While the official walking club has been in summer recess, a small group of us, all anglophone, have been meeting at 8am on Thursday mornings to do 5 or 6 kilometres, just to keep gig fit. This walk was done on Thursday 22 August, around the hidden hamlet of Sauvaget. This post is about the more mundane, general stuff we saw. There will be a couple of others to follow with some absolute highlights -- quite by chance it was a rather exceptional walk in some ways. So these photos represent what you would get without the chance elements.
Vegetables in the foreground, sheep in the background.
The bitumen cracking and sinking on the edge of the road out of Sauvaget.
Limousin cattle.
Naturalised garden asparagus on the roadside. Simon suggested
we map all these plants in order to return in the spring to pick young green shoots for free.
Fresh Wild Boar Sus scrofa (Fr. sanglier) droppings,
obviously on a regular route taken by this individual.
The upper reaches of the small Sauvaget stream have been modified since at least the 17C for powering water wheels. Iron ore extracted in the forest was smelted here.
A small orchard in open fields. The Forest of Preuilly in the background.
Yellow Toadflax Linaria vulgaris (Fr. Linaire commune) flowering on the edge of a field.
A sign that the season is changing I always think.
Lisa looking at some naturalised grape vines, likely a remnant of a vineyard.
I guessed the variety was Chenin blanc, based on the pink petioles and veins, and three lobed leaves.
A pear tree in a farmyard.
I have previously posted about walking around Sauvaget here and here.
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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.
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We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos.
1 comment:
"Naturalised garden asparagus on the roadside.".... what makes you think it is naturalised... it is a European wild plant... Asparagus officinalis... found from the north of Scotland to the tip of Gibralta and all places west... it can be really chunky and the sprue are well worth hunting down... have you GPS'd them?
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