August 2022 News - Summer Heat, Planes, Princesses, Personal Pilgrimages...
Posted on 31st August 2022 by Julie and David Thomson in General News.
August - a month that always feels like the zenith of summer. Dry, dusty days, France pauses for holidays, farmers still toiling. And as always, wonderful, interesting guests finding their way to our door, eager to explore the wonderful history and landscape around us.
The weather has continued to be very hot and dry. We count just very few showers of rain this month and the landscape is golden and brown, not green and fertile. The wheat harvest is over but the stalks remain in the field. Normally the fields would have been ploughed and seeded again, the next crop already showing new growth, but the farmers know there is no point without the rain, so the stalks remain, ready to be dealt with when rain is forecast. The potatoes, maize and sugar beet yet to be harvested, remain as the crops defiant of the dry weather. We have never known it so dry. The great rivers of France like the Loire are drying, and devastating forest fires in South West France have decimated huge areas of wonderful pine forests. We haven’t had a summer like this in our 10 years here.
There has been much to keep us busy this month even in the heat. We capture some of the month's highlights here...the cover photo is Lochnagar Crater, August sunset.
