Joe read an article recently about the 10 most dangerous animals, etc in France and we seem to be ticking some of them off as we encounter wildlife nearby. I’d already mentioned that we’d seen deer in adjacent fields and on two recent mornings we have seen from a bedroom window a wild boar (no. 1 on the list) trotting happily through a field and in to nearby trees. Another morning two huge hares were feeding in the same field. It doesn’t bode well for the vegetable patch…. At the open end of the barn I was looking at various piles of logs when I spotted a good sized snake (also on the list) lazing near the top of the pile. Needless to say I won’t be going near that again without trouser legs tied tightly, sturdy boots and gloves! A nest of house martins has fledged this week and the youngsters are banging into walls and windows as they learn to fly.
The mystery of the shoe thief also continues. A few mornings after the disappearance of one of Joe’s shoes we found a sock, which had been tucked into a shoe in the open-fronted shoe cupboard by the back door, on the grass. Either the one-legged man was looking for a sock to go with the shoe, or something had been rooting around. To add insult to injury, a few days later we found that Joe’s flip-flops (admittedly left on the terrace overnight) had disappeared. This is starting to get expensive and we will definitely be securing the front of the cupboard. I think my friend Lynn’s suggestion of foxes sounds like the most plausible cause and, although we haven’t seen any yet, we’re told that there are both foxes and badgers in the area.
Once we’re settled in here Joe wants to get involved in groups associated with his interest in classic motorbikes and military vehicles and we’ve already been doing some research on this. We saw a poster for a classic car show at the nearby village of Roquecor and headed there on a Sunday on Joe’s 1957 Harley Davidson, which we bought out here in the trailer. The gathering at the edge of the village was well attended with quite a few English voices to be heard and a variety of classic cars. The small market made it a lively affair and the only café in town was doing a roaring trade.
The centre of the small village is quite attractive with a Mairie which has a 19th century replica of a medieval castellated tower. A similar event is scheduled to take place in our village in late September and we hope to take part in that with Joe’s Jeep.
There is a military vehicle association based in one of the larger towns to the west of us and they had been advertising a largeish gathering of Second World War military vehicles on 14th July, Bastille Day, in a town about 2 hours south of us. The event has been running for a few years now and newspaper reports made it out to be quite a large gathering. We decided to make a day of it and to have a look on a beautifully sunny and hot day with a drive through stunning scenery of the Tarn-et-Garonne department. The reports had probably ‘bigged up’ the event, in what was a very small town, to a certain extent and it probably didn’t merit the drive there and back, but nonetheless there were some very interesting vehicles on show, set against the backdrop of a lovely village square. It will be interesting to see some similar events closer to home.
Bastille Day celebrations in general were a little more muted this year due to recent rioting in France, the sale of fireworks being banned and also fire risk following dry weather.