We had a bit of
light snow last night. After breakfast, we drove to Langres, a pretty
walled town about half an hour away. We parked outside the town walls
and walked in through an arch in the wall and into the town itself.
We climbed up onto the city walls and then turned down a very narrow
alley and into the town itself. It was very cold and we were feeling
a bit peckish, so we popped into a cafe/
pâtisserie for a coffee and
a cake. We then walked the length of the town looking for somewhere
to have lunch, but were uninspired by everything we saw, so we hopped
in the car and drove to a supermarket, bought some bread and cheese and went home
for lunch.
In the afternoon, I
went out for a bit of a walk on my own. The end of the lane on which
our cottage is situated quickly turns into a rough track that runs
along between a river and a forest-covered hillside. After a fairly
short time, I spotted a dark shape on the grass next to the track up
ahead and a little voice in my head said 'fox', but it was too far
away to make out any detail and it was still quite light, so I
ignored it and turned my attention to the hillside and the rather
scrubby forest. Not long after, I saw some movement out of the corner
of my eye and there, running across the track and into the trees, was
a beautiful big fox with a bright white tail tip.
There has obviously
been quite a bit of rain here recently, as many of the streams and
rivers have broken their banks, and up ahead of me was a large area
of water adjacent to the river, where a big white egret was hunting.
After a while, I left the road and headed up the hill and into the
forest. It's a very 'worked' forest, divided into coupes for cutting
and with very few large trees. It clearly gets a lot of rain
generally, as all of the rocks and fallen branches are covered in
copious amounts of moss. Today, they also had a light coating of
snow, making them stand out slightly eerily in the encroaching gloom
like scattered animal bones.
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