April started with a great blizzard and remained cold for a week or so; when the sun returned and temperatures lifted, the fishermen took to the rivers, trees came into leaf and the first flowers appeared on the bare alpine grasslands. The most captivating was Lady of the Snows Pulsatilla vernalis with vivid, white hairy…
Brown hairstreaks on the North Downs
30th July 2023 The walk from home near Hextable in north west Kent to the corn bunting colony up on the downs passes along a tall, ancient hedgerow before emerging onto the rolling arable fields. This year the fields are down to flax and there are no nesting buntings to be seen or heard in…
Catching up with old friends in the South Charente
A few days in the South Charente at Boisjarzeau in late July provided the opportunity to catch up with some good friends. This included the large coppers in the small, damp meadow beyond the lake seen for the first time in 2018 and not found in 2020. Thankfully, a single female was on the water…
Vézère Valley, Dordogne
Plazac is a small but beautiful, medieval village in the Périgord noir in the south-west of the Dordogne; at its centre is an imposing church above a grid of narrow streets below. Plazac sits just to the north of the Vézère Valley with its pretty riverside towns such as Montignac, Saint-Léon-sur-Vézère and Les Eyzies. To…
Postcards from the Ariège – March 2022
I spent March 7th to May 19th 2022 and May 20th to July 8th 2023 based at Luzenac in the Ariège Mountains. This then is the first monthly review; a chance to take a another look at this great, mountain wilderness that is so rich in biodiversity. March in 2022 is surprisingly warm and often…
Marc Chagall at Tudeley Church, Kent
This is a collage of some of the stained glass windows created by Marc Chagall and installed at All Saints’ Church in Tudeley near Tonbridge in West Kent; it’s a snapshot of the sad beauty of the extraordinary art that was inspired by the accidental drowning of the 21-year old daughter of the local landowner….
Above El Pas de la Casa, Andorra
The scenery in eastern Andorra under a midday sun is stark; bald, alpine grasslands within a panoramic, mountain landscape littered with all the ski-lifts and other paraphernalia to support winter sports tourism. The montane flora above El Pas de la Casa in mid-June is unaffected, diverse and different from the Ariege valleys to the north.
Great storms and butterflies at Trimouns, Luzenac
Above Luzenac near the end of the road to the huge talc quarry, there is a track that runs east below some mature beech woodland. There are fine views to the south across the valley of the high mountain chain and the storms that build over them each afternoon. The clouds run in from the…
Wet meadows in the Pyrénées-Orientales
2nd and 4th June 2023 The road to Spain and Andorra from Ax-les-Thermes is a busy, twisting road up a magnificent, mountain valley. Before the turn to Andorra, the main road to Barcelona cuts through a long tunnel which opens into a wide and open valley totally different in character to the steep valleys of…
Ariège’s Resurrection Plant
Sunday 2nd July 2023 The Biros valley in the western Ariège is the nearest location to find Ramonda myconi according to to the excellent Biodiv’Occitanie website; this is the sister plant to the Ramonda serbica, which I was excited to find on the hills to the south of Lake Skadar on the eastern edge of…
Around Mijanès
Col de Pailhères at an elevation 2,001 m is an arduous but popular 20km cycle ride from Ax-les Thermes or a shorter but more strenuous one, with some remarkable hairpin bends, from Mijanès on the other side. At the summit, the support vans wait for the groups of exhausted riders with a table of refreshments….
Red squirrel
Normally red squirrels Sciurus vulgaris hide behind the far side of the tree trunk on approach but this one, near Quérigut was confiding and perhaps more concerned with extracting seeds from a fir cone. The main predators of red squirrels are pine martens. In most of England and Wales, the reds have been steadily ousted…