As you may have noticed there’s a sports event called the Tour de France going on at the moment (well, you’d know about it if you were in France). It’s been down here in the Pyrénées for the past few days and I’ve seen two stages of it this week. This morning was stage 18: Salies de Béarn to Bordeaux. I went there with my daughter to get a glimpse of the riders as they signed on for the race at the podium and soak up some of the atmosphere (and some of the free gifts from the ‘caravan’).

Beautiful weather and enormous crowds made it very exciting and great to witness. The Tour comes down to the Pyrénées every year, so if it’s not actually passing our front door like it did in 2008, it’ll be somewhere very near with the opportunity to see it first-hand at least once or twice.

Salies is a very picturesque Béarnaise village which makes for a very ‘intimate’ crowd in it’s narrow streets! A great place for a ‘depart’ in the Tour.

Every year Navarrenx, where we live ,has a cooking competition on Bastille Day, the 14th of July, called the ‘Saumonade’. It involves forming a team and coming up with a theme to dress onesselves and your cooking area and a recipe to cook a salmon in an innovative way. This year we decided to be castaways, using old clothes and hats, even making the front of a ship-wrecked boat out of cardboard.

Whilst a Frenchman and an Englishman tried to make a South American cocktail, the real chef was cooking a Thai inspired spicy salmon to impress the judges.

Not that we’ve got any photos of it, but it was delicious believe me. Did it win anything? Only the second best plate decoration. The French have still got to get used to food being a little bit spicy.

A delicious repas was served at lunchtime and great fun was had by everybody, as usual. Roll on next year.

Last week we had four groups of 20 youngsters hire out bikes from our bike hire shop Pret A Rouler. They had booked them in advance last year in preparation for their stay near here in a campsite in the Basque country.

Unfortunately they had chosen the hottest day of the year so far (40 degrees) and a couple of them fainted and one bike had to be rescued. Even though there were around 80 of them over four days, only one of them actually had a mis-hap and managed to hurt themselves. Nothing serious luckily.

Very warm weather here this past few days, so I thought it was time to find somewhere shady and cool. What better place than down to the river under some greenery.

Combining some cycling with a fishing trip, I found this lovely spot along the Gave too; a sort of island made by the rocks crossing the bed of the river.

Easter preparations for the gallery and the latest on ‘the dome’….

It all started early today, got up at 6.30 am , in the dark, with a sore throat & beginnings of a cold, my brain churning with too many things to do. I started with a bit of price-label hole-punching for the gallery and packing up old last season paintings  then as soon as it got light , whizzed over to Meritein in the ‘Lady car’, to gather several sackloads of dry composted leaves and more greenery from the chateau grounds .Luckily I had carefully saved most of the forest’s leaves that blow into our garden in a heap for mulching etc. Thanks to an endless supply of yellow re-cycling bags from the mayor, I was able to protect the pale blue carpet interior ( as we share this car with some friends from London) I then proceeded to ( sounding like a copper ) cut down another armful of shrubs in the forest, dug up some clumps of bulbs , a few extra saplings  and whatever humps of growing green stuff  I could cram in the car and returned home to find Dave just waking up..

…decided to start dressing the ‘lady-dome’ at about 9.00   and thankfully help arrived all-be-it in the shape of Mrs Pons the wife of one eyed Jam -making man- not much of a gardener, but she took instruction well, became a good assistant and between us we made our own chelsea flower show garden make-over .  With muddy sore hands and soggy knees ( it had been raining for several days)I was back in the gallery at 10.30 to get on with pricing stuff and sweeping up straw….( part of my ‘mis en scene’ in the gallery required that I find some bales of straw for deco purposes ) 24 hours earlier,I had eventually found a straw supplier after driving round for hours , knocking on farmers doors. Without too much persuasion and at the knock down bargain price of 5€ each, I bought 4 big bales of straw for my rustic country painters corner – which had proven to be very rustic indeed covering the whole gallery  and house , with a fine layer of yellow dust – or was it Olive our Jack Russell Terrier, digging in them and deep sniffing for mice…!!?

All in all, lady dome is being well received and is improving with a bit of drizzle. The saplings are continuing to grow and It has given the usually grey cobbled central square Place des Armes in Navarrenx a touch of the  Andrew Goldsworthy….and is greener than it has ever been…!

More news tomorrow about the gallery & the dome after the easter weekend …..

Today at the river a few new signs stating that you may only take five trout per day of which two can be brown trout. No young salmon allowed to be taken. Oh well, I’ll put the other seven back then (I wish…).

On the bank, evidence of  a ‘vison’, or american mink. Or it could have been my Jack Russell, Olive…

As it was so warm today – 20 degrees, I worked outside in the garden of the gîte. A lot nicer and less messy than being indoors. I’m making two of these…

It’s made of wood and lots of plaster, but is a replica of something else in an old French house. When I sand it and paint it tomorrow all will be revealed. Possibly.

While we’re at it – what’s this as well then?…

As it progresses, it’ll become obvious. It’s nothing to do with old French houses this one, in fact I’ll bet no-one round here has ever seen one quite like it.

I spent half the afternoon up to my waist in cold water but to no avail. Still, it’s a beautiful place to waste one’s time in!

Earlier in the day we were at the gîte where I managed to get a photo of the chateau next door’s weather vane (it’s on a fish theme too)…

Well, after about 2 hours trying to catch something I finally landed a nice ‘truite arc-en-ciel’ or rainbow trout, just near to the bridge at Navarrenx. I tried further downstream where there were more insects than I ever remember seeing hatching out, certainly at this time of the year. Lots of flies, but no trout feeding on them, so I tried further up and used a small streamer. It really was just a perfect day, the sun was shining, the water was crystal clear and even the cold didn’t seem to matter. And then there’s tomorrow…

That’s a huge net by the way

At last after another six month wait the trout and salmon fishing season is open again. You can fish for salmon, sea trout, rainbow and brown trout just down a back path from the back of our house in the beautiful ‘Gave d’Oloron’ river. For the price of a permit (66 euros for trout, 90 for salmon), you can fish here and along hundreds of kilometres of river until the middle of september. Despite it being only the first morning of the ‘ouverture’, this lucky ‘pecheur’ has already caught something…