A Walk in the Park

 It was beautiful and sunny when I got up this morning to turn the griddle on for pancakes for breakfast. Not so much an hour later, but we still thought it would be good to get out and get some fresh air so we went for an amble in the park. Most trees are still green, certainly along the avenue I cycle along going to work, but there were a couple of young saplings that were really starting to show colour against a dense dark green background.

(A couple of photos are from earlier in the week. I had seen on Monday or Tuesday that they had cut the long grass in one of the meadow areas, and I was surprised the following morning to see that they had already baled it. I have a couple of photos on my phone - it goes without saying that when I brought my camera the next morning, it was much duller and more overcast and while the quality of the photos is better, they are not as atmospheric.

We were both struck by the reddish colour of the bark in this tree, and surprised that we hadn't noticed it before. I know we were walking in the opposite direction to normal around the pond, I don't know if that had anything to do with it. 

Juvenile tufted duck

July Favourites

 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. 

This is cold off the needles, and very unseasonable. I used up a lot of the leftovers from various socks to knit a scarf for C. It was something like 500 or 600 stitches on the needle, as it's knit sideways. Nice to get a lot of scraps used up, although I had a bright red that wasn't suitable to incorporate. You break the wool at the end of each row and leave enough to tie the fringe, so there was practically no darning in of loose ends - a big bonus. Currently finishing off a pair of socks and I've just started a winter cardigan. 

France part 3

 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. 

France part two

 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. 

France June 24 - part one

 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

All the paraphernalia associated with comfortable camping! We hired a fridge this year, because last year often the only time we needed to go out in the car was to buy ice blocks for my good coolbox. And I must say it was very nice to be relying on either a small portable solar panel or a long drive to keep our phones, camera and Kindle charged. We bought the large black trunk a couple of years ago to make packing the car easier, and it's great on-site for waterproof storage and an extra surface for food prep. New this year was a little CampinGaz grill, which was great not only for burgers and skewered meat, but with the addition of a pizza stone it was excellent for cooking pizzas - widening our options. We bought the stools last year, and they are brilliant because they telescope right down to just a couple of inches high. 

I was going to add a video of a sparrow enjoying a dust-bath, but as I only took it on my phone I don't think it's worth it.  We had a lot of birds on our pitch - both male and female blackbirds, robins (we saw a red squirrel a couple of times too), pigeons galore, and while I only heard an owl a couple of times, the last few nights we could hear a night jar regularly.

June Favourites

 I have more cards than I expected - I think because we only went on holidays for two weeks instead of our normal three.

It was also our laziest holiday in a LONG time, we stayed in one location just beside a beach. So most of my photos are sunsets, and they need some serious culling but I hope to get a few uploaded soon.

What I couldn't find was a single photo from last year to use as a blog header. I was starting to wonder if I had accidentally deleted a folder, but then I remembered that we came straight back from holidays to my aunt being in hospital, and July was a pretty hectic and exhausting month. Instead I used an older photo taken in Farmleigh.