Our badgers' loos...

... across our lane from the copse where we think they live (3 dark spots on the right) seem to be in constant use.

There are several holes that could be badger setts within 500M of La Bastide.  Each year we see signs of them when our big cherry tree starts dropping the fruit we can't reach, but this is the first year we've known that they moved in close to us.

Yet in 13 years we've only once seen a badger (trundling past our front-door). On the rare occasions we return home late, we see lots of owls and are occasionally held up by nightjars that land on the road in front of us and can take some moving, but never badgers.

I guess that as badgers are not a protected species in mainland Europe as they are in England there may be fewer of them.

Maybe the badgers appreciate the fact that we don't allow hunters to cross our land, so feel safer with us, like the partridges and turtle-doves which seem to survive OK. And the bloomin' rabbits of course which get evermore numerous. I could never get get their numbers down when I had a small stud in Suffolk, so I'm not going to try here in La France Profonde.

Why don't British folk do much walking any more?

One of the biggest changes in clients' behaviour I've noticed since we opened our gites 13 years ago (apart from the inability of people to get through their day without clinging to a phone) is how rarely people, especially the young, leave La Bastide on foot nowadays.

There are four paths out of our property, offering plenty of scope for circular walks of varying lengths, some along hill-tops with views as far as the Pyrenees 100km away visibility permitting. On this particular track it takes only 45 minutes to reach the bar-restaurant in the next village. Have a 3 course lunch for €10 and walk it and the beers off on the saunter home!

Are people now so urbanised that their legs are no longer happy supporting their bodies? Are they as nervous of walking in the safe countryside as we are of walking in London after dark? Why don't children go off exploring the woods on their own?

There are a few exceptions of course, particularly a Yorkshire grandfather here last month who went for a 20km run three times a week (2 hours and 2 litres of water).

So if your legs will carry you for an hour or two, think of coming to stay in the Tarn, especially in late May/early June or September, when it's cooler.

There's something about acacia trees...

that birds love, especially young ones.

Around 6pm we turn our sun-loungers and glasses of wine towards the acacias just behind us to watch the groups of young birds work their way along through these trees before turning round and working their way back again.

They are mostly tree creepers, great tits, blue tits and acrobatic long-tailed tits. As last year, not as many as there were before the exceptionally cold spell here two winters ago. We feel certain the drop in bird numbers stems from that, as it's only the year-round birds that are down. Migratory birds are as numerous as ever - never seen as many bee-eaters as this summer.

Summer finally arrived?

Even down here, we've had a disappointing Spring. In March it was as if Summer had arrived early but then the Jetstream started to do whatever it shouldn't and the sun went all coy. At long last normal conditions have been resumed and Nature is trying to catch up (generally been about 3 weeks behind schedule). 

Wild life has been quiet as well - swallows and bee-eaters were late to arrive and the partridges nesting in the verge of our lane have had a damp time of it. Crows have been bad-tempered - I watched three of them attacking a kestrel in mid-flight, constantly swooping down on their victim to peck at it; made me think of a WWII dog-fight.

Only now are the butterflies appearing more profusely in our little valley, which normally has thousands of them. (A group of lepidopterists who stayed with us a few years back found 106 species in the area, 57 of them around our property.) But today they're as busy as the bees around the lavenders - not that you would think that from my picture taken with the 21stC equivalent of a Kodak Box-Brownie. As soon as I try to get closer to them they're away to the next bush.

Just read that the weather forecast for the rest of the summer is highly optimistic - perhaps that will encourage the folk who stayed at home in May & June to come over for a break in September...

Time to reach for my sun-lounger, glass of rosé and John le Carré and go out and keep our cocker Diva company.

Pass Jos the ear-plugs.

They're back. They're rehearsing. They're 'our' nightingales.

As every year, they'll be nesting in the overgrown heap of elder, old man's beard and other creepers just five meters from our ever-open bedroom window (but 100m from our gites).

They start singing in late dusk, but when we turn off our bedside lights, they turn up the volume and Jos grits her teeth for a disturbed early night....

Bloomin' Spring....

got chilly in The Tarn after a good start, but a few bright warm days and Nature's pent-up energy has been released. The blossom has never been as stunning as now.

A less technophobe than me would have taken a video clip to capture the sound of the bees working the blossom.

And we'll have to start being busy b's too, getting the properties ready for the season, which looks like being as good as the pre-credit-crunch times, due more to the diabolical UK weather than Dave and George's efforts to convince us that good times are round the corner. It's an ill wind ........

Hibernation over already?

We don't get much of a real winter in the Tarn, although we usually have one shortish sharp snap in January/early February (-14C last year to plumbers' delight), but this year we've been let off lightly (so far...). Only 30th January and SWMBO is pruning the vines in a sunny 18C.

Unlike Dave & Georgie's, our green shoots are real and the birds' behaviour around us suggests they think Spring is on the way. We hope they're right as our house has an electric central heating system and whilst French governments make sure that EDF cannot increase headline kwH and standing charge prices, they have allowed the list of  'Contributions' (French Newspeak for Taxes) that appear in very small type at the bottom of the bill to grow so much in past couple of years that together with VAT, they now account for over 30% of our bill. But still much cheaper than oil of course.

Jos' main past-time is quilting to which she's become addicted. You can't stay in any of our gites without seeing a quilt or three. 

On a clear day....

....we can't see forever but the Pyrénées appear so close to us that it's hard to believe they are 80-100 kms away.

It reminds one how close The Tarn is to Spain and why it is so common to meet people with Spanish names here, descendants of the families who struggled through the mountains to escape the Spanish Civil War and after a harsh time in French prison camps were permitted to settle here.

La Bastide on the right

What's this?

We were storing away some garden furniture today (seemed prematurely even for second half of November when the sun is still shining so fiercely that our cocker Diva has spent the afternoon basting on the balcony, always with an eye on the small valley below because it's the day of 'La Chasse'), when we found this:

She-who-must-be-obeyed-and knows-everything believes it is the discarded carapace of a cicada. Opinions from people more expert will be most welcome. We curse the cicadas sometimes in the summer: one starts up and within minutes another half dozen are sirening away. We sometimes confuse their noise with the calls of a couple of tree-frogs who live in our garden - very beautiful little critters, like bright green enamelled gems.

ANOTHER OF THE TARN'S SECRETS: VEAL AS NATURE INTENDED.

One of our neighbours rears cattle for veal. The animals all live together: the bull (that's him behind the mother and baby soaking up the sunshine), about 50 wives and their off-spring until it's time for the young ones to go to market.

I'm stupidly soft about animals and would never allow veal to be on the menu in my country-house hotels because most British restaurant-goers did not believe they were being served veal unless it was white. It didn't seem to put them off their appetites knowing that the milk-fed calves had been kept enclosed in small crates to obtain the escalopes to their liking.

Because the Tarn calves have enjoyed a longer and completely natural up-bringing, their veal is pink and succulent, with more flavour than white veal. Cooked simply in a little sunflower oil with whole cloves of Lautrec's world-famous pink garlic, Tarn veal is something to savour, especially it you get it from M. Fraisse in Lautrec.

TOUR DE FRANCE 2013

Most years the Tour de France passes through the Tarn - in 2010/11 only a couple of kms away from Puycalvel - but next year will be particularly convenient for guests in our gites, as one stage ends at Albi on July 5th and the next start off from Castres on the 6th.

It is fun to watch the pack race by, but this time guests will be able to be at the 'arrivée' and or 'départ' which will be far more interesting.

Here's the whole route for any biking enthusiasts planning a holiday around the tour.

The Tarn has been battered by a wind called L'Autan for a couple days. Blows up from the Med quite often during the summer, but it's usually just a comfortable blow and this is the first time in 12 years here we've experienced such a gale (125 kph gusts reported).
Our mayor called in at lunch-time to say he'd been told that 'La Poste' couldn't get through to us because of a fallen tree (of which we had no knowledge) so he'd come up with a chain-saw and cleared the lane.
Yet another example of why life in France is so comfortable. We Brits may tease (oh OK, mock) the French for some of their habits and attitudes but their system of communes with active mayors ensures a quality of civic service that British rate-payers would welcome.
L'Autan is sometimes called 'The wind of the madmen'. Perhaps with reason seeing that yesterday a chef of a restaurant in our local town Castres rushed out of the kitchen brandishing a knife and stabbed 4 people, one poor girl fatally.

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We've been eyeing two patches of mushrooms on our land. Jos wanted to try them but I've always been wary of wild fungi since a friend, who was an experienced 'fungologist', made a puff-ball soup that kept me on the loo for several days.
Just read that a French couple died yesterday after eating wild mushrooms...

Fin de season

This is a sad time for us especially when it's been such a great summer here in the Tarn - wonderful weather and pleasant guests staying in our gites. Been a good season for bookings too, considering the eternal economic gloom and the World Footy and the London Olympics gluing so many folk to their sofas, zapper in one hand beer in the other.We were rescued by the foul UK summer and late bookings gave us a good end of season to compensate for a poor start. With early bookings and enquiries for 2013 being stronger than for several years, perhaps the biblical seven fat years are about to start.

Autumn means Jos spending more time on her quilting

and Ian and his form expert discussing their chances after the daily hour or so spent exhausting their grey cells over the Racing Post.