So what are these shots typical of?

These shots are classic examples of what confronts you in most locations outside of Paris and Lyon should you be foolish enough to think you can go shopping on either 1) A late Saturday afternoon 2) A Sunday 3) A Monday 4) On any one of the thirteen French public holidays and 5) More likely than not this will be the sight before you if a public holiday falls on  Tuesday or Thursday in which case the shop owner may well chose to make the Faire Le Pont , or in layman's language simply shift into high gear and go for a four day weekend. Here is another stat which I'm not sure is a winner. The working week is 35hrs. The Employer has the right to ask you to work 40hrs however he must make that request well in advance and if the employee accepts they get paid triple penal rates  for those extra hours. Apparently the French value their time off and as a rule decline the offer of extending their working week.
It's a very cruisy life the further south we go. Right down in the Pyrenees every moves at glacial pace , except for road traffic

Aaah, the Pyrenees, time to kick back and relax

This is as close as it gets to sunshine up here at this time of the year

The photo doesn't do these potatoes full justice .In the flesh they looked like they had a case of jaundice . The trout, well it looked and tasted pretty good

The tunnel to Andorra , the de Puymorens, very long, and very impressive

Aaah, so this is what the Pyrenees is all about

We have now driven south down to near the Spanish border and are staying at a really interesting B&B called Les Eaux Tranquilles, located in the small village of Belvianes et Cavirac which is a couple of k's down the road from Quillan.
The B&B is just great, however the English owner Chris, well, there's an interesting customer. This man is right-out-there, if you get my drift, and deserves his own personal blog, so I will hold fire on that front until later in the week.
Today, we ventured forth and decided to stress test our small diesel rental by way of driving the sucker straight up into the Pyrenees.
Of course the views up in the mountains are spectacular, however, I have to say getting there was a mission in itself.
For starters, the roads aren't exactly what one might describe as highway material.
If you happen to come across a truck or large camper-van that's heading in the 
opposite direction then it's every man for himself. On occasion these brushes with near death can become quite an adrenalin rush.
If that is not enough, you then have the ongoing prospect of vehicles heading directly towards you approaching at excessive speed whilst positioned in the middle of the road.
This is 'who is going to blink first ' territory.
And because we are trying to obey the speed laws, any number of loonies come screaming up behind you then proceed to pass you on blind curves at high speed.
It's Sunday morning for God's sake, why aren't these soon to be aquatinted with coffin merchants off home in bed?
As for the weekend warrior cyclists who are getting in road-time prior to The Tour De France, all I can say is that these guys will never see old bones.
After ninety minutes of this drama we pull into the town of Mont Louis, heave a great sigh of relief and make our way into the restaurant Le Clos Cerdan - Eau De Forme.
When ordering we decided to play it safe so Julia plugged for Salade Catalane. Now this was a tricky call as the salad was accompanied by local meats that could be best described as .....unusual. She gagged on the blood sausage. Who wouldn't?
Her main of Poulet Catalane was pretty standard stuff, so no worries there.
My experience was altogether different.
The main was a whole Trout accompanied by potatoes that looked like they had yellow fever but the dish was actually pretty good.
However, where things took a turn for the worse was in respect to my entree or starter. 
By way of explanation, Julia and I had a great friend (now deceased and much missed) called Stuart Loudon.
All who knew Stuart recognised this man to be the ultimate party animal and an individual who just loved fine food and wine (actually , come to think of it, a lot of wine).
A group of us used to get together for Friday lunches in Auckland. The thing was that once Stuart had finished off a second or third bottle he just reached a point where he would stand up, announce to everyone within 50 metres that that was it for him, then informed us he was going home to put a tongue in the oven in preparation for his and Helen's evening meal. 
So here we are high up in the Pyrenees and Julia tells me they have Tongue as an entree, so thinking fond thoughts of Stuart, like a fool, I order the tongue from our lisping gay waiter with the high pitched voice.
When this entree hit my placemat, I damn near choked on the spot. Julia let out an involuntary whimper and said "you don't have to eat it, just tell the waiter that you have changed your mind and that you are not big on grey food."
At that moment I'm staring down at seven large slices of cold meat that look the colour of recently fallen Volcano ash. 
My heads screaming what to do, what to do. If I send it back I might end up getting into a verbal with that overhyped lisping waiter, however then again, if I eat this stuff it might kill me.
I'm gutless. The thought of a stoush with a pissed off gay waiter was just too much for me to contemplate so I thought what they hell, if the Loudons could stomach this stuff then I'm just going to have to harden up and get this cow's licking equipment down my throat in short order.
No messing about, I did my Zen thing, put my thoughts in a far away place and proceeded to attack the first piece of this horrible looking dead animal tongue.
How bad was it?
Well, when Julia inquired my system had already commenced the mother of all battles for survival. This entree without a word of a lie was singularly the most disgusting food I have ever pushed down my thorax.
The next ten minutes was a living hell.
It was so bad I couldn't even talk. I just swallowed these hunks of whatever whole whilst praying that I wouldn't throw up.
At the end of this seemingly endless torture I looked over at Julia (who knew when to stay silent) and I asked "how do I look?"
Julia responds, "you look fine . No that's a lie. You look dreadful. Your face has turned grey and you appear to be heavily perspiring. Do you think it had anything to do with the tongue?"
WAITER, WHERE'S THE BATHROOM!
The trip back down the mountain was just a blur. I didn't even react when a woman coming towards our line of vehicles hit the approaching corner at speed, spun out of control, turned 720 degrees then accelerated into the cliff face on our car's right.
Near death driving experiences no longer cut it for me.They are nothing in the greater plan.
It's the bloody tongue that's going to get me in the end.

Cheers

The new chicks

Adam and new chick

Midwife duties

My first opportunity to act as a midwife.

Life on a French farm can be so demanding! 
We have seven hens and a handsome rooster called King Gold here on this lovely farmlet in the hamlet. As well as a cat, once a wild thing but now tamed to be a gentle creature busy catching mice all day.
There has been much excitement in the hen house with Adam, aged eleven, the keeper of the chickens as there are seven eggs about to hatch. Well, yesterday I was lucky enough to be on hand helping with the hatching of two new chicks. Ian gently helped the chicks out of their shells once we could hear the 'cheeping' through the little holes that they had made. He peeled them like he was peeling an egg....actually they were eggs. That was a fowl-house in joke. We noticed that the hen sitting in the nest was the twin sister of the mother and was more interested in laying her egg that getting on with job of hatching eggs. Once she had laid her wet egg on my hand as I was inspecting the eggs,she  departed the nest. So, we had to round up Alberta who was on her break scratching about with her mates on the next door farm totally oblivious of the due date of her chicks. She somehow  got the message and as if by sixth sense, looked very guilty and sped back in to plop herself onto of the two wet chicks and the awaiting eggs.Sounds weird but true.
Today we have another chick and yesterday's two chicks are now fluffed up and strutting about.

Another bird story...
After having a fabulous French lunch yesterday and a rather relaxing evening going to sleep was no problem for me. But to be woken at 1pm by a constant trilling and chirping by some poor misguided and dysfunctional bird was just 'not on! ' What bird sings in the middle of the night? Ah,  methinks, it must be that big fat orange moon thing making little  flighty creatures do strange things in the wee hours. Then I thought, or maybe some  kind of mechanical bird noise triggered by the flowing fountain outside setting off a sensor. On and on it went, until finally I stumbled out of bed , threw open the curtains, to check out this diva. But what confronted me was the biggest full moon I had ever seen. Reflected against this moon was the black silhouette of a bare tree and there perched on a branch was a brave little bird singing out its thorax. Such a tiny creature making so much noise. Back to sleep.
Next morning, our host Ian is dancing about the front gate with 'les juemelles' binoculars getting very excited. What are you searching for? A nightingale. 
Ahhhhh....yes, I heard it....all night! 
Response: you are very lucky as they are so rare.
'Lucky, I don't think so. No sleep is not lucky'

An update on the heart warming chicken story. The morning after I wrote this piece we heard frantic knocking on our front door. There stood young Adam in tears. He burst in and struggled to tell me that "they are all dead!"
He had just found three flat baby chicks, stone cold eggs and no mother hen on the nest. She was out with the girls scratching up breakfast worms & bugs. A real whodunnit? Murder in the henhouse? Was it sly Mr Fox, the twin sister, King Gold or the mother? 
We will never know what went on that night in the hen house.

Rocamadour, this village is a winner on all fronts

Let's face it, this village is a real stunner

Living proof that the French are as nutty about rugger as their Kiwi and Welsh brothers

Post lunch and ready to defend French citizens from all harm

To be honest I don't think the French have any concept of the perils relating to drinking and driving 

Rocamadour, now this was a surprise.

Rocamadour, now this is a very interesting trip on a day out.

Today we decided to drive out of the Dordogne area and over to Lot to check out the cliff side village of Rocamadour.

There is no two ways about it, this village is a stunner. When the village first comes into view the first thought was, French building genius aside, what loony would design a village up a cliff face when he could settle for building atop the cliff?

Who knows what goes on in a medieval architects mind–set?

If you check out the attached photo you will note a Chateau carved into the rockside halfway up the cliff.

This little number is referred to as Notre Dame de Rocamadour, The Chateau – Sanctuaires, basically a religious shrine.

As you wander around this Chateau you stumble on any number of chapels dedicated to Christ and his many minions.

That is, until you come into the last chapel on the right which, believe it or not, is dedicated to Rugby (as in, ‘give it a boot Robbie!’)

As proof that I wasn’t hallucinating I have attached a shot of the display cabinet filled with assorted rugby jerseys.

I had hoped for a better shot however just after we had entered this shrine to the oval ball, in rushed a Spanish tour guide with maybe thirty very noisy retirees in tow. This over-hyped tour guide then started impersonating a back line player passing a ball whilst at the same time screaming some kind of Spanish version of an aroused commentator at the top of her lungs.

This wasn’t a big chapel.

The tour guide had the lung capacity of a large glass blower.

What a performance!

Enough of that, down to the highlight of the day.

When we arrived at the Chateau car park, we were confronted with a seemingly endless stream of Pompiers arriving for a celebratory lunch in the outdoor restaurant. All in pale blue uniforms they resembled a humanoid army of wode coloured ants.

And, yes even I know the literal translation of the term Pompier, however in the real world this expression covers all emergency rescue crews not just firemen.

We arrived at about noon and left at least a couple of hundred Pompiers to settle in as we went off exploring.

As we wandered away from the restaurant area I reminded Julia of a restaurant we frequented in Beaune (Burgundy) back in 2010.

This establishment was run by a brother and sister who, without a word of a lie, resembled behemoths. When these guys served us our daily Menu order both the Alcorns and our friends the Bartley-Smiths, had the overwhelming feeling that we had been transported into the seventies flick ‘Land Of The Giants’.

That aside, every day these giants hosted the local Gendarmes who dropped in for lunch inclusive of a couple hours of steady drinking. Watching cops down two litres of rouge over lunch prior to hitting the back roads of Burgundy left a lasting impression.

So, with that thought not far from my mind, off we set to explore the Chateau and town beneath it.

Two hours later, we are back at the car park level, atop the cliff and proceed to the restaurant.

What confronted us was almost beyond belief.

Slouching around the outdoor tables were hundreds, yes hundreds of completely wasted emergency service crews.

I was so amazed I actually forgot to take a shot of the scene. We then settled in for a leisurely gourmand lunch. Meantime these dudes (and dudesses) just kept on partying.

Sometime around about four we exited left, nicely timed to coincide with the mass exit of any number of public servants whose motto in some parts apparently referred to ‘the saving of life’.

And this they inadvertently did, by way of us making the logical decision to wait until these guys had driven their emergency service vehicles out of sight before firing up our rental.

I have to tell you that whilst we waited it out under the safety of a nearby tree, no less than six of these vehicles managed to bang into each other. The guy on the right in the photo at the back of the van, shortly after this shot was taken, proceeded to walk directly into the tree on the right, poking himself in the eye and in a rage, lashed out and ripped the culprit branch off the tree.

It was classic.

I just love these Frogs.

They just listen to a different drummer.

Cheers