52 Week Smartphone Challenge: 11 – Fill The Frame
Posted on March 14, 2020
For week 11 of the Smartphone Challenge hosted by Khürt, we’re invited to fill the frame with a single colour.
Spring seems to have come earlier than usual this year and there are plenty of the usual harbingers already in evidence – like this narcissus.

52WeekSmartphoneChallenge
Bateau Mouche
Posted on March 13, 2020
The bateaux mouches are the tourist boats that ply the River Seine in Paris. Business wasn’t so good on this particular day….

Tuesday Photo Challenge: Scale
Posted on March 10, 2020
Petra is built on a colossal scale, as is evident from this view of the Treasury from the Siq – the 1.2km long narrow passage that is the most common way to enter the ‘rose-red city, half as old as time’.

Monday Window: Abbaye de la Reau
Posted on March 9, 2020
52 Week Smartphone Challenge: Week 10 – Hometown
Posted on March 7, 2020
Week 10 of the Smartphone Challenge poses me something of a dilemma. Does the theme of ‘Hometown’ refer to the place I grew up, or where I live now? There is a vast difference.
I was born and grew up in in the town of Birkenhead, in north-west England. Its principal redeeming feature is that it is just across the River Mersey from, and therefore boasts a very good view of, Liverpool, which I think of as much more my spiritual hometown.
Now, however – and since 2012 – we live in a very small French hamlet which for blogging purposes I refer to as ‘Tranquility Base’. We really wouldn’t want to live anywhere else and we certainly think of it as our home.
It’s where we want to watch our sunsets.

52WeekSmartphoneChallenge 10
Circulation Perturbée
Posted on March 6, 2020
Down here in la France profonde, the more common causes of circulation perturbée (traffic problems) – such as roadworks or a jack-knifed lorry – are just as likely to be supplemented by finding yourself on a country road behind a local farmer in the process of moving his flock of sheep from one field to another.
The ubiquitous white van is the modern-day sheepdog.

Glass Masters
Posted on March 4, 2020
In the entrance to a factory on the Venetian island of Murano, rightly famed for the manufacture of glass.

Tuesday Photo Challenge: Junk
Posted on March 3, 2020
In the UK, the conventional wisdom is that, if you’re looking to sell your house, you make it clean and tidy; perhaps brew some fresh coffee, even bake some bread, in order to create a cosy, welcoming ambience for the prospective purchaser.
In rural France, however, as we discovered on our own house-hunting trip, it’s common practice just to pile up a load of junk and invite the viewer to use their imagination and see past it.
(We didn’t buy this one – although that isn’t to say that the one we did end up acquiring looked any better on first sight)

Monday Window: Limoges Cathedral
Posted on March 2, 2020
It’s a week for stained glass again on the Monday Window Challenge hosted by Ludwig. This is to be found in the cathedral of Limoges.

#MondayWindow 2 March 2020






