Rural Life

Seaside Rendez-Vous

This weekend we had our first holiday together for four years, comprising a night away at Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie in the Vendée.  Once we had fed both sets of cats, and hidden food bowls around the house for the girls, we headed south west in search of pastures new, sea air, food not cooked by us and exercise.

Our first "holiday" stop was to admire the ruined castle at les Essarts, somewhat north of la Roche-sur-Yon.  it looked dramatic driving by, and has a lovely new carpark and an excellent boardwalk to the entrance, but won't be open until 7th April, so the boardwalk was as far as we got.

We then carried on to Saint Gilles itself, found a parking space near our hotel and before we checked in, went for a first exploratory wander.  The place is an amalgamation of a number of small communities along both banks of a river which takes a tortuous route to the sea.  We were on the far side, so to speak, but there was actually a further side beyond the river Vie, which we went to today.  Without a map it was horribly confusing, and as we were outside the tourist season, we had to wait until we checked into the hotel to get our hands on a town plan and make sense of it all.  Anyway, we walked out along the river towards the sea, taking a few photos on the way.

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We then checked into the hotel, let my feet recover from a lot of walking, and studied the map carefully, before changing for dinner.  We then set out inland back over the second loop of the river, and as the weather was pretty filthy, chose the first open restaurant we came to for our dinner, which was very good.  I forget how much I like Pineau de Charente as an aperitif!  We also forget how good the simple things in life are, like good bread and butter and tinned sardines (sardines are very much The Thing at Saint Gilles), which made a delicious starter.  After a very nice dinner, and once that rainstorm had blown over, we went back to the hotel, stopping only to photograph the rather dramatic church tower.

This morning was the fine weather before the storm, so we took advantage to walk up and down along the dune and Grand Plage that protect the entrance to the river Vie and the sailing and fishing ports behind.  In summer it must be vile, lined as it is with holiday apartments, candy floss shops, ice cream parlours and creperies, but firmly out of season and with a few brave cafés and restaurants open and a few mad kite surfers, it was what we needed.  The wind was blowing a gale, which made life interesting.  John had to screw his flat cap on his head to avoid it flying away more than once.  The amount of oxygen inhaled in any one breathe was intoxicating and my hair is still standing on end.

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Even though we were on holiday, we really couldn't resist this bit of interpretation about and curation of dune plants, vital for saving the Vendée coastline in all its natural splendour against the ravages of the sea.  The irony of it being next two blocks of recent and really rather ugly holiday flats seems to be totally lost on the French and local government.

The promised thunderstorm arrived a little after midday, but by that time, we were tucked up in the outer terrace (so protected from most of the elements but with a good view of them all) of a very nice restaurant having a lovely lunch and being aggressively flirted with by a waiter practicing his English before the holiday hoards descend.  We dashed to the car in a pause between rain showers, to head home to face the wrath of cats, feeling very well fed, well oxygenated and almost ready for the Spring.  Almost...

 

It's springing!

This afternoon I heard a cuckoo.  As someone else in the area has also said they have heard a cuckoo too, I'm calling it, it's now officially spring.  With spring comes the first vide grenier (car boot but it lasts all day), which we went along to this morning, saw loads of chums and got a useful implement, commonly known as a "truc", which will make getting ivy off walls a lot easier.  A bargain at only one Euro too.

I moved the trail camera to see what is invading the Garden area before we block off the hole in the fence (sometimes it just isn't worth it after all).  So far I don't have any images of that, which is big enough to make a clear path, but I have been hugely entertained by Woody Woodpecker's Missus, who is enjoying the last traces of walnuts from under the least appetising tree.  Here is her best shot - I will load a video in due course.

Something is setting off the camera at night too, but there seems to have been a mist, so I've not been able to spot what it is.  I'm hoping for something more significant than this fellow, because he doesn't really merit a path!

Soon we need to start clearing beds for serious 2023 crops, so we are working our way through the leeks that I heeled in during the dry season last year, but which have enjoyed the heavy clay soil and a damp December and January.  They are really very good, and the best I have grown here in France, though not necessarily up to my Worcester leek standards.

With spring come flowers, and we have some lovely ones at the moment.  The anemones continue to do well, the plain daffodils are still being a host, while the cowslips and the mutant cowslips (being slutty with polyanthus I think) are pinging up everywhere.  Even the fancy daffs are coming out!

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And it wouldn't be spring in France without a demonstration or two, although this one at la Flèche on Wednesday wasn't making that much of an impression on the guy loading his market goodies into his car.  A long stretch of main road through the town had traffic stopped while the police escorted about 200 union members, their wives, mothers and children up the high street and then back down again, back to the Electricity Company offices they were picketing when not marching.  They were happily singing the French sport theme too - Ultranate's Free from Desire, but didn't know most of the words other than the nanananas.

Next week's edition might be a bit late for a number of possible reasons - apologies in advance.

 

Thinking about spring

Although it's March, it's not quite spring yet, but something is definitely stirring out there.  Of course some say that spring starts at the beginning of March and I can quite see that, but I'm going to wait for the equinox this year before I call it.  It's not that we have had snow this last week - far from it, in fact.  Today we had the hammock out for the first time this year, and pronounced it to be good.  I had a lovely quarter of an hour, relaxing, covered in large cats, and for part of the time at least, watching a magnificent woodpecker in one of the walnut trees.

I did do some spring-like work in the potager, in that I got around to planting the yellow onion sets I bought a few weeks ago.  Someone on one of the forums who is a bit further north than us talked about having their onion sets planted between the autumn sown broad beans, so that when the beans are done in June or so, the onions can let rip and use the nitrogen fixed by the bean roots.  Someone else poo-pooed that, but on the forums you can normally find someone who will swear blind that black is white.  Anyway, why not give it a whirl?  The onions can't really do any worse than they did last year!!

The plants are certainly starting to get into the swing of things.  The daffodils are coming out, although the more fancy narcissi are a long way behind, and the anemones I planted back at the end of 2021 are putting on another good display this year.

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No trail camera images this week I'm afraid, but a distant view of a small flock of cattle egrets along with next door farmer's cattle, doing whatever cattle egrets do.  I first became aware of them six years ago, when we went to Guadeloupe.  There, people park a cow anywhere where there is a bit of grass, and then each cow seems to have up to a dozen attendant egrets.  But now we have huge flocks of them in mainland France, some with more than a hundred birds, like a snow drift across a field.  I gather it is a sign of climate change as they have moved north from Africa.  They are lovely to look at but not right in the scheme of things.

I spotted something else that doesn't seem right yesterday too.  I was looking at the ponds at the bottom of The Orchard - I am now the proud owner of a pond dipping kit and was checking them out, to plan my first play.  I was hoping to spot a bit of spawn perhaps.  I didn't see any spawn, but was pleased that the level of the ponds has risen a bit with the recent rain, although we need so much more as they are a good 6 to 8 inches below where they should be at this time of year.  Then I heard a swish and a plop and looking across, saw the back and dorsal fin and tail of a rather large fish - when I say large, probably about 8 to 10 inches long.  Naturally it took a while for me to remember to get my phone out to take a picture and it was too far away, but I got something anyway, as you can see.  No, really!  My bumper book of Freshwater Fish says it could be Roach or Rudd, but to me the bigger questions are how did it get there, why haven't I seen it before, what does it live on and will it survive?

Today from The Shack we needed to visit another property, to check on something, and the easiest route, or at least the route we took, went through the area devastated by the forest fire last summer.  I got out of the car to take a couple of pictures and also a video.  It was most odd.  It was very quiet - no trees for the wind to rustle through, few birds, certainly many fewer than at The Shack, where they are raucous at the moment, and an overwhelming scent of pine, like someone had been spraying toilet duck around.  I hope that in a few weeks plants will start to reappear, as the black ground is chilling to look at.

So that's it for this week - I'm not sure what will be on the menu next week, but am sure that nature and life will surprise me!

 

 

 

And just about animals

So last week I featured the best photos of each of the bird species captured on the trial camera.  This week I will do the same with the animals - and the period coved is late November to late February, so everyone very much in winter mode.  Having said that, there was a good variety and it was difficult to pick the four best photos for some species, and a December video for most of them too, but I've done my best.  

The first photo is the only one I have of a mouse - otherwise they seem to keep away from the camera.  I know they are around as the cats catch some, but I assumed they were near the buildings.  This one is nearly as far away from a building on the land as you can get!

After that, let's stick to alphabetical order on what has been spotted (ignoring cat, dog, human and hunter).  The badgers are around and about.  I need to sort out more video of them as there is clear evidence of more than one individual, but for now, here are some photos and a video of a badger getting surprisingly up close and personal with the camera.

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Then there are the boar - less keen on the edge of the meadow, although they are making a mess of it, but quite keen on their trail around the ponds.  From the paper I gather that a sow can have two litters a year, of between 8 and 13 piglets - they are prolific and with no natural predators, so numerous but shy.

 

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The deer love the edge of the meadow and were also very apparent along the trail by the pond.  Apologies that some of the photos are just links - I think the internet is a bit overcrowded this evening.

 

And the deliberate errors there were that I didn't do a gallery of deer photos and the video name should be December 22 deer - you really can't get the staff!  Then there is the fox.  As we don't have chickens at that site, I'm pleased to see him or her.

My particular favourite by the meadow is the hare that has a hideyhole somewhere in the bank of brambles.  We know roughly where as there is a tunnel in and a tunnel out, and the camera was by one of the entrances.

And finally my much loved pine martin, although the video shows a rather worrying feature - no tail!  We fear that there is a snare or trap somewhere nearby and it got caught in that, although I guess there are other possibilities including a close encounter with an owl or a car.  Anyway, he looks distinctly odd without a tail.

 

Next week there may be more animal videos, but there will certainly be a review of the winter, as we are now into what can be classed as Spring (well March anyway).  Apologies for layout challenges - internet speed on a Sunday evening and perhaps the image files weren't as compressed as they should have been.