A day of two halves

Both Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon were rather exciting, although in very different ways.

You know by now that our cottage in France is in the middle of nowhere, on top of a hill, and of course that brings all kind of wildlife to the doorstep. Every morning I walk the dogs along our lane and they love snuffling at all the animal tracks left overnight.

 Saturday morning, about 7am, I went out of the gate and onto the lane, and after a few metres the dogs stopped of course, and started sniffing around. I looked down the lane while I waited with them, and thought, oh no, there are two deer on the lane, half hidden in the tall grass, I hope they disappear before the dogs see them, and, oh, they are a very dark colour............  At that moment, the 'deer' started grunting and snorting, and I realised they were two great big wild boars! OMG, of course, the dogs immediately reacted and started racing towards the boars and I nearly fainted. I was so scared for my dogs, I screamed and whistled for them to come back, but of course once on the hunt, there is no stopping Poppy, but at least Hector came back pretty quickly. Poppy disappeared so quickly chasing the boars, and I eventually managed to raise my DH with my whistling and screaming and we both tried to find her. I had terrible visions of finding her mauled to death by the boars, they are extremely dangerous animals. But after 20 minutes or so the little b.tch suddenly turned up behind us no worse for her adventure. I, on the other hand, was much worse, lol, it took me hours to calm down. Not an experience I want to repeat in a hurry! And no, I didn't get any photos of the sangliers ( wild boars) , lol!

So that was the morning. The afternoon at least promised excitement of a different sort. A few days earlier, a lovely gentleman came to our house and explained that the Annual Charolais Brionnais cycle race would come along the road at the top of our lane, and could we ( and of course all the neighbours along the same route ) not use our cars between certain times, because the roads are so steep and narrow with very dangerous bends. Once a year, for a couple of hours? Of course, no problem.

We thought we would make a bit of an afternoon of it, so we invited a couple of friends to come over. We set up our garden table on the corner of our top field, brought out the nibbles and the drinkies, and watched the whole thing unfold from there. 

DH on the right, our lovely friends on the left

Typical apero in our area, rose wine with creme de pamplemousse -

One of the marshalls was also stationed at our corner, so we had a good chat with him as well. First, there were the promo cars, loads of them, all honking their horns and waving and shouting greetings -

Then came the security motor bikes, loads of them -

and finally the start car with the flashing lights, which meant the 115 cyclists were right behind! -

Yep, woohoo, the first ones were coming round the corner! -

 A MINI TOUR DE FRANCE!!!

I loved how the cyclists were colour coordinated with their support cars -

and being so close to them, was interesting to see their facial expressions-

We did watch the Tour de France a couple of years ago when it came through a town not far from us, but of course you can't get close, there are thousands of spectators, so taking photographs was far too difficult. Not here though ;-) -

After most of the 115 cyclists had come through in large groups, there was a long line of support vehicles -

and a few single ones trailing a little behind, peddling like crazy to try and catch up-

We had a lovely couple of hours spent with our friends and watching it all, and you know what? WE EVEN MADE THE PAPERS! Yep, out of all the shots they must have taken along the very long route, in the towns etc, they picked US for their newspaper spread. We thought that was hilarious.

So, the day ended well after all. And Sunday was brocante day. Found a few things, nothing too exciting, but you know, lol, a few things are better than no things.

More about that later. 

For now, thank you all so much for stopping by and visiting, a big hello and welcome to the new followers, and a toodlepip to you all. xxx