Dog walk

Haven’t been up here as often as normal, what with the burden of working. 

I’m very unfit having spent a year sitting at a desk, and it is a steep walk up!

The view is just amazing even when the weather is a bit marginal. I love these trees.

Some beautiful orchids

Bright spring greens

Stupid doggy

Happy Birthday Poppy

Tree being with groovy hair!

Just in to the neighbours field at the top of our land, seen today on a nice birthday walk before a birthday bone and a birthday nap.

 

Walk at Payolle

We haven’t been here as often since we got the flat in La Mongie as we tend to go there instead. It is a lovely place to walk the doggy though, she really enjoys swimming in the lake, whatever the season...

Change to lockdown

From today (after 4 weeks of the 2nd confinement) we are allowed to go a little further from home for exercise (and drive to get there). Up until now we have only been allowed to go 1km from home for 1 hour. We can now go 20km for up to 3 hours! Hurrah. This is just far enough to make it to La Mongie so we are hoping to get a little bit of work done there or at least check the apartment is ok.

Lockdown is due to end on the 15th of Dec as long as new cases are below 5,000 a day. But ski areas, restaurants and bars won’t open until late January.

Today we celebrated with a nice walk. Not far from home, but a very nice change of scene.

We had tea and eclairs too. Yay!

She has a slight scratch that she won’t stop licking, so not a serious injury, it just needs a chance to heal

The Virgin

Walk and tea

 Wet walk on a rainy autumn day, followed by first cup of tea from OUR OWN TEA BUSH!

A branch partially snapped during transit so we thought we had better not waste it.

Give me a treat!

The holly has a lot of berries, it seems very early, will there be any left for Christmas??

I let them wilt a while, then steamed them for 1 minute, rolled and unrolled them a few times and finally dried them in the dehydrator for 1 hr at 70°C

Green tea!

Walk at the Col du Toumalet

It was cloudy and a bit drizzly at home, so nice to have a walk up in the mountain while preparing the La Mongie apartment for guests.

Dramatic clouds

Pretty flowers

The cloud came and went. This is the giant who is at the col in summer and lives in the valley in winter. There is normally a cycling event around his drive up the hill. Sadly it couldn’t happen this year.

Some horses on the road outside the apartment. They will soon be providing pony trekking to guests in La Mongie

Yummy spicy pork noodles to help us recover from so much exercise (actually not that long a walk, but any excuse!)

Burn's Night

Nice walk during the day and then Burn's supper in the evening

You can almost see our house from the lunch spot

Great views

Poppy was exhausted after the walk so hardly noticed when we left her for the evening

It was dry January so we avoided the whisky!

I am not sure the green stuff is very authentically scots

These antlers are ones Doug found on our land. Cool to have them used. We are thinking of hanging them somewhere in La Mongie

You can just see us dancing in the background here. It was a bit chaotic because even the caller didn't really know how to scottish country dance... they kept starting the dances right at the beginning of the music rather than waiting for the intro to finish. Then everything after that was not on the right bar. However fun was had, we danced The Gay Gordon, The Military Two Step, Strip the Willow and The Dashing White Sergeant.

Walk round the virgin

This has to be our most walked walk. It is a nice loop, not far from the house, and has great views over the mountains - and our house.

There is a lot of damage from the December storms. They are getting on with cleaning up a lot of it, but it is pretty dramatic still.

View over Bagnères-de-Bigorre, our apartment is in there somewhere

Dog posing

 Doug posing

Yummy apple pie snack afterwards. Homemade but with bought puff pastry. Must try making puff pastry one day...

Strimming strimming strimming and a walk

Having finished the Bagnères flat, and while our guests get on and enjoy it, our attention has returned to our land.
Doug has been working on the fence lines, some of which have been thoroughly engulfed by brambles and squished flat mostly under the weight of them.
I have been working on finding the potager again as it has disappeared in to a jungle.

We needed a little break though and took a nice walk with Poppy (she doesn't think much of strimming)

The church in Beaudean where we started

I love walking past peoples veg gardens and seeing how huge and immaculate they look. Something to aspire to. I think lots of people round here have been doing it their whole lives - and their parents before them - so I don't feel good about ours not being a patch on theirs.

It is quite a steep walk to start off with but then amazing views and more gentle

Lunch stop Doug and faithful hound (who is trying to get out of the sun a bit in his shadow, hot day!)

Monné walk

Sadly Poppy generally can't come skiing with us, but she needs plenty of exercise else she gets annoying so we have to go for walks as well. Not too much of a burden in this weather!

We went up Petit Monné and then Monné which is only a little higher. We did the petit Monné walk towards the end of last year with Olli in the mist, so it was nice to be able to send him photos of what he missed!

Well deserved pizza after all that exercise!