When the sun comes out

Walking Thursday: 3.9km

Cycling Thursday: 33.1km (along the towpath of the Canal de Nantes à Brest)

Walking Friday: 3.8km

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The passengers on the plane groaned as one:

"The weather in Paris is overcast, the temperature at present is five degrees"

It had been 25 degrees in Hanoi as we left, it was 25 degrees in Singapore (at midnight) as we took off.

The weather in Brittany while we had been away had been cool and rainy, the grass wasn't knee high as we had feared it would be, the Spring hadn't sprung and, although the potatoes and broad beans had just pushed through, everything else looked more winter than Spring.

Then on Easter Sunday the sun came out with a cold easterly wind, the sun stayed for a week as the air slowly warmed up. And then today it got really warm and the temperature reached 25C for the first time this year. All of "l'hexagone" has the same weather today:

So, on the day that the temperature in Noyal-Muzillac reached that in Singapore it all proved too much for one of the Basse Cour team who had to take to his summer bed in the hangar:

A New Calf

Walking today: 3.9km

Swimming today: 1.25km

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In hindsight it's strange that, being surrounded by dairy fields, we hadn't seen a calf being born before. I'm not very knowledgeable about dairy farming, Dominique once told me that his dairy cows have one calf a year - "normalement", whatever that means in this context. 

So on Sunday afternoon Barbara spotted a very new born calf in the corner of a field at the bottom of our land. The mother and another cow were in attendance but it was what happened next that was most interesting for the two spectators sitting on the house terrace.

Dominique's son Bertrand was handling milking duties and he arrived on the quad bike to bring in the cows. He drove away the two adults quite aggressively, they were reluctant to leave at first but soon obediently trotted away with the rest of the herd. Bertrand returned a few minutes later and collected the calf in their ubiquitous white farmer's van and took it back to the elevage. 

I think the theory is that the cows can't be allowed to form any relationship with their calves, in reality they seem to have short memories anyway - we once found a calf wandering around in a field an hour after the milking herd had gone in, the attraction of food must have proved a bigger draw for the mother.

Of course the reality is that only female calves are of any value, and only some of them as about 20% of the herd are replaced each year. Of course, this being frugal Brittany there are some innovative ways of using up all the various surplus products of farming, other than as an experience don't recommend you try fricassee or andouille and somehow we've never been attracted to buying a ticket for the school PTA's April event where tête de veau is served .....

Spring Blossom

Walking Tuesday: 5.4km

Walking today: 3.9km

A few pictures of Spring blossom for today's blog:

The peach is in full bloom.

And in the "crouching lion" Japanese garden the flowering cherry "Snow Showers" is making a good show in its first year.

Mekong Catchup

Walking today: 7.6km

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One of the areas we visited in Vietnam was the Mekong Delta.

The Mekong River rises in Tibet and via China, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam makes its way to the sea. Along the way it picks up a lot of mud and silt, much of this has been deposited over the years in the Mekong Delta with the result that it is the agricultural powerhouse of Vietnam. In the mountainous areas we saw rice being grown in contoured paddyfields about 3m wide where all the work has to be done manually, it's a struggle to get a single crop from this land. In the Mekong Delta the fields are large, farmed mechanically and produce three rice crops a year.

Sue Perkins did and excellent series The Mekong River for the BBC last year where she traveled from the sea right to the source of the river. The scale of just the delta region is huge and in a single day trip it was only possible for us to get a brief taste of the area.

The river itself is huge and a micro landscape in its own right. There are specific types of boat that have been developed for use on the river and we passed many boatyards where these vessels are built and repaired.

There are some new bridges that have made travel across the delta region easier.

And the pace of building is intense, we passed two massive new bridges that are under construction at present.

The river is a key transport route for commerce in the delta and the pace of life all along the river mirrors that in HCMC.

The river crossings are still mainly by boat running in convoy 24 hours a day.

 

On the ferries the lorries and cars get loaded first and then the scooters flow in around them like water.

It looks like a seascape but this is the Mekong River - it's huge!

We also took a trip through some small backwaters fringed with palms and banana plants.

Changing Seasons

In a splash of slate-blue the first swallow flew over our field yesterday. It was like a reconnaissance flight as it pulled up over the barn and came back across the pond for a second look and then disappeared over the fields towards Dominique's dairy.

It has been a cool spring so far, we had expected the leaves and blossom to be out on our return but mostly the trees are still in bud. The peach, nectarine and apricot are in flower but nothing else as yet.

La Basse Cour is aligned almost exactly East-west (the south wall faces 182 degrees as far as I can work out) and so the tiny postholes we glazed in the eastern gable end face nearly exactly East. At the Spring solstice the sun rises exactly in the east and so for a few days around the spring and autumn solstices we get a magical shaft of light shining into the barn in the morning:

Like the blossom, the cuckoo and the swallow it's a sure sign that summer is on its way.

First Cuckoo and the last word

Walking Today: 3.8km

During our morning walk today we heard our first cuckoo of the year. Actually two separate birds in two copses calling to (or at) each other.

And, in case you missed the end of Radio 4's "You and Yours" today here's the tweet Peter White read out as the last item on the programme:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pr38c 

Catching Up

The Garmin GPS went off the rails in Saigon, thinking we had walked 247km in one day. It never recovered from this aberration and, after the transfer to Hoi An, never again managed to work out where in the world it was.

The BBC website was blocked in HCMC (a legacy of an unfavourable report of political dissidents in 2013) - I don't think GPS signals are blocked in Vietnam but you never know ....

So these figures are extracted from maps and timings.

Friday 20th (Hoi An)

Walking: 3.5km

Swimming: 0.42km

Saturday (Hué)

Walking: 1.6km

Cycling: 16.2km

Sunday (Hué)

Walking: 1.1km

Swimming: 0.04km

Monday (Hanoi)

Walking: 6.7km

Tuesday (Hanoi)

Walking: 2.4km

Wednesday (SaPa)

Walking: 6.3km

Thursday (SaPa)

Walking: 9.8km

Friday ( SaPa)

Walking: 4.7km

Saturday (Halong Bay)

Walking: 1.1km

Swimming: 0.35km

Sunday (CatBa Island)

Walking: 3.3km

Monday (Hanoi)

Walking: 2.1km

Tuesday (Hanoi)

Walking: 5.2km

View from SaPa hotel room: