Let It Snow

I've had a fabulous summer, much of it spent in the sea at Tregastel, walking the Sentier des Douaniers and working in the garden, and now it's time to look forward to some snow (climate change permitting).

My Ragazzi and I take the business of snow very seriously and have a family tradition that whenever there is more than a few inches a snowman must be constructed.

Here's mine from this February.
 

snow -> noun [mass noun] 1 atmospheric water vapour frozen into ice crystals and falling in light white flakes or lying on the ground as a white layer.
- ORIGIN Old English snaw, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch sneeuw, and German Schnee, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin nix, niv- and Greek nipha (OED).



NEIGE n.f (de neiger). 1. Precipitation de cristaux de glace agglomérés en flocons, dont la plupart sont ramifiés, parfois en étoile.Quand la température des basses couches de l'atmosphère est inférieure à 0 ºC, la neige se forme par la présence, dans un nuage, de noyauxde condensation faisant cesser le phénomène du surfusion.
(le Petit Larousse 2007)



How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated!I should hardly admire more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat."--Henry David Thoreau

Picture courtesy of Snowflakes and crystals

You can buy stunning pictures of snow crystals here (I bought half a dozen in a bout of apres-ski trip nostalgia, and a book. I'd have ordered some snow too if it hadn't been too warm to post it)

Yes, we have been known to keep snow in the freezer...









At this time in France we have strong winds and blue skies interspersed with downpours, so I offer some photo's taken in Finnish Lapland, above the Arctic Circle, in 2006...

and my own tribute to snow...

The reindeer farm where we took part in a hilarious hijacking by reindeer. We were paired up and placed in a sled with a mad reindeer hitched at the front and then we were left to the mercy of our furry friend.

The reindeer took off at a canter, racing each other, trying to stay in front of the herd, jostling for position as we were tossed about in our sled, giggling hysterically.

After which we bought souvenirs, including a skin that has continued to shed all over my carpet, pictures and a slab of meat to cook back at our cabin.

Sorry Rudolf, it's a dog eat dog world out there!

We also took part in a husky safari


I can't express in mere words the wonder of a journey through a winter wonderland of snow-laden conifers, deep, thick blankets of snow on either side of the track, the silence pierced only by the panting of the team and our shrieks of laughter.

Pure pleasure...

One of the log cabins in the woods just outside Levi. I believe that the residents of this cabin may have witnessed an English woman of a certain age rolling naked in the snow outside a neighbouring cabin just after midnight on January 1st, 2006.

It's traditional, yes?

Especially after several tequila slammers and a hot sauna


The sun rises late during the winter months above the Arctic circle. By 10am it is just starting to spread a pinky, orange, golden glow across the morning sky.

And by 2pm it is sinking fast, colouring the sky with a glorious rainbow




I had thought that the lack of daylight, the merest glimpse of the sun for a few hours would induce a severe bout of SAD in me. Interestingly it didn't. My body adapted rapidly to the darkness and the thick, gleaming snow more than compensated for the lack of the sun's rays

Everything you ever wanted to know about snowflakes can be found at Snow Crystals

Everything, that is, except how to make it snow in Brittany. Now for that I would pay a handsome price!

and there's a museum dedicated to snowflakes, the Wilson Bentley Museum


The Perm International Snow and Ice Sculpture Festival has been held since  1995 to develop international friendship, mutual understanding, to establish artistic and aesthetic space through the art of snow and ice sculpture, and to position the city of Perm as part of the global art community and a place for international projects.


Wikipedia has an article that explains how to construct an igloo
(Inuit language : iglu, "house", plural: iglooit or igluit)

Incidentally, it has been said the Inuit have many words to describe snow. Probably true but so does English, and if one considers that there are several languages termed Eskimo-Aleut languages, then English begins to compete in the snow-word stakes. For example and according to Wikedpedia, Yupik, spoken by the peoples of western, southwestern, and southcentral ALaska and the Russian Far East, has been estimated to have around 24 — but English has at least 40 words that describe frozen water, including "berg", "frost", "glacier", "hail", "ice", "slush", "flurry", and "sleet".

Still, the idea of linguistic relativism states that our langage affects and reflects our view of the world. The belief that Eskimos had hundreds of words for snow led people to think that an Eskimo's eye-view of snow is vastly different from, say, that of a Mexican, or a man late for work and trying desperately to shovel the snow off his driveway.

Linguistics aside, for now, and speaking purely personally, I see snow as a beautiful, enchanting and fun phenomenon and I will continue to play with, roll in, ski over, throw around and eat handfuls of snow as long as it continues to fall from the sky...

 

A link to a translation of Hans Christian Andersen's Sneedronningen, The Snow Queen

A website that is All About Snow

And one for the kids amongst us who wish to spend the long winter months making paper snowflakes to hang from the beams of a Breton house

All I can say, in conclusion is

LET IT SNOW!

Iceland Noir

I've been in Iceland, having adventures, as I always seem to do.
(An aside, sometimes I think it would be nice if my life were a little less exciting, but most of the time I think it's all great fun!)

2018 was the year of the Iceland Noir literary festival. It's held every two years, in 2016 I had planned to go, having been introduced to Icelandic writing by such brilliantly dark and twisted authors as Yrsa Sigurdardottir  and Ragnar Jonasson one of whose books I was delighted to proofread. So delighted that I went to London for his launch party and even had my picture taken with him, though I was too shy to ask him to turn around. Hey, it was a huge deal for someone so camera shy and introverted. He is also very tall.

 


But I digress, as ever.

I had planned to go to Iceland Noir in 2016 but at the last minute I went horseriding instead.
It was  my post-twelve-months-of-cancer-treatment challenge: fly to Iceland and spend five days riding Viking horses up volcanoes.

This year I went to the literary festival.
Very nervously, it's stressful for me to leave the security of my comfort zone in this commune, and this particular trip involved boarding my pets, travelling to Paris via Rennes by TGV, an overnight stay in a hotel at CDG, a flight to Keflavik, a trip to the Blue Lagoon on arrival, finding my hotel at midnight, attendance at the festival itself with the prospect of meeting some of the authors whose books I have proofread, and the publisher for whom I have worked, a couple of outings, horseriding up a volcano, and retracing my route back to my small French village.

So very much could go wrong...
So very much did.

Mostly thanks to Iceland Air  who were once my favourite airline but whose lack of communication/information/accuracy/efficiency and care caused one problem after another.

From the acute stress of the Paris flight that was first delayed, then cancelled, then arrived to take the dozen of us who'd not made the alternative flight with everyone else, to the mistakes with my booking at the Blue Lagoon, to my hotel room being overbooked and me being sent off at midnight to an unsatisfactory alternative place by the harbour that was so noisy I did not sleep a wink, to a cancelled excursion for which there was no refund, to the non-arrival of the transport for the riding excursion to the failure to provide the requested wake-up call for my 4:30 a.m. departure, to the pilot whose unilateral decision to wait for a dozen Canadians delayed our departure by over 45 minutes and caused me to miss my train from CDG and thus to have to wait over six hours for the next one. 

But my trip was wonderful, once I'd decided not to be stressed and annoyed by Iceland Air's mess-ups, and Iceland Noir was amazing. Of course it was. I knew it would be worth it.

The Orenda Books team were, for me,  the stars of the show.

Especially Antti Tuomainen  and Johanna Gustawsson  seen here making everyone laugh, and yes, that's Yrsa sprinkling them with glitter...

Karen Sullivan,  the amazing publisher at Orenda Books who produces some of the best books by the best authors. Seriously. Check them out. yes, of course I am biased, but I love them all.

Roxanne Bouchard. Author of We Were the Salt of the Sea (among others).  Another lovely lady, very wicked sense of humour and very approachably kind and warm-hearted.

I could go on, and on posting pictures of the people I met, the authors whose books I've had the pleasure to proofread, those whose new books I have on my Christmas List for Santa - did you know that in Iceland the tradition is to spent Christmas Eve reading the book that someone has gifted to you while eating chocolate? I am spending Christmas in France while the Rags are in the UK so I am planning to embrace this Icelandic tradition with a new book, some Baileys chocolate liquer and a box of chocolate brazils. 

I ate cod and chips for lunch at the festival on both days because Icelandic cod is so fresh I just had to make the most of it, and having it infrequently makes it more of a treat. A little likethe kouign amanns that I only eat at Trégastel...

It really was good.
Very good.

This lady is wonderful. She is Lilja Sigurðardóttir she not only writes brilliant books, she is also kind and funny and incredibly clever.

Of course, I went riding.

This time with Ishestar  They are excellent. Before we met the mounts they gave us a video lecture on the Icelandic horses, how best to ride them and a little info about the area etc. They were ultra-cautious about bio-security because the horses are pure-bred, have no exposure to other horses outside of Iceland and thus no immunity against equine diseases. I had washed and disinfected my riding boots but not my hat so it was left in a locker and I used one of theirs.

We rode along tracks through lava fields, careful not to let the horses stray onto the lava because the ecosystem is very special and precarious: it's taken thousands of years for the mosses and lichens to establish themselves and they are dependent on the health of their neighbours, so if you damage one plant, the destruction can spread to the whole lava field.

I'd like to study lava fields in depth one day...
Maybe Reykjavik University has some online courses...

So, Iceland Noir in a nutshell.

I made it there, coped with the challenges, was stoical and pleasant in the face of more than my fair share of problems, mingled and met with authors, publishers and translators, and generally had a blast.

And these guys were the cherry on the cake. 

l'Abbé Pierre et Emmaüs

This post was inspired by an item on the BBC website about buying secondhand goods... 

I first 'met' l'Abbé Pierre back in 1995.

I was studying my first Open University course, Cadences, encouraged by my best friend Jeannie who was already a pretty fluent French speaker. We'd met at an Italian class and discovered that we were soul sisters, and we studied together for the Institute of Linguist Italian exams together. That led to me embarking on French and her starting to study for her French degree.

Jeannie died fifteen years ago, before completing her studies, while I went on to earn my degree in 2012, in French and English, of course, I did it for my friend as much as for myself.

Since 2015 I have also shared the breast cancer that killed Jeannie, life has a wicked sense of humour, I think.

I digress, as ever, but with good reason.

L'Abbé Pierre will always, in my mind, be associated with Jeannie, so who was he?

He has been variously described as: The French Mother Theresa, The Conscience Of A Country, A Living Saint.

L'Abbé Pierre (born Henri Antoine Grouès; 5 August 1912 - 22 January 2007) was a French Catholic priest, member of the Resistance during the World War II, and deputy of the Popular Republican Movement (MRP). He founded in 1949 the Emmaus movement, which has the goal of helping the poor, the homeless and the refugees.  (Wikipedia)

Abbé means abbot in French, and is also used as a courtesy title given to Catholic priests. He was one of the most popular figures in France, he probably still is.

For me it was the Emmaüs organisation that first attracted my attention even before I knew that he had been a Resistance hero, had saved the lives of French Jews, been decorated etc etc.. Before I had learned of his efforts across the globe to relieve suffering and bring joy.

The winter of 1954 was bitterly cold in France and the homeless were freezing to death on the streets so L'Abbé Pierre broadcast the following radio appeal:

"My friends, come help... 
A woman froze to death tonight at 3:00 am, on the pavement of Sebastopol Boulevard, clutching the eviction notice which the day before had made her homeless... 

Each night, more than two thousand succumb to the cold, dying without food, without bread, many almost naked... 

Hear me; in the last three hours, two aid centers have been created: one under canvas at the foot of the Pantheon on Montagne Sainte-Genevieve Street; the other in Courbevoie. They are already overflowing, we must open more, in every neighbourhood. Tonight, in every town in France, in every quarter of Paris, we must hang out placards in the night, under a lamp, at the door of places where there are blankets, straw, soup; where one may read, under the title 'Fraternal Aid Center', these simple words: 'If you suffer, whoever you are, enter, eat, sleep, recover hope, here you are loved'.

The forecast is for a month of freezing weather. For as long as the winter lasts, for as long as the centres exist, faced with their brothers dying in poverty, all mankind must be of one will: the will to make this situation impossible. 

I beg of you, let us love one another enough to do it now. From so much pain, let a wonderful thing be given unto us: the shared spirit of France. Thank you! 

Everyone can help those who are homeless. We need, tonight, and at the latest tomorrow, five thousand blankets, three hundred big American tents, and two hundred catalytic stoves. Bring them quickly to the Hôtel Rochester, number ninety-two, laq Boetie The rendez-vous for volunteers and trucks to carry them; tonight at eleven, in front of the tent on Montagne Sainte-Genevieve. 

Thanks to you, no man, no child, will sleep on the asphalt or on the waterfronts of Paris tonight. 

Thank you" 


This speech touched the heart and conscience of a nation and resulted in an "uprising of kindness" (insurrection de la misère) with a staggering 500 million francs being raised in donations. A few weeks later, in March 1954, the  Emmaüs community was created with volunteers to assist the homeless by providing them with food and a roof over their heads and, more importantly, somewhere to work to raise the money to pay for the community.

In time many of the sans-abri became, themselves, volunteers in accordance with l'Abbé Pierre's desire to show that even those who have nothing, who are totally destitute, can still help others... no-one is completely helpless or without worth.

There were many, many other humanitarian roles upon which l'Abbé Pierre embarked. He travelled to the countries where he was needed and he wrote books, lectured and taught his message of love and charity and providing people with the means to help themselves.

His was a life of action and service rather than words and rhetoric.

So, if you do only one thing today to benefit others... If you take only one small step, please, read more about l'Abbé Pierre and see if his life doesn't provide you with the inspiration to help others and if his story doesn't make you feel humble and grateful for whatever you have been granted in this life then nothing ever will.

I went to the woods...

I  went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
(Henry David Thoreau)

I went to the woods because I was starting to suffer from cabin fever, because the dog deserved a good long walk with lots of new smells to explore, and because I wanted to play with the korrigans.

You've never heard of the korrigans?

Perhaps you are a non-believer?

You've obviously never lived in Brittany.
Me, I take no chances, especially when it comes to elves, fairies, goblins and korrigans.
They were waiting and watching when I arrived.

Look closely at this and tell me, how many faces do you see?

These korrigans were with me as I walked down into the gorge.
Past piles of grey granite boulders that I once climbed, twelve years ago.
I'm hoping to so do again next year...

Deep into the woods.
It looks silent, it wasn't.
There was the sound of the stream tumbling over rocks and stones on its way to the chaos.
There were birds singing in the trees. Invisible birds, I think, Maybe korrigan birds?

As it's autumn, these beauties have appeared, almost overnight.

I have no idea if they are edible. Last autumn a friend and I joined a fungi foray in the woods near my home . We were taught what to look for, what to collect, what was delicious, what was deadly. At the end of the afternoon the guide looked in to my basket and declared that I had collected an example of every toxic toadstool in the woods.

If I ever invite you for a mushroom feast, accept with caution.

The gorge it is a mossy, velvety, seeingly soft world.
Do not be fooled, the moss covers hard rocks and jagged tree stumps, sharp branches and the gaping mouths of bottomless pits.
Well, maybe not bottomless, but who knows?
And look what happened to Alice when she fell down the rabbit hole.

Do you think that the korrigans stole this horse from an annoying human and hung it from the higher branches of the tree? I hope it's released before nightfall...

I found some korrigan art.
To this one I added a couple of twigs.
I hope they like it...

This one was too far for me to adorn.

It was on a large granite boulder in the middle of the pile that constitute the chaos. I would have clambered over but I had the dog with me and he would have fretted. And I would probably have slipped among the rocks.

It's rather lovely though, I think...

I wonder if there is a Breton word for shinrin-yoku - forest bathing...

Koeswik koronkat is the closest I can get.

Koeswik koronkat with korrigans.

There is a new movement towards outdoor schooling for children.

Forest schools

A link to Forest Schools in the UK

Here's a BBC film about one in Dorset, UK 

and a BBC film about another in Norfolk, UK

When I was a child we spent a lot of time enjoying nature rambles, either with the teacher and my classmates or with my family. When I had children I took them out into the countryside and we walked for miles, explored, played, climbed trees and bloulders, collected random things for the nature table at home that we updated each week, and came home tired, dirty and very grounded.  

I am a great believer in being outside.

If you need any more persuading, here are some BBC podcasts from The Essay:

Mirkwood -  The great forests of Middle Earth 

Brothers Grimm -  the dark Germanic forests of the brothers Grimm

The Wood Beyond the World - A meander through the lush, romantic delights of the pre-Raphaelite forest 

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease

(Voltaire)

S is for Scallops...

We eat a lot of scallops here, in Brittany. Which is why the recent spat between the French and English fishermen caused a bit of a stir.

                               
                           
                     
                          (Pic Reuters from bbc.com)

The main point at issue was the size of the British boats coupled with the fact that they are fishing all year round, whereas the French, quite sensibly, allow the scallops some respite between May and October to keep stocks at healthy levels.

Of course, I am on the side of the French fishermen, And the scallops.

The environmental mayhem wrought by commercial scallop fishing is truly terrible.
Large boats dredge the sand, scraping up everything in their path, destroying countless communities of sea creatures, laying bare huge swathes of the seabed.

In addition to being so destructive, dredged scallops can spend anything up to two weeks languishing in the bottom of the boat before they even make it to terra firma and your dinner plate, during which time the flesh begins to deteriorate.

But reading about an agreement reached between the UK and French got me thinking about scallops...

A scallop is a marine bivalve mollusc of the family Pectinidae.
scallop -> noun 1. an edible bivalve mollusc with a ribbed fan-shaped shell. Scallops swim by rapidly opening and closing the shell-valves.
# short for SCALLOP SHELL
# a small pan or dish shaped like a scallop shell and used for baking or serving food
2. (usu. scallops) each of a series of convex rounded projections forming an ornamental edging cut in material or worked in lace or knitting in imiation of the edge of a scallop shell.
3. another term for ESCALOPE

-> verb (scallops, scalloping, scalloped)
1. [with obj] scalloped ornament (an edge or material) with scallops
# cut, shape or arrange in the form of a scallop shell
2. scalloping gather or dredge for scallops
3 bake with milk or a sauce: [as adj] scalloped

- DERIVATIVES scalloper noun
- ORIGIN Middle English: shortening of Old French escalope, probably of Germanic origin. The verb dates from the 18th century

(That's for those of us who like words, courtesy of the Oxford Dictionary of English)

And for the biologists:

Scallops are hermaphrodites; capable of switching sexes. Both sexes produce roe, whose coloring depends upon the parent's (current) sex. Red roe is that of a female, and white, that of a male. 





After fertilisation scallop ova sink to the bottom of the sea. After several weeks, the immature scallop hatches and the larvae drift until settling to the bottom again to grow. They reach sexual maturity after several years, though they may not reach a commercially harvestable size until six to eight years of age. 

Scallops may live up to 18 years, with their age reflected in the annuli, the concentric rings of their shells.(Wikedpedia)

One fascinating fact about scallops is that they have many, many eyes..

The eyes are very tiny, and occur along the curved edges of the shell, just inside, about one eye per shell corrugation. Each eye is rather remarkably like a certain kind of reflecting telescope complete with a spherical mirror to reflect incoming light rays onto a retina, after being corrected for spherical aberration by passing through a lens
(From Everything 2)

Blue-eyed beauties!


                            .


Personally I'm bit of a shell-person and scallop shells are, to my thinking, The Epitome of A Sea-Shell. Keep your conches, wave away your winkle shells, lose those limpets, give me a scallop shell anyday.

I've used scallop shells as ashtrays, bead boxes, pin holders and, of course, serving plates for seafood dishes back in the 70's when we ate prawn cocktail on a bed of that nasty iceberg lettuce as a starter for quite a few of the dinner parties that we hosted. The main course was probably a veal scallop and scalloped potatoes and desert, a pie with a scalloped edge...

Now I collect them whenever I'm walking on the beaches here. It seems wrong not to. How can people just walk past a scallop shell? À chacun son goût, I guess, and my goûts are definitely shells.

Here's how to clean a scallop:
An Illustrated Guide To Cleaning A Scallop
And here are some links to scallop recipes:
Fisherman's Express ('all wild and all natural')
About.com:Home Cooking
Recipe Zaar

Enough already?
Ok, just one more, my favourite recipe, Scallop Bisque

Care to make an angel from scallop shells? Then look no further than this link

I'd post a picture of the blanket that I crocheted when I was 17 years old, if I hadn't lost it along the way. The stitches resembled scallop shells. Maybe I'll crochet another one one day soon...

What else can I say about scallops?

The scallop shell is often associated with the act of pilgrimage. It is said that this comes from the Way of St. James, also known as el Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. Legend says that it is here that the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried.

                                                
                                                   

The shell features a single point from which ribs radiate outwards, a symbol of pilgrimage. By tradition dating back to the 8th century pilgrims would bring back a scallop shell to prove that they'd completed  the journey. This then developed into the symbol of pilgrimage

Something for the linguists...

In some languages the scallop shell is called the muscle of St. James.

The German word for scallop is "Jakobsmuschel".
The Swedish word for scallop literally translates to pilgrim mussel.
A French name for a dish containing scallops is coquille St. Jacques (in Québec, pétoncle is more commonly used).
The Dutch name is Jakobsschelp (James being English for Jacobus).
In Danish, ibskal refers to scallops worn by pilgrims from Santiago de Compostella (Ib being the Danish name for St. James)
(Wikepedia)

Once, on a trip to the coast to find a sawmill my then-partner and I stopped by a lake to take a walk with the dogs. The lake is around 5kms from the sea.

As we walked amongst chestnut and pine trees something in the fallen leaves caught my eye.
It was a beautiful scallop shell.
Ever the forager I bent down to pick it up and in so doing I unearthed a veritable treasure-trove of scallop shells.

By the time that we'd finished digging we had filled a large carrier bag

We brought them home to sit in their bag and wait for me to clean them, drill a hole in each and string them up somewhere, they're still waiting....

I have no idea who left them or why they were there.
One of life's mysteries.

By the time that we'd finished digging we had filled a large carrier bag. We brought them home to sit in their bag and wait for me to clean them, drill a hole in each and string them up somewhere, they're still waiting....

I have no idea who left them or why they were there.
One of life's mysteries.

                                               

The scallop shell is also associated with the cult of Venus, as seen here in Botticelli's beautiful The Birth of Venus.
                                   

The painting avoided the flames of Savonarola's bonfires that reduced all such 'pagan works' (including many books) to ashes.

It obviously pays to have friends in high places and the Medici Family were very high indeed. Such a shame that the same Florentine family abandoned poor old Galileo to the wrath of the Catholic Church for daring to suggest that the earth revolves around the sun.

So, there you have it.
The simple scallop.
Amazing what you discover when you dig a little deeper.                         

              

Le Sentier des Douaniers on Sunday

I hadn't been to the coast for a few days and I was in need of a day communing with nature, and it's been shown that spending time out of doors in green spaces is good for your mental and physical wellbeing:

This Is Your Brain On Nature from National Geographic

The Effects of Nature on Well-Being from Natural Resources Institute Finland

In Japan they talk enthusiastically about Shinrin-Yoku, or, forest bathing, it's becoming quite the thing as people seek to reduce the stresses of life.

Me, I love being outdoors. Especially at the coast.
Thalassotherapy!
Sea bathing.
Or simply sitting on the sand and listening to the waves make the small pebbles dance and sing. I have a special spot for that, round the orner from Tourony. I'm often to be found there, sitting by the edge of the water with my eyes closed in a semi-yoga state. It is deeply relaxing.

This time I made a big mistake though.
I arrived at Trégastel at 9:45, popped into Super U for some bits and bobs, drove to Ploumanac'h and parked the car and noticed, from the beach there, that the tide was ebbing. And I was so pleased to have parked in the centre of the village that I decided not to drive to Tourony to swim but, instead, to walk and have lunch first.

People, that car park fills up so early and to have found a spare place was, well, it was like Christmas with snow, and elves and reindeer!

I'll do the Sentier des Douaniers from this end for a change, I thought to myself as the dog and I set off walking.

Note, there will be many pictures because it is just so picturesque, n'est-ce pas?

Et voilà...

The Sentier des Douaniers. The path leads from Ploumanac'h to Trebeurden. I usually fo the bit from the car park near the camp site to Plouamac'h and then walk back after lunch, but it's good to vary one's routine sometimes and there was the matter of the car parking space so I set off the other way.

Leaving Ploumanac'h under the eucalyptus trees...

I love the way the bark peels from them, and I love the fresh scent of the leaves. They are said to cleanse the air and I'd plant one in my garden but I did that once before and the tap root was so thick I thought it might tunnel under the foundations of the house.

Since I am having my 'jungle' cleared next month I may plant one up there...
I'd quite like to make it a forest garden.

Where were we?

Right, emerging onto the coastal path with the lighthouse in the distance and the start of the most amazing pink granite rock formations...

This pink granite is only found in two other locations in the world. One is in China, I forget where the other is. It's the product of volcanic activity (soon you'll come to learn how much I love volcanoes) and these rocks once formed a mountain range higher than the Alps...

Four million years of weathering has eroded them, and sculpted them into natural artwork, and it's funny to think that in a few more thousand years they will all be just pebbles and small rocks.

But comforting, in a way... 

It's a busy place on a sunny Sunday morning.

Soon the tourists will have departed and it will be much less crowded on the sentier, especially when the weather is wet and stormy. I walk in all conditions. A colleague from Norway once told me, 'There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.'

I agree.

It's still possible to find a quiet spot to sit and write. I'd love to know what this woman was working on, perhaps her first novel? maybe a love letter to a long lost amour?

At the end of the lifeguard ramp there were people scub diving. Damn! I had meant to take that course this year and now I think it will be too late to start. Another reminder that one should not delay because life passes so quickly.

Most people ignore the collecting box on the wall of the lifeguard's building. The French seem to expect that the state will take care of such things so charities are not so well-supported here. In an ideal world they would be but I think it's good karma to help others when we can so I always pop a euro in the boat when I pass.

The Sentier des Douaniers is a protected natural space. A decade or so ago the walkers had pretty much eroded the soil and destroyed much of the vegetation and then it was decided to reverse the damage. A team of volunteers made little paths and put up small wire fences to encourage the visitors to stay on them, installed signs explaining why and now it's pretty much recovered. 

There are still those who don't respect the environment but most people are considerate. I make no apologies for being a long-time eco-warrior, and I have been known to (politely) request that people step back onto the path, and mostly they are understanding.

On this walk I discovered this sign down by a little spring on a path just off the main route.

No sign of the salamanders...
The dog and I did look.

There are quite a few in the ditches and streams near my home though, and a friend has one living in her water metre hole. They look quite exotic with their yellow and black colours.

One of the best things to do on the sentier: stand and stare.

 I spend a lot of time sitting with my eyes closed and listening to the sound of the waves on the rocks. And taking photographs of the water because the colours and the patterns fascinate me.

Heading back to Ploumanac'h for lunch.

This is an interesting sign on the way back into the village.
This part of France was occupied by the Germans during WW2 and the Resistance fought hard here. The countryside is dotted with crosses to mark the spot where a Resistance fighter died, near my home there is a crossroads at which thirteen men from my village were executed for 'disobeying the Gernans.'

And so back to the beach at Ploumanac'h

Past the notice detailing the times and heights of the tides for the day. And this greeting that made me smile. Happily it does not apply to me. I am, as I have to keep explaining to people, a resident.

Remember the people who do not respect the rules?
Dogs are not permitted on the beach between 15th April and 15th November.
Didn't seem to worry this pair, even though they risked a large fine.

I had a packed lunch but, well, who knows when I'll be back in Ploumanac'h, parked right in the centre and hungry enough to do justice to a lunch at one of my favourite restaurants? A change of plan, I decided to eat there again.

Alas, they do not take cards, only cheques and cash, so I had to go in search of 'the bank' and this was it! Unsurprisingly. quite easy to miss!

And then back to the restauarnt where I didn't even need to order, the waiter recognised me and said, with a smile; 'Kir cassis, escalope de dinde et une carafe d'eau?'
I am very predictable.
And their turkey steak is very tasty.

So no apologies for always ordering it.
Besides, the restaurant will be closed soon until next spring so another carpe diem moment!

As I walked back to the car there was a queue of people waiting to parl and a tired looking elderly woman asked me, hopefully, 'Vous partirez Madame?' I smiled and said, she was lucky, yes, I was just leaving and she waved happily to her equally tired-looking partner in the car nearby and smiled as I wished her a pleasant afternoon. Silly, but it made me feel good.

And then to Tourony where, the tide being as low as it could fall, Tashi and I walked to the pink castle to take some close-ups.I think I have several thousand pictures of the chateau de Costaérès now but I can't resist taking more.

I wish I could paint. I am about as artistic as my gate post.
Probably less so.
But a couple of years ago it occurred to me that it's a shame that as asults we stop playing and being creative so I bought myelf some little canvases and a set of acrylic paint and now I have fun.

Here's the lighthouse again.
I have thousands of photos of it too.

The beach was quiet.
This group were demonstrating the seriousness with which the French take their eating. They had set up a table, complete with a cloth, cutlery, glasses etc for their lunch among the rocks.

These people were busy collecting their lunch.

I often encounter people with buckets of things in shells and since I usually have a bag of plastic and other rubbish I find on the sand, they often stop me and ask to see what I've found, thinking it's going to be scallops or oysters.

We sat on the beach and watched as the sea slowly reappeared, and I did consider staying for the tide to be full enough for a swim but, well, patience is still a virtue that I have yet to acquire.