Martyn suggested a half hour or so of geriatric trainspotting this morning, so we took ourselves up to the level crossing between Conilhac and Fontcouverte. We parked at the end of a path beside a vineyard, an arable field and some fallow land running parallel to the railway line, so we strolled and botanised a bit while we waited for the various trains to present themselves: the Marseille-Bordeaux inter city, a stopper from Toulouse to Narbonne and a Toulouse to Lyon TGV double-decker. The birdsong as we strolled was exquisite: one of the thrushes, a skylark, a chaffinch with an unfamiliar flourish in its song, a distant cuckoo. In fact, as I report at my place by the open dining room window, I could hear a cuckoo until Henry rumbled up on his motorbike.
As for the flora, the fennel is making its annual comeback from beneath the tall skeletons of last year's growth, and we have a few sprigs in water to complement this evening's salmon. That and some other subjects are attracting huge numbers of snails that cling to their stems: escargot fanciers to note. The poppies are resplendent, though starting to go over now, and the little white cistus is going great guns, like its cousin, the cistus pulverulens. When we pulled on to the verge to take some photographs, the scent of crushed mint and fennel under our wheels was really powerful when we opened the doors. We found a little path in the garrigue that hadn't seen a lot of traffic lately - the strip between the cart ruts was full of cistus. On the slope of the old road back into the village, there's a big patch of the beautiful blue aphyllante de Montpellier. A fine time of year for them who appreciate wild flowers to be hereabouts, if they can put up with the capricious weather.
The good news for me is that I walked for half an hour or so on the level without discomfort from the knees, and again for another quarter of an hour up in the garrigue. Perhaps the exercises are helping: or is it just the stimulus of fine, warm sunny spring days? I'm certainly not about to start jumping out of aeroplanes like a couple of dozen nutters we watched this morning. We watched one lot from our trainspotting/botanising spot, and another nearby at the aerodrome at the market town. In the second batch, eleven parachutes came down, several of them with beginners strapped to the bellies of more experienced lunatics. That's a lot of bodies in a Cessna Caravan! It always worries me that, at that particular aerodrome, some parachutists are still landing as the aeroplane comes in. None shredded this time.
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