A rainy day sailing from Dunkirk had us hiding away from the open decks.
Not a great deal to see until the first sight of the White Cliffs of Dover.
Still a little rainy …
And then the rain stopped, and sunshine welcomed us back to life in a busy port … and England.
… driving from Romorentain to Dunkirk: 482 km. See? After a fortnight of spring and summer days, the weather’s getting us ready for England again.
Still, it’s not all bad. We dropped lucky on our last night’s chambre d’hôte.
The landscape near Minerve, and out in the midst of it wild daffodils, a mere eight centimetres high. Blurry photos? Windy day.
Can you spot the secret garage?
South American freshwater fish at the impressive aquarium and rainforest area of Barcelona’s wonderful Science Museum.
A public holiday. Where to go, when everyone everywhere is looking for an outing? Emily and Miquel chose Canet de Mar, a few miles up the coast. A characterful little town that was the home of Lluís Domènech i Montaner, a Modernist architect whom I hugely admire, and who deserves a post later. A museum visit (the featured photo), a long lazy meal, moments on the beach playing with Anaïs. I call that the perfect day.
Here we are in Spain. Between travel fatigue and the fun of a family wedding – all in Catalan – getting an album of Sharp Shots for Denzil’s photo challenge this week has been an unusual one. https://denzilnature.com/2023/03/29/nature-photo-challenge-6-sharp/
But here are a few shots of prickly plants from nearby gardens.
And here’s another sort of sharp.
From the wonders of nine hundred year old man-made cathedrals…
… to the perhaps two hundred and fifty million year old natural wonder which is the Gorges du Tarn (better photos later, I hope. My phone-camera was over-awed) …
… to the twenty year old wonder which is the Millau Viaduct.
The featured photo shows a spot of shock and awe from a weathered statue stacked outside Reims Cathedral and awaiting restoration.
We’re on our way to Spain to see daughter and family, trundling down through eastern France. Now we’re in the Aube, in Troyes. It’s been a successful city since Roman times, but what you see now is a place that still has hundreds of half-timbered houses. Still lived in, still used as shops and business-places. A few are in bad nick. Some are being renovated. Some lean at impossibly drunken angles. Most are well cared for and entirely habitable, just getting on with life, as they have been for centuries. And a few of them provide a convenient surface for discreet pieces of street art.
Last week, I offered you a monochrome spring day. Today, because Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge also asks us to celebrate the spring, I’m going for colour. Just one colour though. What shouts ‘spring’ as cheerfully as the many flowers which emerge over these weeks in every shade of yellow? Look at Fountains Abbey in the header photograph – it’s just carpeted with sunny daffodils. But there’s more …
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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