Reader, we ate them. The spotted apples on the tree on the short walk outside Nontron. On the winding road near the stream, the little apple tree just there, as pastoral a picture as you could hope for. I wish I’d taken a photo now. I remembered those lines from Big Yellow Taxi:
Our second day’s walking was around Agonac, a small town about a 20 minute drive south-east, and the morning fog hadn’t yet lifted, so we couldn’t see much of the countryside as we headed down there. But we knew it would, as the sun rose and warmed the day. Der had been up and out on the porch when I’d come back from Aldi with the baguettes rustiques first thing that morning, watching a watery dawn rise over the glen beyond, brightening the trees – the same trees the sun had reddened as it set the evening before, the darkening slowly pushing up its soft and tired red light until finally it was only a thread at the treetops and then it was gone.
We wanted to start our first day’s walking from the house so that’s what we did. By making our way down to the town via the paths along the meadow, and then taking on two loops in a figure of 8 route around Brantôme, near to where we were based. We’d had a short stroll around the town the day before finding our bearings and that was pleasant – it’s picturesque and old and cobbled and French. We were buoyed just to be there, after the long drive down from Nantes the day before and having met Aude and her nephew Bastien, and Marine, and especially Aude’s mother, all of 88 years old – that was a wonderful treat.
