2026 Holiday Day 4

Aachen and it's treasures.

The cathedral. The domed part is Carolingian 

That's handy. A larger than life reliquary 

Aachen town hall

The inside of the Carolingian dome

Added bonus: goth samba

The car stayed at the hotel, and we caught the bus.

2026 Holiday Day 3

Yesterday was a relocation day, not far, just from Tervuren to Aachen. As it's only 111km as the crow flies I thought we'd take the opportunity to get lost and see some interesting things we didn't have plans to see. We managed the first part of the equation, including 2½ turns around Maastricht, with the added bonus of an excursion into the forbidden zone. Oops.

The second part wasn't as spectacular as we had hoped. Hey ho.

We're now in Aachen for two nights. Today our plan is to get seriously early mediaeval.

Life on the road. We picnicked by the autoroute.

Distance travelled 169km

Cumulative total 907km@ 53km/h

2026 Holiday Day 2

Troyes - Brussels 

After fields of opium poppies, we started seeing big things.

The Woinic Sanglier is 10 metres high and weighs 56 tonnes

The Lion Mound at Waterloo

Distance travelled 377km

Cumulative total 738km@ 58km/h

Insects on the Eperon

 On a recent outing to the Eperon de Murat nature reserve I saw a range of insects.

Forest Fly Hippobosca equina (Fr. Mouche plate). 

A blood feeding parasite of bovines primarily, but often also found on horses and dogs. It causes no discomfort to its hosts and is not a vector for disease. They do tend to freak people out though because of their scuttling movement.

Golden-ringed Dragonfly Cordulegaster boltonii (Fr. Cordulégastre annelé). 

A dragonfly that breeds in small fast tumbling streams often on hillsides. It is present throughout most of Europe but always uncommon.

Female Beautiful Demoiselle Calopteryx virgo (Fr. Caloptéryx vierge). 

This species also likes small cold swift streams and is very sensitive to oxygen levels in the water. Numbers are dwindling as water is increasingly warm and eutrophic (full of algae that use all the oxygen). 

Male Beautiful Demoiselle. 

Males are very territorial and are often to be seen perched on vegetation along the banks of their stream. Their flight is languid with quite slow wing beats, so people don't always recognise them as damselflies.

Dance flies Empis sp and pollen beetles Meligethinae all over Bath Asparagus Ornithogalum pyrenaicum. The dance flies are predatory. Bath Asparagus is foraged in the wild and sold as a great delicacy in fresh markets for about 15 euros a small bunch during its brief season.

A small carpenter bee Ceratina sp on Field Scabious Knautia arvensis. 

These bees nest in hollow plant stems, making cells containing a stock of pollen for the larva, and divided by plant pith.

Ferruginous Bee-grabber fly Sicus ferrugineus on Field Scabious. This fly is quite common throughout Europe but so weird looking that people usually don't know what they are looking at. They have strange yellow swollen heads and sit with their abdomens curled up under themselves. They are parasites of bumble bees.

Female Azure Blue butterfly Polyommatus bellargus (Fr. Azuré bleu-célèste) ovipositing on Horseshoe Vetch Hippocrepis comosa. 

They are a species of hot dry calcareous grasslands, quite dependent on sheep grazing to keep the habitat suitable for them. Where they occur they are usually abundant, but because of destruction or degradation of their favoured habitat their population is declining.

Rusty Tussock moth Orgyia antiqua (Fr. Etoilée) caterpillar on Downy Oak Quercus pubescens. 

This is a species that will eat a wide variety of plants, but for reasons that are not understood it has become rare. The caterpillar is amongst the most distinctive of any Lepidopteran. Be careful not to touch them as those hairs are urticating and can cause skin irritations on people who are sensitive.

Orchard Ermine moth Yponomeuta padella caterpillars and cocoons inside the web communal nest on Blackthorn Prunus spinosa. These poor Blackthorns have been munched twice this season. Earlier in the year it was Small Eggar Eriogaster lanestris caterpillars all over them. But they will recover. 

2026 Holiday Day 1

Preuilly-sur-Claise to Troyes via Joigny

Cumulative distance: 361km @ 56km/h

An Artisanal Chestnut Chair

In the Haute-Vienne and neighbouring 'counties' of the south-west of France like Limousin a rustic tradition is clinging on. Developing as a commercial product in the 19th century, by the mid-20th century there were 20 artisanal workshops making large quantities of chestnut furniture that is unique to the area.  All the workshops had to close during the Covid pandemic, and almost all never reopened. Nowadays, after a low point of a single workshop making this furniture, now there are a handful of people who are working to prevent the skills dying. The best known workshop operating today is that of Pascal and Martine Raffier, at la Chapelle Montbrandeix and they are doing their best to train younger artisans.

At the beginning of the 20th century there were 5000 people employed in Haute-Vienne making chestnut furniture. These artisans, called feuillardiers, would select and mark suitable chestnut trees for the foresters to coppice. These managed trees gave a range of products, including large numbers of pickets, much valued by winemakers for the vineyards of the South-West. As well, there was a range of simple, durable furniture made, with a great diversity of forms.

 

A chestnut armchair in the Chateau de Bridoré.

 

The chestnut armchair has become one of the iconic products of the region. Initially it was small family workshops making this furniture, and the industry thrived in the post-War period up until the 1970s. Multiple generations were involved in the manufacture, and some workshops were able to employ a handul of staff. The furniture was sold in fashionable Paris stores such as Galeries Lafayette. Older inhabitants of the area can remember wagonloads being sent to Paris on the train from Chalus. Luxury hotels on tropical islands ordered dozens at a time.

But plastic came to dominate the outdoor furniture market, and it could be built more cheaply in developing countries. The focus of the workshops in the Haute-Vienne switched to the repair of chestnut furniture. Pieces needing their seats or table tops rewoven would be brought to the artisans by devotees of the style who had owned the chairs for decades.

To make a chair the artisan selects lengths of chestnut that are dried in an oven. The artisan first removes the knots with a pocket knife. Thin strips called clisses (splints) are cut on a special old machine to form the 'canes' which will be hand woven to form the seat and back. After the woven panels are done they are framed in rattan and the splints carefully cut for a neat finish. It takes two hours over two days to make a finished chair, during which time the wood is prepared, the main structure is put together, the woven panels are added and everything is finished off.

The furniture was appreciated because of its light weight combined with durability. It was resistant to insect damage and the pieces have a sort of quirky creativity which consumers enjoyed for their holiday houses. Le Corbusier is said to have been very fond of the armchairs, and these days they are marketed using his name for the model.

Faking Sudden Death

 

 European Peacock butterfly Inachis io (Fr. Paon du jour).

Male insects are remarkably persistent. They have to be if they want to reproduce and mate with a passing female. It is not the males who decide if mating will take place, it is the females. One of the techniques that female butterflies and dragonflies of some species will use if they don't want to mate is to drop out of the air or off their perch as if they have suddenly died when approached too persistently by a male. The bemused male will hover above for a while, but the female is capable of maintaining the charade for quite some time, so eventually the male pushes off. The female makes a 'miraculous' recovery and flies off in the opposite direction. What she's done is not without its own risk though. She could find herself predated or injured whilst on the ground. But mostly it's an effective way to get rid of a sex pest. Twenty years ago a study of butterflies playing possum showed that in 27 out of 31 instances the female succeeded in avoiding unwanted male attention in this way.

 

 Female Brimstone butterfly Gonepteryx rhamni (Fr. Citron).

If you are in the Touraine Loire Valley, watch out for the behaviour in butterflies such as the Brimstone Gonepteryx rhamni (Fr. Citron), European Peacock Inachis io (Fr. Paon du jour), Speckled Wood Pararge aegeria (Fr. Tircis), or Wall Brown Lasiommata megera (Fr. Mégère). 

 

 Wall Brown butterflies Lasiommata megera (Fr. male Satyre, female Mégère) engaged in courtship behaviour. The female, on the right, has dropped her wings. She's not playing dead in this instance, but offering an invitation to the male.

Female Speckled Wood butterfly Pararge aegeris (Fr. Tircis).