Wildflower walk

Not our house but one of our favourites, the “Chateau”

We’ve had a few days here in France and the weather has been dramatic and beautiful. The temperatures when we drove down on Thursday steadily rose and as we neared the house it had reached over 30 degrees. That evening it felt very heavy and stormy and true enough, at 3am a huge thunderstorm hit and lasted a good couple of hours. Fortunately none of the dogs were worried by it, remarkable really to see Twinkle being scared of regular day to day things like approaching her to clip on her lead, but in the thunderous racket of a storm she was perfectly at ease.

The next day the heat returned and we had a quiet day sat under the apple tree, dozing on and off and all of us catching up on sleep. That night, the storm made a noisy return and we lost electricity at 1am across the region, it was fixed by midday yesterday so we weren’t really inconvenienced but it’s been a lively start to our holiday.

Due to the high temperatures we need to head out early each morning for our walks if we’re all to get some decent exercise before the heat makes it impossible to move. So far we’ve done a couple of really pleasant walks through the woods but this morning we decided to go across to the Chateau, it’s a decent couple of hours walk and can be too hot if we time it wrong, but this morning we were out early enough to give it a try. We hadn’t managed to walk there on our last trip as it was wet and the paths get waterlogged and muddy quickly but we were hopeful this morning of coming home with clean feet and paws as it’s been so hot and dry.

It’s one of my favourite walks direct from our house as it is largely off-road and the dogs can be freely off-lead most of the walk. It also has staggeringly beautiful views all year round. It’s a mixture of forest and flower-filled meadows at this time of year, in the winter it’s one of stark, frozen beauty. It was one we hadn’t yet introduced Twinkle Berry to and I knew that she would enjoy it today.

As we descended through the trees to the path across the fields, we were happy to see that this year they have been planted with sunflowers, they are often corn which is dull to walk through and lacking in visual appeal…..shame the farmers can’t take our aesthetic desires into account when planning their plantings! Normally by the end of  July the sunflowers would be in full bloom but because of the late and cold spring everything is delayed, but there were a few early yellow blooms opening up to give a hint of how stunning the fields are going to be in a couple of weeks time.

The path through the fields is rather overgrown, few people walk here, but we battled a route through. We weren’t sure though that the girls really appreciated the beauty of the wildflowers they were entangled in….

When walking through anything remotely thicket-like with Susie-Belle it is not uncommon for me to pick her up and carry her along, firstly to help her out and make her walk as smooth as I can but also when things are at eye-level for her, I do worry that she may get a cornea scratch, so I was careful this morning to check back on her. She valiantly made her own way through the flowers and didn’t seem too worried, although when we reached the clearer path at the end, she was, like her sisters somewhat wet and bedraggled from the morning dew and exertions.

The walk was a success all round, Twinkle loved it and we managed a two hour walk before the heat of the day really started. Now we’re all about to head off to the loungers for an afternoon nap. Have a lovely Sunday everyone.