Holiday highlights 1

Impressions from Bordeaux and the Périgord:

Chatty apéritifs with Mum on the thin hotel terrace, hung over the darkening spires of Bordeaux
The shock of grey gothic stone and hot terracotta looking down over Cathédrale St. André
Witnessing opulence restored leaf by gilt leaf in the jewel-like Grand Théâtre
The overblown tumult and exuberance of the Fontaine des Girondins

Picnics watching fish swim lazily in the Dordogne, fixed in the limpid current
Skirting the twilight vineyards, hands sticky with blackberries and figs
Staying with the sun from first to last through the full high arc of blue, day after day
Feeling slightly voyeuristic at vendange watching the harvester tickling the grapes beneath vineleafy skirts
Distant pops of hunters’ shot and treehouse ladders to canopy lookouts
Dining and laughing amongst the vines, evenings dissolving into parlour game idiocy
The postcard perfection of the Château de Montbazillac