We've been back from the back hills, les Monts d'Arree, a week already, and I'm afraid I'm just not getting around to editing the photos and doing anything very creative with them. I seem to have been fairly occupied with other things, and there are quite a few other projects calling to me, which means I put off everything, and now it's beautiful weather and I'd really rather be outside, quite possibly taking more photos, than sitting indoors in front of the computer editing them!
However, I've just sat down in the comfy seat, with the notebook computer, on which I can't normally carry many photos on or do much editing, and started fiddling about with the Google+ on-line editing tools on the automatically backed up photos - I think this must be the result of a box I must have ticked somewhere along the line with Picasa, not something I actively wanted to get involved with. As with any on-line photo editing it's comparatively slow and laborious, but perhaps that forces me to make more stringent choices.
So here is our Troglogîte, something like a hobbit hole:
and here is a rainbow over the one next door.
They were interesting places to stay, very cosy and surprisingly light, and very nicely appointed; there was a lovely loaf of organic bread, a bottle of cider, crêpes and an array of pots of jam, wood for the fire, towels and soap all laid on and to hand, unusual for a gîte. We needed the fire, and to keep a ventilator fan on for much of the time to keep the place well-aired, since the misty, windswept moorlands of central Finistère were, typically, rather misty and windswept for some of the time.
They were very lovely though, and a more varied landscape than I expected. Here is the view from our door:
The horses lived there.
It was a couple of kilometres to the top of that hill, called the Montagne de St Michel. The old chapel, which served the needs of the isolated shepherds in former times, is now disused, but much visited.
for the views, of which this is just one,
and the bracing air.
It really was very windy!
Those are old German military emplacements we're standing on.
I'll post more over the next few days.
12 comments:
Oh, how quaint - a hobbit house. Lovely views too!
Sounds like you had a great getaway.
Always wanted to live in a stone house, that one would be nice for a week or so.
What a place, gorgeous.
Lovely. Especially enjoyed another quite rare picture of the camera operator. Is that the turning shaft of a big fixed gun?
Your second pic aroused thoughts that surely couldn't have been further from yours. How the two deep-seated windows seemed to have been arranged for the purpose of machine-gun fire, ensuring as wide a sweep as possible, while protecting the gunners from a flanking attack. On a journey I have taken virtually every Friday for fifteen years, travelling from Belmont, the Hereford suburb where I live, to the village of Mordiford, I pass by a similar structure (called I believe a pill-box) built over seventy years ago, in this case by those who were called the Allies. It is remarkably well constructed though not as indestructible as the German gun emplacements near you and the submarine pens at St Nazaire.
The Third Reich may not have lasted the thousand years its organisers had hoped for but its architecture might.
And then in your last sentence you make the reference in passing. Swords into plough-shares I suppose. A day of different purpose and with different aims. What a strange landscape though in keeping with a literal translation of Finistère.
It looks beautiful and I love the little place you're staying in, I quite fancy living somewhere that looks like that I think!
I had looked at the 'Pause Nature'
brochure link that you provided in your last post and was actually travelling along with you in my thoughts. The view after reaching the top of the mountain is splendid although a caressing breeze instead of strong winds would have been more to my liking. It must be the love that you and Tom surround yourselves with that makes such brave troopers of you.
Love this 'hobbit hole' idea of a home whilst vacationing.
Ready for more.
Splendid! And splendidly cold and windy-- the reward for braving the hill would be that view. Are the chapel doors unlocked?
Fwoosh! Thanks for the glimpses.
You look like sculptures on those plinths, frozen into stillness by the cold wind.
So that's the Finistere landscape - impressive. I might be seing it if I make that trip when the book is done.
i have saved picture 6 of 7 and filed it in the pantheon of fine wimmin
Oh, what fun! And I love the name, Troglogite! Beautiful pix - and I love the post with your friend Jantien's art. Looks like a lovely trip.
Thanks everyone, I've left comment replying too late as ever, but appreciate your responses.
In fact we live in a real stone house all the time, but above ground, which I feel is rather better aired and healthier than these trog dwellings, but it was an interesting experience for a short time. I'll try to post more on them soon.
The German occupying forces in WW2 left their mark on the hill, also in the form of the good quality road most of the way to the top.
The Finistère landscape is very rich and varied, the coastal sections being in turn very different from the interior of course.
I am chuffed to bits about being numbered within the Pantheon of Fine Wimmin!
Post a Comment