I’m cheating slightly with my Thursday Doors post this week. The entrance door of my subject building – a long-since abandoned village shop – is certainly old and nicely weatherworn but it’s the doors to the cellar which really caught my eye. These small doors which give a very limited access from the street to…
Tag: France
Thursday Doors – A Gentle Shade
For this week’s Thursday Doors I’m back to the churches again. The church itself is another wonderful example dating from the 12th to 13th century but the door this time is rather different. Instead of the ancient heavy oak, the door is a fairly sober painted affair (in a beautiful and very French greeny grey)…
Growing Tomatoes and Connecting with Nature
I’ve thought a lot about the state of the world lately as we’ve been picking the fruit in the orchard and harvesting vegetables and herbs from the potager and the herb garden. It seems to me a sad thing, that for all the miracles of modern science and technology, so many of the supposed advances we…
Thursday Doors – The Abandoned Farm Cottage
My offering for Thursday Doors this week is not exactly pretty and certainly not an impressive example of a door but I found this farm cottage on the edge of a quiet lane a compelling subject for a few photos. It seemed to be almost out of place amongst the lush vineyards of south western…
The Château and The Fairytale Swan
A trip out with the camera earlier in the week took me to a village I have not visited for a few years. I confess I had quite forgotten what was there and after a quick look around the church – yet another fine example from the 12th century – we followed the path towards…
Thursday Doors – Curlicues and Rosettes
There is some evidence in a dusty local archive, that way back in the 12th century, the Hillside was the site of a religious ‘paroisse’, the French version of our word ‘parish’. This could mean quite simply that a lone monk lived up here in contemplative seclusion or that he had fellow monks and a…
Thursday Doors – Inside Out
On Tuesday morning I set out on a photographic visit to an ancient local church a friend of mine had mentioned to me. It has to be said that our little corner of France is blessed with a wealth of ancient churches, a host of breathtaking examples from the 12th and 13th centuries lying within a…
Alliums, Garlic and a Potager
It’s been a good year so far on the Hillside for our potager. The plot near the orchard which we had ploughed up by the local farmer last year looked intimidatingly large at first, more suitable for feeding a couple of rugby teams than our tiny household, but as Mr H has worked his green-fingered…
Thursday Doors – Rue Tranquille
Exploring some of the beautiful, narrow backstreets in the old town of Périgueux in the Dordogne, we came across this stunning ancient doorway. The heavy oak and iron studded door itself made it more than worthy of a photo but the wonderful carving around the door in the warm local limestone made it something extra…
Thursday Doors – A Door, Steps and a Juliet Balcony
The rehearsals for our summer theatre spectacular are in full swing now with only one week to go to the first performance. All the action takes place in various spots around our courtyard, in front of the barn and the house. There will be music and lighting to accompany the drama which won’t begin until after…
Thursday Doors – La Dimerie Blanzac
I risk repeating myself a little with today’s post for Thursday Doors, as I’m posting another tower, but this time the tower is quite small and the door that leads into it is very small and must surely have been built for a race of fairy people. The tower and the building it is attached…
Thursday Doors – Le Manoir d’Alfred de Vigny
Just across from our hillside is the wonderful property which used to belong to French poet Alfred de Vigny in the early 19th century. This medieval manoir was his retreat where he wrote some of his finest work in the wood-panelled room at the top of the stone tower and where he pottered about in his vineyards…
Hillside Views – Haybales
On our walks these last couple of days, Freddie the Labrador has insisted on walking along the field where the hay has recently been cut and turned into beautiful round bales. They smell divinely of summer, sweet and warm with a sprinkling of sunshine and look particularly beautiful arranged in a string like a necklace of…
Enveloped – Weekly Photo Challenge
Enveloped Enveloped in a golden sunset, the earth sleeps, wrapped in dreams of summer……. The hillside was bathed in glorious sunset light the other evening when I took this and I thought it would express perfectly my idea of ‘enveloped’ for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge. I’ve included a monochrome version too…………. ……and a colour…
Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge #4
THE LECTURER It had been another dull lecture, the hotel conference room hot and stuffy despite the air conditioning. Twenty minutes from the end and a number of her colleagues had already discreetly left for the bar or one of the fashionable cafes on the square. She didn’t quite know why she’d stayed, sorry for…
French Essence # 3 – Macaroons à la Française
I have always thought of macaroons (macarons) as a particularly French delicacy, a delightfully diminutive round cake, crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle made from ground almonds, sugar and egg whites. Endless varieties of flavouring and delicate pastel colours can be found in tempting tower displays in the finest French patisseries. …
French Essence #2 – Wine
A few years ago we worked for a while with a French estate agent helping to select properties we thought might appeal to potential English buyers. Given most people’s romantic notion of the perfect French dreamhouse, it was not difficult to dismiss the ranks of ugly concrete shoe boxes and Spanish style haciendas which sadly…
Sunset Colours and Autumn Vines
Every day of September here on the hillside, has been warm, balmy and beautiful; the evenings noticeably cooler as the Autumn approaches but full of astonishing light and colours. I decided the other evening to take a walk down the hill towards the poplar wood where the sheep live, passing en route the tiny vineyard…
Doors Part 3 – Jonzac – Seven Doors and a Window
Now that the summer is over and we return to our normal opening hours here on the hillside (5 days a week instead of 7) we are able, on rare occasions, to indulge in the odd visit to pastures new, to wallow in some slightly different scenery and recharge our batteries. Usually our ‘grand days…
Of Sunflowers, Kites and Kestrels….
In which we bang on about the weather again but for a different reason and then turn a little serious………….. I have always had the fanciful notion that the weather here on earth is largely dictated by the activities of the Olympian Gods up in the clouds. Right at this moment in time , they’re…
Summer Storms and Teeny Tiny Toads
In which we consider the return of Noah’s flood to the Charente and tackle a hoard of teeny tiny toads in the wine press………. The weather has achieved Biblical proportions today here in sunny France. After an impressive build up over the last few weeks and months, with a few minor monsoons here, a mini…
Oh No! It’s Holiday time on the Hillside
In which we consider the impending onslaught of summer visitors and wonder whether a person could have opening and closing times like a boutique. Well it’s that time of year again here on the hillside, the friends and family start their mass migration to foreign climes passing where possible by our front door for a…
Doors – Part 1
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.’ Alexander Graham Bell ALL PHOTOS © JANE MORLEY
Oh No! Here Comes Summer!…….
In which we consider the excesses of French summer weather and wish we had a decent deckchair…… Well finally, here in South West France, the sun has put in a long awaited appearance and the Summer has arrived, at least for the next few days. This is, of course, great news for those of us who…
And a fine time was had by almost all….
In which we praise the optimist, denounce the pessimist and wonder just who is Maureen? And so after weeks of planning and a good deal of hard work, our first independant arts and crafts fair is finally over. The gazebos and backdrops have been taken down, the debris tidied away and the hillside is back…
New Kid on the Blog
In which we enter a new world and attempt to learn a new language – twice… When we first moved to France almost 13 years ago, armed with our reasonable school French and an extra dose of advanced grammar, we were happily confident that we could cope on an everyday level with the language barrier….
A First Glimpse
In which we finally begin and some introductions are made….. Given the million and one other people writing about their lives in France and jostling for position in the blogosphere, it may be a weird decision to decide to join the throng. Is anyone out there ever going to notice us we…
View from a French Hillside 