I think we have landed in the doldrums as we come to the end
of yet another uneventful week. The weather has changed and is getting
decidedly cooler. We have even put the duvet back on the bed and are enjoying
snuggling down into its cosy warmth at night. The days are getting shorter too,
although they have been brilliant, with clear sunny days and gorgeous still
evenings. It must be the start of autumn as a few of the trees have begun to
change into their wonderful reds, yellows and browns. The up side of that
though, is that once all the leaves have dropped off, the views through the
bare trees are amazing. All sorts of hidden gems suddenly become visible that
previously were obscured. So, roll on winter!
Pieter and Tilly arrived back on Monday afternoon, full of
glee, after a successful business trip to Paris. We barely had time to say ‘Hi!
And Bye! before they left again on Tuesday morning for Pieter to keep an
appointment in Toulouse They then spent the night in the Toulouse area so that
Tilly would be close to the airport to fly back to Malllorca on Wednesday. These
two certainly get around.
Now Pieter is back with us and having a wonderful time exploring
the area by bicycle and just loving it. We have obviously got a bit blasé about
the beautiful country we live in now and don’t see a lot of the things that he
has seen and marvelled at. On the strength of that thought we went off this
afternoon to look for two things, a dolmen which was supposed to be almost outside
our door, and a Neolithic cave which was supposed to be down a little used
track not much further away. The dolmen we found with no trouble and had a good
laugh at ourselves for having missed it previously. It is right next to the
road and the stone wall was built up to the one end of it and continued on the
other side again. The shrubs have grown around the whole thing and so it just
looks like part of the boundary fence. I think we could be forgiven for not seeing
it.
As for the cave, well that is another story. We had very
hazy directions on how to get there and the final part of the directions was to
‘take an untarred track off to the right’. At that point we may well have
chosen the wrong track but once committed we had to continue on, purely because
there was nowhere to turn around. As we progressed, the undergrowth encroached
ever more onto the roadway and poor Neels was wincing and cursing as sharp
branches scraped across the car’s paintwork. When we finally came to a place to
turn around, which was eventually accomplished after a 99-point turn, Neels and
I looked around a bit for any sign of a cave but the land was much too flat for
anything like that. Then, armed with a pair of side-cutters and a Leatherman,
we walked back up the track clipping off some of the branches that had
scratched the car on the way down. Walking the track gave us a good chance to
really look at it, and quite honestly, one could hardly imagine that anyone had
been down there for many years. The stone walls were not completely tumble-down
but were covered with a heavy growth of moss; the surrounding trees and bushes
crowded in on the track and almost seemed to close it off when looking ahead.
The whole place had a wonderful greenish light which prompted me to take the
only photograph that I have to show for the whole week.
Not an action-packed week as you can see but a very pleasant
one all the same. Don’t despair – there will be something interesting to tell
fairly soon, I hope.
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