French Life-expat France

Mrs B couldn’t got on her usual Tuesday morning excursion today - she usually sets off exploring with a friend once a week - which meant I get roped on as a rather poor alternative.

As a result, we set off bright and early to explore a few tiny villages we had never visited before, and about a trillion hectares of vineyards south of Bergerac. The villages weren’t particularly thrilling - there’s only so many Roman style churches a person can look at enthusiastically - but the vines look at the best at the moment, with the leaves turning orange - red - brown for autumn.

It was very enjoyable, in stark contrast to the bike ride I went for on Sunday, which was very gruelling - Saturday night was late after the rugby, I hadn’t eaten enough, and I haven’t been out on the bike much recently, so soon enough I was struggling. The solution, my French cycling companion told me, was to eat something…but what?

Now, fig season has more or less finished, but they are a great source of energy, so we stopped at a fig tree to see what we could come up with. There was no fruit to be seen on the tree, and I was all ready to set off, when he told me that I was giving up too easily.

A few minutes of scrabbling through the undergrowth and dead leaves, and he emerged triumphantly with two figs. Neither was bigger than a marble, one was as hard as a ballbearing, and the other completely dark-brown from months of ripening.

Neither of them looked like something you would want to eat, being the only two figs that even the wasps and ants had rejected, but it seemed ungrateful to complain so I nibbled small bits off the edges and wondered if it was still possible to catch dysentery in France.

In truth I can’t claim that my cycling improved from that point on.

Last vaguely interesting event, Mrs B went to a saffron farm this afternoon to look at the flowers. Did you know that saffron, that staple of Indian cuisine, grows in south-west France? Neither did I.

Anyway, the appearance of the saffron flowers has been eagerly awaited by Mrs B and her gardening friend, who set off all excited to see them - the farm operates small guided tours, by appointment, in the afternoon, apparently. What they didn’t realise as they set off, is that the farm harvests the saffron flowers in the morning - so the afternoon guided tour leaves something to be desired.

The owners proudly told them that they had harvested at least a thousand that morning, but had left a handful so they could see what they looked like. A bit like going to Holland to see the tulip fields and seeing a heap of bulbs and a small vase of flowers, I imagine. I’ll stop home and stick to orchid care and mowing the bamboo that creeps ever closer to the swimming pool for no.