Walking Around Yzeures sur Creuse

On Friday 21 February Simon and I walked 6 kilometres with les Galoches Yzeuroises group. It was overcast, 16°C, and took us two hours. Simon slipped in the mud near the end of the walk and ended up sprawled out full length on his belly. Face, T-shirt front, coat sleeves and trouser knees all covered in wet black stinky mud, plus a hole in the knee of his nice new tan corduroys. Luckily he just grazed one knee and all the mud washed out of his clothes quite easily. Thanks to Bruno and Geneviève as we stopped off at their place to clean him up a bit before driving home.

 

Bruno and Geneviève's garden, overlooking the Creuse River. They freely admit they took one look at the garden and the view and decided to buy this before even looking inside the house. They have had to put up with flooding over the bottom third of the garden four times this winter though.

The community orchard. The vine hut is not old but brand new, made in the traditional style when the orchard was planted. Vine huts, usually referred to in the Touraine as 'loges de vignes', are for agricultural labourers to store their tools, eat their lunch and shelter if caught out in bad weather.

The town water supply. Even in this form the structure is referred to as a 'chateau d'eau'. I would have thought that 'tumulus d'eau' was more appropriate in this case. Or 'casemate d'eau'. I always think it looks like some sort of Cold War military bunker.

Bruno informed me that this unremarkable farm is 'the Australia of France'. It's a sheep farm...The name 'la Pluche' is an old word meaning 'plush' or 'fleecy', so it would seem to have been associated with sheep for a long time.

This lake is an étang, one of a series of dams that drain into one another in a line, in the manner that is common in the Brenne, just a few kilometres away. This one is used for irrigation.

Some of the Gorse Ulex europaeus (Fr. ajonc d'Europe) is flowering, providing important early season nectar for bees. Gorse is remarkable in that individual plants flower at different times, so there is always some gorse out somewhere in the vicinity.

A small parcel of oak woodland.

A male Small Bloody-nosed Beetle Timarcha goettingensis (Fr. Petit crache-sang) lumbers across the track. He is easily identifiable as male because of his small size and his 'velcro' feet pads, used to grip on to the bigger female when mating.

Lesser Celandine Ficaria verna (Fr. Ficaire fausse-renoncule), always one of the earliest and most abundant spring wild flowers. As you can tell by the characteristic glossy yellow petals, this is a member of the buttercup family.

These vicious thorns on the roadside belong to a volunteer sapling Black Locust tree Robinia pseudoacacia (Fr. Acacia). They are an invasive nuisance in many places, but appreciated by beekeepers as they are an abundant source of nectar for honey bees and miel d'acacia is the most popular honey in France.

Shutters on a village house.

Hazelnut Catkins

Hazel Corylus avellana (Fr. noisetier) is a plant you will easily encounter in our forests. hedges and woodland edges. Most people know the nuts, but may pay less attention to other parts of the tree. It flowers at the end of winter, often ignored. 

 

Hazel catkins photographed last Friday near Yzeures sur Creuse.

These flowers are called catkins (Fr. chatons) and are in fact the male flowers. They are rather delicate and unspectacular, dangling in the winter winds. Grouped in twos and fours they are browny grey to start with but develop a yellow colour as the pollen develops and is liberated. The female flowers are nearly invisible, just some tiny red filaments. 

Hazels favour woodland understoreys and clearings. You will often find them on the edges of forests or in the hedges around bocage (damp pasture). These flowers, with their nutritious load of pollen, are one of the most important food sources for early emerging solitary wild bees.

Walking Around Marce sur Esves

On Monday 17 February I walked with the Phoenix en Claise group around Marcé sur Esves. We did 5.5 kilometres, taking an hour and a half. The temperature was 14°C and the sun was shining.

 

There is still a lot of standing water in the fields. Finn the lurcher turns around to check why his Mum and I have stopped.

Lesser Periwinkle Vinca minor (Fr. Petite Pevenche), a common wild native plant here.

Our friends Anne and Denis nearly bought this house 20 years ago. If they had we likely would never have met them.

A flooded poplar plantation. The poplar trees, as usual, have lots of mistletoe.

The exterior of the charming little church in the village of Marcé sur Esves.

An interior view of the church.

The Angevin style side chapel, with 21st century window glass. See link below for further details.

It's early spring so the floral arrangements feature wattle blossom (Fr. mimosa).

Box pews.

Interior view.

Entering the medieval church through the 17th century porch.

Further Reading: My previous blog post on the church:  https://daysontheclaise.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-church-at-marce-sur-esves.html.

The Fake Spring

Just about every year February gives us one week of beautiful weather that could lead you to think that winter is over. Sometimes we even comment that it looks like spring is here. This year we won't be drawn into that debate, but it has been lovely and sunny this past week, and a couple of days have been warm, with daytime temperatures reaching 15°C. 

Here's proof that it has been sunny. Proving it has been warm is more problematic.

Batlow's Big Things

Yesterday a big trout, today a big apple - and a bonus!

The small NSW town of Batlow has three big apples, but we only found one. This is the big apple in the middle in a field just north of Batlow. It used to be surrounded by an orchard, but the trees were burnt in the big bushfire of 2019/2020. To be honest, to me it looks like an oversized tomato.

We were expecting a big apple - it's inevitable that a small town producing 10% of a country's apples will have a big one. What we weren't expecting was a Big Apple Peeler. Carved in 2004 this is much more artistic, carved from a piece of cypress pine with a chainsaw by Viktor Cebergs.

The Big Trout

We have written about the big stuff in Australia before - the Big Pheasant and the Big Banana - Australia loves big things and the Big Trout in Adaminaby, New South Wales, is one of them. Erected in 1973, the Big Trout was the brainchild of local resident and tourism advocate Rod Dent, who wanted to celebrate Adaminaby’s reputation as a premier trout fishing destination. The sculpture, which stands approximately 10 meters tall, was crafted by artist Andy Lomnici, a Hungarian  born Australian artist, using fiberglass and concrete.

By the early 2010s, the structure began to show significant wear and tear, with its paint fading and parts of its surface deteriorating. The need for restoration was evident, and in 2018, the Snowy Monaro Regional Council approved a refurbishment. The process involved structural repairs and a complete repaint, which was intended to bring new life to the aging fish. When the repaint was unveiled, it wasn't greeted with universal acclaim.

The Big Trout in November 2024

The issue arose from the choice of colors used in the restoration. Instead of the soft, natural hues that had defined the sculpture for decades, the new coat of paint was strikingly bright, with a vibrant mix of red, white, and black that some residents and visitors found garish. Many locals were dismayed by the transformation, arguing that it made the trout look unrealistic and out of place. Social media discussions and news reports covered the backlash, and even in France I was aware of the controversy.

Because of this, the Council commissioned another repaint in 2021 to restore a more traditional color scheme. This final repaint was widely welcomed, as it returned the trout to a look more in line with its original aesthetic. It's not the Big Trout as I remember it as a young man, but it's not as garish as it was before its latest incarnation.