Botanic Gardens part 1

I didn't take a lot of flower photos this time - it was a very overcast day and they weren't looking at their best.
But the morning glories in the Palm House were absolutely beautiful!! They're slightly soft focus as my lens had steamed up so much and I didn't have lens wipes with me.

This was possibly my favourite sculpture. I can't find the plan of where they were all sited in the gardens, so I can't check the title in my catalogue just now.  I could have spent ages looking at them from different angles and seeing how the reflections changed.

I am still around...

The time had come to format my hard drive, re-install Windows and restore everything, so that took a whole day, pretty much, but it was spread over two days. I think it's all back to normal now; still some programmes that I won't remember I used to have until I need them, but all the important things are up and running. Towards the end of my last computer it was so flaky that I was having to re-install several times a week but it's probably been three years since I last had to do it. So after I'd installed Windows and was trying to set up broadband again I was looking and looking for my LAN connection, till I realised that of course I had to install a few drivers to get things going. And then Thunderbird didn't like me having three accounts, and although I did a  specific Thunderbird back up and restored what should have been ALL settings, it only restored one account but all the emails. It took a day before I wondered why I wasn't getting any emails...

We even managed to make it to the Botanic Gardens today. The Sculpture in Context exhibition ends on Friday, and having missed it last year I was determined that we'd make it there this year. The forecast was not good - rain - and our car is still hors de combat / in the dry dock, so it had to be good enough weather to go on the motorbike.
And it was!! You couldn't call it sunny, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was dry which is what mattered.
I'll be back with more photos later on in the week, to be going on with here is the one that I voted for as my favourite. It was titled Do Androids Dream of Mechanical Sheep. Isn't it so much fun?

Azay-le-Ferron

From Brittany we drove to LaRoche-Posay, and a very pleasant campsite, with large pitches and lots of greenery.. It was right beside the river Creuse - you could walk out through a gate in the hedge along the back of the site and you were right on the river bank.

One direction along the river also took us along the back of the local racecourse. We didn't actually get to see much of the town itself, which was a shame really as when we did drive through it it looked lovely, with some old mediaeval areas. Lots of wildlife around the site - we saw red squirrels several times, and although we never saw them there were certainly owls around, and I encountered a bat one evening walking back from the toilet block. We arrived late and only barely got the tent up before dark, and it was decidedly dark by the time I was trying to cobble a meal together. Unfortunately the weather wasn't the best for the three days we were there, but it didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves. The very helpful site owner gave C lots of ideas of things to see and places to go, and luckily the afternoon that we'd planned to go and see a nearby castle - Azay-le-Ferron -  was the afternoon it poured and poured. We managed a bit of a walk in the grounds before the tour was due to start and before  it started to rain . A short break in the rain allowed the guide to give a brief history in the front courtyard - helpful, as the castle had been expanded from its earliest origins and there were at least three distinct architectural elements. No photography allowed inside, but it was certainly interesting to see. It had been lived in right up to the 1950s, when the last owner left it to the city of Tours on condition that it was opened to the public. There were a couple of very fine parquet floors and an amazing wooden ceiling that had come from an old hôtel particulier in Versailles which was being demolished. I can't now remember how long the guide said it had taken to reassemble the floor, but I think it was in terms of a couple of years.  Also interesting to see was the difference between a large tapestry hanging which had been executed entirely in gold and silk, and how well that had stood the test of time compared to another large hanging woven from cotton and wool, which had faded so much more even though it wasn't as old. There were also some beautiful botanical watercolour paintings around the door in the main bathroom, which if I remember had been done by the sister of the last owner. They were done in an earlier style, though, along the lines of Redouté, and they were so light and luminous that I thought they'd been painted on glass. It was interesting, too, from a "professional" point of view to see the kitchen. It seemed a lot smaller than the kitchen that I had cooked in when I worked in a large old house in Yorkshire, which would have had a similar number of staff in its heyday as Azay-le-Ferron did.
The last owners of the house had been a hunting family for at least a couple of generations; they'd hunted in the parkland around the estate and also on safari in Africa - with all the trophies to show for it. I'm thinking this is also why the weather vanes are as they are.

The tower is the oldest part, dating back to the 15th centrury

 

Some architectural details

 

The library, in the square across the road from the castle

It's quite mild here for the time of year, but very windy. We went on the motorbike to visit my aunt as the windscreen wipers on the car weren't working and I didn't want to chance a 30 mile motorway drive in the rain. Thank goodness the wind seemed to have died down a bit compared to earlier on in the week, but when I went out shopping the next morning I saw a tree down just about a hundred yards from the house, and a large branch fallen from another tree. It's still mild on the whole but I think I'll be buying a tub of fat-balls for the birds next time I go shopping; on Thursday morning it was cold enough that I decided it was time to bring my hats out of storage.

Quiberon

The last of our outings in Brittany was to the Presqu’île de Quiberon (presqu’île means *almost an island*). It's somewhere I can remember visiting the first time I went to France - we cycled out to the peninsula from the Perrut's house in Carnac. I remember the long sandy beaches; having grown up swimming in the Atlantic and the Irish sea it was a novel experience to swim somewhere where it was warm enough to just lie on a towel and get dry. I remember too the fact that even then there was still some barbed wire here and there in the back of the dunes, left from WW2.
It was mixed weather that day - it was quite cloudy when we were in Quiberon, at least by the time we'd had lunch. But after we were almost back to the car after a long walk it turned beautifully sunny, so we went and sat on a beach for a while. Lunch was some very nice crêpes in the Duchesse Anne - savoury buckwheat crêpes for starters, and some lovely sweet ones with apples flambéed at the table with Calvados.

Fish shop

Bakery

 A few hardy souls sunbathing before the sun actually came out. When it did, people seemed to come out of the woodwork. In this picture and the following one you can see little changing rooms (I guess) built under the esplanade.

We got to see some cirl bunting, male and female

 

Some rather fine graffiti on one of the old WW2 blockhouses

Hitching a ride

 All along our seafront walk there was a spicy smell, a bit like cloves. We never did identify which plant or bushes it was coming from, but it was certainly lovely.

C sitting on one of the beaches further back towards the mainland. We were watching some would-be kite surfers, but in all the time that we were there they never really got going. And it wasn't quite warm enough to tempt me in for a swim - paddling was enough.

Beyond Vannes

Geographically Vannes is set in the centre of the Gulf of Morbihan, more or less, so there is an arm of land out above and below it. After we left the town we drove along the southern peninsula right out to the end.
First stop was a cider museum, with tastings afterwards. There was a film, and then a self-guided tour round the old machinery, all well signed with plenty of information. There was even a bee hive, because of the importance of bees for pollination. I haven't smelled that smell since we used to have a hive in the garden when I was growing up. At the end there was a little orchard with a collection of different types of cider apples.
The photos are of two cider presses and a mobile still.
The first cider press is a central screwed one - there was also one with a long transverse beam running across the top. I'm afraid I don't know how to translate the technical terms into English.
The granite one is the only one of its type that the museum was aware of - it dates from 1929 and is cut from one piece of granite. Easy to clean was the advantage, apparently, and there was no need to take it apart each year for maintenance.

We got to taste four different ciders. The one we liked best was what they called an aperitif cider - crisp, sweet, slightly acidic. That was the one we bought a couple of bottles to take away. We also had a sweet, a brut and a semi. Me, I love the Breton cider. It's low alcohol, often only 2% or 3% abv, and it really tastes like fresh pressed apples. I wish we could get cider that good here. Traditionally in the restaurants it's served in little jugs (a pichet), and drunk from pottery (or if you're upscale, china) bowls. But when we had some down near La Rochelle, it was served in pottery beakers.

Along the way after that we stopped and went for a walk along some estuary land. We saw some egrets and plovers as well as herons and swans.

Port Navalo is the little town - if you can call it that -  at the tip of the peninsula. We had another walk here around the end of the headland...

Quick picks

Still working on my French photos - we're not even out of Brittany yet! But the weekend is never a good time, even such a gloomy, wet one as this was.
A reflection of Frank Sherwin bridge in the Liffey one morning last week. The river was so still and the sky was so blue; the bridge itself is a bit burnt out in the photo, but I took several and I think this one best shows how the reflection almost looked like a road in the water - almost a Yellow Brick Road.

As we were away I don't have wide scope for picking favourite cards for September. The apple and pear ones were fun, a different colouring style to normal, and I enjoyed doing the little pony for one of my nieces - they all go riding every week, so I thought a pony stamp could earn its keep. This one reminds me of the Norman Thelwell books my sister used to collect.

We have a robin around, but I don't think it's Mrs Robin, as it initially flies to the feeder and picks seeds from that, and will only come to the back step after it's sure all is clear. I'm hearing a lot of robin territorial noises, though, so there's another robin around somewhere for sure. This evening when I went out to open the back gate for C there was some lovely birdsong, but it was too dark to see who was singing.

A good book - Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet; there seem to be some very negative reviews on Amazon, but they're in the minority. We both enjoyed it, though initially C had thought he wouldn't bother reading it, and his mother is currently reading it and enjoying it a lot. We were just discussing this evening how hard it is to choose books in the library - a lot of the time I'm very happy with what I pick from the shelf near the desk of recommended books, but there has to be a better way of finding what we like.

Vannes part 2

C is a sucker for boats and marinas, so I think his first view of Vannes after we'd driven through it and found a (free) car-park and he could relax, already endeared the town to him. A canal leads from the town out to the Gulf of Morbihan.

 

Vannes is an old town, and there are many timbered houses in the centre.

There's also an old castle and the old city walls and ramparts...

If I recollect the sign on the walls, the covered arcade in front of this building was where people used to do their washing in the river.

...and a small cathedral: