Back Again

It has been over three weeks since I last posted. Although I have been away for most of that time, there is no excuse for the gap since Tuesday, except that I am finding it difficult to get back into my normal routines . So sinews need to be stiffened, resolve needs to be strengthened and blogs need to be written.

Our holiday was in a small village near Matha (which in turn is fairly near Cognac), where my sister and brother-in-law have a house. We go there quite often and love the peace of the countryside and the way our normal world first fades and then totally disappears. No internet, TV or radio - no need to know about anything happening anywhere else. A house, a group of people, daily tasks, outings, eating and drinking - and that is all there needs to be.

The countryside is perfect for running - open and rolling, with traffic-free roads. No run is flat but for every long drag up there is a lovely long slope down. As well as the roads linking the villages there are masses of small vine roads to give the farmers access to their crops, so you can run on good surfaces but feel as if you are running through the fields. There are no hedges, or other barriers to block you in so you can stand up straight, look out and see for miles.

The agriculture is interesting . Our tradition is for farm houses to be isolated - on their farm. Here the farmers all live in the village and travel out to their surrounding land. For an outsider there are no clear lines of demarcation between the land of different farmers, just as there is nothing between the different crops - they butt up against each other so there can be a vines next to wheat, next to sunflowers, next to maize, with trees as windbreaks. It is probably close to how things were before land enclosure - more like medieval strip farming but done in a modern way. Except that there are no animals. A generation ago every farmer would also have kept a few animals but the economics have now changed.


So here are a couple of photos of the landscape. I will amuse myself over the next few posts with some more photos and might even make some ludicrously convoluted attempt to link them to running.