The weather changed overnight as a cold front went through, and while it was actually quite nice and I got the laundry dry, it was also much colder than of late throughout the day. This made sitting on hooman much more appealing for Nibbles, and at lunchtime she spread herself up my chest and got up close and personal. She allowed me to take about 50 photos of her - that's how comfortable she was! A few were out of focus and she wouldn't look direct at the camera most of the time, but ancient tribal beliefs would say that her soul is now mine (I think she thinks it works the other way round though).
When I managed to extricate myself from cat, I went out for my allowed exercise. I had to post a letter, and had thought of going on one of the familiar routes, but wanted a change of scene, so I went down to the Pont de Godeau (he still didn't turn up) and then up to the Voie Verte and along that towards the open country. The Voie Verte used to be a railway line and once decommissioned, was then left to run wild, which made it a great place for wildlife. When it was reopened as a cycle and pedestrian route, that exposed a couple of large badgers' sets along the line. Much to my distress, last winter, someone erased one of these. Either it was overzealous path maintenance or it was a farmer trying to avoid badger tracks over his land. Either way, my walk this afternoon demonstrated nicely that they failed and Badger Burrows are being extended and improved for the winter!
Further round on my walk, I looked across to the village from where I know to be the 1 kilometre as the crow flies from home limit. I must admit I was very lucky with the time I chose to go out for my walk as I had sun the whole way, which took the chill off and made everything so much more optimistic.
The final photo from my walk is of the cressonière that is perhaps 200 metres from home and taps into the same groundwater spring as our well. When we first saw it, we thought it was an old washing point or lavoir, but talking to locals, we now know it was a tank for growing watercress. The water flow has diminished considerably from what it used to be, and I don't think that is due to residual drought conditions. There have been groundworks and building further up the hill which are likely to have impacted on the flow. I'm not sure how clean the water would be anymore either, so I wasn't tempted to grab a handful of greenery - and I don't think it is watercress in there anyway!
By the way, it is Beaujolais Nouveau day today!
Comments