Over the border

Public holiday in France today so I suggested we went into town to see the remembrance parade. Mr B preferred the "let's go to Spain" option. So we did. First stop a volcano ("don't worry Mammy, it's a dead one" as Conor reassuringly pointed out). After some home schooling at home this morning (fractions for the juniors, phonic games, reading and odd/even numbers for the infants) we elbowed in a quick geography lesson about how volcanoes happen, and the kind of rocks they produce. This latter point was made much easier by someone having dug up a lot of the rocks and used them to make a small church in the middle of the caldera.

Nice walk around the caldera rim, with me able to test my macro lens out on some frosty leaves (the lens had a bit of a tumble the other night - I'm sure Mr B was trying to be very helpful.... but anyway, it works so no harm done). After all the walking (volcanoes are quite steep and high) we decided we'd earned more than the hastily thrown together picnic lunch in the boot. The first restaurant we tried didn't open for lunch until the decidedly odd time of 2pm, but happily we found the wonderful Restaurant Santa Margarida (named after the volcano) where we had a wonderful three course meal with wine and coffee for almost no money at all. It was one of those times when I checked the bill twice to make sure they'd remembered to put everything on. Frankly my chicken with prunes and pinenuts was worth the price alone (it was way better than it sounds).

The only downside to lunch was the other folk in there smoking throughout. I think I'm so used to being able to be out and about without having to worry about smoke that it really bothers me now. Anyway, it made me think about how quickly my perceptions on that have changed: only a few years ago it would have seemed quite normal to walk into a pub and barely be able to breathe.

To walk off lunch we headed into a local beech forest. The kids had much fun throwing the leaves around and I traipsed after them with my camera trying to encourage the fun to happen in better lit areas.

Later, on to Besalu - another medieval village - with this wonderful bridge entranceway. I tried putting this in black and white, to disguise that blue colour in the water (I don't remember it being there and I'm not sure where it's come from) but just couldn't seem to get it right somehow. Also, while I'm on camera stuff, I'm finding that my usual habit of having the camera on aperture priority all the time is letting me down a lot. Maybe it's just funny light at this time of year, but everything today had to be shot on manual or it was massively overexposed. So, some good practice for me.

Home for a very light dinner (cheese) after all that huge lunch, and watching the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie. I'd loved the book, but I think Mr B found the whole thing a bit harrowing.