un anglais en diois

After a slightly longer journey than planned time-wise (my overnight stop ended up being in Paris rather than Valence, thanks to a weather-delayed flight), I’ve arrive in a rather damp and grey Romeyer for two weeks or so. As usual, I’m be putting regular photo dumps of the lovely things here on my Google Photos album, with short annotations next to each photo. If the weather stays like the Easter weekend’s weather, I might not be doing that much cycling, but we’ll see. But just getting here and having a break after a hectic term is enough anyway!

I’m back for Christmas, and New Year (just) after a very busy run-up to the end of term. As I’ve run out of photo storage here, you can see new photos on my un anglais en diois Google Photos album, and if you subscribe to that, you’ll be notified when I add photos to the album. Actually, Google Photos is much easier for annotating individual photos, so you should see where each one is, and the odd additional comment! Just click on the info button at the top right if the comments don’t appear by themselves.

Right, at least a temporary fix for now… below you’ll find the link for the Google Photos album for this summer more or less from where I left off. The nature of GP albums is that they are wordy things, so you won’t get my descriptions of stuff, but I will try to annotate the photos, so you can piece together the jigsaw without my help, and can comment on photos if you want to know more.

Here’s the summer album link – the album will get updated until my departure on 6 September. https://photos.app.goo.gl/nVRQSfTGCKJWGaRa8

More apologies, but what I thought was a fix to my technical issues was anything but – I thought I’d solved the storage issues by upgrading my Google Photos account and linking photos from there, but WordPress insists on reuploading them onto its own server, and so filling up the space I’d created for text (or so I thought). They seem to have me over a barrel, so I’ll have to review from here, given the high cost of upgrading the WordPress account.

The Drôme département is under vigilance rouge for canicule again today, so it was a 6am alarm for me to get out and up before it got to hot to be comfortable. In fact, I went over Col de Pennes before 9am, and both the ascent and descent via the Roanne Valley were shaded and cool. But it was definitely getting warm by the time I got back to Die market. Now just laundry and a bit more light bricolage on my woodpile to go… oh, and a salad lunch, of course!

You’ll have to forgive my tardiness in posting stuff here… not just because of my technical issues, but last week whizzed by in a whirlwind few days, with concerts in Crest and Die, the odd ride with Lewis, my fellow trumpeter, a day of doing almost nothing to recover post concerts, and a ride to the always-amazing Combe Laval. Oh, and some warm weather… thanks to the forecasting, I knew to get out early yesterday onto Vercors, to get home before the later afternoon, when the ‘mercury’ touched 41C. I’m glad I got the house down to 22C this morning!!

Anyway, a miscellany…

Apologies, but I’m having technical issues with WordPress and storage – it seems that my free storage has run out here, and I’m trying to work out how to continue on this domain without paying an arm and a leg for what is just a personal blog. I’ll have a play around over the next few days and see what I can come up with.

In the meantime, if you’re on Facebook, that still seems to be working on https://www.facebook.com/unanglaisendiois

My trumpeting friend Lewis also works at a wine merchant in London, and is interested in the Diois wines, in particular the méthode champenoise Crémant de Die, as it’s something that they think might sell well in London. So we did a simple route this morning to call in at the caves of Raspail at Saillans, and Jéjé Vincent at Barsac, to chat to the producers and taste their fizz. Lewis was impressed.

And then this afternoon, we got back on the bikes to head up the steep climb to Valcroissant Abbey, where we did another rehearsal for the two upcoming concerts in Crest and Die. And it went very well, even if we both needed to catch our breaths after the climb and before the first notes of the rehearsal!

Apologies I’ve missed a couple of days – my trumpeting colleague has arrived (last time he was here was 2018), and we’ve been out on the bikes a bit, and have had our first rehearsal for the concerts in Crest & Die on Friday and Saturday. That’s pretty much going to be the menu till the end of the week now. The day before his arrival, I did a standard loop down to Valdrôme, for the first time stopping in the village itself, which is certainly very pretty.

A nicely ‘routine’ day at home today – a large load of washing to do, and a few food needs from town – I trundled down into Die, took a few photos and had (of course) a coffee & croissants as well as doing the shopping, before trundling back up the hill to have lunch and do the odd jobs that needed doing. Now it’s siesta time while the washing dries in the heat & gentle breeze.