{"id":7751,"date":"2015-02-08T23:55:51","date_gmt":"2015-02-08T23:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=7751"},"modified":"2015-02-09T16:42:20","modified_gmt":"2015-02-09T16:42:20","slug":"fresh-air-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/fresh-air-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresh air day"},"content":{"rendered":"

The day started off with a really strong northerly wind and when I went out to get wood in for tonight as part of my usual morning chores, I made sure to put on both a scarf and a warm coat. However, as the morning progressed the wind began to abate and by just after lunch time had almost totally dropped, making the day much more pleasant even if it still couldn’t really be described as warm outside. So bearing in mind the decision I took a week or so ago to do a bit more walking this year, I decided to wrap up warmly and get a bit of fresh air into my lungs.<\/p>\n

I initially had in mind just a walk up the road past Le Bos de Plazac and back again, but as I approached Le Bos I decided to become a bit more ambitious and walk down the top part of the off-road track that I drove last time until it joined the track that I’d walked down previously from home when I went to Le Camping du Lac. I’d then turn up that for the climb back up the hillside to return to my house. It turned out to be a refreshing walk in good conditions even though the sunshine did disappear half-way round and I was glad that I’d decided to do it and felt better for the exercise.<\/p>\n

I took my old Pentax Optio camera with me as my Panasonic Lumix has let me down in just over a year of use, of which more some other time. Enough to say that for the time being I’m exceedingly disappointed with it as the little Optio has been subjected to much tougher use under more extreme conditions, and shows it too with the dents and scrapes it has, but is still going strong. Anyway, here are a few shots that I took along the way.<\/p>\n

As I was just beginning to descend the hill from Le Bos, there was a clearing to my left on the hillside with a small stone building on it. I have no idea what the building is or was used for as it was far too small to be a house. The best ideas that I’ve had are that it might be for housing animals in, although there were none on the hillside today, or might even be for the use of hunters. But whatever its purpose, the land around it is being kept clear as can be seen in the couple of shots that I took of it as I passed by.<\/p>\n

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The track from that point on then began to descend quite steeply, as I’d found when I came up it in the other direction in the Kia. Here’s a shot that I took looking down the hillside, which gives some idea of how precipitately the hillside falls away to the left of the track that I was walking on.<\/p>\n

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There are quite a few tracks on the hillside many of which disappear off to I know not where. Some lead to remote houses that are still occupied and some, as I found a few minutes later, lead to buildings that used to be there and are now ruins. As I was walking that’s what I came across slightly higher up the hillside to my right, and here are a few pictures of what I found. I took the first shot from the rear corner of the ruins after I’d climbed up level with what had once been a building about half the size of my house and the others as I walked across what had been its back but which had long ago collapsed down to the level of the hillside.<\/p>\n

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I have no idea whether this building once had anything to do with the one that I’d passed earlier in the clearing higher up the hillside, although I suspect not as clearly these ruins were quite ancient – probably hundreds of years old. The front looked as though it contained a wide opening, which supported the ‘animals’ idea, yet to the side of the opening there were the remains of windows, suggesting some kind of human occupation. The only way I’ll perhaps ever know will be by asking someone local who’s knowledgeable about such matters, and as my neighbour Jean-Claude’s family have lived in the house next door to mine since the 16th century, he would obviously be a good place to start. I’ll tell more if I can get more information.<\/p>\n

The climb back down from the ruins to the track that I’d been walking on was an experience in itself as the ground fell away very sharply and I found myself hacking a path through brush and brambles as I made the descent. I made it down safely, however, and not long after as I continued walking, I came to the junction with the track on my left that I wanted to go up to return to my house. A few minutes after I’d begun the upward climb, I noticed something which I found very interesting. I was at a point that was a hundred or more feet below the track that I’d earlier been walking down that vehicles can drive on, as I’d shown previously in the Kia. However, the hillside up to my left had been levelled off by placing layer upon layer of stones in order to make some kind of terrace. I couldn’t take a picture of it because of the conditions but it was very clear that the terrace would serve absolutely no modern purpose, so when was it made? Yet again, I suspect that its construction was quite ancient, which says an awful lot about both its builders and the reason why it was constructed, which remains a mystery to me for now, as it must have required many weeks, or months even, of laborious effort to get the stone up the hill to that location and placed in position.<\/p>\n

I’d noticed some similar terracing when I’d driven the Kia off-road the first time over on the other hill and hadn’t thought much more about it but I would really like to know more about who built it and why. The mystery deepened even more when just a few dozen metres further on from the terracing, lo and behold there was another set of stone ruins in the trees on the hillside. Common sense tells you that if the terracing and the ruins are ancient, the hillside will have changed beyond all recognition in the meantime. If the ruins were indeed houses, they would likely have been built in areas cleared of the bushes and trees which have now taken them over again. And possibly the flat terraced areas were used to grow vegetables and other crops or even, if they were large enough, to keep animals on. Maybe I was looking at the remains of a community who lived on the hillside hundreds and hundreds of years ago, who knows. Fascinating and deserving of more research, I think.<\/p>\n

By the time I got to the top of the hill I’d managed to work up quite a sweat so I was glad when I got to the part of the track which turns to run along the bottom of the field below my neighbour’s house that is behind mine. It was then that I heard the chugging of an engine and what should come round the bend towards me down the track but a small, white, elderly Renault Express van. These are farmers’ workhorses down here and whereas I’d baulked at driving the Kia down this track, this driver had no such concerns even though it had little ground clearance, narrow wheels and was only front wheel drive. We waved at each other as he went past and I allowed myself a wry smile as I imagined him sliding and bouncing over the mud and ruts that awaited him further down the hillside, which I’m sure he must have known about. It’s good to know that all’s well in rural France and life goes on just as it always has \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The day started off with a really strong northerly wind and when I went out to get wood in for tonight as part of my usual morning chores, I made sure to put on both a scarf and a warm coat. However, as the morning progressed the wind began to abate and by just after … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7751"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7773,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7751\/revisions\/7773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}