Photos – Le château de Sagonne

Mont dore, the Puy-de-Dôme spa town in the mountains

What’s in a name, why the name change for this blog

Well it’s a tricky one, it has to do with the fact that I find it very hard to write in journal style so will be writing slightly differently.

The name comes from a painting called the Treachery of images, I provide no explanation where I see the connections to this piece are because it much more fun to think of that yourself once you’ve read the paintings explanation

image sourced from wikipedia

Coocoo – Bringing back the bloggin’

I’ve been gone from this little land of blog for a while, holidaying you see.

To start off, I want to show you something beautiful that really hits it home with me

This is the link to the following video (if for some reason the embedding doesn’t work) http://www.climateprotect.org/ah12

St Pierre le moutier

Bicycle taking me to nearby towns is a blessing. Today it was St Pierre le moutier. This is the nearest rail-station town that I’ve visited many a time to catch the train but never to see.

Today I did some looking.

Its pretty standard and small towns go, but something that is becoming evident is that each small french town has something special to give it a different charm than the last town.

For example St Pierre has a very beautiful little patisserie that I shall be returning to, to sample their wares.

There was an office de tourisme on the edge of the church square that I was glad to see, as haven’t been a very good tourist lately. I took many a pamphlet to plan effective use of my time in the subsequent days off that I have each week.

Took a quick jaunt around the church square and happened across a doorway that took me by surprise. It was fashioned in a delicate art nouveau style, the roof of this building was steeply sloped according to the art nouveau period. This is unusual for small towns and art nouveau architecture is generally found in larger towns where the cultural change pressure is stronger. After looking around a few streets it was clear that this style was radiating faintly throughout the entire village. It seems that there was a convincing and talented art nouveau architect at large in St Pierre in the art nouveau period.

Apparently St Pierre was liberated from the English by Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) in 1429, she would have been 17 at the time. Its sort of odd sometimes to be walking the same paths as history has, especially a history that has so widely saturated the general public that it is thought of as common knowledge.

 

Upon my return to Le Veurdre I found a map of the train network across Europe which I then drew all over with a somewhat optimistic plan of how to see the rest of the western continent. This needs some editing and will be disclosed at a later date for all to advise on. Where must I go, where must I avoid, I’ll be looking for your help. But for the moment, I’m loving making a plan.

 

I have recently made acquaintance with a bicycle which was kind enough to transport me to Chateau Augustine, whereupon I happened across, what I like to call, Chateau WC. My mother will appreciate my glee at finding the following fantastic loo.

And on a completely different topic, today I would like to pay homage to my favorite comic in the world, always thinking around a different corner, xkcd bless your creators, you never fail to make me smile.

How green are you?

Spotted this on the Treehugger blog. Find out how green you really are and how much you can reduce your carbon emission by taking the online quiz below. Its quite snazzy actually because it gives you a figure for how many carbon emission units you create now and then another hypothetical figure showing how your carbon emissions can be reduced by changing a few things about your life.

 Heres the link to the Quiz

http://www.slate.com/features/greenchallenge/default.aspx   

promenade Le Veurdre

I took a little walk the otherday and decided to put it to video, with my new found video making tools, photos to the right for those whose internet connection is not so fast

Skype – who has it?

Let me know by email/comment. Am veritibly minutes away from getting a headset so can call everyone hooray!!

And just out of curiousity – whos reading (apart from my beloved relatives) leave me a comment and let me know who’s out there

a very good point

I thouroughly enjoyed the video blog post by rocketboom on earth day

Check it out