The (Very) Early Bird!

On days that we don't have any exploring planned,  I like to walk first thing before the world wakes up and enjoy the peace of the countryside .  This morning however I discovered that I wasn't the only early bird around as when I opened the curtains this is what greeted me!!

The start of another beautiful day perhaps.....

......or something more sinister - maybe an alien craft?????  Best wait for a little more light!

No!  Not Martians this time, just our (insomniac?) neighbour starting his day very early and ploughing 
away at the crack of dawn !!

Not such a quiet start to my day after all!!

Images of Autumn ...contd!

Patience has never been one of my strengths (!!)and I am sure I'm getting worse as I get older, thus disproving the theory that we mellow with age :-)

I was so annoyed and impatient with Blogger's  nonsense on my last post that I just signed off and left it as it was.  However, just to show that there is more to Autumn in Brittany than a few dead leaves lying around, here are the photos that didn't make it!

Enjoy !!

Images of Autumn

Sunday we were up on the hills, yesterday it was back to the Nantes-Brest canal on another  beautiful sunny day.  Today - it is raining!!!!! Don't you just hate weather forecasters when they are accurate with bad news!

Sorry about the layout ,no matter what I try I have no control at all - Blogger has certainly got a mind if its own today!!!

Autumn Sunshine

Our lovely Autumn weather is still with us, but not for much longer by the sound of the long term forecast, so it seems only right to take advantage of it while we can !  Yesterday saw us back in the Broceliande Forest and another ramble over the hill tops for views like this...

......and on the top, like this !

It was all a bit  'follow your nose' as we just picked a pathway and off we went!  To be honest when we got home and checked the map we were amazed at how far we'd been  - would you believe 6 miles- not bad for a 'little stroll' on a sunny afternoon!!  It was such a lovely day though and the surroundings so beautiful we didn't noticed the distance :-)

Did manage to get ourselves a little bit lost, but were lucky enough to find the little river that flows into the lake shown at the start of this post

Did I say river  ??  You can see from this how dry it has been for many weeks now, even the lakes were well down from normal levels.

Now - which way is home???

By the time we got back to Trehorenteuc the village was crowded with the usual Sunday afternoon tourists and these fellows were doing a roaring trade with their vintage 'horse powered' bus taking rides around the village

.....passed the superb  Arthurian mural on the wall of the Tourist Office.......

........the old 'Manoir'

...and of course the village church or la Chapelle du Gral.  Built  in 1614, what you can't see unfortunately are the wonderful stained glass windows depicting scenes from the  Round Table  stories,  together with biblical scenes such as the Last Supper .  

A lovely bonus afternoon even if we were glad to take our boots off at last !!!!

Good News Day!

The great news is that our little orphans are no longer homeless!!  Today they are leaving for their new home and what is even better news - they're staying together - how good is that! 

It's now official that they are both little boys, confirmed by the vet on Tuesday , she'd been unable to do so sooner as they were so very young! Both are house trained,  lapping and feeding of their own accord so no more cuddles while they take the bottle for anyone :-)  Just see how they've grown though

More than doubled in size, and although the little black & white one is quite a bit smaller than his brother, he is certainly just as mischievous and both are full of curiosity  !!

It was so lovely to see them again and spend a little time with them before they go, I know I only had them for a short while but they certainly stole my heart away!!

A story with a very happy ending thanks to the help of a group who's only resources are what they are able to raise amongst themselves. By holding cake sales, raffles  etc within the community, these volunteers manage to foot all  vet bills and where necessary provide food for rescue cats until they are found permanent homes.This year alone they have placed some 15 kittens, as well as a number of fully grown cats, in good homes and currently have another 8 (excluding these 2 little ones) on their books - I guess they deserve to be called 'animals lovers' don't you? I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that DH & I are their newest members!!

Bloggers' Quilt Festival - Fall 2009

I am so glad I made it back in time for Amy's Quilt Festival as the Spring Festival was such fun and led me to lots of new blogger friends!

As I've already written about my favourite quilt , this time I've chosen a log cabin, another quilt that really tried my patience (!) as the logs were only 3/4" finished which not only took forever to cut and piece but - all that pressing !!!!



I just love the placement of the blocks, which I found in a very old Quiltmaker magazine I 'inherited' from a quiltie friend here in Brittany and as this has now been passed on ( English language quilting mags are very precious here in France !!) I can't tell you which issue it was! Every time I look at this quilt I can see something different as there are stars and diamonds, squares and triangles, some straight furrows, sunshine & shadows and maybe even a little barn raising? All this in one quilt - it doesn't get much better than that !!

I also made my first pieced back for this quilt, nothing very flash, but just one big log cabin type block to make the fabric go a little further which works for me !





In spite of the scorched fingers (!) it was certainly worth the time & trouble and has become a firm favourite of mine and most of the family, which is why it still lives with me and hasn't found a new home as I am too much of a coward to decided who to give it too!

Normal Service Resumed!

Well, the holiday is over and as usual the washing machine is now cowering in the corner after working non stop for what seems like forever!! That part of coming home is bad enough but - Oh My!! Who's going to iron it all :-)

Our leisurely wander up through France to Pays de Calais was somewhat shorter than planned thanks to our two little orphans (both doing well and I have visiting rights to them until they find new homes !) but very pleasant just the same. The weather was very kind to us and we were able to do lots of sightseeing and walking, especially on the lovely long beaches of Normandie , Picardie and in particular the Baie de Somme . It was quite surprising to see how lovely the Somme was, as like many others I am only aware of the area's history during WWI and it was hard to imagine the lovely countryside as the sea of mud associated with one of the most horrific battles of the Great War.

Cap Gris- Nez , famous for being the 'grounding' place for cross Channel swimmers, and it's sister Cap Blanc-Nez were worth the visit, albeit a very quick one, as we made our way to Calais to catch a ferry across to Dover, with it's white cliffs



and a short stay in Kent - but more about this in another post!

Just before we left, I was very relieved to hear that my Friendship Bag Swap had arrived safely at it's new home!!I can tell you that panic mode was beginning to set in as it took over 3 weeks for the package to arrive in Norway, but all ended well and I think Grethe was reasonably please with her parcel! I forgot to take photos before I sent it off so I 'borrowed' this one from Grethe's Blog, hope she doesn't mind !!




Unfortunately it seems as though the bar of chocolate didn't make it to the photo shot!!!!

The fog has lifted, and the sun is shinning again so I'm off to take a 'quiltie' photo to enter in Amy's Autumn Blogger's Quilt Festival - have you entered yours yet ??????

Motherless!

If you don't do ' cats' or 'cute'(!) then this certainly isn't the post for you!!

Just after lunch on Friday DH came in looking a bit worried and said that there were 2 kittens under the hedge at the bottom of our garden. Now I know some people claim to have fairies there, but kittens - no chance!! He was right though and this is what we found






They took one look at us and scurried under the decking at top speed so we assumed that mum must be around somewhere as these little fellows certainly seemed to know where home was. It wasn't a great surprise to see them really as stray cats are a mammouth problem in this part of the world and we have several of them around the village, so I suppose it was only a matter of time.

We kept an eye on them the rest of the day and all through Saturday but didn't touch them in case mum got upset when she turned up. Trouble was that mum didn't turn up at all and the kitties had started to come out from under the decking whenever we got near, mewling most pitifully!! By Sunday morning they were in a bad way, and to cut a very long story short, after dozens of phone calls we managed to track down a cat rescue charity in the area run by a number of fellow Brits, and were able to collect some feeding bottles and formula for the little ones.

Very small feeds every 10 minutes all Sunday afternoon started to pay off by late evening and by midday on Monday they were on their feet and ready to play! No sign of mum at all during this time,even though we left food out for her in case she returned, but when it was still untouched Sunday night we decided she wasn't coming back for them and took them into the warm!

They are the most gorgeous little animals you can imagine and are so full of mischief - I know all baby animals are cute, but judge this pair for yourselves!!




Well - I guess one milk bar is much the same as another !!




Look how cute I am !



...... me too..me too!!


Please come down before you hurt yourself!!



Lets race......


......and the winner is...



..but I found my new mum's leg!!






Wanna fight, eh !!!



Oh No!! She's put us back in Alcatraz!!!!

It's been a bit difficult the last few days as we've had to keep William indoors in case he either attacked the little ones or got attacked himself had their mother come back, but tomorrow they are going to a new foster mum until they can be placed in permanent homes as we are going away for a few weeks and won't be able to keep them. I will certainly miss the pleasure and smiles these little characters have given me over the last few days, but at least I'll be able to keep track of them through the volunteers who run the Cat Rescue Charity and I'll certainly be helping with the fund raising in the future!!


post script - I have been talking to one of my neighbours since I started this post, and he tells me that he saw the kittens being moved into our garden on Thursday afternoon but is adamant that he saw 5 kittens being moved, so what may have happened to mum and the other 3 I dread to think as there are so many predators around ( that's why I have our 2 'caged' during the daytime, this way they are safe and at night they are indoors) or maybe it was just that she couldn't cope with all 5 and decided to abandon some, who knows - I don't suppose I ever will!!

Broceliande

I mentioned Broceliande - land of legends and enchantment - a few posts ago, and whilst there is much debate as to whether Arthur & his Knights or Merlin actually existed, here in Brittany there is certainly a feeling that they may well have !

The forest of Paimpont covers many hundreds of hectares and a very large part of it is either privately owned or used as a training area by the French Army. In fact convoys of troops travelling along the dual carriageway from Ploermel to Rennes are quite a common sight and sometimes might you even catch glimpses of camouflaged figures scurrying through the the undergrowth !!

However, the publicly owned 10% has much to offer in support of the Round Table connection! We have claims to the Fountain of Eternal Youth, Merlin's Tomb as well as that of La Fee Morgane. Add to this the castle of La Fee Viviane (the Lady of the Lake) , oak trees 1,000 years old, manoirs & chateaux dotted all over the forest and some of the prettiest villages in the area and you have Broceliande!!

Now, whether you believe in these legends or not (!) there is no denying the absolute beauty of the area and taking advantage of the Indian summer we've been having, off we went to explore the Val sans Retour ! Local legend differs slightly from the official version as it is claimed that if you are a faithless lover, then you will not return from the valley but be turned into stone! Whichever version you choose to believe it is well worth the visit - if you dare!!

I have been trying for AGES to upload photos and am just about ready to scream!!I think there is a problem with my ISP at the moment as we seem to be on a 'go slow' as well as some other strange happenings (!!), so until things settled down and I can show you some of my own, just have a browse here

Have you seen this from Australia?


These very talented & generous ladies are making Blogland an offer it can't refuse :-)




and how about this from Canada, the first of Dorothy's 'Sweet Nostalgia' free block of the month - how cute is that !


Now that really is a North to South connection - see how much we'd miss without WWWdotCOM! !!