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| A yet to be identified member of the blue family that we saw on our walk on Tuesday |
It’s true that we didn’t have
breakfast until midday on Tuesday but, as my family know, I have to have
several snacky pre-breakfasts and, as we are in France they consist of fresh
pain au chocolate and coffee 😊
During the morning two Dutch couples
left and we are now down to only four occupied pitches on this rather pleasant
site. A Dutch couple with a dog in a
caravan, a Dutch man also in a caravan and a French man in a campervan. At first it struck us as odd seeing single
people camping but this nomadic way of life is so similar to boating in many
ways and there are plenty of single boaters out there so, after thinking about
it, it wasn’t unusual.
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| Just four pitches out of 25 are now occupied – we’re the only tent |
It’s just over two weeks since we left
the boat in Skipton and have been on the road so felt it high time we did some
clothes washing. The site has a washing
machine (looks almost new) that is free to use so we popped to the little store
in the village to get the relevant ingredients and set a wash going.
 |
| Feeling more like the itinerant boaters we are |
After hanging out the washing and
having lunch we set off for one of the many walks advertised on a board in the
village. We chose a 10km walk as we
didn’t want to walk too far in the heat, but as it turned out there were plenty
of shady bits through leafy lanes and woods.
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| I took a picture first in case we couldn’t follow the route |
We were following the blue route and
we were reminded of the way public footpaths were marked in Norway when we were
there in what feels like a month ago but was only just over a week ago. Unlike Norway, where all paths are marked
with red paint on stones and trees, the waymarks on the paths here were painted
in the colour of the route marked on the map.
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| A horizontal line meant we were going the correct way |
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| A cross meant we were going the wrong way |
Even though we were following the blue
path the above picture shows that the red/yellow path was close by as there was
a second cross painted on the telegraph pole.
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| This meant turn left |
It’s just as well the route was marked
as we would have got hopelessly lost if we had followed the picture I had taken
of the board. We went through one
village on the walk and that wasn’t on the board and vice versa we didn’t go
through the villages marked on the map on the board!
The river Anglin runs through the
village and we met and crossed it several times on the walk. At one point we felt like we were in
someone’s back garden and, for a moment, wondered if we were meant to row
across the water.
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| The blue arrows were slightly misleading as we ended up in a private garden at one point and thought we had to row across the river |
We walked through several almond and
peach orchards but resisted taking any fruit:
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| Ready to eat peaches |
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| Crossing the river Anglin again… |
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| …and again |
Needless to say, there were plenty of
butterflies on the wing and we saw lots of different species including a lone
swallowtail which seemed slightly out of its natural habitat.
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| Tracks like this were swarming with butterflies, mainly of the blue and brown families |
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| When we took this shot we reckoned we could see three dozen butterflies on the wing |
One plant had six tiny blues flying
round it. They were so small that at
first I thought they were small blues, especially with their dusky grey upper wings. But when they were at rest they were clearly
not small blues and my best guess so far is that they were unusually tiny brown
argus’s and the sun made their upper wings look dusky grey rather than brown.
|
| Exceptionally small brown argus? |
Wednesday will be our last day at Bélâbre;
we are meeting up with Noel in the evening and then taking the final push down
to the south on Thursday.
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