Round and about

This morning I saw a blackbird on the ground picking at a fallen rowan berry. I wished I'd had time to stop and take the camera out - even in the miserable grey windy weather the contrast between the berry and the bright yellow beak was wonderful. But the train service here isn't frequent enough that I could afford to miss the train...
However, I did snap these last week - on another wet, though not so wild, day. The rose is in a garden just up the road. I'd seen the fungi a week previously when they were fresher, and they looked like lovely glossy wood, almost. But it was a day when I'd decided that a camera on top of six library books was just more than I wanted to carry, and by the time I passed that way again they had faded a little from their original beauty.

This is another one I saw on the way to the bus stop one morning  - it almost looked as if it were melting into the ground. I don't remember seeing such a wide variety of fungi in the local area as I have this year.

Did I say that last time we went to the park we saw more deer gathered together in one spot than I think I've ever seen there before?

And they weren't all at a distance either - a small part of the herd was quite close to us.

France - finis

Just a few of the birds from the bird park. I can't actually remember what this first one was called - and I thought I'd taken photos of most of the signs for reference. The flash of green was just beautiful. I feel it was perhaps some type of teal.

Goose

 I did see a Night Heron perched in the hedgerow when we were having our boat trip. This one, however, was in the bird park - in the same enclosure as the storks.

We've always just driven past Morlaix on the main road, but as we were early for the ferry we decided to leave the main road at Morlaix and drive up the coast to the tip of the peninsula, and then cut across to Roscoff. We stopped along the quay in Morlaix for a walk. It was a very picturesque town - we'd definitely make a detour and spend more time there again. We missed France's tallest lighthouse, somehow.

We drove on up to Carantec, a tiny village on the north coast, and had another short walk along the cliffs.

Lighthouses reminds me that I never posted this photo from La Rochelle - it was strange to see a lighthouse that far inland. Perhaps it was to guide boats towards the lock gate into the basin, I don't know...

Park morning

I blew it and accidentally had my camera set for flash colour balance. Luckily all the files are there in RAW and I can convert them, but for the time being I've only done these two. It was a lovely bright sunny morning so we took a quick trip to the park. Lots of deer, and a charity run with bicycles and runners.

Favourite cards for November

No hesitation here - these two are still sitting on the piano.

It looks like a busy month ahead, but I hope to finish the last of my French photos over the weekend. I'm not going to bother with all the bird park ones, but we had a lovely walk along a headland in Brittany on our way to the ferry, as we had some time to spare.

Marais Poitevin

A windmill near Marans. Being off-season it wasn't open at the time we were passing, but it does still operate (primarily as a tourist attraction) and produces flour which I would definitely have bought to try if it had been open. The sails are wooden slats which fan out - I think you can see in the second photo. And the weather vane is a hen and chicken.

Photos from our boat trip along the canals in the Marais. As posted in an earlier post (the one with the storks video): according to Wikipedia it covers about 970 square km , and according to our guide there are about 6000km of man-made drainage canals, as well as some natural ones. This work was started during the reign of Henri IV (1553 - 1610), who called in the Dutch experts, (just as the English did  with the Norfolk fens in the early 17th century). We saw a lot of wild hops and teasels, there was also a lot of willow, ash, birch, alder and hazel. In the old days, according to our guide, they used to transport cattle from field to field on flat-bottomed "barges".  I saw a night heron perched in some bushes, and a quick glimpse of a kingfisher. You can pre-book dawn or dusk boat trips which would probably be much more fruitful in terms of wildlife spotting. Introduced animals include the coypu - we saw their holes in a bank, but not any out and about.

The tiles on the roof of this little hut are typical of the region. They're made from local clay - at intervals along some of the canals you could see excavated areas at the edge where the clay had been quarried. Our guide could remember either his grandfather or father (I should have made a note, as at this stage I can't remember!) working in the clay pits. My recollection is that the guide told us the tiles were called dames (ladies) because originally they were shaped over the thigh, but quick research hasn't yet confirmed this.

Teasels

Wild hops

We really enjoyed our boat trip - it was shaded enough that we enjoyed the sun without getting burnt, it was very peaceful and there were no flies. We'd certainly do it again if we're back in the area, although having had a guide this time and learnt about the area we'd probably hire our own boat next time. The poling certainly doesn't look as arduous as rowing, although I am sure there's a knack to be learnt before being able to do it smoothly and evenly.

Sunny Park Day

I was on a day off today and it was a beautiful sunny day with blue skies. Still can't drive the car, waiting for circuit diagrams and so on...but I hopped on the bus and went for a walk.

The American Wood Duck has been so hard to get a good photo of in the water - I think because its plumage is so dark - but on land I managed to get some much better ones.

I saw a lot of rippling in the water at one end of the lake and spotted a little rat swimming along. I don't know if we have water rats or if it was just a regular one, and he's so small in the photo that it would be hard to tell. I was looking to see what caused the ripples in case it was the terrapin I saw a while back.

In Farmleigh I saw a little bluetit feeding from the base of a tree - shooting into the sun, so the photos aren't the best. Makes a change from seeing them on the feeders here, though.

Lots of toadstools around - this one was lovely:

Plenty of holly berries too. I was intrigued by this little sapling which must have rooted from a berry a bird dropped into the cleft in the tree trunk.

Favourite cards

Not much card-making in September with holidays, but plenty in October so I'm putting them all together.

L'Houmeau

Nearly finished our French holiday!
Our last campsite was Le Petit Port de l'Houmeau. There is a big municipal campsite in La Rochelle itself, but this one was very near and on a regular bus route into the city, so we decided to go for it. Not as nice a site as LaRoche Posay, but very pleasant and helpful staff and a lovely location. In our short time we fitted in a couple of walks along the seafront, a swim (me only), and crepes at sunset in one of the few cafés that was still open at the end of the season.

We never did make it out to the Ile de Ré - but looking at the bridge out to the island I am fairly sure I would not have enjoyed the journey, either by car or on a bicycle. Personally I was content to admire it from a distance.