The tomatoes, of which the three types I put in have all done well…

And the pumpkin vine is rampant…

… and showing real signs of productivity (last year I got two huge ones, this year a number of smaller ones would be preferable!

The chilli pepper and the aubergine have done less well – suspect they need more warmth than they are getting at 650m.

Pictures from the 21st century.

“In the woods … the storms there are sometimes terrible, and, like those of the tropics, arise and terminate with wonderful rapidity. These tempests, which purify the atmosphere, leave behind them a delicious coolness, the trees and shrubs, as they shake from their trembling leaves their sparkling tears, appear so bright—the flowers which raise again their drooping heads, load the air with such delightful odours—the whole forest, in short, seems so refreshed and full of life, that every one hails their approach, the toil-worn peasant breathes without complaint the sultry air, and observes with pleasure the dark and lowering clouds gathering in the far horizon.”

“No; there scarcely breathes the human being who could be so insensible to the charms of scenery like that of Le Morvan…”

“If the woods and forests of Le Morvan, which, by the clouds they attract, the thunder-storms that continually fall over them, and the moisture that generally prevails, feed a great many streams, the district is not the less deprived, by its elevated position, of large rivers and extensive sheets of water; for the rains, falling down the sides of the trees, and penetrating the thick mossy grass at their roots, do not remain for any length of time on the surface of the earth. The whole forest may, in fact, be described as a large sponge, through which the water filters, descending to the inferior strata, where it finds the secret drains of Nature, and is by them conducted into the plains.”

“Le Morvan is certainly not a country for a petit-mâitre or a delicate lady to live in; to enjoy yourself there you must have the fire and energy of youth in your veins, a stout heart, the lungs of a mountaineer, and a sinewy frame. You must love a forester’s life, the hound and the rifle… to him who in the full sense of the term is a sporting man, or a lover of nature, I would say: Go—explore Le Morvan!”

There is, however, one big barrier: the last 1.5km to home. Doesn’t sound much, but it’s 1.5km straight up, no breathers, and mostly I’d estimate at a 1/4 to 1/5 gradient. The thought of cycling that unassisted on the last stretch before home, particularly with a load of shopping, would be enough to make me stay at home.

So I bought this electric bicycle on eBay for 500 euros plus delivery…

It doesn’t mean that you can sit back and relax, coasting up the hill – the 250W electric motor only engages when you keep the pedals turning, and that requires a reasonable degree of force to get up the hill – I’m still sweating a little, but I can make it all the way up in 1st gear without stopping (and even a couple of times in second – the gears arrived a bit crunchy and 1st wouldn’t take until the nice bike shop in Autun – the one just off the main square – kindly adjusted them for me without charge).

And it means as I’ve been touring round the district no hill looks daunting – when I went to visit our local organic farm, which turned out to be at the very head of a long valley, the ride was a pleasure, not a challenge.

Etang is pretty much at the limits of its range (for me – it depends a lot on how hard you pedal and what you weigh). Which left me thinking that what we really need are electric bicycle charging stations – a couple of hours top-up over lunch would be a big help… perhaps they could be combined with electric car charging stations?

I went for the basic town bike shape, rather than something racier because my back won’t take crouching over the handlebars – you can get electric bikes in all shapes and sizes from mountain-bikes (which seems a little odd to me) to serious tourers.

This only has one major design flaw – the plug-in battery, which is entirely exposed to the elements (a standard indoor type plug). The first time I left it at a train station it rained, filled with water and stopped working (thanks Martin, the neighbour who rescued me on the road!) but resumed once it dried out. Some proper seal is clearly need, although in the meantime I’ve found plastic bag and sticky tape doing the job.

But the basic concept is brilliant – and great for cyclists just getting started, those whose regular journey is just a bit further than comfortable, or people who want to get to work without working up a sweat. There should be a lot more of them around!

What to do? I don’t want noxious flyspray chemicals. Then a neighbour came up with the answer – fly traps.

So I cycled down to my handy local store and asked for the “paper to catch flies” – well I learnt what I really wanted to say was attrape-mouche (or to be really precise a ruban anti-mouche). These are simple glued paper strips (they come rolled up in a little cardboard tube) that are hung from the ceiling.

They don’t work instantly, but after a couple of days the population is practically down to zero, no nasty chemicals required.

Similar things exist for rats and mice, but I wouldn’t use those as I regard them as akin to torture, but I’m afraid I don’t have the same sympathy for flies, and anyway they seem too die pretty quickly, within minutes.

And I didn’t regret those hills – it was a lovely local, social occasion, just like country things you read about from decades ago in England.

The flashest, most “modern” thing was two bouncy castles, whose operators were looking pretty glum and unoccupied.

What was really going down well with the under 10s were these wonderful old pedalcarts … lots of fun was being had.

But for those too big for those, the band was the thing – three accordians, two bagpipes, and a wind-up thing that looked kind of like a mandolin (no idea what it is called in French or English). I was very impressed at how many people seemed to know the traditional dances!

And the other main grown-up entertainment (well other than drinking and chatting) were two simple, but very challenging, games.

“La Quinelle” was basically ten-pin bowling, but with a twist – you throw the ball into one end of a U shaped wooden tunnel, and it comes out the other, into the pins. Seriously difficult – I only saw one person get the 13 points from three throws for a win in lots of attempts.

Equally difficult, but seemingly at least more dependent on individual skill was a game that must be pretty well as old as the human race. Ten old rusty (bet they’ve been save for this over decades) cans are stacked up, and you’ve got three padded balls to try to knock them all down with…. I gave up eventually and decided it was easier to buy a drink than to try to win it – though it should be doable!

There were also a few commercial stalls – I couldn’t resist the lime and pear preserve and some lovely honey macaroons being sold by the bee-keepers. But that wasn’t really the point.

It wasn’t very fete-y – but I found fascinating an archaeological display about a recent study that compared evidence of ancient farms and small settlements around the nearby Gaulish capital Bibracte, and Tintignac, a bit to the north of here.

In St Prix they highlighted two places they found. To the west of the commune in the vicinity of the current small hamlet of Argentole, which is also the name of the river, they found three artificial terraces with tiles and amphora remnants dating back to Gallo-Roman and Roman periods, and on the largest of these of a four-century occupation which at its height was quite grand, with hypocast and full system of central heating (definitely useful in these hills).

At the farm of the Barbiers to the east, they also found GalloRoman and Roman ceramics near an artificial terrace beside a spring. This was a more modest occupation, mostly local pottery with a few signs of amphora from 1st century BC to 4th AD.

They don’t know if the occupation continued after that, although though there’s written evidence of occupation in 1475. (And if you think of the evidence of Merovingians at Anost – colder I’d think than here, its hard to think of a reason why it wouldn’t have.)

So perhaps those games, and dances, really do have long continuous antecedents.

It’s the home of Uni Vers Terre, (website now down, but hopefully temporarily) where they are trying to promote permaculture, with regular courses in that, and in collective consensus decisionmaking, and there’s also thinking about a developing a local movement something like the British Transition Towns movement. I also learnt that efforts are being made to develop a local currency.

They also sell at the Friday market in Autun Kombucha (fermented tea – I had a glass and definitely recommend it), dried fruits, and also jams and conserves.

I got lots of advice on what to grow in my garden – and the possibilities are amazing – and recommendations for lots of websites, around which I’ve been pleasantly grazing as the rain falls outside (can’t complain, it has refilled the empty water tank). The fruit possibilities are endless, and look great.

Recommended were Daniel Duret, Proeftuin and Multibaies, while I also found this useful listings page, which led me to Tropicaflore, which looks rather good.

I also learnt the term basin phyto plante (or phyto-epuration), which is, more or less, the translation for “reed bed”, as used in water treatment – what I hope to install instead of a septic system, combined with a composting loo.

It was a nice pair for my visit to the organic vegetable garden in La Celle en Morvan, where with a similar philosophy and principles, they are growing, selling and promoting traditional varieties and methods.

Such as this yummy, and ripe, egg-tomato…

Just a word of warning – it is far from easy to find. What you actually want to do is ignore the address and take the road in the direction of Le Petite Verriere. And just on the outskirts of town is a single sign on the right…

There’s also a small mineral museum here, where I learnt that there’s traditionally been a lot of mining of flourites in this area … which may help to explain why there always seem to be mineral displays whenever I’m in Autun.

If you head out of town towards St-Leger-Sous-Beauvray, corss over the bridge, then immediately on your left is the turnoff, and the “official” picnic spot (with tables) is about 200m down the road (all very drivable in any car).

But if you’re walking (and it’s only five minutes out of the centre of town) you’ll be able to see the trout and catfish in the river, and the amazing iridescent blue dragonflies…

Walking further along the river – the road stays by it for about half an hour’s walking time – you’ll see other life…

But interesting things may lurk in the forest…

Nevers, in Nievre, is a place you can find out. The ducal palace, a piece of Renaissance perfection, was finished in 1595, and that was pretty well the final high point of the town’s architectural (and I suspect economic) life. It’s so heavily restored now that there’s little historic sense, although there’s a nice view from the top, and regular exhibitions.

Before that Never must have been a buzzing kind of place – at the forefront of miliitary technology…

And in 1097 what is regarded as one of the most perfect examples of the Romanesque (it hasn’t been mucked around with since), the Church of St Etienne was completed.

The inside is beautifully proportioned, and it has that weighty solidity that makes me fall for the era’s buildings, but its perfect proportions (which the pic below hints at – very hard to photograph) did leave me feeling like this is the end of the era (which it was) – everything was worked out and it was time for something new, unlike the cathedral in nearby Tournus, which is much more knockabout and uncertain, but therefore exciting.

The cathedral is about a quarter Romanesque – curiously it was built wrong way about so now has two apses, and the crypt underneath the Romanesque is glorious, while the apsidal fresco (12th-century) has the virtue at least of antiquity and rarity…

Gothic’s not really my thing, but I found this more interesting than most, partly because its very clean and pristine (for which you can blame the RAF for a 1944 error in navigation), but also because it’s packed with informative captions (in French – so now I know what a remplage is – the stone framing used within gothic stained glass windows as support – and every one here was different. You can see why my French teacher finds me frustrating – I’m terrible on grammar, but quite good on terms for historic architecture.)

The town has clearly been clinging on economically since the end of the Middle Ages (and it is certainly struggling now – surely not helped by the fact that almost none of it is pedestrianised so, as at Cluny, the whole atmosphere on the streets is wrecked. Even the main tourist plaza below the ducal palace – where the main cafes are – is shrouded in fumes and the din of constant traffic.)

But for the visitor that means the survival not just of the classic half-timbered shop-houses…

But also of lots of other fascinating structures. This was where in the 15th-century monks linked to the nuns of the Abby of Fontmoregny (Cher) used to get their wine deliveries – the arch led into the “grand cellar”.

Around the back (in a yard filled with new “plastic” garages for rent) is this wonderful tower…

And back in the 15th-century, this was the workshop where the town’s money was made, built in “Flanders-style” for Hugues de Pougues, who had that important job from 1420-27.

Really, they should just have stopped there. The architecture seems to have gone down fast with the economy. There’s some dreadful Sixties concrete Halles, but the really awful example is on the way back to the station… the Chapel of St Mary.

Okay, I’m no fan of the 18th century, but there’s something really, really wrong with the proportions of that!

Driving with a neighbour about 1km from home this week, in an area of forest and pastureland, by the side of the road was an animal snuffling around. First thought a cat, but the movement, and the shape, was all wrong. Second thought: look it up.

And I’m 99% sure that what it was a pine marten (photo Neil Phillips from Wikipedia Commons)

That conclusion was supported by the fact that Daniel tells me that La Martre is primarily is found in “old groves” (les vielles futaies) and “small woods” (boqueteaux), which pretty well perfectly describes where it was. It’s a “predateur generaliste”, eating mostly insects and fruit, also carrion.

It has a curious reproductive story, which might well explain why this one was out and about on a summer evening: the rutting season is from the end of June into August, with females coming on heat for one or two days up to three times during that period.

But after fertilisation, the development of the embryo stops and gestation restarts at the beginning of the year, when the females have a fake rutting period. Here the young are born between the middle of March and the middle of April, with litters of two or three, with the young staying with their mother throughout the summer. They don’t build their own nests, but opportunistically use those of other animals.

And not long after I arrived, while clearing dense undergrowth around the house, I cam face to face with what I’m pretty sure was a white-toothed shrew, in one of those moments where two species have a long gazing moment of “what the hell?!) at each other, before the smaller scuttles away in a hurry.

My identification is partially confirmed by Daniel, who says this is the best known of the shrews, and an “anthropophile”, often found around farms and hamlets, particularly in colder areas, where this allows them to survive the winter. And there’s almost certainly more than one, since unlike most shrews this has a social lifestyle.

We’ve got a very high local cat population, so this one must be smart enough to avoid them, since I read they are most often discovered after being killed by cats. And there’s also a new burrow appeared just under the bird feeder, which I’ve been filling for the past couple of weeks. Given that my resident nuthatch throws as much seed out as it eats, I suspect my shrew family are also showing their brains by setting up home right beside a steady food supply.

The other mammals that I see often, though never close or slow enough to identify in detail, are bats. Lots of them pretty well every evening are flying around the valley. But given 16 species to choose from in the Morvan, it may be some time before I can provide identification!