Tails From Provence

Provence, through the lens

Warning! May contain lavender!

The holiday got off to an inauspicious start, weatherwise anyway :

It seems the rain followed us from Ireland. We had thundery and, at times, torrential downpours for the first two days.

It turned out to be perfect weather for a spot of dégustation (wine tasting), though, and we set of for Pierrevert, on the other side of the Grand Luberon, and one of our favourite producers of red wine, Domaine de La Blaque. The weather improved en route :

but we kept our minds on the job in hand and eventually arrived at Domaine de La Blaque. This place was really busy, with a steady stream of tourists popping in to sample and buy.

We did our tasting, contributed to the local economy, put the boxes in the car and headed back towards Céreste. A walk was in order, seeing as the rain had stopped, so we did a short (one hour) loop at the top of the Grand Luberon. It was through forest all the way, so there were no spectacular views, but it was quite steep in places. It seems that, for once in my life, I’m fitter than the Long Suffering Husband! You can’t tell from the picture, but he was actually gasping in this photo on the right! Speaking of Long Suffering, it seems I am destined to be the Long Suffering Wife on this trip. The LSH has been keen to photograph lavender fields for a few years now, and finally we are in Provence at the right time. While he clicks away with his super-duper camera, I could sit in the car like the sainted Long Suffering Wife that I am, but instead, I’m practising with my new Nikon Coolpix P300.

There was this field, with the perfect little Provencal building at the far end, which he had earmarked since our winter visit. I took shots from several different angles, while messing around with depth of field,

Focussed on the building

Focussed on the foreground

and I discovered that my little camera doesn’t really like to play with depth of field, it likes to put as much as possible in focus,

Mostly focussed on the foreground

but I got some nice shots, although a BLUE sky would have been nicer than light grey.

Mostly focussed on the foreground again

Since then, every time we pass a likely field, brakes are applied, and he leaps out, studying angles, light and whatever else is involved. My forte is strolling into the middle of fields…

…to get a different perspective on things

These last two are my favourites, I think the blue sky and the very dark lavender helps.

Same field, different angle. I love the colours.

In general, the plan for our whole holiday is to do loads of walking, starting early in the morning because it’s very hot by the middle of the day. So far, we’ve only managed one early morning walk. We went up La Gardette, a small hill (400M high) behind Céreste, one of our favourite walks while we were living here.

There’s the field of sage at the start (it looks a lot like lavender but a different colour)

Then there’s the lookout over the valley where Flurry and Gigi lived for the winter – you can’t see the road we used to hack on, with all the foliage on the trees!
Now:

Winter (slightly different angle):

I quite like this shot, taken while the LSH recovered after a steep climb (he was pretending to take a photo, while sneakily allowing his breathing to return to normal)

and of course there was the view of the Grand Luberon from the back of La Gardette :

Still more lavender, wild lavender this time, so not so thick and clumpy

but still sufficient for a small brown dog to hide behind.

I didn’t know my camera had a macro mode, so I’ve been playing with that too. Flowers (the pink and white one reminds me of sweets, I think they’re called Campino)

and this cool bug :

Today, we visited the ancient fort at Buoux – well worth a visit. It’s being excavated and somewhat restored at the moment, but you can still wander around and look at everything. It dates back to the 12th or 13th century, and was clearly a very important point of defence. It sits perched in a rocky hilltop in the middle of a gorge, surrounded by cliffs, mountains and forests. The view to the northeast has the most cliffs :

Entrance archway :

The biggest building was, of course, the church :

Church entrance

These holes are fascinating – they are thought to be ancient grain silos, possibly pre-dating the fort itself. They were fitted with wooden covers to keep the rain out.
How on earth did they make those holes with only hand tools? They’re pretty deep!

Who needs an RSJ? This piece of timber has been here for hundreds of years!

These steps are where there used to be a drawbridge, into the very last piece of fortification. There are three defensive walls, each with a moat, protecting the final donjon, or fortified tower, which is protected by a sheer cliff at the far side.

There’s a secret flight of stairs, too – not so secret anymore, though, there is a sign directing you to them and they are marked on the visitor’s map too. They really are incredibly steep – for the first time in my life, my knees were complaining about what I was asking them to do. I was glad to get to the bottom!

The whole thing has a real Lord of the Rings feel to it – Rivendell, perhaps?

Buoux is also a very popular climbing centre, this photo is for my brother… spot the climber :

And finally, there was this old friend looming in the distance :

Mont Ventoux, which looked over us as we covered the first 200km of Le Big Trek.

Holiday Time!

No blogging = a busy week, and it’s been busy indeed. The start of the week was occupied with Silver Spurs, a talent spotting competition for young riders. The Youngest Daughter won Silver Spurs twice, in 2005 and 2007 – her prize was a €500 training bursary each time, my prize was I got to take over running the competition, along with my good friend and co-conspirator, Naomi. Our original plan was total world domination, but we’ve had to settle for Silver Spurs, due to insufficient inherent evilness.

Naomi and I enjoy the road trip, though, and we natter away while we clock up the miles, solving problems as diverse as the demise of the Irish Horse Industry and the reason why so many characters get killed off in Game of Thrones! We also get to meet lots of nice people – our assessors are usually involved with the British Young Riders Dressage Squad (BYRDS) in the UK, and they’ve all been amazingly generous with their time and advice.

There’s usually a mix of abilities in the riders – some are not yet “at the races”, some are nearly there and some are very well educated and show a lot of natural talent – they’re the ones we’re looking for. We’ve now got 35 riders through to our finals in August, and every single category (Under 12, Pony, Junior and Young Rider) is going to be hotly contested – we love trying to guess who’s going to come out on top in each section, but we’re usually wrong!

I got back home late on Wednesday night after Silver Spurs, and had to pack for my holidays the next day – we were leaving for France at 10am, to catch the 4pm ferry from Rosslare.

The holiday is going to be totally non-horsey, but I’m planning on doing a few photo posts – I got a replacement for camera that I drowned, so I want to play with it on this trip. To start the ball rolling, this series desrcibes the journey very well :

Goodbye, Ireland!

Bonjour, France!

Enchanté, Provence!

A bientôt!

What’s the Story with Aero?

My friends know that I’d been making progress riding Aero until he went lame last weekend. I’ve had a few texts and Facebook messages, “What’s the story with Aero?” “How’s Aero doing?”

I’ve had no answer all week, no diagnosis other than “I think it’s an abscess.” I’ve been poulticing with Animalintex and hot-tubbing with Epsom salts since last Sunday. Of course, my mind has been in overdrive :

If it was an abscess, why did it improve with the poulticing and hot-tubbing, despite the fact that it never burst?

Maybe it’s navicular…. no, it can’t be, navicular won’t show up as sudden acute lameness…. but he’s been stepping short in front for a while, maybe that was navicular building up and suddenly it’s manifesting itself…. no, he’s been stepping short because his feet are a little tender after the last trim… ok it’s not navicular… maybe

Maybe it’s a tendon problem…. no it can’t be, why would he have heat in his foot as well as the slight swelling on his tendon? Oh no, maybe he has an abscess AND a tendon problem??

Maybe he broke a bone in his foot, galumphing around the paddock…. sudden acute lameness? yes? Well, no, it improved after a couple of days of poulticing and box rest, surely a broken bone wouldn’t respond so quickly…. but maybe the box rest helped it… aaargh…

Today, there seemed to be less heat in his foot. I decided to walk him out for a few minutes… he wasn’t quite sound, but he wasn’t very lame either, so I took him into the arena and let him run around for a few minutes. Unfortunately, he seemed to get progressively more lame, so I brought him back into his stable and thought a bit. I’m going away for the second round of Silver Spurs Qualifiers next Monday evening, getting back Wednesday night and then the LSH and I are leaving for a two-week holiday in Céreste on Thursday. The Youngest Daughter is moving home while we’re away, and I need to leave her with explicit instructions and a treatment plan for Aero if necessary, so I need to work out what to do.

If I called the vet out, I was 90% certain he’d say “abscess” and start excavating in the hoof – I’ve had this experience before, when a trusted vet removed literally half of our pony’s sole, which took weeks and weeks to regrow.

If I did nothing, I’d be petrified I’d made the wrong decision…. maybe the vet would say “X-rays of the hoof” and we’d see something awful like navicular or a fracture.

Anja, the Equine Podiatrist (DAEP), was due back from a family holiday in Paris today. I decided I had nothing to lose by contacting her, so I texted her, asking if she could call me when she gets back, so we can work out a plan. She did better than that, she replied saying she was flying into Cork airport at 5pm and would call to me at 6. Brilliant! A knowledgeable second opinion!

She duly arrived, in her glitzy Paris gear, put her boots and her farrier’s apron on over her glad-rags and checked him out. She watched him walking and trotting, applied the hoof tester and made her diagnosis – an abscess, improved, but not burst out yet. She advised me to turn him out, as the movement might help disperse the infection in the foot. She was pretty disparaging about hot-tubbing with Epsom salts – she reckons that if it doesn’t succeed in drawing out the infection straight away, it’ll make it even more difficult for the abscess to burst, as the Epsom salts harden the hoof. She thinks there’s a chance the infection will worsen, and a bigger chance it will continue to improve. Her approach is for minimal interference in the foot unless she’s sure she’ll get a result, in fact she suggested putting a temporary pad inside a hoof boot which would alleviate the pain, stimulate circulation in the foot, while at the same time giving the abscess time to find a route to the surface.

All very interesting, and a very different approach to the traditional veterinary route of dig it out, whatever the cost in terms of the horse’s sole.

So the treatment plan is turn him out, see how he goes. If he’s acutely lame again, she’ll come back and have another look. She thinks the most likely outcome is that he’ll continue to improve, and that the abscess will gradually grow out, leaving a hole in the hoof sole and/or wall.

I can only say that Aero heartily approved of this plan. I walked the dogs past the paddock fifteen minutes after he was turned out with Flurry and Lilly, and he was lying down, sleeping, in the middle of the field, a happy boy, back with his herd.