MARSEILLES TO CORSICA

These pictures have been inserted by Ruth into the Drafts section of the blog for me to reshuffle and then to add some words of description. 

 It was Ruth's birthday on 31st. October. We seem to be establishing a pattern of going away to celebrate our birthdays and this time it was the turn of Corsica to receive the benefits of a visit.  

These few shots are of Marseille, from where we got the ship which was to take us and our car to Ajaccio.

The floodlit castle past which we sailed is the Chateau d'If where the fictional Count of Monte Cristo was held. I have been to the island which had been a prison and can vouch for the fact that it was an unpleasant place in which to be confined.

MAUBOURGUET ETAPE TOUR DE FRANCE 2014

Cripes! Ruth has added a whole lot of photos to the draft blogs, which I didn't know about and for which I was expected to add text.That's a bit of an undertaking, so I'll summarise. 

Maubourguet is a town/village about 3 miles from where we live. This year one of the stages of the cycling Tour de France started there. We have been quite lucky since the Tour two years ago also came within a very few miles of our home and we saw Bradley Wiggins leading the Tour that time. 

We went into Maubourguet in July and saw the start. The first picture shows two of our friends, Lesley and Irene walking into town. After that the shots are of the market place and then of the "caravane" that precedes the race, throwing out sweets and tacky souvenirs. Tacky and plentiful they may be but Ruth and I didn't manage to get our hands on many as we were sitting on a wall and the man in front of us with his child intercepted most of what came our way. Never mind, we should probably have thrown them away in any case.

 

 

 

DOES ANYONE LOOK AT BLOGS ANYMORE....

....or have they been overtaken by Facebook et al.?

Here's just a short comment for anybody who may be browsing.

Today is 27th. April, the last day of the ski season in the French Pyrenees. I had my last ski of the season yesterday and there was plenty of snow left, better than some previous years and enough, you would think, for several weeks more. But we've had some odd weather today, 10-minute bursts of sunshine alternating with 10 minutes of heavy rain and strong winds. Real April showers. It was lucky I managed to mow the lawn last Thursday morning.

Caesar Manrique's House in the Lava bubbles Lanzarote

Manrique had a number of homes on Lanzarote. This is the best known. Ruth is pictured here outside this "house" in the centre of the island, with one of his sculptures behind her.

 

Me at the same place.

It's really difficult to photograph three-dimensioned images with a 2D camera but these are our attempts.  This is a shot taken at ground level looking down into the house.

And this is looking across the top of the house at the countryside. As you can see, volcanic ash is not very fertile.

This is taken from inside the house, looking up to ground level. Because it doesn't rain very much in Lanzarote a watertight roof is not necessary, but protection from the wind is.

Again, a shot looking upwards.

In one of the seating areas.

The indoor garden.

Caves of the blind albino crabs

These photos are out of order. At various place on Lanzarote there are caves formed by volcanic gasses at they bubbled up from below. Many of the caves, of course, collapsed but there are still many which remain. From some of them Manrique made his subterranean home, but this one, filled with seawater which has permeated in from the ocean remains as a spectacle. It is the home of blind albino crabs, apparently unique in the world.

 

This is a shot of the interior of the cave/bubble. You will get an idea of the size by comparing with the people at the far end.

A swimming pool has been made in some of the collapsed section of the cave.

 

Note the people on the right-hand side of the cave.

 

 

 

It seems to be bloody freezing in France today and I am back in long trousers. It is hard to imagine that I was in shorts over a month ago.

 

Amador's corner with Andres and Borro and Emilio

Twice while we were on Lanzarote we visited a bar recommended to us by Dick, El Rincon de Amador. Amador sold the bar a couple of years ago and it is now run by Emilio but every night, as far is we are aware, there is local Spanish live music.

 

These are Andres and Borro.

And this time with Emilio providing the rhythm section.

This animated clip may work for you. It didn't for me!

La Graciosa and theMirador del Rio

 

There's rather a lot of photos in this post, so most of them will be uncaptioned.

 

Close to the sea near Malpas de la Corona, towards Orzola. I picked up a volcanic stone which we brought home. (Malpas isn't Welsh or Cornish, by the way.)

This is the apron on the harbour at La Graciosa. The restaurant where we celebrated my birthday is beyond the single person in the photograph

This is looking at the hinterland of the island. As you can see, the roads are all sand.

This is the light at the northernmost tip of Lanzarote.

And now we come to the viewpoint on Lanzarote looking across to La Graciosa. Viewpoints are not my strongpoint, so to speak, but this one was stupendous. Another one of Cesar Manrique's creations, it is situated on the northwest coast and I shouldn't have gone to it if we hadn't been so close. There were a few cars around the entrance, pictured below, which gives no sign of what you are about to see.

You go in and this is the view, more than 1500 feet up and looking down on La Graciosa, from where we had just come. If you go back up two pictures you will be able to see the hillside from sea level.

Myself and friend enjoying the view.

The Atlantic Ocean.

Another view of La Graciosa.