Hat laying

We've been AWOL. Overcome by the sheer and unremitting amount of plaster dust in every crevice, we took off for a few days on the Atlantic coast, to Le Teich on the Bassin d'Arcachon. No, I'd never heard of it either, though I've wanted to get to know the Bassin for a long time. We stayed, courtesy of a Good Deal with lastminute.fr, in a fairly new residence de tourisme that just happened to be a couple of minutes walk from one of France's major bird reserves; unlike most of its concrete counterparts on the Med coast, this one had real character, being built in traditional Arcachon style - several 'villas' on stilts, wooden framed and faced with wood in different colours, each comprising four apartments and built in a circle around a pool. We felt at home from the moment we arrived. Life for a week was oh-so-simple: we walked, we cycled, we ate, we swam, we read, we chatted with people we met here and there. And there was no plaster dust.

The weather was kind - more than kind in fact: six days of sun and balmy temperatures up in the late twenties ensured that everyone spent the week in hastily-packed shorts and tee shirts. The bird reserve - Le Parc Ornithologique du Teich - was up with our old favourites of Cley Marshes, Titchwell and Minsmere (if I'm honest I could be pressed to say it even outclassed them). The landscape was stunningly photogenic, especially for a died-in-the-wool Light on Water fanatic like me; not unlike north Norfolk in many ways, though the quality of the light makes it into something quite other.

Early morning mist over Le Teich's bird reserve

The puzzle is to work out where the stick emerges from the water ...

Dusk over the Bassin d'Arcachon on Cap Ferret

We twiddled our way home on the back roads through Lot et Garonne and Gers, which got me to thinking about what it is that draws people to want to lay their hats in particular places. When we first decided to live in France, we put Gers on the 'possibles' list, because it's stuffed full of seriously attractive and substantial farmhouses, and because it has attractive rolling countryside, not unlike Tuscany, with villages perched on top of ridges and lots of mellow stone. But I just couldn't take to it; in fact two days into a week long house hunting trip I was in full blown 'get me out of here' mode. I haven't been back since, until now. This time it took just a couple of hours. We explored a bit of Armagnac country and a few bastide towns before staying overnight in Auch, which so should be a great place ... but - and I'm sorry if you live in Gers and love it, I really am - it just doesn't do it for me. Any of it. I can't feel its heart beating or its soul singing. I simply don't get it.

It's such a strange thing, this energy of place. Being basically a nomad at heart I've lived in (I just counted) 19 different places between leaving my parents' house and moving to Grillou, each one not just a different house but an altogether different location. Most of them I've enjoyed, to a greater or lesser degree; the odd few I've not; and a couple I've felt such a strong connection with that I miss them even now. One is Scarborough, the other - can you believe this? - Acton in west London. I suspect Ariège will be another, should I ever leave it. But why? What is it that makes a place call out to one person while repelling another?

It's clearly not just about natural beauty, as anyone who knows Acton will readily concede. I spent a year living in west Wales, which is as stunning a part of the British Isles as you could wish for - and yet much as I might have appreciated it, I never felt connected to it or welcomed by it. Nor is it just about people: some of the closest and most extraordinary personal connections I've known came when I was living in Norwich, but I'm not mad keen on Norwich either. And it's certainly about about tick lists of what makes a place right.

No, it's clearly something other, something bigger, something more mysterious. As Michael Polanyi wrote in The Tacit Dimension, we know more than we can tell.

Mussels, flamingos and sheer desperation

Last Sunday was John's birthday. Why he has to have a birthday three days after Christmas I don't know - wouldn't you think that his parents could have stopped in mid - er - conception and spared him all those years of not getting proper presents ("We've bought you an Extra Large Christmas Pressie this year, dear"), not to mention spared me the vexed question of how to celebrate this year's Big One? Well, yes, they could have, but they didn't. Mean, eh?

We don't usually bother very much with birthdays, it has to be said - best not to notice the years rolling by - but this was one of those milestone birthdays that you really can't ignore. So a short sharp surprise trip was in order. In typical Libran fashion I ummed and aaahed for several weeks trying to decide where to go, but in the end three things made the decision for me: mussels, flamingos and sheer desperation. So it was off to the Aude coast and the villages of Bages and Peyriac sur Mer, two of the most atmospheric (and photogenic) places I know.



Yes, this is the same Languedoc coast that was developed into resortland in the 1960s when the government decided that the working classes should be able to afford to go to the beach too - though not, heaven forfend, to the Côte d'Azur where they went themselves. So they sprayed the beaches to get rid of the mosquitos (as they still do every year, though it doesn't work), created a number of purpose-built resorts for the mass market ... and the mass market duly came, and still comes, in ever-increasing droves. Don't get me wrong, it's not as gross as it sounds - we even go there ourselves (!) ... some of the beaches are more reminiscent of Australia than France, many of the resorts have been decently laid out with lots of space and greenery, and it is more egalitarian and, I think, more welcoming than the celebrity sands of the Côte d'Azur. And here and there you can still find pockets that remain much as they have been for centuries, like the snappily titled Parc Naturel Régional de la Narbonnaise en Méditerranée, of which Bages and Peyriac form a part.




Both villages are right on the edge of saltwater lagoons, which means that the light is just dreamy, and the bird life fantastic.



I poddled round with my camera, getting seriously stuck in the mud at one point, although it was worth it to get shots like these:



And of course we saw these:



and ate these:



What more could you want? Well, actually, some decent weather would have been nice: we drove there through blizzards and howling gales which were the subject of an Alerte Orange (severe weather warning), and although the snow melted fast the skies remained resolutely grey and menacing until Monday, when they opened and promptly dropped several centimetres of rain in a few hours. When we got home, we discovered that it had been warm and sunny here in Ariège all the time ... so much for the bloody Med.

Slow Walking on the Plateau de Beille

We've just spent a couple of days camping and walking in Haut Ariège, on the Plateau de Beille and in the Haute Vallée d'Aston nearby. And very lovely it was too.



Although it's only just over an hour from home, this part of Ariège is so different from our 'end' that it feels as though you've travelled a lot farther. With a few exceptions, such as the valleys of Vicdessos and Oriège, most of the habitation is centred around the Ariège river, which runs from its source high in the mountains close to Andorra northwards towards Tarascon, Foix and eventually joins the Garonne 164 kilometres later. South of Tarascon, the valley sides are so steep that the houses and farms cluster close to the river; unlike the west of Ariège, where farmhouses and granges dot the slightly more gentle and greener slopes surrounded by large swathes of land, in Haut Ariège people live much closer together. We spent not a little time fruitlessly househunting in this part of the department before it dawned on us that the terrain simply didn't offer the kind of house that we wanted. The N20, the road to Andorra, runs parallel to the river, and - how can I put this? - it ain't quiet. On an average weekend it feels as though all of Toulouse and half of Tarn et Garonne are en route to Andorra to fill up with cheap pastis and cigs. In fact they probably are.

For all that, it's a spectacular area, and once you leave the N20 behind is as silent as you could wish for. The Plateau de Beille is a high altitude plateau, better known for being the Pyrénées' most important cross country skiing area and a frequent stage finish for the Tour de France. Now I'm not a skier, and haven't been one since a memorable school skiing trip during which I entered into the kind of relationship with a T-bar that's really best not described. But the walking is great. You can drive up to the ski station, which means it's one of the few walking areas where you can start walking at an altitude of 1800 metres. We're Slow Walkers, not peak baggers; we’re not interested in how fast we can cover a path, how much height we can gain or how many kilometres we can walk, nor are we up for scary scrambles, precarious footholds or anything that needs crampons. Slow Walking is about taking time to be in and contemplate our surroundings with all our senses; to stand and stare just as often as we want to; and to enjoy the simplicity of walking without the need for challenging goals. So the Plateau is our kind of high altitude walking: no ropes, no vertigo, no scree, but still enough ascent and descent to feel that you've had a decent workout, plus 360 degree views of lots of the big peaks in France, Spain and Andorra. There was one point where we could see both Canigou and Mont Valier, which if you know your Pyrénéan geography you'll realise is quite remarkable.

On the second day we walked in the Haut Valléé d'Aston, where so many flowers were still out that it almost felt like spring.



We gathered bilberries and wild raspberries, spent over half an hour watching a golden eagle circling then perching in a tree not far above us, walked through clouds of butterflies, and I spotted my first ever Black Wheatear.



The sun shone, the cow bells on the estives (high summer pastures) rang loud, I came across the most beautiful beech tree, and the river soothed our hot feet. Am I making you envious? Good.

Grillou goes to the seaside

Yes, we've been on holiday. We decided to make the most of the fantastic weather (not to mention the fact that it was the last week before Les Grandes Vacances), packed the tent, and drove the 150km to our 'local' seaside village, Gruissan, for a few days of R&R.

Gruissan is a pretty good mix of fishing village, huge nature reserves, modern port/marina/resort and wine-lovers' paradise.




Apart from having five huge beaches (and I mean huge. I mean driveable-along. I mean ones where you get your car stuck in the sand and have to be towed out, after half an hour of hot but fruitless digging, by a fortuitously passing 4x4. But that's another story), Gruissan has several étangs, or salt water lagoons. In the winter, masses of pink flamingos, egrets, avocets and other waders take up residence (the bird list runs to over 200 species); in the summer you have to be content with countless species of butterflies and a richness of plant life that puts even Blakeney Point into the shade. Apparently it's one of the only areas in France where garrigue meets saltmarsh head-on, hence lots of rare plants and every ecological protection label going. One plant is so rare that it's almost on the edge of extinction: centaurea corymbosa only (and that's as in nowhere else in the world) grows in a 3 square kilometre area here, and less than 500 individual plants reproduce each year. Isn't that extraordinary? And scary? Here it is:




Wine lovers will need no introduction to La Clape, the 15000 hectare massif between Gruissan and Narbonne, where we spent a couple of days wandering in the garrigue - some of Languedoc's best wines are produced from around 30 small and passionately run wineries here. La Clape was an island until the eleventh century, when the rivers silted up. It's been inhabited since Neolithic times (several dolmens, but they're not easy to find!); later on Roman centurions from the 10th legion, who were given land to build villas on the massif, planted the first vineyards. The herby smells of the garrigue, shimmering light of the water and the ubiquitous chirping of the cicadas combine to make it a very sensuous, as well as strangely beautiful, place in high summer.



Parts of Gruissan give me a sense of déja vu; walking by the saltmarshes, with the sea in the distance and the avocets calling, I can almost feel myself to be back in north Norfolk, on the coast path from Cley to Blakeney:



Except of course that Cley doesn't have these:



Yet.