I’m not sure if Jo’s walking today, but we’re on a mission to find good food no matter what. Tighten your seat belts because we have to drive to our walk today at col du Mont de Fourche…unless you’d like to cycle to the top of a pass once part of the Tour de France. Or you can give this big boy bike a try.
Usually our walks end with a tasty bite. We’re going to turn that around: start and end with a walk and focus on the food in between. Be a rebel with us!
At a time when weather in the northern US has been a hot topic (or a cold topic), “Weathered” is an apt theme for the Photo Challenge. In the annoying tradition of making a word a part of speech it wasn’t meant to be, those of us in that part of the country have been getting (winter) weathered like crazy.
But my example comes from a summer day in the Vosges Forest of France, a place where you don’t expect to come across a chair of any sort while following a trail. This chair obviously had weathered more than a few nights in the forest and come out the worse for wear, something with which we who’ve experienced many days and night of sub-zero Fahrenheit temperatures might identify!
I enjoyed having all of you along for the trip to Wyoming and our stop in the Badlands on the way home. We never did finish our trip to France, so I’ll be going back to that soon. Here’s a video I took while on our way into the mountains, where we had so much fog the first day. My s-i-l let the dogs out for a short break and I took photos and enjoyed the sound of the stream. This is in the Forêt de la Bresse or forest of Bresse.
Turn the sound up and spend half a minute just relaxing.
We’d dried off a bit, had our cafè to warm us, and were off exploring. Flying under the radar clouds, we absorbed quite a lot of beauty before stopping for lunch. As we drove, the clouds began to lift, allowing us better views of this stunning area covered with wildflowers.
Finally, fundamentally fabulous, fantastic French forest fungus. Fun! 🙂
Yes, alliteration has struck again. If you’ve been following my blog for some time, you know that where I go in France, I’m deep in the Vosges forest. This is where we walk the dogs each day.
Although we love to hunt for (edible) mushrooms, much of what we find is, although fun to see, not edible and might even be poisonous. Despite not being edible, fungi can be eye-catching, as I think you can tell from these photos.
Since on Tuesday we were in the vicinity while visiting the priory of Hérival, I thought we could take quick look back at a few of the less-than-perfect doors seen even in a spa town such as Plombières-les-Bains. Even though we wouldn’t want them on our homes, they somehow manage to have a certain air of shabby chic where they are. As Lumiere says in Beauty and the Beast: “After all, Miss, this is France!”
This week’s Thursday Doors, one of the most enjoyable challenges out there, is, as always, hosted by Norm. Click here for an instant trip to Montreal and to the link that will lead you to the other entrants this week.
As many of you know from my posts of last year’s trip to France, Plombières-les-Bains was one our favorite discoveries, a beautiful city reminiscent of Italy, tucked away in the forests of the Vosges, with thermal baths that were enjoyed already in Roman times. We have yet to try them, as mid-summer temperatures don’t really make them sound appealing.
We made a number of trips there again this year and one day, we set out from there for another brave, daring adventure, following inviting roads until we saw a sign for the hermitage of Hérival. The road grew narrower and narrower (and if you know French back roads, that meant quite narrow). We began to wonder whether the signs had lied, but finally we saw what looked like the priory.
What was I thinking, cutting off the top of that cross??
This, that and the other thing 