Cottages

Bonjour Villentrois, Aug 2017

For many generations, my spouse’s family has had a home in Villentrois (population 645) near Valençay, at the northern tip of the Indre departement. In the past, the town was famous for its mushrooms, which blanket the landscape in November. Mushrooms are also grown in deep caves cut out of the Tuffeau limestone hills. My spouse’s family home has such a cave. They keep you lovely and cool in the summer. Tuffeau limestone is also used to patch neighboring Loire Valley castles, the most famous of which is probably Chambord.

We cycled trails, wrought by tractors, that skirted the boundaries of farms and intersected major roadways, and dirt roads cut by lumber companies, patched with ceramic shards, that disappeared in the shadow of Forêt de Brouard. We avoided major roadways as the roads are small and drivers speed and are unused to cyclists. Small restaurants – none more authentic in France – quenched our hunger. Only one word of caution: check the weather forecast before you leave, as there aren’t very many places to take shelter during rainstorms.

Veuil has a cluster of restaurants that are worth risking a drenching for. We arrived late to Le P’Tit Veuil with a ferocious storm close on our heals, but they did not hesitate to welcome us in, and fed us with such alacrity that I have had to reconsider my definition of hospitality!

The dark area is the Forêt de Brouard. We got caught in a rainstorm while in the forest. The best shelter we could find was a young tree that slowed the passage of the rain, but in no way prevented it from reaching us. The storm lasted about thirty minutes! It was a fantastic ride, though.

Sunflowers, or “tournesols” in French.

A house built with blocks of Tuffeau limestone.

This trail in the Forêt de Brouard was on the delimitation between two departments. The concept of “departement” is similar to “county” in English, but the jurisdiction of departements is wider than that of counties (“comte” in French), which are usually part of departements.

The entrance to a nest of European hornets. Wikipedia says they’re docile unless engaged in contest with another wasp, or defending their nest. They were unbothered by us.

Classic Valencay cheese, made with goats’ milk, little flattened pyramids of heaven.

Route Departemental (D33), road from Lucay-le-Male to Villentrois. The glass insulators on the power lines were old in the 1960s. When my spouse was a child, these funny, old insulators imprinted themselves in his memory so that they will forever be associated with Villentrois.

Resources Consulted:
A Gardener in France: Troglodyte flower show in central France
European Hornet (Wikipedia)
Cheese.com, Valencay

From the Downs to the Sea – Day 1, Apr 2017

Our second cycle tour of the UK took us to the South Downs. We followed South Downs Way, a 100 mile (160km) off-road National Trail that connects Winchester, the Saxon Capital of England, with the white cliffs of Eastbourne. With a total of 3,800 metres, or 12,600 feet of ascent, it normally takes 7–10 days to walk, or 2–4 days to ride. We set out early one Saturday in April to do a one day tour, starting in picturesque Petersfield and ending in Emsworth, via Buriton Chalkpits and Limeworks, West Dean Wood and Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve.

The trail through Buriton Chalkpits and Limeworks was shady and quiet. A couple busy roads intersect it, which seemed a bit dangerous. West Dean Woods was spectacular with hazel coppices and fields of purple violets. It’s also the home of the Andy Goldsworthy chalk balls, located along the aptly titled Chalk Stones Trail. Kingley Vale Trail takes you through an ancient yew tree reserve. Some of the reserve’s yew trees are the oldest living things in Britain!

The grassy, round hills were a treat to ride. The ascents and descents were gentler than those of The Ridgeway, although I will say that we thought we’d hit the final hill five times before we actually climbed it. We saw quite a few mountain bikers and backpackers, but, strangely, no other female cyclists. And we added another word to our British lexicon: “hiya.” Unlike in the US, where the same expression sounds the way it is written, over here it sounds like “howareya”; it means the same thing, though. My dad, an Australian and long-time resident of the US, says hiya like the British do and always gets the response, “Good thanks; how are you?”

Petersfield

Brilliant graphism. These labels very effectively placed us in space, time and history.

This little fellow entertained us as we at our lunch.

This was our view from Harting Down as we ate our lunch.

Andy Goldsworthy chalk stone

Notice the hazelwood fence

Yew tree

Chichester in the distance

Racton Monument, completed in 1775; a folly (i.e., not a real ruin) commissioned by the 2nd Earl of Halifax, possibly as a summerhouse or a lookout so the Earl could watch his merchant ships dock at the nearby port village of Emsworth.

A bridleway overlooking Racton Monument took us through a small paddock full of sheep.

Resources consulted
Chalk Stones Trail
Guide to the South Downs National Park
Kingley Vale Trail
Racton Monument

Fakahatchee by Bike, Jan 2015

Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park
137 Coast Line Drive, Copeland, FL 34137
(239) 695-4593
26°01’14.37″N 81°24’29.28″W elev 8 ft

The rumors about Fakahatchee are true: it is breathtakingly beautiful with incredible diversity. Several trails loop through the sub-tropical strand swamp. We took the shortest loop – 12 miles, four over dirt roads and eight through the wilderness – and it took us four hours.

The oranges in those wild orange trees were super sour.

Originally purchased in 1913 by the Lee-Tidewater Cypress Company, logging began as a war time measure in 1944 and continued into the ’50s. Approximately one million board feet of cypress per week were removed. This guy looks to have been a casualty.

In 1966, the Lee-Tidewater Cypress Company sold the Strand to a real estate company, who platted it and sold 1 1/4-acre residential lots. In 1972, the Florida Land Conservation Act was passed and the State started to buy back the land. Consequently, abandoned dwellings, such as this one, appear occasionally along the trail.

One of the draw-backs of biking the trail is that you miss seeing some of the smaller details of the trail, like the ghost orchids that the trail is famous for. However, there was no missing the giant leather ferns, one of 36 fern species that grow in the Strand.

This section of the trail is called Four Stake Prairie. As you can see, it got a little muddy. Although the 3.8 mile section of trail through Four Stake Prairie to Mud Tram Road was moist, we didn’t encounter mud like this again.

The pine dotted Florida prairie

This is where the trail veered away from the Four Stake Prairie and into Mud Tram Road

Biking along Mud Tram Road was a bit of a challenge. Knee high grass and vines hid cypress knees, tree roots, and holes in the oolitic limestone out of which the road was carved. But they were nothing an urban assault bicycle couldn’t handle… I wish I could say the same for the rider. We walked most of this section.

A speed limit we could handle.

Resources
The History of Fakahatchee Strand, by Franklin Adams, Friends of Fakahatchee historian
Experience the Fakahatchee East Main Trail
The Ferns of Florida: A Reference and Field Guide, by Gil Nelson

Birthday Adventure, Feb 2013

Cayo Costa State Park
26°41’07.96″N 82°15’10.43″W elev 6 ft

My beloved boyfriend took me to Pine Island and Cayo Costa State Park for my birthday. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present.

That thar is our handsome inflatable Advanced Elements tandem kayak. It’s parked on top of an island made up of crushed oyster shells. The oysters served at the restaurants on Pine Island are fantastic! No wonder the Calusa had the highest population density of south Florida! The Calusa were Native Americans who inhabited the coast and inner waterways of Florida’s southwest coast as far back as 500 CE.

And there’s Ollie in his jersey; cute and functional, it prevents him from getting covered in sticky burs. See all the oyster shells!

I love knicker nuts, which is what you’re looking at in this picture. Inside those spiky shells are incredibly hard, heather-grey nuts, roughly spherical, striped, about an inch in diameter. They’re used in jewelry in the Caribbean. If you crack them open with a hammer, you see that the shell is made up of multiple layers and you find a flat, round white seed inside.

We had a picnic lunch and this way our view; it’s Boca Grande.

Isn’t he a handsome devil… he must have driven the female sea urchins crazy in his day (sea urchins do, in fact, have separate male and female sexes… I looked it up).

The light wasn’t great, so I had to doctor these pictures. Here I tried to enhance the light glistening off of the water. See the hungry little plover?

Sea Oats, so important to barrier island ecology. Picking or disturbing sea oats is punishable by fine in Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina (according to Wikipedia). Just visible in the background are the fuzzy tops of sable palmettos.