Last news from Laroque revisited

As you read this post, we’re on the road, heading for France, then Spain to see the Spanish branch of the family, and even to attend a wedding. Please expect little in the way of responses to comments, whether on your own blog or this one for the duration. But nine years ago, on 20th March, we were leaving our home in Laroque for the very last time…

Last news from Laroque

23rd March 2014

You’re making your last visit to Laroque today, for the time being. We left 3 days ago, and now we’re in Ripon. Those last days were a furore of packing, cleaning, ‘goodbyes’ (though never, never final farewells), and two visits from the removal firm, who couldn’t fit everything in, first time round. At this moment, perhaps, the person who bought our house is planning his own removal to Laroque.

I never told you, probably out of sheer superstition, the story of the house sale. The housing market’s incredibly tough in the Ariège just now. House prices have tumbled 25% since 2008. Properties remain unsold for one, two, three years, as unhappy owners reduce the price of their homes in hopes of at last attracting a buyer.

Whereas we had nothing but luck. A man from near Paris, house-hunting here, in the area where he’d grown up, saw our house, arranged to view, and said he liked it. A week later he came again, showing his ‘coup de cœur’ off to his mum and dad. He made a low-price offer, as you do. We refused it, as you do. But we offered him our non-attached garden, being sold separately, at a generous discount, and said we’d include some of the furniture in the house sale. Reader, he offered full price, and the rest is history. Vue-vendue.

We’d just locked the door for the last time. And helping us wave ‘Goodbye’ are Martine, Francis and Anaïs, almost the very first friends we made when we arrived. Nine years on, we have a granddaughter called Anaïs.

So here we are in Ripon, ready to house hunt and begin our new lives here. Oh, and there’s the Tour de France starting in Yorkshire too, in a couple of months. We’ll keep you posted.

Our luck continued here in England. The very first property we viewed to rent – as a temporary measure while we house-hunted for somewhere suitable – was the house we are still living in nine years on, with no intentions whatever of leaving.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday

SOS Air Ambulance revisited

It was twelve years ago this weekend that I realised that even ordinary-seeming mishaps on country walks can have very unfortunate consequences …

SOS Air Ambulance

March 20th, 2011

Poor Micheline. Her pain, her distress was our Sunday Soap Opera.

We’d gone walking with our Rando del’Aubo friends, near Nébias again. We’d yomped up a mountainside, two hours of it, and were looking forward to lunch in – oooh, maybe ten minutes. That’s when Micheline fell over a tree root.

It was bad. Very bad. Broken ankle? Knee? We still don’t know. Anny, who has GPS, ran off to find some kind of reception for her mobile, so she could ring emergency services, and give them our exact reference.

Pretty quickly, it became exciting. We were fairly inaccessible, though not as badly so as we might have been, considering we were almost at the top of a (smallish) mountain: because there was, for the first time that morning, open land nearby. A bright red ambulance service 4×4 came into view, then an ambulance, tossing about on the rutted track. The sapeurs pompiers had to walk down into the woods, carrying all their equipment and a stretcher, to see Micheline, who was now in quite a lot of pain. Then – wow! A helicopter air ambulance hovered overhead, looking for a landing spot.

The pictures show the efficient and organised crew. (11 of them, sapeurs pompiers, nurses, pilot) doing what they had to do in muddy, dirty conditions to get Micheline sedated and sorted and ready to be air-lifted to Carcassonne Hospital. They don’t show the 4×4 being ignominiously towed out of the mud by a local farmer.

Despite our compassion for Micheline and the acute pain and discomfort she was in, we were quietly excited to be part of such a drama, the first apparently, in Rando del’Aubo’s long history of weekend walks. No news from Micheline yet: but she won’t be at work tomorrow.

That was all I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the accident. In fact, Micheline -who worked in a shop – was never fit enough to return to an on-your-feet-all-day job. The French Ramblers’ Association argued for months about whose insurance should pick up the tab for the helicopter call-out. It was all a sorry mess, and I’ve thought twice since then about venturing to out-of-the-way places for a solitary walk.

For Fandango’s Flashback Friday.

Fog and mist, cloud and sun revisited

This week’s Lens-Artists Challenge #137 invites us to bring softness to our shots. What Bren – who set the challenge – means, is that she’d like us to enjoy playing with effects – available in various software packages – to enhance our photos. The trouble is, I don’t really enjoy doing this. I often crop my shots, I may adjust the light, then I’m done. I admire the results that other people get, but I don’t hanker after doing it for myself. I rely on the weather or light conditions to do the job for me .

So as it’s Flashback Friday, I’ve dug out a walk from 2020 which began, unexpectedly, in thick fog. It didn’t end in thick fog. so if that’s what you’re looking for, stop reading when you get to the lunch stop. But then go straight to the end, because I couldn’t resist adding another 2020 photo, taking during Lockdown, when I’d sometimes get up at about 5.30 to enjoy the sunrise.

If you’re reading because, like Jo of Jo’s Monday Walk fame, you enjoy a good walk, feel free to carry on till you get to the end.

Fog and mist, cloud and sun

Weather forecast. Cold, but bright and sunny. That sounded perfect for a walk in Wharfedale. Starting and finishing at the forbiddingly-named Grimwith Reservoir, and taking a fine circular route to and from Burnsall would give us extensive panoramas over the hills of the Yorkshire Dales.

Except that on the way there, an impenetrable curtain of fog descended. To walk? Or not to walk? My friend and I had both made the effort to get there. So we’d walk.

And for nearly an hour, this was our landscape. No hills, no dales, but just the occasional gate, or tussocky grass, or – sometimes – sheep.

Then – suddenly it seemed – this.

The sky lightened and brightened, and the countryside we’d come to see developed before our eyes like those Polaroid photos that once seemed so exciting.

Soon we were at Burnsall, our half-way mark. A hearty yomp up hill brought us to a bench, where we saw in turn black skies, grey skies, blue skies: and views, always with the village below us.

*Our lunch time views of Wharfedale, the River Wharfe glinting below, a few curious sheep, and Burnsall.*

After lunch, a further climb, and then level walking back to where we’d begun our day. But this time we had the views we’d come to see, and at the end, the quiet tints of the reservoir.

It hard turned out that this walk, so unpromising to begin with, had become memorable, as the heavy mist added another dimension to familiar territory, and gave a special beauty to the landscape.

And here is my Optional Extra …

Taken in June 2020, as the mist from the river sweeps over the fields at sunrise.

Give us this day our daily bread revisited

I often used to make our own bread. These days, with the cost of fuel, and because we have a fabulous two-person-band bakery in town, not so much. And back when we lived in France, we certainly never bothered. Here’s a post from our days when we lived there which may explain why.

Give us this day our daily bread

February 25th 2010

How could they? I mean, what ARE they playing at? All last week, and most of this, the baker’s shop down the road has been closed. Instead of rising at 2.00 a.m. to get busy making baguettes, flutes, ficelles, baguettes a l’ancienne, flutes tradition, pain noir, chocolatines, croissants and so on and so on, our bakers have chosen to lie in till – ooh, 7 o’clock perhaps – and then spend the day catching up with their families – the children are on half term.

It’s a family business, our baker’s shop. M & Mme Fonquernie owned it, and now, although officially they’ve retired, they help out all the time .M. Fonquernie is the one who drives his little white van round the local villages which have no shops, selling bread. Their two sons have now taken over the day-to-day baking. One is responsible for all those loaves, while the other specialises in patisserie. Their wives divide the work of running the shop between them with Mme Fonquernie Senior’s help.

So our morning routine has been disrupted. First thing each day, one of us usually walks down the road to get our favourite pain noir, hot and crisp still from the oven. The other day, the baker forgot the salt. The bread wasn’t half so nice, but I rather liked this very human error. It proved that our loaves are still ‘artisanale’, rather than being churned out by some computer-assisted machine. There’s usually someone in the shop to chat to, or to walk back along the street with, and so neither of us looks on getting the bread in as a chore.

We’re lucky, I suppose, that there are three bakers in town. Last week, we went to the shops at Castellanes to the baker there. No pain noir at this shop, so we chose their unbleached white. The small one’s a slender baguette shape – an Ariegeoise – but buy the larger butch version, and you must ask for an Ariegeois.

But then what happened? A notice appeared in the shop: from Sunday, they too would be closed for a holiday. So for a few days this week, we have to patronise shop number three. Everybody moans ‘C’est pain industriel ça’. It’s true. It comes all the way from Lavelanet, from a bakery which has three shops. That’s mass production, and it shows. Roll on Thursday, when the Fonquernie family re-opens its shop doors.

Sergio Arze, Unsplash. The featured photo is also courtesy of Unsplash, Tomasso Urli

For Fandango’s Flashback Friday

Beltane Revisited

It’s a mere 18 months or so since I reblogged my post about Beltane, but I’m doing so again because it fits so well with my last post celebrating Thornborough Henges.

Beltane at ‘The Stonehenge of the North’

May 1st 2016

Not much further than a mile from us as the crow flies lies Thornborough Henge. It’s a prehistoric monument consisting of three giant circular earthworks. Constructed 5000 years ago by the first Neolithic (New Stone Age) farmers, it was probably an enclosure for their ritual gatherings. The Henges became an important centre in Britain for pilgrimage and trade, although its exact purpose still remains a mystery.

It sends shivers down my spine to think that this ancient piece of our history lies just a short walk from our home.

An ariel view of Thornborough Henges (photo courtesy of Historic England)

We can visit it any time we choose, simply to tramp round and try to imagine it in its heyday, and we’ll have the place to ourselves. Not on May Day though. Today is the Gaelic feast of Beltane, half way between the spring and summer solstices. It’s a day to mark the beginning of summer. Sadly, today is very cold, rather windy and a bit wet.

Back in pre-historic times, rituals were held on this day to protect the cattle, crops and people, and to encourage growth. Bonfires, deemed to have protective powers, were lit. For many centuries these practices died out. But nowadays, at sites like Thornborough, pagans, Wiccans, New-Agers and lovers of history and tradition gather once more to celebrate the renewal of life and growth.

Today I was there too. For an hour at least, for the opening ceremony. Brrr! It was cold.

I was strangely moved. The Green Man, representing rebirth and the cycle of growth was our Master of Ceremonies. He invited us all to join hands, whether friends or strangers, in fellowship, and shout out three times the invocation to new life. We hailed Brigantia, Celtic goddess of Northern England. Then at his bidding and as he sounded his horn, we turned to the east and welcomed the summer rains. We turned south to welcome the sun (who was coyly absent today), to the west to welcome summer winds, and to the north where the wolves apparently are.

Then a man, naked from the waist upwards save for his covering of woad-coloured paint, leapt among us bearing the flaming torches which would offer us all protection over the coming months.

And that was the ceremony over. Dancers entertained us. They seemed to me to owe much to flamenco and to middle-eastern belly dancing traditions, but we all cheered them on with enthusiasm.

I shan’t be there this year for the closing ceremony. I’m still thawing out. But weather permitting, I’ll certainly go along next year. Will you come along too?

We haven’t been along since: cold May Days, Covid – all the usual tired excuses. But we definitely should make the effort this year.

For Fandango’s Flashback Friday

Flashback Friday Looks Skywards

Eight years ago, none of us knew that five years later, our local tracks – the only ones permitted to us during our Lockdown Daily Exercise – would become almost as familiar to us as our own garden path. This is a post I wrote about a nearby walk on January 27th 2015, when I thought that I’d seen all there was to be seen locally. I was wrong as it happened, and later realised how very much more there was to discover when Lockdown provided the incentive. For Fandango’s Flashback Friday.

Only Sky

The days are short
The sun a spark
Hung thin between
The dark and dark.


John Updike, 'January', A Child’s Calendar

A bright winter’s afternoon. Just time, before the evening cold sets in, to get out for a couple of hours of brisk walking: 5 miles or so along familiar paths. So familiar that this time, I focus on the sky: changeable, unpredictable.

Sometimes it’s moody, sometimes cheerful, sometimes simply rather grey and colourless: at other times dramatic, particularly towards sunset. Come and walk with me to watch the clouds.

Butterflies III: Half an Hour of My Life revisited

It’s time for Flashback Friday again, and as butterflies have so far been in fairly short supply this year, I thought I’d return to a happy moment in France, in August 2013, when we had friends from England to stay …

Butterflies III: Half an Hour of My Life

There we were at Roquefixade, showing our favourite walking destination off to two of our Harrogate friends, when a butterfly discovered me. Then another. These two creatures played round my wrist for more than half an hour before finally dancing off into the sunshine. They made our day.

I’m thinking they’re the Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus). Any dissenters?

And if you’re wondering why this post is called Butterflies III, here’s why …

In the same month, I wrote about a Butterfly Bonanza, and at the end of July, about the rare Mountain Apollo

For Fandango’s Flashback Friday

‘Except ye Lord keep ye Cittie, ye Wakeman waketh in vain’ revisited

Ten years ago today, long before we imagined we’d one day be living here, we were having a short break from our lives in France here in Ripon. And this is what we saw…

July 2012

‘Except ye Lord keep ye Cittie, ye Wakeman waketh in vain’

That’s the verse from the Psalms, inscribed above the town hall in Ripon, where we’re spending the next few weeks to avoid the cold and rain of the south of France (no, really, they’ve got the heating on over there). It reminds us that every evening – EVERY evening – for well over a thousand years, the Ripon Wakeman has sounded his horn to the 4 corners of the city to announce that all is well.

We had to go and check it out yesterday evening.

Promptly at 9, a smartly dressed individual in buff coloured hunting coat, tricorn hat and white gloves took his place before the obelisk on the Market Square and sounded his horn 4 times, once at each corner of the obelisk – one long mournful note each time.

Then he grinned at us, a small crowd of 20. ”Want to hear a bit of history?’ Well, of course we did. He made us introduce ourselves, and we found we too came from, well, about 3 corners of the world: Catalonia, Italy, Australia, even South Shields and Merton. And here’s some of what he told us:

In 886, Alfred the Great, 37 year-old warrior king, was travelling his kingdom to defeat the Vikings and to drum up support. Arriving at the small settlement of Ripon, he liked what he saw and granted a Royal Charter. He lacked the wherewithal to produce an appropriate document, and so gave a horn which is still safely locked in the town hall.

‘You need to be more vigilant, there are Vikings about’. Alfred warned. So the people appointed a wakeman to guard the settlement through hours of darkness, and he put that horn to use by sounding it at the 4 corners of the Market Cross to announce that all was well as he began his watch. The city’s now on its 4th horn.

If you want to know more, our current Wakeman, George Pickles, has written the whole tale for the BBC website. It’s a good yarn. Read it when you have a moment.

The Market Square, where the Wakeman does his job.

2022 Update: These days there’s a team of three Wakemen, and one of them is a woman. Only Lockdown – sort of – interrupted the tradition, when the nightly task was performed from the comfort of the duty-Wakeman’s garden at home, courtesy of Facebook.

For Fandango’s Flashback Friday

A Flashback to the Orange Man

Here’s a blast from the past: from November 2012 in fact, when we were hunkering down for winter in France. It was round about now that The Orange Man arrived …

THE ORANGE MAN

Winter has arrived. How do I know? Although the nights are cold, the afternoons are still for going walking or tidying up the garden wearing a tee-shirt, beneath a duck-egg blue sky. So until the other day, I thought we were clinging on to autumn.

But on Thursday, the Orange Man arrived. This is exciting enough news for it to be worth phoning a friend. Every year, once winter kicks in and the orange harvest is well under way in southern Spain, a huge container lorry arrives in Lavelanet. It parks up at a disused petrol station on the main road into town and becomes an impromptu shop.

The man with the lorry, the Orange Man, speaks only Spanish, and sells only oranges. Not singly or by the half-dozen, but in large 10 kilo boxes. 10 kilos, 10 euros. What a bargain. These oranges, though sometimes a little knobbly and in irregular sizes, are the juiciest and tastiest you’ll ever eat, and it’s no wonder that whenever you pass, you’ll see someone pulling up their car and opening the boot for a case or two. Our Spanish friend won’t have to stay long. In a few days the entire container-load will be sold, he’ll return to Spain …. only to return when he’s loaded up again.

When he departs for the last time at the end of the season, we’ll know for sure that spring has arrived.

For Fandango’s Flashback Friday: a chance to go down Memory Lane and give an older post an airing.

A Castle Fit for a Captive Queen Revisited

We seem to have been to Castle Bolton quite often recently. It reminded me that shortly after we came back from France, one of our early walks was here. Maybe it’s time to revisit my blog post about it, to remind myself, if nobody else, about its history.

A CASTLE FIT FOR A CAPTIVE QUEEN

October 2014

We travelled the road in thick white mist, fearing a dank and gloomy day. But the higher we climbed, the more the mist fell away, and the brighter the sun shone.

Looking down over Wensleydale from Castle Bolton

As we began walking, Daphne shared some of the castle’s history with us. It has belonged to the Scrope family since the time it was built in the 14th century, and has always been admired for its high walls. It’s a proper castle, looking exactly like the ones you will have drawn when you were eight years old.

Tudor history is largely about the constant religious and temporal battles between the Catholic and the Protestant church, which Henry VIII had made the Established Church, with the king as its head: the Fidei Defensor – Defender of the Faith (unbelievably, Henry hung onto this title, awarded him in his pre-Protestant days by Pope Leo X, in recognition of his book Assertio Septem Sactramentorum which defends the supremacy of the pope). His son Edward briefly succeeded him, and then his daughter Elizabeth, and both were Protestants.

But Elizabeth’s rule was threatened by the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, and she was held captive first at Carlisle Castle, then at Bolton. Here she was attended by 51 knights, servants and ladies-in-waiting, not all of whom could be accommodated in the castle itself. She also had cooks, grooms, a hairdresser, an embroiderer, an apothecary, a physician and a surgeon, while furnishings fit for a queen were borrowed from nearby Barnard Castle. She went hunting, learnt English – for she spoke only French, Scots and Latin – and spent time with local Catholics. She made an unsuccessful bid to escape from captivity. It’s said she climbed from an upstairs window in the castle, and fled on horseback past the nearby market town of Leyburn. It’s here she dropped her shawl and so was discovered and recaptured. And that is why, so they say, the long escarpment above the town, nowadays a playground for walkers and sightseers, is still called ‘The Shawl’.

As we enjoyed our history lesson, we passed a field of Wensleydale sheep. We very much admired their sultry fringes.

And onwards. Autumn colours.

A completely pointless stile in the middle of a meadow.

Then Aysgarth Falls. What a wonderful lunch spot. The crashing waters made conversation quite impossible, but we sat enjoying the surging waters, the coppery leaves above our heads, and the all-encompassing percussion of the tumbling River Ure.

And then it was time to turn round and head back by a different route. Another great day’s walking, with an added history lesson.

But wait! This post was all for Fandango’s Flashback Friday, when we’re invited to dig up a Post From the Past. But Becky’s Past Squares demands a look at the past too: here’s Bolton Castle, square style:

Then there’s always Jo’s Monday Walk …