We left Barcelona.
Past Monserrat….
We drove north through the Pyrenees, both in Spain and in France…..
Used the mirrors to glance back and back till we could no longer see the mountains……
Through the edge of the Lauragais, south of Toulouse…..
….reaching Cahors by the evening.
Much of the next day was spent in the flatlands of central France, in the Touraine…..
And now we’re with friends in Normandy, on the border of both Mayenne and Manche.
Which landscape would you choose?
Our third address in France was within a couple of miles of a splendidly ruined castle, Lagarde, commanding wonderful view of the Pyrenees. And on Saturday, there was an event which commanded our attention from 10 o’clock in the morning, till 10 o’clock at night when it closed (we did pop home several times, but always came back for more). I took masses of photos so I could share the day, but readers of my last post know why I no longer have the camera. These shots are courtesy of my phone.
It was an inspirational day. Dozens of enthusiasts from all over southern France came to share their knowledge. All were dressed authentically: linen was the material of choice – no cotton or polyester need apply. They brought history to life, demonstrating the labour-intensive nature of making chain mail armour, for instance. A chain mail tunic represented 400 hours of work, and cost as much as a farm. Attack someone dressed in one and you wouldn’t kill him. Far better to demand a ransom from the family of such a rich man.
We met a pilgrim on his way to Compostela, a shell at his belt.
We watched fighting spinning and weaving, musicians and dancing. There were thrilling demonstrations of horsemanship.
As night fell, the medieval world fell away. Jugglers and acrobats quite literally played with fire, and the event concluded with the most exciting and memorable firework display we have ever seen. I got some rather good pictures. Nobody will ever see them. Grrr.
It brought the Château de Lagarde to life. We had an inspirational glance of the life of a bygone age.
The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is ‘inspire’.
We went to Foix today: county town of the Ariège, twinned with Ripon, not that anyone takes any notice of that.
It has a castle- a fairy tale castle if you’re that way out, or the scene of medieval jousting and chivalrous knights if you prefer. It’s a Proper Castle, anyway.
We always enjoy pottering down the city’s narrow little streets, and today these are what we found there…..
…and later, in the mediaeval abbey church of Saint Volusien…….
……these jolly creatures were marching above us, near the high altar.
Click on any image to see full size.
My last post showed a sunrise over Corrèze. This is the sunset from our friends’ house in Laroque d’Olmes. You can’t see the Pyrenees from here, but the foothills, the Plantaurel.
Here’s the view from town.
Lovely as it is to see our friends (five hour lunch, eating, drinking, talking and laughing on a shaded terrace anyone?), Laroque has been a horrible disappointment.
Since we left, quelques petits commerces have closed. InterMarché has come to town. And McDonald’s. They’re building a Lidl, so I took a picture of the town through the webbing and netting of the building site. It’s not a small town any more. It’s one of those out-of-town roads lined with out-of-town stores. I’m just glad we no longer live here.
This is the last Snapshot Saturday. WordPress has decided to discontinue its weekly photographic challenges. I’m a bit sad about this. It’s been fun tussling with choosing images for each week’s idea, and through it, I’ve ‘met’ fellow-bloggers and made virtual visits to all parts of the globe.
This week, we’ve been invited to bow out by posting our all-time favourite shots. That’s far too difficult. Instead, I’m taking you to the Ariège in France, where my blogging journey began when we lived there for some years, and offering you some favourite shots from there.
Click on any image to view full size.
I’ve shown these photos before. I’ve even shown them in a previous WordPress Photo Challenge. But I’ll never forget this February sunset from a few years ago in Laroque d’Olmes. ‘Dramatic’ doesn’t seem an overstatement here.
This is my contribution to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge inviting shots of a sunrise or sunset. Click on any image to view full size.
This week’s WordPress Photo Challenge invites us to show images of where we’d rather be at the moment. Well, I’ll tell you where I’d rather not be, and that’s here, in North Yorkshire.
I love Yorkshire, and I’m happy to agree that it’s ‘God’s own country’. But frankly, life here is a little trying just now. Like most of England, we had The Beast from the East a couple of weeks ago bearing snow, blizzard and fierce wind. And much of the rest of the time it’s been raining. This photo was taken a couple of months ago: since then, things have only got worse.
So how about a little trip back to the Ariège, where we lived from 2007 to 2014? Here’s a selection of photos, all taken there in March or very early April. Down in the foothills of the Pyrenees where we lived, blossoms were out, and wild daffodils carpeted the more out-of-the-way hills. At the weekend we would head off for Montségur and higher land to enjoy the snow that was still thick there. We were never fans of snow-shoeing, but now I’d be more than happy to exchange their crisp deep snow for our thick deep mud.
Click on any photo to see it full size.
The WordPress photo challenge this week is ‘Beloved’.
I don’t think the humans in my life whom I love would be happy for me to plaster their images all over the blogosphere. I have no pets, beloved or otherwise. So I’ll have to look a little further.
Here’s a little miscellany of images, beloved images:
I’ll end though with this. I wasn’t beloved of this elephant in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, who was only doing his job when I visited him ten years ago on my Indian Adventure. But I felt beloved and very special when he raised his trunk and brought it down upon my shoulder – his very distinctive way of blessing me.
Click on any image to see a slideshow of the photos, full-size.
We’ve been getting in touch with our inner Ariègeois(e) today.
We spent six years in France, living in the foothills of the Pyrenees in the Ariège, a département where almost everybody still had firm roots in the simple self-sufficient lifestyle of their forbears. Nobody that we knew would have considered installing, as David Cameron recently has, a faux shepherd’s hut in the back garden. Instead, most people had a serviceable shed, built of bits of this and that and adapted to personal requirements.
Nobody that we knew ever bought firelighters for their wood burning stove. Instead, we’d all hang around as the weekly market packed up, rescuing the wooden fruit boxes, now empty of peaches and pears, which when broken up provide perfect kindling material.
Everyone we knew never left home without an ‘au cas où‘ (‘just in case’) bag, to fill with wild mushrooms, or walnuts, or sloes, or chestnuts, or apples, or any free food that came their way.
That’s been us this week. We don’t need a garden hut. But we have got a wood-burning stove. And today we’ve been re-purposing the wooden casing that our delivery of logs came in. It’s soft wood, so we know we can only use it sparingly on our stove. But it’s there – and we will use it. So here we were, sawing it into manageable lengths, sorting and storing it.
We’re the odd-bods who gather the discarded fruit boxes at Ripon market. We’ve been breaking those up today too, for kindling.
And yesterday, our friend Gillian had us over to raid her plum trees. We came back with a pail full of greengages, and a pail full of czars. Today was the day when we started to convert this ripe fruit into chutneys and cakes and hooch and crumbles. Our French friends would definitely approve.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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