La Rochelle

Our visit to La Rochelle was photo-heavy. Being a lovely bright sunshiny day helped!
It was founded in the 10th century and by the 12th century was already an important harbour. In its early history there were a couple of periods when it was part of England's territory in France, and it was the last city to be liberated from the Germans at the end of WW2.

The big clock tower at the entrance to the city from the harbour front is a pretty dominant feature - first seen from inside the city (as our bus dropped us at at square fairly near the centre), and then from outside the city walls.

 

A shop just beside the clock tower inside the city walls (l'horloge is French for clock)  - great graphic design:

Another feature of the city is the stone arcades along some of the streets:

Guy-Victor Duperré (1775 - 1846) was an admiral and three times the Naval Minister for France. His name is one of the names inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. I can't believe I don't have a  digital photo of the Arc de Triomphe to link to  - it's definitely time we paid another visit to Paris.

A treat in the Park

Today was a sunny and crisp November day. We put on our walking boots and went to the park in the morning, after a good warming porridge breakfast.
Time is short today, but I wanted to share these beauties - there must have been at least 5 male mandarin ducks and 3 hens. They were the funniest things to watch as well as being so beautiful - I could have stayed a lot longer if C wasn't starting to get cold.

More park pics and a little mandarin video to follow as soon as I find some time.

Trip Down Memory Lane

I picked out a lovely autumnal photo of the lake in Farmleigh to use as my header for this month - but then I couldn't find any colour for the title that worked, so I had to scrap that idea. C, whose turn it was to choose the calendar photo for the month, chose a snow scene but I wasn't sure I wanted to be looking at snow all month, so I actually had to go back to November 2009 for a suitable November photo...

Last week when I went to visit my aunt she had a hairdresser's appointment just around the time my train got in. So instead of my normal walk up to her cottage, I walked around the seafront instead. Much more my home turf - I can't count how many times I must have walked along that road.

The South Beach - when we were on it last summer I noticed a lot of some type of grass growing in it. That was never there when we were kids. And it used to be possible to bathe in the men's bathing place! I remember a couple of midnight swims there, but looking at the condition of the graffiti it's been a long time since the water came in that far.

There were several "in memoriam" benches along the front - this was the most unusual, and a great take on a rowing boat.

A Ringed Plover trying to open a mussel, a young Herring Gull and a crow...

And some information boards on what may be seen.

My brother always loved this anchor!

Working on the new marina and harbour. Or more like not working - it's all fenced off, but there was no sign of any machinery either from the train or walking around the harbour. A victim of the recession, I suspect.

And look - you can see the house where I grew up - that red roof with all the chimneys. The big tree to the left is a eucalyptus. It was the only tree in the garden that we couldn't climb - with a trunk diameter of at least  8-10 feet, and the first branch coming out about 15 feet up that was hardly surprising. But we could clamber into it from another tree beside it, and there was a rope for climbing and swinging from.

The LaTouche Hotel was where I (very briefly) did ballet, and I've been to a couple of weddings in my time too. It's pretty derelict looking now!!

Angles sur l'Anglin

Our last outing in this area was to the nearby town of Angles sur l'Anglin. The weather wasn't great - it was overcast and a bit on the drizzly side, but it wasn't far and it was certainly well worth the visit, it was very picturesque. When we were on the way back to the car we thought we'd go and see the interpretative centre for the Roc aux Sorciers - a 14,000 year old carved stone frieze. With our usual luck it was closed, and there was no indication of whether it was closed for the day or merely closed for lunch. There was a very jolly group of French tourists who were hoping we knew more than they did - they were enjoying an impromptu picnic on the steps of the centre, complete with their boxes of wine.

We also enjoyed a short walk out of town down a lane that led to a reservoir - lots of little birds in the hedgerows, and lots of walnuts on the ground. I still have a bowlful on the kitchen table.

The rain got much heavier, so that we'd decided that it was unlikely that we could get the tent down and move to our next location in time to set it up before dark. But just as it got to the point where it wouldn't be worth moving on, the skies cleared and the sun shone enough to get the tent dry. So it was a very quick and unmethodical packing, just a case of getting everything into the car as fast as possible, and on from the Poitou-Charentes area to the Charente-Maritime.

La Brenne

After we had lunch in LeBlanc we found a short trail to walk along one of the many lakes in the area.
In the first  photo you can see some tall aerials. There were a lot of signs right beside them - no parking, no photography, no stopping...I think that perhaps it was a Very Low Frequency transmitting station for the French naval submarines, as there is one in the locality. We couldn't work out what the object floating in the water was - there were two of them just beside each other, and we came across more in another lake.
We saw the usual herons, egrets and mallards, but I think this was the only place we saw cormorants, and we also saw some crested grebe.

Chicory

Yet another hunting themed weather vane

Just across from where we parked was this little building. It must have been a communal oven way back in the days when not everybody had one in the house (four means oven in French). The door was ajar, so we took a look inside.

After a lot of wasted time trying to find the interpretative centre despite the road closures and detours we did finally find it - only to discover that most of it was closed and only the shop area was open. C'est la vie...

One morning I was opening the cool box, and just noticed this grasshopper in time not to catch it as I swung the lid back.

Last of the Sculptures...

This one was called The Bigger Picture. From a distance it didn't look all that interesting; we'd passed it in the distance, and it just looked like a tall chicken-wire cone with bits and pieces all over it. I'm so glad that we ended up passing much closer because we went into the Palm House through the orchid rooms and ended up coming out the front entrance. If C's feet weren't starting to give out I could have spent a lot longer admiring all the little details.

Flying frogs - I think it's funny that they were for sale individually,  they look just right like this.

And this fun one was in the botanical family beds, and was title Family Bed Labelling. It reminds me of drawings from when we did plant biology in school.

Next post should be back to France - one outing left in the LaRoche Posay area.
Election today today - I don't know which particular vote caused such a turnout, but I've certainly never seen it so busy, and the officials at the desk where we picked up our ballots said the same. For us we had a bye-election as well as the presidential election and the referenda.