Au revoir!

Ok, so we havn't written too much recently but the truth of the matter is we've just been having too much fun too spend time sitting in front of a computer! We've been to Cassis and Marseille, we've waded through marshes and been up viewing towers over lakes of leaping fish and flapping flamingoes, we've limboed and caleighed in the dinning room and spotted wild cats, kingfishers, rollers, and yes even ducks and donkeys!

So today we leave! Thank you to everyone who has made us feel so welcome here, to others, I can definately recommend a visit! Next stop is Bosnia and I'm not sure what access we'll have to the internet so our blog maybe quiet again for a while! Au revoir!

Sur le pont d’Avignon

We went to Avignon 2weeks ago. A city surrounded by towering walls, full of narrow streets and known for it's half bridge made famous in the french nursery rhyme 'Sur le pont d’Avignon' which translates as 'On the bridge of Avignon'. Apparently it originally was sung 'Under the bridge of Avignon' and it was where men would meet certain ladies for 'dancing'...hmmm, so that's what they called it back then.

Avignon is also famous for it's popery. At one point there was a split in the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, and one faction made it's home in this French city. For a long time it was an independant state to the rest of France, like the Vatican is to the rest of Italy. So they built the 'Palais de Papes', when we visited it was VE day and there was a big military parade with the old soldiers lining up with their flags. There were also lines of military types with shiny buttons and guns, but the humourous thing was that the musical accompaniment was a young persons marching band, and thgey were all giggly and embarresed to be there.

One of the high points of our daytrip was the visit to Le musée du Petit Palais with it's outstanding collection of mainly religious Italian and Provencal paintings from the late 13th to the early 16th centuries. Some of the paintings were breathtaking, others just plain confusing. But we found one that has to be the funniest depiction of baby Jesus we've ever seen. I wonder why he's grinning so much? This picture is worth enlarging, you can see his happy tiny teeth. I think he seems a little bit too old to be still posing for this type of portrait!

internet down

just to let you know our internet has been down since a thunderstorm a week last monday. We're both fine though and will and try and update the blog a.s.a.p!
Love to all!
D & T

He's Back!

Yes, that's right, only 24 hours later and he's back to his usual chirpy cheeky self. Being the gentleman that I am I don't want to dwell on the gory details for too long, but safe to say I felt and sounded like an over-inflated dead rodent bagpipe creating sounds and smells not meant to be heard by anything even vaguely human. Ok, enough of that.

Well today, we convinced Gabriel to take us to Le Baux de Provence, which is one of the most visited places in France outside of Paris. It could have been a film set for some medieval epic with it's position on a rocky crag surrounded by uncertain mountains and encompassed by fortifications, but instead it was a tourist trap full of crockery, small painted terracotta figurines and replica swords.

We found a small chapel which I thought was intersting because they'd painted a biblical mural on the walls using the local scenery as a backdrop. I liked it because it makes Christ seem more imminent, aproachable and manifest.

Outside the chapel was a beautiful metal cross, they seem to have them al over the place, in the countryside at cross-roads, in market squares etc... I guess they're the legacy of Roman Catholicism to the background of Provence.

After leaving the slightly damp and overcast Les Alpilles mountains, we headed for the vibrant market of Arles, where we tried to get as many freebies as possible. If we could poke it with a cocktail stick and make it stay it was destined to be a pre-lunch morsel. Sausage, ham, cheese, bead, olive oil (a bit difficult to stab), mango, olives, melon, stuff-we-had-no-idea-what-it-was, all was consumed and enjoyed. Deborah wanted to come away with a puppy, I fancied the live goat, but we left with nothing.

Bon Anniversaire Maman!

Well, it's just another work day really but I did want the world to know it was my mother's birthday today so please lift a glass or light a candle in a nearby cake and sing along with me! Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear Mummy! Happy birthday to you!

En Francais, Fridays is a work party day. Oh, but before I get into that I should clarify that I'm better again! yay! Although the sad news is that Tim's has been struck down with the dreaded lurgy. Boo! I don't think he's as badly affected by it as I was so he should be back to his bouncy self in no time. However with this opportunity of him otherwise engaged I would like to point out some flaws in his previous posting. For those who may be a little behind the times France is actually quite civilised now and there is a pharmacy with all sorts of modern medicine, just a couple of minutes cycle ride from our accomodation. Many may also be aware that Tim's organisational skills are not at the top of his very long list of strengths, and so he has failed to notice A Rochas thoughtful list of emergency numbers including a list of several local doctors which is taped to the phone. Actually it has been a brilliant place to be sick! I've felt really cared for as people in the community here have been checking up on me whilst I've been stuck in bed and as I have felt a little bit better I've been able to wander and rest in the peaceful, green and warm grounds.

Back to the work party then. On Friday mornings everyone works together at this centre to tackle some of the garden projects. Todays' was the ongoing tree issue that we started when we arrived. The new strategy has been to let Francoise loose with a chainsaw and just to try and get rid of the piles of sawn off branches. At least we'll know through the winter they'll be able to remember us through the stick piles of fire wood!

We seemed to have timed our visit to France impeccably as we are now about to have a second bank holiday weekend! So hopefully we'll get a further taste of the local area to report to you all.

Finally, there seems to be a problem with leaving comments on our blog at the momment. I've changed some settings to hopefully make it easier so please try again if you have had problems! Alternatively you can always email us. We really enjoy hearing from everyone! Bye for now!

In the Field.

Because Deborah has been mainly sleeping for the past 24 hours it has allowed me to go out with Francois, the centre ecologist, and check-out flowers, birds and insect life. I saw some amazing things, including sun-bathing carp rolling in the shallow waters of the marsh, kingfishers like blue lightning flashing through the reed beds, colonies of black kites slowly circling above looking for prey.

Francois most exciting moment was when we came a cross a tortoise. Unfortuneately it wasn't an indigenous species and had probably ben set free there, like an unwanted puppy. It got me wondering though, what bad behaviour warrants relesing a 'naughty' tortoise into the wild? Maybe he jumped up at the dining table too much, or worse than that he bit a small child...hmmm, we'll never know.

I have to say I'm not that bothered about the flowers, but Deborah and I've been put on a project to survey the local road-side flowers. A Rocha hope to harvest the seeds and sow a wildflower meadow, eventually collecting the seeds from that and trialing them on a local landowner's lands. A Rocha's hope is to sell wild flower meadow seeds in the future, so that people like us can be more 'au naturale'.

In practice what this means for Deborah and I is that we go along, find some 'interesting' flowers, photograph them, stake and number them and record their location on a map. Trouble is we don't know our rare specis from our invasive weeds, and all the flower books are in french. So it's all a bit hit and miss.

Here's some pictures to brighten up this post:

A Locust laying eggs & black bulls watching us work.

One Down!

Yesterday Deborah was ill, in fact she's still recovering. She was vomitting throughout the night from late on tuesday to 6am on wednesday, all I could do was empty the sick bowl, give her some reassurance and try and stay awake.

Well, she's on the mend now, she's mainly been sleeping and resting and sleeping some more since then.

I'm so glad for my cast-iron stomach and my high tolerance to grim bodily excretions, it made cleaning up after Deborah a breeze.

It's strange being away from home when you're ill, all your usual safety nets are gone, no car to whisk her off to hospital, no medicine in the cabinet, I wouldn't even have known the number for the emergency services if it had all gone really wrong. So when you're feeling a little helpless all you can do is look to heaven and trust God.

What is 'church'?

Deborah and I have been chopping wood again today in the Provencal sunshine. All that physical work and blisters let my mind wander. It got me thinking whether 'A Rocha' is a church.

As an organisation their vision is for each project to stand for the following values:

CHRISTIAN charity; committment to CONSERVATION; CAMPAIGNING for the care of God's world; drawing on CROSS-CULTURAL strength of the world-wide church; each project having a distinctive COMMUNITY emphasis.

In practice they live in outward looking communities, they have a definite mission focus on science, research, practical conservation and environmental education and people join the community and become christians. They also pray, study the bible and worship God, so are they a church?

Ok, they don't baptise or take communion (not that I've seen) but neither do the Salvation Army.

Could 'A Rocha' type communites be an answer for the declining church in the West, prophetic communities with a specific mission focus, whether it be conservation, skater kids, or simply young families with kids?

Monday 1st May

Very exciting day today! We experienced one of the top ten attractions in France (according to the Lonley Planet guide) the Fete des Gardians. The 'Camargue Cowboys' came to town, in a big style! First of all the cowboys and girls congregated in all their traditional finery on the main promanade. They then paraded on hordes of ponies guided by one handed pipers and drummers. The horses quickly attended mass, as all good horses do, to be blessed by the priest and an effigy of St. George.

The festivities had a very Spanish feel with ladies riding side saddle with their big dresses festooned in ribbons, lace and cushed velvet, so we continued the theme with paella and sangria for lunch! We took the lull in the days programme to have a look around Arles. This is the town we are currently living closest to. Vincent Van Gogh lived and died here. His famous street cafe at night painting is of a local street and we visited the hospital he stayed in. Today it is no longer a hopsital but a beautiful garden which Tim and Gabriel can be seen in in our photo!


We then rejoined the days programme for a Grand Spectacle Provencal at the the Amphitheatre. We started off with non-lethal bullfighting which involved bull 'fighters/runners' removing tassels and charms from the bull's horns. It was mainly skinny boys in white jumping over fences as the bull thundered towards them!

The main content of the show was displaying the Gardians' skill and culture. This involved games such as young cowboys on horse back trying to remove ribbons off each others sleeves and men (also on horse back) lancing a ring off a hook at full pelt! The women did some side saddled syncronised horse dancing. Oh la la!

The finales show cased the Garidans' skills with the bulls. They subdued bulls using long poles (non-contact), wrestled a young bullock to the ground, as they would for branding, and herded a group of four bulls by surrounding them in a triangle of horses (see photo!). One of our favourite parts of the day was when a young bullock leaped over the safety barrier, scattering onlooking Gardians much to the delight of the crowd. As the wrestled it back into the ring it then charged after the horse, thus the chaser became the chased!

All the fun of the fete for just 8 Euros!

Thank you for allyour comments, glad you're enjoying our little escapades!