Nature can be brutal
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Phoques doing similar in France. Learnt something new “a la banane”!
EN IMAGES - Deux jeunes phoques gris font une pause sur des plages d’Oléron et de Ré
EN IMAGES - Deux jeunes phoques gris font une pause sur des plages d'Oléron et de Ré - ici via France Bleu
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Yesterday did a ‘proper’ walk of 12 kms up and down, up and down between the 200m and 650m contours in the valleys around Conques. By coincidence it’s a year since I began this thread with some photos from part of yesterday’s walk. Some friends have just rented the farmhouse below in the middle of nowhere. Because it’s France there’s another tiny place in the Conques’ diocese that has the same name, but is about 20kms away on the other side of the Lot. Anyhow we got there eventually…
The first part of the walk was down a steep rocky path where the strata are vertical and slippery, worn smooth by over a thousand years of pilgrims on the Camino. Slipped and fell heavily on my back on the rocks - bloody pilgrims! It was my first fall for a couple of years and fortunately had a rolled up jacket in my backpack that probably saved a broken rib or two. Relieved and surprised that everything seemed OK and carried on down to the tiny chapel of Ste-Foy, the C4th child martyr whose relics were stolen from another monastery in the C9th and brought to Conques to (very successfully) boost its status as a pilgrim site.
The chapel looks down on the abbey
After the chapel we began the climb back up to the top, it’s nearly 400m of steep rocky path and too much to stop for photos, butI was pleased to do it without a break for breather (unlike previous years). I only had a day pack, but modern pilgrims do this ascent with much larger loads. However, on reaching the top I realised my fall had probably done something to my right knee and ankle… and the rest of the walk was a bit of a struggle, but soon after caught a glimpse of our starting point and thought, not much further…
but instead of turning left to head back we crossed the road and took another steep path down into a valley (with the knowledge that we’d have to go back up the other side) but the leg held up and back on top of the plateau we found a field full of these
However, I was sure that last year the same field had been full of llamas … has there been some sort of highland putsch?
The last stretch was the softest, just walking along the plateau, but there, there is this lovely sensation of walking in the sky that one never gets where we live at the bottom of the Lot Valley.
Footnote (literally) was quite lame after a 12km walk with undiagnosed injuries and was dreading sitting for 2h 20 minutes that evening in the cinema with the new Dylan film, but in the event all was wonderful - great movie! Then got home and found I couldn’t raise my left arm above the shoulder - previously had been so worried about my leg, that I hadn’t even noticed. Today leg is fine, but the upper arm’s going to take a few days (I hope).
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I hope your arm, leg and back all recover quickly and fully Mark. Thanks for posting these - your ability to stride through the hills and mountains is quite impressive.
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I’ll just pop up a few more Seal pics, taken Wednesday, edited last night.
Out of the sea.
Horsey Bay Seals 1 by Anton Ertl, on Flickr
Pack shot.
Horsey Bay Seals 2 by Anton Ertl, on Flickr
Fed up with human litter.
Horsey Bay Seals 3 by Anton Ertl, on Flickr
Dance party.
Horsey Bay Seals 4 by Anton Ertl, on Flickr
Did you hear the one about…
Horsey Bay Seals 5 by Anton Ertl, on Flickr
Awww.
Horsey Bay Seals 6 by Anton Ertl, on Flickr
Not you again.
Horsey Bay Seals 7 by Anton Ertl, on Flickr
In the sea.
Horsey Bay Seals 8 by Anton Ertl, on Flickr
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Nice variety! - back home, you’re going to miss those seals …
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This is our very own Nat Geo channel. Thank you! I enjoy your accounts and the pics without having to change out of my slippers. 
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Get well soon!
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Wonderful, lovely pics thank you
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Is that a manually operated railway crossing gate ? I didn’t know they still existed in the UK!
Thank you for putting up with my pictures. 
Just the common electric type for cars, although the pedestrian gates are manual. There’s quite a few manual pedestrian crossing gates around here, but they’re trying to get rid of crossing in some places. Tackley village lost its crossing more than a year ago.
Another Weds, another walk, this time a new one in the southern Cantal - 12 kms with lots of up and down through typical Cantal rolling high pastures and chestnut woods. Sunshine and clouds, but with a cold wind from the north. Had been hoping to wear shorts, but decided that was too ambitious for a morning walk.
We started from a tiny, but seemingly prosperous village called Fournoules, just south of Maurs (if that means anything to anyone). Not sure about the church, it was locked; Romanesque entrance, maybe C15th, possibly even later, whilst the tower looks a much more recent (C19th?) addition.
Lot of climbing through the woods before reaching the first viewpoint, while keeping one eye on the sky - 40% chance of rain (but it held off).
The southern Cantal mainly consists of chestnut forests in the valleys, conifer plantations often on the higher slopes and pasture on the top (beef and cheese)
Not all panoramas though, lots of this too, paths that go down and down through the forest until you reach a stream and then you have to go up and up on the other side. Interesting that even months after the leaves have fallen and decayed, there’s still such a variety of colours on the forest floor.
The birches thrive where the soil is too thin for the chestnut and oak.
Eventually the village reappears
And to finish, some fine examples of (C19th?) Cantal lauzes roofs and typical large, wildly irregular granite quoins up the side of the buildings.
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Weds is our normal group walking day, but while our friends were tramping the hills of the Aveyron we were in Antibes primarily ‘researching retail outlets’ (a phrase learnt from a fashion lecturer who used to use it to explain her frequent absences). Anyhow, whilst our group managed a mere 10kms in the Aveyron, we racked up nearly 18 kms. After a morning in the town changed into trekking sandals (first time this year!) then went for a walk up through the woods of Cap d’Antibes to an interesting chapel on the top that I’d first chanced upon a few years ago.
There’s an official walking trail to it with the usual markings, but because we’d done that before, instead we made our own way to the top and popped out opposite one of the last Stations of the Cross that border La Calvaire, the official route to the chapel, The original C19th paintings have recently been colourfully ‘restored’ - possibly by someone who is primarily a BD illustrator…
At the top, in front of the chapel, looking east, one has a great panorama of la Baie des Anges that lies between Antibes and Nice - the white fuzziness on the LH horizon is the snow capped Alpes Maritimes obscured by haze.
On the other side of the Cap, looking west one can just pick out the beach of Golfe Juan, between Juan les Pins and Cannes, where Napoleon landed after escaping from Elba, and where a century later Picasso used to draw in the sand then watch his work being erased by the incoming tide.
Yet today it has an endearing ordinariness compared to its more glamourous neighbours. However I’ve also sat on that beach and realised that the view to sea and of the Cap is essentially unchanged since Picasso used it a century ago as the backdrop for many of his most famous paintings, such as La Source
Anyhow, returning to the chapel
It has rich maritime associations that go back five hundred years and inside it’s full of hundreds of ex-votos in the form of paintings, models of ships and marble plaques- thank yous to Notre-Dame for saving sailors and other from various horrible fates.
Lastly back down through the woods, low late afternoon sun making it difficult to see. But good!
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I’m enjoying your holiday! 
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Forgot to post this walk from the other day
The following day, did 22kms - apart from walking into Antibes for breakfast and dinner did a few other walks - but still amazing how it all adds up
Cap d’Antibes from Antibes -
I also re-visited the Picasso museum (pas de chien, so Madame et Gigi went shopping). Meanwhile for me in this Picasso museum, his ceramics made at nearby Vallauris are the most interesting part of the collection. This display is of large platters of local seafood - fish, langoustines and sea urchins.
After that we had another walk over the top of the Cap via an interesting botanical garden founded in the C19th that’s now a research institute looking at how trees from around the world (mainly S hemisphere) will be best suited to the future local environment in the context of global warming. A lot of the palms were much larger than one normally sees in France.
When I lived in S Africa, my university had a C19th botanical garden with mature trees from all over the southern hemisphere, many of which had grown much larger than would be normal in their countries of origin. But not sure if that is the case at Antibes.
After that we walked down to Golfe Juan through narrow lanes between very high garden walls that shielded expensive properties, This reminded me of Jo’burg suburbs, though here several strands of razor wire or electric fencing were deemed unnecessary and I didn’t see any signs for armed response companies, that are essential in suburban SA.
Eventually climbed back over the top of the Cap back to the Baie des Anges and then a few kilometres along the sea front. Mixture of new luxury villas on the landward side of the road and slightly crumbling ones between the road and the sea - obviously no longer a good place to build and already several seemed very close to the waves…
Was pleased that despite all the morning and afternoon walking we were still able to rack up a few more kms in the evening by walking into Antibes and back.
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I used to have a Picasso plate that grateful patient gave my mother, but I broke it.
Oh dear…
And a missed opportunity to invent ceramic Cubism…
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I did try to make it into a mosaic seat of a stool (which I’ve done reasonably ok with a 19thC plate) but the curvature was too difficult.
That’s a shame, but I still like the idea of a fragmented Picasso.
In early po-mo art and theory the fragment became a metaphor and eventually a cliché for the ‘lost’ unity of modernism - and something similar had happened previously with neoclassicism’s fascination with the antique past - Piranesi et al…