Cold it is!

7.30 this morning, minus 3 degrees, good time for a walk! As the forecast predicted after a wonderful clear night the frost has hit but soon after this picture was taken the sun broke through the mist and it's been a beautiful day with clear blue sky so a full day in the garden for some hacking and slashing plus another wave of cranes have flown over this afternoon heading south...another sign that winter is on its way!
We'd also like to say that we hope all our american blog readers are safe and sound with the news of the current hurricane sandy on its way to the east coast of the usa.

Cold front arrives!

Yesterday I was wearing a t-shirt, shorts & sandals, today it's jeans, mid layer and walking boots, what a change in 24 hours, today it hasn't got above 10 degrees but when the sun was out it was beautiful. The picture above I have just taken as the sun is setting tonight, as the saying goes - red sky at night etc and it looks like a clear night with temperatures dropping to just above zero, forecast is that the weather is getting better on Monday, so i won't pack away the shorts just yet!

All by myself!

Spotted on the bank of the Vezere down the track opposite Les Granges at the start of my early morning walk, what i thought was a white carrier bag caught on top of a branch turned out to be what I think was a Little Egret, all by itself, I wondered if it was injured but it wasn't there after I'd finished my walk an hour later so maybe it was just passing over and decided to rest for the night.
Also last night at 10pm we heard the Cranes flying over the house, heading south for the winter, we didn't realise they flew all through the night, maybe it's a bad sign of the winter to come.

Fresh from the garden.

Here's just one mornings pickings, fresh mushrooms, figs and walnuts. A nice soup was made from the mushrooms, figs were given away to a guest and the walnuts will be dried and stored with the rest of this years harvest for the future production of Philippa's now famous homemade walnut cake!

....and finally a little further.

 ...you then arrive at the very pretty small village of Tayac which has an amazing 12th

century fortified church. It was originally a priory and survived the Hundred Years war almost unscathed .
The two very tall straight towers front and rear served as a fortress (the front also doubles up as a bell tower) and when viewed from the rear as pictured below, the tower has magnificent stone columns on the facade.

So in just 45 minutes my walk had taken me from the first findings of Man through the Hundred Years war and to the 19th century french railway network....some journey!

Carry on a little further.....

 ...and a few minutes up the road from the Abri de Cro Magnon is the railway station that was being constructed at the time of the discovery. The sight of the magnificent rock face in the distance as the train approached Les Eyzies would have been what all those thousands of interested visitors that flocked to this area following the news of these findings would have seen.