Living it up at Berlin Airport.
Coffee here…
Calm and peaceful 
9€ for two coffees ✓
7€ for a bottle of water 
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Just about to start a well earned week in Limassol, Cyprus.
It helps having a school mate living there who is the hotel and tour guide! It doesn’t help he has just had a kid!
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We got stranded there late at night a while back.
It’s still infinitely better than Tegel 
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Today i learnt that the French Plane trees that are lining roads and squares are hybradised American Sycamores. Planted across France, along roads and canals, on the orders of Naplolean, to provide shelter for his troops non the less.
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Another wonder round the village today, came across a street called Quai de Rhone, which seemed a bit strange given the Rhone is over 200m away.
However, what I thought was an old and restored fortified wall on the other side of the street turns out to be the old flood barrier, given away by the large blocks with grooves for pedestrian access. The grooves being used to place timber in in the event of a rising river. I imagine if you go back further in history, this would have been a wooden quay, with jetties.
The Rhone is now channelled by large earth banks some 200m away and 10m higher.
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Wander?
Looks lovely btw
Yes,hotel Croatia
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Busman’s holiday today with a visit to M Lacroix’s chairmaking workshop in Vallabregues. Been in the same family for some 170 years and the guys’ sister, brother and son work there. Had a chat with the fella and he was more than happy to show me round the workshop, I was like a pig in a strawberry field!
The entrance and then into the timber storage area, mainly Beech with some Oak.
In the workshop you can see templates various on the wall
A couple of copying mahines for the spindles and arms, the second machine using metal copying blanks, the first using copying cutters.
Stock ready for the copying machines
Nice detail on the first arm support spindle that comes down through the wicker covered seat base and into the top stretcher for added strength. The arm is set back from the front of the seat to allow the chair to be drawn up to a lower table.
Once complete, the chair frames are then sent to various ladies in the village who weave the seat bases from Rhone rushes harvested in the Camargue. Their houses are identified with similar to below.
Needless to say, one of these chairs will be making its way back to Blighty.
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Today was a lesson on the local bulls and the role they play, including in the ring, even Vallabregues had a ring.
It’s a bloodless event, well for the bulls at least, lasting 15 minutes. During this time the Rasetours have to remove up to 4 trophies from between the bull’s horns, each carrying a cash prize. It is the bulls that are celebrated and named, not the Rasetours. If a Rasetour is badly injured or killed, then the bull is retired. They participate in these events when young, after that they spend their time in the Carmargue, tended by local cowboys and eventually end up as prime beef. This way of life is embedded in the culture. Having not witnessed it, i remain open minded about the bull rings. Not my pic, but these are the black bulls…
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Nature popped in a graduated gray filter today, didn’t take anything away from this though, the Pont du Gard
The various sockets and stone outcrops are part of the supports use during construction. The modern bridge alongside was added in the 18thC, no doubt helping to support the original structure.
It’s the tallest roman bridge and aqueduct, the covered section ontop being the aqueduct, concrete lined. With a declination of 1cm per 185m, it bought 40000 Tonnes of water/day to Nimes from over 50km away.
A bit of old graffiti
a nearby Neolithic cave
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I recall walking along the very top of the Pont Du Gard back when you could in about 1986. There were slabs missing above the top water course you had to step across. It was wide enough & not windy but it did seem a long way down!
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They do guided tours along there, through the largely covered aqueduct. None available today, a real shame. It’s now a world heritage site, with all that that brings.
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Lived in a tent and swam that river every day not very far from there where I picked cherries and apricots for a good few months in remoulins
Too much kerouac and a much needed clean up after times working in the Dutch bulb industry, one of the best times in my life
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Probably for the best tbh. You could just walk up there back then.
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Bakker?
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One of them , worked the fields and lived in the squat near hillegom
Vout’s?? spelling obviously wrong
The open air gaff with loads of caravans and trucks
We made a sign of penny lane on top of our patch as all of us were scousers
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Do you remember Vout’s hand dug basement club?
I remember very little of the detail if truth be told, is that the little building on the squat that we used to have raves in ?