The changes we are seeing
Thursday, 11 October 2012
Sometimes when you’re traveling (or amidst life), you have to let serendipity prevail. We made a side loop to visit…Cadillac. Because it was there.
And discovered it’s a walled town, with some plain but impressive ramparts (if, indeed, that’s what they are).
Then we took another side loop to check out a cultural feature signposted as “Pont Eiffel.” There was no pullout nearby, and no way to see the lacy metal support structure of the small (like three car-lengths) bridge in any detail, and we can only guess that the tour-Eiffel engineer had a hand in this one instead of merely influencing it. So, no bridge pix—only this one of the mill just upstream (no public access). Moral of this story: serendipity is sometimes just for your eyeballs—and imagination—and not for your camera.
Sometime later, we passed through an area where the grape-harvest was well underway. The trucks from the fields apparently back up to the gate appropriate to the variety they are carrying. The smell of souring grape-juice and the busy insects were the most dramatic impressions/activity at the moment we encountered this cooperative.
We covered some territory today, and the agricultural crops and general landscape went through several noticeable changes as we left the coast and moved through inland zones. We are overnighting in Perigord, and it is nut/fruit country—no grain and olives are long behind us, as are the chateaux of Bordeaux.
We’re staying in a really small town—the only biz is our B&B—with several homes and a church getting major attention from historic preservationists. The cracks in the walls are being monitored as restoration continues, using these simple calibrated slips.
