PORTUGUESE BULL FIGHT, MONT DE MARSAN JULY 2014

It's all in the title, isn't it? I was invited to go to a Portuguese-style bullfight in Mont de Marsan by a near neighbour, Henri. 
What makes it Portuguese is that the matador (not the right name) is on horseback and they don't kill the bull. Or not in the ring, anyway. I couldn't say, and didn't want to find out, what happens to the bull after the fight. 
It was pretty impressive though, primarily as a display of horseman-(and woman)-ship. Practically the whole fight is carried out from horseback, the horse having no protection from the bull but the skill of rider and horse. It is amazing that horses and riders are not touched by the bulls.

There are some distractors in the ring and, at the end, of the contest, 8 of them line up, one behind the other so that the bull cannot see how many of them there are, and tempt the bull to charge them. The reason why there is a number of them is to absorb the thrust of the bull. One of these men then goes to the bull and throws a loop over its horns so that it can be taken from the ring. This looks to be the most dangerous (from the human point of view) part of the whole performance and there was quite a sprinkling of human blood on the sand at the end of each bout.   

AJACCIO

This Post is of photos taken the first day of our visit to Corsica in Ajaccio, the capital.

 We read about the street market, selling farmers' produce before we realised we were already there.

This notice in our hotel seems to offer a refund for any meals paid for in the restaurant.

And we can see here, on a notice for the Petit Train, that Napoleon, who was born on the island and apparently couldn't stand it, came from an isillystriou family. Is that somewhere in Greece? 

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.