visit this afternoon sitting there. C went to investigate the small greenhouse (really a section of polytunnel) and came back telling me he had seen the most beautiful butterfly. There are several ceramic sculptures in the garden, and initially he thought the butterfly too was a piece of art - until it moved. I went off to look, and at first I only saw it with the wings closed - which was indeed very beautiful. It's a small butterfly - not much bigger than the top joint of my thumb when the wings are folded closed.
And then it opened them to reveal the most beautiful  blue. It's a (not very common) Common Blue.
Unfortunately I had left my camera in the car, and had to make do with my phone, so the quality isn't great.
The foliage is fennel, I'm not quite sure what the flower was...

France - part 4

On our way to find a good sandy beach we drove through Biscarrosse town, and spotted this hydroplane on the first roundabout as we approached the town. So the next time we drove through, I had the camera out and ready...

As well as the oil - and tourism, Biscarosse was also home to a big seaplane base and a lot of early hydroplane building and development, so on the one cloudy day, we spent the afternoon in the Musée de l'Hydraviation. They had a big barn-like building with some original and replica seaplanes, and then the main part of the museum was housed in a separate building. One room showed the development of the cockpit over the years - from the very early planes right through to Concorde.

The work and craftsmanship in the older planes was beautiful to see - wonderfully grained wood, brass. They must have been so heavy before all the lighter alloys came along.

It's hard to imagine that the seating in a plane ever looked like this! 

Before visiting the museum, we had gone to the Dune de Pyla (or Pilat) - the highest sand dune in Europe. We visited last year too, but the heat was so intense that it was not much fun. This time, on the coolest day of our time here it was much more enjoyable. We were not only able to climb easily to the first peak, but we walked quite some distance along it too.

France - part 3

From the Marais, we headed down south to Gastes on Lake Biscarrosse, about an hour south of Bordeaux and on the coast. This was planned to be a few lazy days of just enjoying sand and sunshine...
Biscarosse is France's second largest lake, and holds their largest oil reserves - which I didn't know, and it was quite a surprise to see all the little oil rigs scattered around. It was, however, very pleasant to swim in (I prefer the sea any day, though), and a sandy beach 5 minutes walk from our tent was great. We did also head to one of the Atlantic coast beaches; too much surf for any serious swimming but great fun.

Sunsets over the lake...

And evening light - with a wagtail

We were off to one side of the campsite - it was mostly chalets and cabins and where we were, there were pitches for tents and campers. Maybe there's not much demand for them - it looked as if there was a whole row beyond us which was being let go wild, and beyond that again was a little forested area which I walked through and came across this, gently rusting away.

These two photos were actually taken on the last morning, but I'm going to slot them in here...the tent is looking slightly the worse for two nights of heavy thunderstorms - but we had sprayed it with waterproof spray after getting it set up, and it stood up to the heavy rain. At this stage the kitchen had been taken down, we were packing ready to go - and thankful for the picnic bench (hidden behind the car) which we were able to put all our stuff on rather than the wet ground. We had bought an expensive 5-day cool box. It never did actually hold the ice blocks for more than a day, but even in temperatures around 40°C (over 100°F), the butter was sometimes almost too firm to spread, and we were able to chill our cider very nicely - so it was a worthwhile investment. Behind the tent you can see the above-mentioned chalets (there was a small ditch between us, and from the sound of it I'm pretty sure some frogs lived in there), and the second photo is looking to our left up towards the wooded part of the site.