The re-growth of the Cubbington Pear tree (felled in 2022 to make way for a railway line) gives hope for the future of the Sycamore Gap tree.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...Pear-success-suggests-famous-wood-return.html
BEFORE:
AFTER:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...Pear-success-suggests-famous-wood-return.html
Plenty of deer around here, so many they walk everywhere. Meet three last week on our chalet access road, they acted like we where on their own land (which is…). They are beautiful. In Quebec our forest are full of them. We are lucky to still have large forest, but we lost a large surface this year because of gigantic fires.
A scene from my chalet camera at night, and an other of a view from our chalet, plenty of trees. Two weeks ago i was removing the fallen leaves from the grass. You could hear the leaves falling in the surrounding forest, like a quite rain. It was very beautiful and peaceful. We are planning to move over there in two years when my wife will finally goes on retirement. No more large city for me, at last…
A scene from my chalet camera at night, and an other of a view from our chalet, plenty of trees. Two weeks ago i was removing the fallen leaves from the grass. You could hear the leaves falling in the surrounding forest, like a quite rain. It was very beautiful and peaceful. We are planning to move over there in two years when my wife will finally goes on retirement. No more large city for me, at last…
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If you can find the best of the Gaillac wines they can be wonderful. Albi also has some really beautiful parks, a great place to eat home packed lunches for the desk jockeys. The French like the rest of Europe didn't destroy their old towns after the war which is what happened in the UK and replace with p/poor attempts at art deco. When they had to start afresh after carpet bombing most countries did a good job.We stayed overnight in Albi on our scenic route back to the Caen ferry. We wanted to see the Haut Languedoc mountains and towns on our way back from Beziers way.
Found a lovely hotel on the river with a swimming pool near a bridge.
View attachment 1234870
We did enjoy a drink on the terrace too. Very black wines down that way IIRC.
Best Regards from Steve in Portsmouth, UK.
Following on from the earlier discussion of peat and whiskeys, can I get some suggestions for 4 different whiskeys, two Scottish, two Irish, with different flavor and aroma profiles, available in US (I live in Washington DC metro area). I have a Lagavulin which I enjoy very much. But I want to expand my appreciation.
I do know that deer can be very destructive in peoples' gardens. In the Highlands sadly the deer need to be culled, a far better solution is to bring back the madadh-allaaidh/wolf. The Romanians don't have a any real problem with the wolf packs there as all heir sheep and goats are protected by wolf dogs. When we lived in the Aveyron I saw lost of problems with mice why, because the hunters had virtually exterminated the fox. Foxes main foods in the country are mice and rats. One year our two dogs hunted and ate about 20 mice each when out for their walks. Foxes can only break into hen houses if they are crap built.
Your chalet must be a lovely place to 'hang loose' my only worry would be the very fires you mentioned. Yes I agree entirely about large cities. I spent most of my life living in a large town (200,000) and made the mistake of moving abroad to a large city,|Rotterdam, that was over 40 years ago. Since then I have lived in small communities far from cities. When you live in big city you loose the ability to really 'listen' it's all noise. I gave up working on major construction sites, when I got home at night all I wanted was silence. The Tarn started a couple of years ago to make a lot of GRs and other footpaths easy for people to walk or cycle. There's nothing better than to choose the right time of day to go for a walk and just stop and listen to bird song or a woodpecker tapping out his tune and it all comes for free, you just have to get off your a~#se.
Lagavulin is an acquired taste, It's very in your face and I lean now more to some of the Irish whiskies. We don't get many Canadian whiskies her in France - are there any malts as I really don't like blended from anywhere.
Mice are a relatively recently introduced species here (1700s) and in bumper grain seasons we have huge plagues. When I was a kid, we lived in a wheat farming town and had a few incredible infestations. I remember having to pull the bedsheets tight to slingshot mice off almost every night. We could sit and shoot them with air rifles, as they ran across the base of the wall. Everything was chewed to bits in the home, even inedible things. If you moved a 44 gallon drum (as fuel drums were called back then) there would be a round shape of mice left the size of the drum, and they would just scatter.
This is a recent one that was similar to those of my childhood...
Stuey - when Europeans started their invasion of other continents they brought lot of unwanted species with them. Rats had catastrophic effects on flightless birds in NZ,, same in Hawaii. On the island we had only hares, then the Norsemanland monks introduced rabbits as a food source and of course some escaped. To use miximitosis to kill them was a horrible thing to do. I remember seeing so many dying horrible deaths when I was young and living in the West country.
Myxomatosis was around in Britain when I was a boy.
https://academic.oup.com/tcbh/article-abstract/19/1/83/1705315
Quote: "In 1953 myxomatosis ... broke out in Britain for the first time. It rapidly killed tens of millions of [rabbits] from Kent to the Shetlands."
The World Organisation for Animal Health says that the virus was deliberately introduced into France in 1952 and spread rapidly across continental Europe and into the United Kingdom.
https://academic.oup.com/tcbh/article-abstract/19/1/83/1705315
Quote: "In 1953 myxomatosis ... broke out in Britain for the first time. It rapidly killed tens of millions of [rabbits] from Kent to the Shetlands."
The World Organisation for Animal Health says that the virus was deliberately introduced into France in 1952 and spread rapidly across continental Europe and into the United Kingdom.
<https://www.theguardian.com/environ...in-uk-and-ireland-scientists-warn-myxomatosis>
Came across this when searching for myxomatosis in Ireland! Very sad indeed.
Came across this when searching for myxomatosis in Ireland! Very sad indeed.
I've lived through incredible inflation. When I was living in Devonport, a suburb of Plymouth I remember going with my mother to the street market I think it was on a Saturday and I remember people buying wild rabbits, skinned in front of you for 9 pence each, completely different in taste from the farmed variety that live no kind of life at all before they are killed, just like those awful huge sheds used to mass produce chickens. Clotted cream was 1 shilling a pint and the freshly dug potatoes from around Exeter covered in red soil. The taste of wild rabbit is so much better as is the quality of the meat and it's nutritional value. My sister was still quite human then and we used to cross the Tamar river into Karnow/Cornwall for a farthing each way and in the sunken lanes you could see the rabbits everywhere.
Back in Sussex you could once upon a time find small wild woodland strawberries with a real sweet taste. Some years see fields covered white with mushrooms and huge puffballs. If you find the puffballs before the maggots came they were excellent cut into steaks and fried in butter, wonderful cheesy flavour. Going to cattle and produce markets from Hove to Steyning market by steam train, eyes full of moats because you spent the whole journey with your head out of the window. Not possible anymore, a klootzak called Beeching at the behest of the Nasty party closed thousands of miles of railways, many of which were better than building roads to replace them. Talking to old men like myself in France, Spain or the Netherlands we had great adventures as kids, spent most of our time outside in all weathers.At night we had to be called in by our mothers. We didn't have money we had adventures and skirmishes with kids from other parts of town. No designer clothes, no junk food, it was nothing to walk 5 or 6 miles. Now kids obsess with having Nike, mobile phones, really stupid hairstyles. Kids then did things - now they are just spectators, very sad.
Not all kids are so sedentary. Mine are a bit active and the grocery shopping shows for it. I never buy less than 60 eggs at a time. Luckily they have jobs and can cook for themselves.
17 year son mostly into Parkour and gymnastics.
20 year old daughter will likely be a circus performer or acrobatic performer.
22 year old son is a swim instructor.
17 year son mostly into Parkour and gymnastics.
20 year old daughter will likely be a circus performer or acrobatic performer.
22 year old son is a swim instructor.
I remember going on a successful rabbit hunt with my father, followed by a lesson in skinning and gutting and, eventually, the reward of a tasty meal.
The local butcher hung chickens, rabbits etc. in the window, and while queing inside the shop customers would be rubbing shoulders with hanging animal carcasses.
In the co-op store next door, butter was cut from a large block and worked to the weight the customer requested using butter pats, before being wrapped in greaseproof paper.
Every commodity was served over the counter and to pay, the customer would go to a hatch where they would receive their dividend chit in return.
Best memory of all? Sweets came off ration as I started school and the corner shop on the way there did a roaring trade in Gobstoppers, Penny Caramels and Sherbet Dabs!
Remember Mac Fisheries? Every species of bird in season and rabbits hanging off the front of the shop resplendent in full feathers or furry coats whilst the fish were displayed on a water cooled marble slab.
I spent a couple of years in hospital in Dublin - 65 miles from home which meant twice weekly parental visits. The consequence was that I missed those formative years
which Black Stuart and Galu talk about above. I was then sent to England for schooling. So my early Irish memories were mixed with those of an English provincial
Hampshire town along with six journeys to and fro by train and passenger ship.
But I do remember a butter churn being used at home and the butter which had been paddled - with its criss-cross pattern! We had a daily workman whose first
job was to milk the three household cows by hand into a bucket. Meat other than beef came from local farmers and had been home slaughtered. Chickens we
bred and killed in our yard.
Today here in Kelso we have some butcher shops and a fish merchant, but produce is variable. A farmer friend who has won everything to be won and now an
international beef judge told me that even the most traditional butcher cannot vouch for the origin of the meats they sell!!! Supermarket fish - wild or farm bred
and reared? Just can't tell because the packaging seldom covers that aspect.
And likewise with electronic components!!
I spent a couple of years in hospital in Dublin - 65 miles from home which meant twice weekly parental visits. The consequence was that I missed those formative years
which Black Stuart and Galu talk about above. I was then sent to England for schooling. So my early Irish memories were mixed with those of an English provincial
Hampshire town along with six journeys to and fro by train and passenger ship.
But I do remember a butter churn being used at home and the butter which had been paddled - with its criss-cross pattern! We had a daily workman whose first
job was to milk the three household cows by hand into a bucket. Meat other than beef came from local farmers and had been home slaughtered. Chickens we
bred and killed in our yard.
Today here in Kelso we have some butcher shops and a fish merchant, but produce is variable. A farmer friend who has won everything to be won and now an
international beef judge told me that even the most traditional butcher cannot vouch for the origin of the meats they sell!!! Supermarket fish - wild or farm bred
and reared? Just can't tell because the packaging seldom covers that aspect.
And likewise with electronic components!!
Galu - snap. Veg lasted a lot longer then because it wasn't 'washed'. This is only done to make life easier for s/markets. Same with putting so much into plastic bags and if only people knew how long a lot of fruit and veg is kept at chill temperatures before selling. Even in the street markets here in France you can tell it has been kept at low temps. Never understood how Testco is so popular. Long ago gave up buying any veg from their stores, if you didn't eat it inside 2 days it went off.
The butter story 1958 - I used to go shopping for my mum at a Sainsbury's store. One day I was waiting in the queue to buy butter and this little woman strutted in and went straight to the head of the queue. I was only 13 but I was disgusted that not one woman was going to remonstrate with her, all they did was mutter under their breathe. So I piped up "what do you think you are doing, there's a queue, go to the back". She glared at me "how dare you speak to me like that". I replied "you are an arrogant strutting little woman and act like a Nazi, my father and my uncles used to kill vermin like you". The women around me said you shouldn't talk to a grown woman like that. To which I replied " I shouldn't have to, you should all have stopped her but you said nothing, what are you frightened of", not on e gave me an answer. She stormed off to get the manager. He knew she was the wife of a Tory/Nasty party local councillor. In a craven manor he told her you have to go to the back of the queue, which she did fuming.
When I eventually came to be served all the women serving had a big smile on their faces and the one serving me said "well done young man, your mother should be very proud of you", which made me blush. And then she turned to all the women waiting behind me and said "and you lot should be ashamed of yourselves". Like you said in those days they patted the butter into shape and weight. Consumerism hadn't really started programming the masses then, that began in the 60s.
Sadly the main reason we live in France is because too many Brits right across the UK still have this peasant mentality. Here in France the people outside the big cities organised themselves into the Gilet Jaune movement, they had no leaders and it wasn't political, it was a social movement. Up until then the ordinary French people had a lot of respect for the Gendarmerie, that's all gone now. Very interesting times on the mainland now, Ukraine might well be the powder keg that kicks off a major reset in Europe - vamos a ver - let's see.
After lunch I shall go for a walk on the GR36, listen to the birds, breathe clean air and just stop still for a few minutes for brain massage and then return to the other reality, I couldn't do that in the big city.
The butter story 1958 - I used to go shopping for my mum at a Sainsbury's store. One day I was waiting in the queue to buy butter and this little woman strutted in and went straight to the head of the queue. I was only 13 but I was disgusted that not one woman was going to remonstrate with her, all they did was mutter under their breathe. So I piped up "what do you think you are doing, there's a queue, go to the back". She glared at me "how dare you speak to me like that". I replied "you are an arrogant strutting little woman and act like a Nazi, my father and my uncles used to kill vermin like you". The women around me said you shouldn't talk to a grown woman like that. To which I replied " I shouldn't have to, you should all have stopped her but you said nothing, what are you frightened of", not on e gave me an answer. She stormed off to get the manager. He knew she was the wife of a Tory/Nasty party local councillor. In a craven manor he told her you have to go to the back of the queue, which she did fuming.
When I eventually came to be served all the women serving had a big smile on their faces and the one serving me said "well done young man, your mother should be very proud of you", which made me blush. And then she turned to all the women waiting behind me and said "and you lot should be ashamed of yourselves". Like you said in those days they patted the butter into shape and weight. Consumerism hadn't really started programming the masses then, that began in the 60s.
Sadly the main reason we live in France is because too many Brits right across the UK still have this peasant mentality. Here in France the people outside the big cities organised themselves into the Gilet Jaune movement, they had no leaders and it wasn't political, it was a social movement. Up until then the ordinary French people had a lot of respect for the Gendarmerie, that's all gone now. Very interesting times on the mainland now, Ukraine might well be the powder keg that kicks off a major reset in Europe - vamos a ver - let's see.
After lunch I shall go for a walk on the GR36, listen to the birds, breathe clean air and just stop still for a few minutes for brain massage and then return to the other reality, I couldn't do that in the big city.