4th July, 2025 The rolling hills around Boisjarzeau are bleached after a months of incessant sun; the wheat has been cut early and much of the maize and sunflowers are looking small and underwatered. The irrigation where applied appears futile. The gardens are barely coping too; and yet the wet ditch in the marshy field…
Category: French Wildlife
La Vallée d’Ossoue
14th July 2025 La vallée d’Ossoue sits below the Col des Tentes and runs west from Gavarnie; it is a long valley of two halves with flower rich grasslands full of pinks and field gentians beneath a huge cliff, that after a tortuous section of road runs into a wide valley with track that runs…
Col des Tentes, Hautes-Pyrénées
13th July 2025 Below the col, the subalpine grasslands are short-grazed and full of wheatears that nest in gullies and low cliffs. Pairs have recently fledged young so the adults frantically try to divert us with rasping calls and bold distraction displays. There is also a range of ringlet Erebia butterfly species including a dazzling…
Col du Tourmalet
July 12th 2025 This is the highest pass in the Pyrenees at 2,115m and the one revered by cyclists both for its challenging ascent as well as its consistent inclusion in the Tour de France. The wonderful sculpture at the summit is the Giant of Tourmalet (Le Géant du Tourmalet), or simply Octave in memory of Octave…
Cirque de Gavarnie
Tourism has transformed the pretty, mountain village of Gavarnie; its huge car park is filled by mid-morning. Most visitors run the gauntlet of shops and cafes and then hike up the valley to the immense cirque with its 400m high waterfall; this entails walking the track up through the pine forest and pastures to the…
The South Charente in Late June
Under thundery skies, the herbaceous borders at Boisjarzeau are at their colourful best. The wet spring this year has saved on the watering but the garden meadows are unusually thick with false oat-grass and barren brome with little space for wildflowers. A sward full of yellow rattle would impede the grasses and promote floral diversity…
Arles, Van Gogh and the Stars
Arles is a magnet for visitors and the attraction is Van Gogh and his ‘Starry Night over the Rhône’ on loan from Paris for a summer exhibition at the Fondation Van Gogh Arles entitled ‘Van Gogh and the Stars’. There are works by those that inspired him such as Jean-François Millet and many more of…
Postcards from the Ariège – April 2022
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…
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…
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.