Home from home

Having eaten rather badly in the flophouse restaurant last night, I went and got us some breakfast from the baker up the road.  I can just about put up with the mediocre dinner, but breakfast of Lipton's yellow label, tepid water and HIV milk, not to mention Other People, is more than I can bear.  As I headed up to the baker's shop this morning, another car of the same model as mine was just leaving the car park.  As I got there, said car was outside the boul-pat, and its owner and I left at around the same time.  He told me he's as pleased with his as we are with ours.  Another was leaving the motorway as I joined, oddly enough, and these are the only two Atecas we've seen other than at dealerships.  Plainly a select band of owners.  (I didn't ask him how to reset the clock, but have subsequently worked out how to do so.  Next challenge: how to reset the bloody clock without zeroing the bleedin' trip.  And don't say RTFM: so to do is bad for my blood pressure.)

Not a bad ride down from the Auvergne, though the cloudy skies deprived us of the best of the views. As we approached Millau, Martyn noticed a couple of dozen birds circling at altitude.  Probably griffon vultures, we think.  We elected to keep moving.  Having left around 08:30, and filled the tank the night before, we were home and shopped, having survived the awful A9 and A61, well before 13:00. 

Botanically speaking, we have been enjoying the fine display of cowslips by the side of the motorways.  We hadn't noticed before just how many laburnums there are beside the motorways: not my favourite subject, but good motorway furniture.  Down here, the poppies and valerian are flowering like mad, and up in the Auvergne there were still daffodils in flower, braving the -1.5°C cold at 1100 metres.  The vines are coming into leaf hereabouts, though signs of spring are fewer up at altitude, as you'd expect.  Our tiny weed patch is weeding along nicely, though the sage seems to be asserting itself, as is the mint.  Our solitary rose has a handful of buds.

On which point, by the way, a singularly weedy Piccadilly rose back at Forges-l'Evêque is bounding into growth.  It is hemmed in by bulbs, which have recently had a bit of post-flowering feeding.  We'll repeat the process on the other roses when we get home, though the English rose Geoff Hamilton and the Justice of the Peace (they do guard duty on either side of the steps up to the grass) were looking pretty vigorous unaided when we left, so we expect to return to a few blooms.  Hereabouts, we think we're too late for the tiny daffodils and irises up on the hill, but hope to find some cistes cotonneux in flower once we're out and about again.