Bonjour!
Hope you had a nice Christmas and all the best for 2014, nice round number hey.
Earlier this week we visited the largest spring in France, and the fifth largest in the world I might add. What an amazing spot. It's at a place called Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. "Vallis Clausa" (the "enclosed valley") is where the name Vaucluse originally came from. This first photo shows the valley as the sun was setting, with the ruins of a castle in the foreground.
This calm, very blue body of water, only metres away, turns into rapids, as shown below. It is the source of a whole river, the River Sorgue.
And about a kilometer further down you can see the full force of this river as it flows over a weir....
At this point there is an interesting 15th century paper mill which is still making paper! You can see the water powered wheels which drive the pulping hammers.
We tried our luck at growing some winter crops. Well, in a way. This is another French tradition, where you plant some seeds on the 4th of December, let them grow, and then on Christmas day you place them on the dining table for good luck. We had a lot of fun in seeing whose seedlings had grown the most each day, we're a competitive bunch.
Just before Christmas we went to Saint Saturnin-les-Apt for their Christmas celebration night. The photo below, that Jane took, shows us walking through the back of the village along some medieval paths, Connor on my shoulders and Soph behind, the atmosphere was magical.
And then, not knowing what to expect, almost the whole village had turned out to see a procession of horses and carts and a couple of miniature trains take the kids for a ride up to the top of the village with all the mums and dads following behind. Here are our two on one of the trains, very excited.
In the church at Saint Saturnin was an impressive chreche. The French love their chreches. Interestingly chreches grew very much in popularity, in an underground way, during the Revolution as all churches were closed, the church was seen as a symbol of the old aristocracy. People would build there own chreches secretly in their homes as way of having their own little place of homage.
At the end of this special night in Saint Saturnin they had a fire works display which was pretty spectacular especially considering the back drop was some 13th century castle walls.
This is a classic. Jane took this photo whilst we where at the supermarket shopping for Christmas day. It's a packet of frozen duck foie gras marcarons, remembering foie gras is liver fat, I need not say any more.
We had originally planned to have the turkey roast for lunch, but after some skyping with the folks back home, champagne to toast the day, a large bottle of French Three Monts Beer, a few glasses of red, and watching most of the Michael Bubble Christmas Show it ended up being an early evening feast, well worth the wait I have to say. Jane did a wonderful job with the turkey, traditional stuffing and all. We had our own little party basically. Here we are, making another toast....
We then decided to go for an evening stroll, before too much alcohol was drunk. Jane took some lovely photos of the Christmas lights in the village. The photo below was of the little pottery shop. A Christmas day we will always treasure.
Hope you had a nice Christmas and all the best for 2014, nice round number hey.
Earlier this week we visited the largest spring in France, and the fifth largest in the world I might add. What an amazing spot. It's at a place called Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. "Vallis Clausa" (the "enclosed valley") is where the name Vaucluse originally came from. This first photo shows the valley as the sun was setting, with the ruins of a castle in the foreground.
At the bottom of those cliffs you can see in the photo above is the source of the spring, as shown in the photo below. In 1946, the famous Jacques Cousteau almost killed himself as he tried to dive to the bottom of the spring. At a depth of about 100m a compressor used to fill his tank starting taking in its own exhaust fumes and produced carbon monoxide, he almost didn't make it back to the surface.
This calm, very blue body of water, only metres away, turns into rapids, as shown below. It is the source of a whole river, the River Sorgue.
And about a kilometer further down you can see the full force of this river as it flows over a weir....
At this point there is an interesting 15th century paper mill which is still making paper! You can see the water powered wheels which drive the pulping hammers.
We tried our luck at growing some winter crops. Well, in a way. This is another French tradition, where you plant some seeds on the 4th of December, let them grow, and then on Christmas day you place them on the dining table for good luck. We had a lot of fun in seeing whose seedlings had grown the most each day, we're a competitive bunch.
Just before Christmas we went to Saint Saturnin-les-Apt for their Christmas celebration night. The photo below, that Jane took, shows us walking through the back of the village along some medieval paths, Connor on my shoulders and Soph behind, the atmosphere was magical.
And then, not knowing what to expect, almost the whole village had turned out to see a procession of horses and carts and a couple of miniature trains take the kids for a ride up to the top of the village with all the mums and dads following behind. Here are our two on one of the trains, very excited.
In the church at Saint Saturnin was an impressive chreche. The French love their chreches. Interestingly chreches grew very much in popularity, in an underground way, during the Revolution as all churches were closed, the church was seen as a symbol of the old aristocracy. People would build there own chreches secretly in their homes as way of having their own little place of homage.
This is a classic. Jane took this photo whilst we where at the supermarket shopping for Christmas day. It's a packet of frozen duck foie gras marcarons, remembering foie gras is liver fat, I need not say any more.
Speaking of Christmas we had a very special one, just the four of us, and one turkey. Here we are opening presents first thing in the morning.
We had originally planned to have the turkey roast for lunch, but after some skyping with the folks back home, champagne to toast the day, a large bottle of French Three Monts Beer, a few glasses of red, and watching most of the Michael Bubble Christmas Show it ended up being an early evening feast, well worth the wait I have to say. Jane did a wonderful job with the turkey, traditional stuffing and all. We had our own little party basically. Here we are, making another toast....
Au revoir pour le moment et heureuse nouvelle année!
(Good bye for now and happy new year!)
Jane, Sophie, Connor, et moi
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