Posted on February 19, 2021
Even with all the latest technology and machinery available to them, farmers’ work is hard. It’s difficult to imagine how tough it must have been when everything had to be done by hand with simple toools like these.
Category: Autrefois Tagged: CMMC, Farming implements, France, Garden tools, Rural, Tools
Posted on October 16, 2020
Our humble abode (aka ‘Brokedown Palace’).
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Outside Home
Category: Black & White Tagged: Black & White, Brokedown Palace, Cee's Black & White Photo Challenge, Exterior, France, Home, Rural
Posted on July 12, 2020
This week, the challenge is to post a picture that conveys ‘your culture’.
Which begs the question, what is my culture? As an English (although I prefer to be Scouse, which is most definitely not the same thing) expatriate living very happily in rural France, the answer is by no means clear-cut.
However, I think this image of a brightly painted old-fashioned cart on display outside the Mairie gives a decent idea of my current cultural circumstances.
52 Week Smartphone Challenge: 28 Your Culture
Category: Uncategorized Tagged: 52 Week Smartphone Challenge, 52WeekSmartphoneChallenge, cart, Culture, France, Mezieres-sur-Issoire, Rural
Posted on May 23, 2020
“What does serenity mean to you?’ is the question posed for the 21st instalment of the 52 Week Smartphone Challenge.
I always find this view very tranquil and calming (not that I often need to calm down). It’s what I see when I look over the wall of our back garden. The two fields were bought with the house, so for a few brief minutes I am master of all I survey.
52WeekSmartphoneChallenge: 21 Serenity
Category: Landscape Tagged: 52 Week Smartphone Challenge, 52WeekSmartphoneChallenge, France, Landscape, Rural, Serenity
Posted on March 25, 2020
A foggy, frozen morning on the back road to La Motte.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge 24 March 2020
Category: Landscape Tagged: Cee's Fun Foto Challenge, Fog, France, Freezing Fog, Landscape, Rural, Winter
Posted on March 18, 2020
Frank’s theme for this week is ‘Spread’.
Before we retired to France, we came over for a few weeks each summer to see how the renovations of Brokedown Palace were coming along. We generally stayed at a Chambre d’Hôte in nearby Le Dorat.
One weekend while we were there, however, the place was being used for a wedding reception, and since our room overlooked the garden in which it was being held, they were good enough to invite us. It was quite a spread…
Tuesday Photo Challenge: Spread
Category: Uncategorized Tagged: fpj-photo-challenge, France, Rural, Spread, Wedding, Wedding Reception
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)
Category: Uncategorized Tagged: Abandoned, fpj-photo-challenge, France, furniture, Junk, Rural
Posted on January 29, 2020
I suppose that, strictly speaking, this is not so much harvest as haymaking, but I think it stands on its own merits as a contribution to Cee’s Fun Foto theme for this week of ‘harvest’.
Posted on January 18, 2020
A full moon far outshines the streetlamp in lighting the road that runs through our little hamlet.
52 Week Smartphone Challenge Week 3: Black & White
Category: Black & White Tagged: 52WeekSmartphoneChallenge, Black & White, France, Moonlight, Roadscapes, Rural