Big hugs from the little ones, and little hugs from the big ones this morning. So the great adventure continues – for them, nearly at Calais at the time of writing; for me, five hours down the road at Saint Sauveur-en-Puisaye, ready to visit the castle of Guedelon tomorrow. But that’s for another post.

Since writing about the Golden Oriole, I went on another expedition to try to find it, but without result. I did meet a man out walking, who told me (in French) in his sixty nine years he’d only seen them once – shy, like the cuckoo. Sadly, he said, the orioles are trapped for their feathers, to make fishing lures. I did see a Serin, rare in UK but quite busy down here.

The other farewell this week was to the Haydock family, who are turning into close friends at various age levels. There’s talk of a reunion in the UK; Lily will be particularly please. (There were a few tears, and from her friend Freya). There was no room for John and Gill in the picture – he’s a small farmer from Lincolnshire, with a small collection of old tractors. And a painter and decorator, and a former body builder, and bouncer, and ……

As was our usual practice, there was a fair bit of drinking and dining out involved, as I touched on in the previous post. My friend Amel had recovered from her shock at my news, and there were grand bisous all round. And Olivier’s culinary invention was on display again: asparagus again (I suspect he has a glut) but on a chantilly of some sort, with a couple of spears on top. Then stuffed cabbage, filled with a poultry mousse. We also ate the special, duck breast, at the Bar des Voyageurs, and steak at the Cafe de l’Univers, both acceptable meals, well cooked.

My solo trip, while the others were at the monkey forest (le Forêt des Singes – they were not just in the trees either) was to the waterfall at Autoire. This is yet another of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France, but with added gushes. The lady car park attendant in high vis, supervising the use of the automatic machine, told me it was about twenty five minutes from the car park. She didn’t tell me it was up quite a steep hill. I fell in step with Alan, who was on a long scale walk organised by a UK company. Their maps and instructions left something to be desired. As did my lung capacity. Having failed to read the instruction panels at the outset, I looked at walking to the Panoramic Viewpoint, forgetting it was on the opposite side of the river, and up high. It was when the path doubled back ina zigzag, and steepened, that I decided to bugger that for a game of snowballs, and, like Robert Frost, took the other road and that made all the difference.

At something like 15m high, the falls were very impressive.

The walk back to the car park was on the other bank, much flatter following the stream down, unto the last little bit. Beautiful scenery and wild flowers, and pretty houses, the envy of Dordogneshire.

My journey here was great, but sadly the cloud base was too low for a view of the Puy-de-Dôme. In parts it was too low for a view of the road ahead, dropping down to 40mph. At one tollbooth, I had trouble finding the booths; to be fair, keep going and you bump into them. Made for an interesting journey. I think I’m now about on the third rotation of my music collection: Dark Side of the Moon belting out is always fun. Well for me anyway.

Back to St Sauveur. Writing this post in the campsite bar, everyone having a good time: the carp in the pond are particularly popular with some. Pascal has an affable manner; I’m wondering if it goes with the job? He took over in 2019 and has made a big impact, I’m told. Tomorrow, the Castle.