Very doable craft
For those perfectionists
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Yes, I love that. And tried it but I am too heavy handed as not as easy as they make it sound!
Or The Repair Shop, but you have to take it to the Weald and Downland Museum (might have got that wrong:roll_eyes:).
Some really talented people there, I have some items long cherished that they could fix but not up for the journey anymore.
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First rando of the year in shorts and first post for a couple of weeks following a surprisingly debilitating dose of flu - probably some exotic strain caught from well-travelled inhabitants of Antibes.
Today’s walk was in the southern Cantal, but chaos ensued because there’s a place with the same name upstream from us in the Lot Valley. Chose the right one, but then missed a turning when we were only about 100m from our destination and spent the next twenty minutes describing a very large circle on single track forestry roads.
Then, the group had only walked a few hundred metres before realisng another turning had been missed. Then, while looking down at the footpath to avoid looking into the low sun , I ripped my scalp on a low branch. lot of blood. Looked dramatic, but thankfully didn’t hurt. Not a wholly auspicious start, but at least the first shorts of the year was the right decision, despite the weather being a tad weird and not conducive to good photography
Lot of walking through scrubby woods on thick beds of chestnut leaves where lots of young spindly birches hadn’t survived the gales of the last few days. These trees had a chance symmetry that would infuriate a landscape painter…
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Then a long and brutal climb from the valley up to the top of the plateau, kept plodding upwards, but the top never seemed to appear. Eventually when we emerged on the plateau there were strong really cold winds at the top (they were supposed to be coming from the south!) It’d been so mild in the valley, that I’d left my windproof jacket in the car so had to assume the personna of a hardy Northerner and stride into the teeth of the gale (yes, I know it’s a cliché, but it was bloody windy)
Often when posting walks in the Cantal, I include a photo of a fine example of a traditional, beautifully crafted barn, with beautiful stone work and a lauze roof, but today, I thought we’d have a change -
I thought I hadn’t done this walk before (elderly person, failing memory) until we came on this little artificial lake up in the hills.
Once you ignore the bamboo, it looks very Northern European Romantic - Caspar David Friedrichisch…
Some astonishingly green green stuff in a tiny pond
Haven’t mentioned a seemingly endlessly brutal 400m ascent to get to these tranquil spots, but this gives an idea of how far we’d got to go back down on precipitous woodland tracks with thick beds of dried chestnut leaves.
This typical, but seemingly unremarkable Cantal house is actually two-thirds mediaeval church . Couldn’t get a decent angle to photograph the front because there’s a river in the way, but found this online
So not fully fit, but still managed the walk - could be worse…
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Thanks for posting Mark, I hope your head isn’t too sore this morning.
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Thanks, it wasn’t and if it had been, I’d probably have blamed the wine not the tree.
Since then we’ve had the year’s first walk in trekking sandals en route to the auberge in the next village only to be met by a fellow walker (ret’d German army colonel) who told us they were on congé in Barça - too misty for photos as well, so that was that, but we still managed 8 kms
Yesterday was hazy rather than misty, but still not wholly conducive to crisp phone photography, nevertheless, I tried…
We were walking from Nauviale in the Aveyron between Conques and Rodez (if that means anything to anyone). It’s a village on a high plateau surrounded by higher hills and lower valleys, so it was lot of up and down walking (as my knees are still reminding me).
The walk began with a stiff climb out of the village during which we picked up ‘the black dog’ that had been roaming the streets collarless and became very attracted to Gigi. After a couple of hours of this it became ‘that black dog’.
Looking back down on Nauviale, we’d gained a lot of height and unlike the previous week in the Cantal, it felt like Spring was getting started - but the air was milky with water vapor and far away views were softened.
Then we dropped down into the next valley - another world. The long, wide, flat-bottomed valley of the Doudou, a tributary of the Lot, rich soils long prosperous, centuries old farms where they grow mealies for cattle rather than for sweet corn lovers. There’s only one producteur around us who grows corn for people - it’s not cheap and I’m surprised that more don’t do it - maybe in time they will, it’s often like that around here. When we arrived thirteen years ago, heritage tomatoes were not a thing, whereas today many local producteurs have six or more varieties on their stalls.
After a few kms along the valley we crossed the river and began climbing up the other side of the valley - 450-500m through an ancient forest. But in this region, the forest was always farmland rather than wilderness - pigs, chestnuts timber etc - it was always a managed resource, even thought today it looks very ‘natural’ and there are many architectural traces of this past.
The hills are littered (probably not the right word) with, mainly C19th calvaires commemorating all sorts of things from individual lives lived/deaths to Divine deliverance from phylloxera. I’ve been struck by how many of these are C19th and suspect that rather than being a consequence of increased devotion, it was the advent of industrialised Christianity inasmuch as most of the crosses are wrought or cast iron. There may be a future paper on that subject…
Meanwhile, two hours into the walk, that black dog is still pursuing Gigi…
There are very few vineyards (not sure why) but they’re probably within the Marcillac appellation as opposed to VDP Aveyron. This vineyard’s interesting because they’ve planted nitrogen rich plants between the vines and also have sheep (white dots in middle distance) grazing on the plants in the vineyard, and presumably fertilising it.
Then the mysterious graveyard, a few hundred metres above the valley, but not on the highest point (better reception there?). Expensive, dressed stone walls, and not in the local dark red sandstone, also a weathered pair of Ionic capitals on the gateway, which must be from a much older building - possibly Roman? Very unexpected…
Equally unexpected was the sudden appearance of this (very typical) chateau
Many of these ancient Aveyronais hameaux with a chateau, also have what must have been an advanced sewerage and communication system whereby everything went down the hill into the valley via a paved road/drain/sewer. And so did we - a treacherous descent down 150m of slippery moss and mud covered boulders - no time for photos - staying upright was the main priority.
But then a simple walk along the river back to the car park, stopping only to record this strange little building - I’ve no idea as to its purpose.
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I did more than a few educational visits there, a brilliant place. I made bricks when I was there once.
Thanks for posting Mark, I always enjoy your rambles.
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Yesterday’s walk was one I’d not done for a long time and all my previous memories of it were in very different conditions to yesterday - wet and windy and not conducive to photography, but I remember once - maybe ten years ago, when we were young - we did this walk in 40° heat. Young and stupid…
We started from St Martin de Bouillac, which is an old village on the Lot a few kms downstream from us. The church is romanesque, but the campanile is a later addition. When the church was built the village most have been minute as most people lived at Bouillac on the other side of the Lot (no bridge before the C20th) and for many centuries the congregation must have been drawn from the surrounding hamlets. The railway arrived in 1871 and most of the houses are late C19th/early C20th, which to my mind was a low point in provincial French domestic architecture (hence no photos other than the church).
From the church we climbed up to Asprières, a mediaeval village at the top of the valley - the road goes up, then becomes a bridleway and then a very steep narrow footpath for the second half of the climb up to 550 metres - too narrow for stopping to take photos as a pretext for a breather.
Eventually we arrive at the top and discover there’s donkeys rain and a very strong wind.
Not a nice day and crap for photography…
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Normally on this walk we stop off in the village square, but everyone walked past it without thinking and I was already far behind through stopping to take photos so you’ll have to imagine what it looked like. Eventually on the way down, I got a single shot of the village, that dominates the skyline for miles around
At Asprières we’d crossed the head of the valley and now returned along the other side along this track, which for centuries was probably the main communication route between Asprières and its very prosperous hinterland and the region’s principal communication route, the Lot.
Eventually we arrived at this grotto that is a shrine to St Roch, who’s commemorated everywhere around here - pilgrim, plague victim miraculously tended by angels , with a dog bringing him stolen bread every day - complex iconographical stuff,but the sculptors usually managed to cram in most of it. So St Roch is usually depicted with a pilgrim’s hat or staff, pointing at some suppurating wound on his thigh and by his side the faithful hound with a loaf in its mouth, although in this case it looks like St Roch’s sandwich lunch…
We’d stopped at the shrine for another reason that illustrates one of the disadvantages of wearing shorts on a narrow very brambly path - self portrait as St Roch with ripped open leg (however the ripped open scalp of two weeks ago has now healed)
The route back - a bit drear, wet and windy, but at least it was downhill all the way with a few interesting vignettes - though I have to feel that decorating one’s chauffage suggests you’ve got too much time on your hands…
Further down one encounters the big stuff, that’s too good to burn
Then there’s a poplar plantation (that at some times of the year can evoke Anselm Kiefer)
And then suddenly, we’re back at the church!
But too cold and wet and windy for a picnic outdoors, so it’s everyone back to our place…
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Thanks for posting. I have sympathy for the leg, as an ex-mountain biker it was often too late to avoid brambles on the trail, and you just accepted picking out the thorns afterwards was all part of riding.
A few photos from a walk from Sainte-Enimie towards Roc des Hortus in the wonderful Gorges du Tarn.
We always feel so lucky to be living at the southern end of the Parc National des Cevennes and just a lazy hour and half drive can be in the most incredible scenery. I reckon this place is pretty solid with tourists in the Summer but wonderful right now.
Pictures are not great becuase they are tken with phone but there you go…
Also to be higher than the Griffin Vultures.
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This week’s walk was one of our highest locally, we weren’t above any vultures, but the whole walk was above 700m. We started from Lunan in the Aveyron and the drive up to the village had superb views (according to my wife - I was driving and it wasn’t the sort of road where the driver looks around to admire the scenery)
The path started at this not very good farmyard sanglier sculpture - the body was just ‘wrong’ in so many ways - yet not really bad enough to be interesting
However, things soon picked up and I started to see some of the views that I’d missed while driving. Unfortunately, early morning haze was an obstacle to great phone photos, but you can still see the planar recession of the landscape.
The path ran along a ridge between two valleys and this was the view on the other side, where we’d be walking for the rest of the morning. The landscape resembles that of the southern Cantal - high plateau, gently rolling countryside with dairy farming and conifer plantations
The architecture is also more typical of further north - curved, steeply pitched lauze roofs (unfortunately plastic, as the real thing is over €200 a sqr m) - complete contrast to the neighbouring communes down in the valley, where we’d walked a couple of weeks previous, with their dark red sandstone and much grander mediaeval properties.
While I was taking this photo we discovered that the steep hill we’d just come down, would now need to be climbed because the two people at the front of the group had been too busy discussing plumbing to notice that we should have turned off a km earlier.
Over the next hour or so walking through fairly boring meadows and conifer plantations I realised that the interior of this high plateau wasn’t really very visually interesting compared to the view from its edge, so didn’t take any photos for ages until the ‘shop window’ of the creator of the Lunan sanglier and realised that it was actually one of his better works.
However, good humour restored by this fine barn that still had its original roof.
And an interesting property for the determined fixer upper ?
Was struck by these stones (fortunately not literally) as they seemed so out of place in this landscape and wondered if they were pyroclastic bombs that had been spewed from some ancient volcano in the Cantal or the Auvergne
Another tree! Desperate for photo ops…
The end in sight!
But not quite the end, because as is so often the case, there’s a church to check out before the picnic. I think it’s C19th Gothic Revival, though it’s possible the Gothic was a recent arrival around Lunan. Again it reminded me of village churches in the Cantal, whose interiors are often comparatively austere compared to their older neighbours on the Lot Valley Camino.
And that was the Lunan rando - good start, but subsequently, not the most interesting…
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Very nice and I quite like the sculptures:)
Romanesque most likely, as at best looks more 12th than 4thC
You’re probably right.
The reason I thought they might be earlier (late rustic Roman) is that the graveyard was probably C18/19th and if they’d originally come from a church, there was no apparent trace of the original building (which if Romanesque wouldn’t have been that old when it was demolished). Also why would it have been demolished? - unless there’d been a fire?
The fact that there isn’t a village nearby compounded the mystery.
The whole graveyard masonry is from an earlier building, which if Romanesque,must have been a church, but the dressed stone of the walls is locally more typical of slightly later chateaux or recycled Roman stonework.
A mystery…
The Revolution would be my guess.
The period would be apt given the style and material of the gates, but I don’t know of any local churches being demolished at that time (possibly other ecclesiastical buildings like monasteries?). However, I do know that the Revolutionaries did try to seize the then new bells of our village church, but were attacked and thwarted by the women of the village!
This week’s rando started here, high above Flagnac, the next village but one up the Lot from ours. A fine view over the Lot Valley to the charming chateau de Gironde
I’ve posted the video below before as we do the walk to the chateau a couple of times each year, but it gives a good idea of the setting.
However, at the other end of the spectrum is this place that I’ve walked past many times over the years, expecting that one day it will have collapsed, but nothing ever seems to change…
Normally it’s the last photo on the walk, but we were trying a new walk that stitched together bits of several different routes. This, together with the recent heavy rains meant not everything worked quite as intended - here the tiny brook had become a river
This little scene had a very C18th pastoral landscape feel -
And this building was probably being used for something a couple of centuries ago
Looks like a frontier guard post, but it’s actually far more mundane…
…an agricultural fertiliser factory where they make big bags of the stuff
Having come down through the forest, we’re on the banks of the Lot, with a long easy stretch of a few kms along the picturesque Lot veloroute.
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I’ve photographed this poplar plantation many times, but usually from much closer. This stretch of the river is actually more photogenic than the surrounding forests, where one path looks pretty much like all the others, where it’s just the gradients that change!
A series of barrages like these control the river’s flow and protect our village from floods
Buoy, oh buoy! (think I’ve used that line before further downstream)
Variety within unity is a good aesthetic maxim (probably a good political one too, though unfortunately much harder to achieve).
I’ve photographed this scene a few times too but its symmetry remains seductive. The house is a Dutch maison secondaire - whereas most of our local Dutch friends prefer to live very high up…
Another obstacle, but this time we don’t change the route
Instead straight ahead!
Oops! obstacle…
Beyond…
Here we leave the river and climb back up to where we started from
Looking back…
Good walk, 13kms in three hours with lots of variety and it didn’t rain.
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I really enjoy these posts of yours, when looking at all the waterways, I can’t help thinking if I lived there I’d go back to some with a fishing rod & a packed lunch.
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Thanks - our stretch of the Lot is certainly very tranquil and relaxing.
I’ve not fished since my teens, apart from a summer about thirty years ago while staying on a lake in northern Ontario. However we have a few friends who fish the Lot - mainly trout perch and zander - whilst others launch boats from the next village downstream, go up to the barrage just beyond our village and then drift back down trolling on the current.
Thanks for taking the time and effort to post these pictures Mark.
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