The Pyrenees from Our Bedroom Window
I’m often
hearing the comment that I spend a lot of time away from home and even a recent
shot I posted from last November noted that I get around. I have to agree that
Rose and I do travel quite a bit, a conscious decision made following a life-changing
occurrence, but still constrained by Rose having a day job. Our plan is to
travel while we can and build a bank of memories that we can look back on when
the ‘lure’ of international air travel has waned.
We’ve
reached the stage now where all of our holiday trips are photography-based,
except for one, a situation that has evolved since we first raised a camera in
anger back in 2011. With only one exception (2013), since 2009 we have spent 2
weeks every year in the Gascony region of France, either in June or September.
In recent years, the September date has been
favourite,
as I like to spend my birthday there.
Originally,
the attraction was to spend our time there indulging our preferred pastime of
cycling and to some extent it still is. For my 60th birthday, we celebrated by
cycling up the Col du Tourmalet, Rose from the western side and me from the
eastern route, meeting up at the summit. But as the photography took hold, we
found ourselves bringing all of the camera kit as well as the bikes. The garden
of the house we always rented gave us some wildlife shots that have been
published and there was plenty to see in the fields around and about.
We had
daily visits from Green Woodpeckers, wild Rabbits that were quite tame and even
my first sighting of a Southern Scarce Swallowtail butterfly. There were plenty
of Buzzards, although they were even more flighty than in UK, usually a pair of
Jays and on one of the June trips, a pair of Black-shouldered Kites with a
chick that fledged while we were there. We had Red Kites, Black Kites,
Hummingbird Hawk Moths, White Stork and an abundance of other insects. Away
from the house, in the Pyrenees we saw Griffon Vultures and on one day on the
bikes, a Lammergeier. Across the fields
were Red Deer and in one of the local lakes, Coypu.
It got to
the stage that in 2015 we even packed our hide and set it up in the garden. But
it seems that was when things started to go downhill. All we managed to
photograph that year were Pied Flycatchers. The
last couple of years we reached the stage where we only took a camera as
insurance and in case I came up with a landscape that caught my eye.
It’s
difficult to know what caused the change, it could be Brexit I suppose. What it
did was take us full circle so that the holiday became a rest from photography
and enabled us to do some cycling on nice quiet roads. Drivers there are fully
tolerant of cyclists and we didn’t feel endangered or threatened at all. So
much so that on return to the UK the urge to ride the bike was hugely
diminished.
If you’ve
followed me this far you are probably wondering what place this post has in a
website that is primarily about wildlife photography. That’s not a bad
question, but I’m writing this on my return from our latest, and last, trip to
that particular house in Gascony. The house has been sold and will no longer be
available so we have had to find somewhere new. Fortunately we found somewhere
about ten miles away in a valley, which will give us access to plenty of
cycling routes from the front door.
The shame about that is, this year there were signs that the wildlife situation is coming around. The trees at the bottom of the garden are visited daily by Woodpeckers, Jays and on more than one occasion, Black-shouldered Kites. I’ve seen a Southern Scarce Swallowtail in the garden, the first since 2012 and Red Deer in the field opposite. There were Buzzards aplenty, although still just as flighty, as was the local Kestrel that had been missing for the last couple of years and a couple of Red Kites.
I’m at a loss to know why the situation changed
as it did. There appeared to be nothing that had changed locally to cause it,
but I guess we’ll never know. That’s a pity, because I have the feeling that
next year would have been less cycling, more togging. Of course we may find
there is plenty of wildlife to photograph at the new location, so perhaps we
should again take full togging gear just in case.
