Snapshots of days in and around La Fosse, Normandy

A variation on the theme of autumn colours

In France, autumn colour isn’t restricted to the trees.

Golden light on a golden day

Jardin des Plantes, Avranches

I’m tiptoeing into my long-neglected Tumblr blog to blow off the cobwebs and see if it all still works. I’ve carefully switched on the electricity and the water and opened the shutters and what do I see? A winter visit to the Jardin des Plantes at Avranches in southern Manche. Worth a winter stroll, on our visit there was a mulberry in full green leaf, an acer also in full leaf but autumn golden, and far out in the baie, le Mont-St-Michel, a ghost in the distance.

Because it is in the town and more or less on the coast, this garden is sufficiently protected for a few early daffodils to be in flower and a large bumblebee to be looking around for food. Too chilly for nectar to be flowing, even in the few available flowers.

A remarkable sunrise at La Fosse.

Remarkable - and we don’t see many stunning sunrises though plenty of beautiful sunsets - but the old country saying goes: red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning...

Great British Bake-Off viewers watched Paul the Baker (not Paul Hollywood the Bread) carve his fruit and veg (apples, kiwis, radishes) into swans and other fanciful creatures but this artist at Gavray made Paul the B look like a beginner. Pumpkin art is more than cutting a face into a big orange fruit.

An annual treat... a shoulder of pré-salé lamb (grazed on the salt marshes of the Mont-St-Michel bay) from a rotisserie at Gavray Foire Saint-Luc. Cooked over a wood fire, the chickens and joints of lamb and pork are worth the trek.

A word of explanation: Allee Gastronomique - Tentes, Rotisseurs is a style of dining that we’ve not encountered outside rural France though a similar arrangement may well be common in other countries. The system is that in Allee Gastronimique, there are a number of tents equipped with a bar and lots of trestle tables and benches. Each table seats 6 - 8 people and, depending on the size of the tent, there may be 30+ tables in a tent so a tent can seat maybe 250 - 300 people at a time.

You stroll down Rotisserie Alley and choose your lunch. There are plenty of options from a simple saucisse en croute - sausage in a chunk of freshly baked baguette - to a whole chicken, a shoulder of lamb or a joint of pork beautifully cooked over a flaming fire of wood and embers. There are bread stalls, you can buy your freshly cooked barquette of frîtes, there are stalls selling cheese, ham... look around and for dessert you’ll spot arrays of tartes, flans and fondants aux pommes... everything you could want for Sunday lunch. Then, purchases made, choose your tent.

If you’ve been a bit spontaneous and seduced by the scent of the woodsmoke from the rotisseries, for a few euros per person, you can order ‘covers’ from the waitress - cutlery, plate and glass - onto which you pile your treasures from outside. If you’re a bit less spontaneous - like us and have planned your lunch like a military exercise - you’ve brought your own plates, knives (Opinel, bien sûr) and also - to the bemusement and amusement of some of our neighbours on the table, salt, freshly ground black pepper and - because we’re having frîtes - Hellman’s Mayonnaise. If I have chips, I must have mayo.

The waitress takes our order for drinks - a bottle of a good, local bio (ie, organic) cidre - and brings the bottle + glasses over to the table. We buy a shoulder of lamb and carve it for ourselves at the table. Yum.

We went to the Foire Saint-Luc at Gavray on Sunday. The autumn agricultural fairs here don’t compare to the county shows in England or the enormous regional fairs in the US but they are a very important event on the calendar of rural France and some of them date back hundreds of years.

In Manche, the ‘foire season’ starts with the oldest one at Lessay, mid-way down the Cotentin peninsula. Lessay fair is usually mid-September and we’re typically too busy with guests to get there. In October - amongst others - there’s Gavray, Etouvy and, to finish things off, the big November fair in the centre of the town of Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët - when the centre of the town is closed off to vehicles and plays host to in excess of 200,000 visitors.

For us, these foires have two major benefits: the first is to enable us to buy large quantities of onions, garlic and shallots (well priced and excellent quality) for use in chutneys and other conserves and as a lunch destination! Of which, more in my next post.

Autumn fruits! Shame the figs won’t get chance to fully ripen. These are the figs that sprout in summer and their season here is too short for them to be ripe enough to eat by autumn. We usually get a number of tiny figs appearing in March / April and they are the ones that will give us lusciously ripe figs in September. But in this hilly part of Normandy, late spring cold snaps or winds knock them off their branches and we just get the wannabees pictured above. I’ve looked but I can’t find a recipe that uses unripe figs.

Driving around the countryside earlier in the week, we went past this odd piece of kit.

Farming in rural France ranges from the big business, prairie-style farming of the flatter areas of the country... to the ‘dog and stick’ farming that was common in the UK but is rarely seen nowadays.

Adjacent to a field with a couple of cows cudding contentedly, was this contraption - it’s a mobile (though appears to be well-fixed) milking parlour which will take two cows at a time. The second photo zooms in on the milking cluster attachment - which attach to the cows’ udders, of course.

Having been down at the baie for the high tide on Wednesday, we went back to take a look from the same spot at low tide - le Grouin du Sud near Vains. Its elevated location provides stunning views at any time of the year and tide.

The water wending its way across the sands is the outlet of the river Sée - La Fosse is above the Sée river valley and the spring that feeds our wildlife pond flows into the Sée down in the valley beneath us, eventually reaching the sea at le Baie de Mont-St-Michel. The Mont can be seen on the left while the rocky outcrop in the distance on the right is the small, uninhabited granite island of Tomberlaine. Uninhabited by humans at least - it’s rich in birdlife and botanic interest.

The white bird tripping elegantly across the silty water is an egret - I think, due to its black bill. It is the more common of the egrets, the Little Egret.

Messing about on the river.

Another grande marée (super high tide) this morning at 9.30-ish (coefficient 116 for those who follow these things) and, in the top photo, le Mont-St-Michel was an island again. In the middle photo you can see the approach to le Mont via the causeway which runs to the entrance... and the ranks of spectators to the point that the causeway is engulfed by water. The dots on the water between the causeway and the Mont are probably people on paddle boards - we regularly see them in use and they look fun... providing you have both balance, fitness, and a keen sense of tides and hidden currents.

The bottom photo was taken back in August when there were many guided bay walks, traversing the sands on foot. Each of the groups between the Mont and the camera are people crossing back back at low tide. The walkers are generally accompanied by a certified guide in order to safely avoid the areas of quicksand where the unwary can get stuck. Getting stuck doesn’t mean you sink in a Grimpen Mire Hound of the Baskervilles sort of way, but if you can’t get free, the incoming tide is fast, deep and most unforgiving of errors.

I know they’re not great photos... and there are plenty that are absolutely remarkable if you cruise the online newspapers but I took these from about 4.30am (CET) onwards, standing on the terrace right outside my kitchen door at La Fosse.

Stunning clear sky with constellations winking merrily.  Silence, no light pollution - I could see a light across the valley about 5 kms away but that’s all - and a total eclipse of the moon. Lovely!