Almost 2 years

Ryan turns 2 on Easter Sunday. He has a remarkable number of clear words now - it must be close to 200. He now tells us what to do! "Mummy sit", "Daddy drive", "open fridge", "over the bridge"

It seems from some web trawling that my old boss has severed his ties with ANU. I wonder how the newer personnel are working out. Seems most of the women have left! I don't really miss that place apart from them.

I've been uploading some photos from France. It's been good to look at some of the trips and walks we did again. Pat may go to Sophia and Brest in June but I don't think I fancy flying 24 hours with Ryan.

View from French domaine

HPIM0214
Originally uploaded by Robubble.

I'm missing the best bits of winter from France. For one, this fabulous view when we drove out of our domaine. Mind you, it took a pretty good wind to drive the smog and clouds away so we could see it.

[That was a Flickr test post - the latest digital photo toy]

Last days in France

Last Cote d'Azur hike with autumn colours and snow.

Back in Sydney we are experiencing temperatures over 25 degrees Celcius, humidity, green gardens (despite the ongoing drought) and flowers of all colours.

The last weekend hike

We hiked to a arsenic sulfate mine in the Vesubie Valley, only abandoned in the 30's. We used the handy table and chairs to eat our quiches and pain aux raisins. Despite the sun it was quite chilly. We only saw two other hikers and heard the shots of hunters, luckily in the distance.

Last weeks

We're winding down here in France. I'm looking forward to seeing my family, the Aussie bush, BBQs and Vegemite.

Long weekend in Provence

We spent the weekend amongst ripening olives and autumn coloured vinyards of the Alpilles region of Provence. It was only a few hours drive by motorway and we were able to visit Le Baux de Provence on the first afternoon even though we only left home at 11am. We found a pleasant hotel in Maussane nearby. Since it was raining the following morning we went to Arles which was fairly close and did Nimes on the public holiday Monday (All Saints Day).


Roman arena, Arles

Weekends

Last weekend we drove down to the Esterel to deposit a geocaching travelbug into its goal cache. It was Ben's first geocaching trip. We climbed up to the top of a hill with a military lighthouse then clambered down through prikly brush and over red rocks to get back on the track of the cache. It reminded us all of Australian bushwalking. What made it French was the number of people about, the several rockclimbers in sight of the cache and the castelated tower on a little island just off the coast. We had a very pleasant dinner in the Coin de la Rue in Valbonne afterwards.

This weekend we explored Monte Carlo for the first time, taking shops including a huge fnac music and electronics shop and numerous luxury goods shops, the casino and associated cars, the harbour and boats. Back in Villeneuve Loubet we finally checked out one of our local non-Asian restaurants and ended up with a delicious orgy of seafood (mussels, calamari, prawns and whitebait) and the frites that I was craving - yum.

Hiking

We were on a goat track up high on one of our latest walks in the Southern Alps. This one left from the Sanctuaire de Santa Anna just across the border into Italy. The little alpine lakes were pretty but the area was littered with WW2 bunkers and rusty barbed wire. I ate several delicious handfuls of raspberries from the bushes lining the track. We did another walk on Sunday after camping in a delightful all-season campground at Isola. The walk from St Etienne la Tinée wasn't as nice as the previous day as it was hotter down lower and three quarters of the route was on a steep gravel road. The free fruit compensation wasn't there either as animals, probably pigs, had stripped the bushes of raspberries and most of the leaves.

Beach

I was wetting my toes on our local Villeneuve Loubet Plage, just so I could say I'd done it. It has almost been warm enough again in the last few days for full immersion but it probably won't happen. Those pebbles make for a pretty uncomfortable swimming experience.

Necklace

As promised, a photo that features my new necklace, bought in the Perigord town of Sarlat for my last birthday - the next one is in three weeks!

Fin de été d'Inde

The air seems a lot cooler now that it's getting dark at 7pm. Gone are our evenings playing tennis.

One of the women at tennis is going to Australia (mainly) next week for 3 1/2 months so I've given her my parents' number and she might call near New Year when they are in Sydney.

Bits and Pieces

Animal life: There was a large toad clambering around in the rockery by our car space a couple of nights ago. Also a couple of days ago a large group of sanglier (wild pigs) were hanging around in the car park behind Pat's work when I arrived to pick him up. The pack (what is the collective noun for pigs?) seemed to consist of a big mama, a couple of smaller daughters and a whole swag of piglets. As they trailed off into the pine trees we could see the last two were lame in their back legs. They were all quite dark and bristly. People here reckon their numbers have increased because there are less hunters. Certainly residents with gardens near forests regularly have them dug up. And I saw Australian "sanglier" being sold in a frozen foods shop here!

I also just remembered that on one of our walks in the Dordogne we encountered a hillside so covered with wild garlic we could smell it.

Today I cooked baked beans. It took more than 4 and a half hours. They will have to be better than the canned variety, which are hard to get here.

Rain

It is looking like we might have a whole day of rain. It feels like a refreshing change. The temperature has reduced to 24 C.

We had a very unsatisfying expedition into Italy on Sunday. After Rick regaled us with stories from their visit to Apricale restaurants we decided to try and find it and a cache at San Michele to deposit the Mini Travel Bug. Without a map we had no hope of finding Apricale in the hills above Vintimiglia. So we went to San Michele and couldn't fins the cache box. I looked for about 20 minutes under rocks and bushes but the GPS wouldn't fix. By the time we got to the next town with food (Sospel) it was too late for lunch so we drove home. The only saving grace was that I picked a handful of tasty purple figs from a tree by the road.

A couple of English soundtrack movies have been on tele recently. Am Australian effort Innocence (2000) by Paul Cox, very touching film about rekindled love with Bud Tingwell and Julia Blake. The other was Rear Window (1954), the retouched version with James Stewart and Grace Kelly. We didn't realise it was her until I mentioned it at tennis. She seemed familiar!

Not much to write home about

The news of the past week has been very depressing so I haven't felt like blogging. We talked about terrorism and the French religious symbols ban in state schools in French class. The topic generated quite a lively discussion, if in broken French.

Australia goes to the polls on October 9. Surely the Australian people can give my Dad a birthday present and get rid of Howard but it seems nothing is certain. It is nice not to have to endure weeks of posturing by him and the rest of the pollies although I do try to read current opinion on various news sources. I tend to read the ones pointing out Howard's propensity to lie and ignore the will of the Australian public. We'll do our postal votes for Howard's electorate via the embassy in Paris.

I'm currently watching the US open with German commentary (can't understand anything except "oh ja" and "breakchance"). We spent the day reading secondhand books bought from Heidi's English bookshop in Antibes yesterday. Very relaxing. The weather is a bit opressive, like a Sydney February.

Last week with Bruce we did a cache behind Grasse, at a ruined village called Castellaras. Pat broke the repair off his front incisor with a pain de camapagne sandwich on the way there so he looked like a snaggle-tooth. Bruce went for train trip to Menton and cycled all the way back on Monday while Pat organised a dental appointment for Wednesday. This meant a change to our vague plan of going away for an overnight trip to the Mercantour. Instead we took Bruce around to Barcelonette with the bike doing a hike to some alpine lakes from the Col de Cayolle on the way. He bivvied in a wood for the night while we drove back home over the Col de Bonnet. At 2802m the highest col in Europe. The road seemed to go on for ever through an increasingly barren landscape, a fitting setting for all the WW2 bunkers and buildings still littering the mountain tops. It took us two hours to drive home from the top. Early the following morning Bruce rode Pat's mountain bike over the col, arriving back at the house about 4 in the afternoon, some 170 kms later. Too exhausting by half! We went off to play tennis for a couple of hours and he was asleep, unsurprisingly, when we came back to go out to dinner. I saw him off at the airport for a flight to Munich the folowing morning.

Beetle

A prickly looking customer we met on a walk through woods. We were across the Dordogne River from Chateau Beynac looking for a cache.

Castlenaud

The very popular Castlenaud: a restored Dordogne Chateau containing the Museum of War of the Middle Ages, hence the reconstructed war machine sticking up over the ramparts on the left of picture.

Canoeing the Ardeche with the crowds

Dolmen

Two more dolmen near Limogne-en-Quercy

French prehistory

Here is a large dolmen near Limogne-en-Quercy south of the Lot River, which runs roughly parallel to the Dordogne. This is one of three we visited near the town.

August summer holiday

We have just returned from two weeks exploring more of France. We opted to drive a short distance rather than fly anywhere or attempt anything further afield with Pat's two weeks off work. This time we went north via Barcelonette through the Southern Alps then across through the Rhone valley to the Massif Central and beyond to the Perigord and the Dordogne Valley.

Here is a typical Dordogne valley scene with farms and chateau in the distance.
We camped which was exciting with the number of thunderstorms that kept appearing. Luckily they cooled things down to below 30 degrees. Camping freed our money for good eating. The Perigord is renown for good hearty food including foie gras and the rest of the goose or duck, truffles, potatoes and garlic soup. More highlights soon...