A Day in the Life

Run Holly Run!

Inspired by the idea of flooding social media with poetry, I decided to throw my own creation into the rising waters ;) Write what you know the wise ones say, so this one is a reflection of my current days 'bringing up baby'. I hope you enjoy.

A Day in the Life 

(working title)

We awaken

In the dark

Last stars fade

Daylight creeps

Get up stand up wake up sore back

Pull the blinds

Let day begin

Let dog out do her business

Wash my face and watch it fold

Lift the baby

Change the baby

Smile into her smiles

Warmth of joy at being

Mindful princess.

Alannah to play-station now

Radio on classical

Boil the kettle

Feed the dog

Sweep the floor

Do few jobs

Wake the house

Pour the milk

Oats swell up to meet banana

Eat over-looking winter’s garden

Robin’s work is never done

Alannah cries time for feeding

And then she sleeps

Tea for me

And I pretend to be a writer

For half an hour

And work on a novel too old to be called novel.

Sun is shining

When she wakes again

Illuminating cottage kitchen

Change the baby

Happy smiling chatty

Then I feed her

Tiny toes wriggling as she latches on

All casual like

And then she’s not interested

Down on her mat on the floor

And I do a few things more

And then I play with her because she’s bored

Get the keys and lock her up

Lock her up, lock her up

Until heart-breaking cry that only we know

Mammy, Mammy I’m falling - help me!

Holding my hand holding hers

Mother’s best to soothe her

Fall into that darkest space

Where she won’t see me feel me need me

Losing mind to sleep.

And then I pretend to be a writer

Check my email, FB, Twitter

Anticipate the weather

Turning cold and misting sky

A solid roof of grey.

Holly prowls

Time for walkies

Dog leads our circus to the wood

Three musketeers

Together breathing

In the cold

Alannah’s face to heaven

Discovering sounds - ooos aaas

Delivered up to twigs and branching

Beech and towering oaks

Hovering over

Seeing through the canopy now

A tired head falls on my chest

This time peaceful

No telling signs

And I fall into my stride

And I wish that this would never end

This special time

Being mother and best friend

Her cold bare hands in mine

I stare into giant oaks that live

In timeless mystical world.

Holly staying close

Sniffing out woodland clues to

Reddest squirrels

Other musketeers

She looks to tell me with most

Honest of her trickster eyes

We must go back

Home through big open field

For that is where she gets best runs

From over top of hill

Rounding fence and back to me.

And so we go home through big field

Holly reaches for her peak

Run Holly run!

Helicopter ears -

Woosh woosh

Tongue bouncing

Mind rushing

Happiness pulsing

And then we must cross the fence

And Holly waits to go back under

Lead fastened.

Around the bend through castle gates 
Holly pulling us along

Meeting friendly faces

Everybody wants to talk

Or catch the eye of brave a leanbh

Who might gift unto them

Four and a half month baby’s wisdom and the smile

Emperors would bleed for.

Home in gentle raindrops

We walk around the garden

Blackbird following in robin’s steps

I wonder is it time to dig again

Heaving off wellies and coats

Carrying Alannah

Quick change quick feed

She sits and thinks in bouncy chair

Time maybe for another little sleep

I look to evening sky to say

Prize-winning story comes tomorrow

But I will think on it today.

Yogi salutes the sun, and Ted ;) 
yogi bears

Coffee time for me now

Savour last forbidden drops

Hope she sleeps until

Coffee has been drunk

And mother’s milk is cleansed

And then she wakes all smiles again

And then it’s one more time upon the mat

Watching me salute the sun

And I might contemplate a run

As skirts and leggings become less fun

Blinds pulled now

January’s sun is set

Heating on ‘til fire is lit

Dinner preparation at its get

And he asks, what would you like?

And I say, oh I don’t mind

And he says no - what would you like?

And that is when I must decide

And I watch as spice man cometh

And daily bread begins to fold

Aromas revealed

Cinnamon, fennel, cumin, cloves

And I am hungrier than ever I was.

Eating now

Silence mostly

She watches on

From buggy first and then my knee

And I don’t know what she sees or

What she thinks

This and every time.

Eating done

Coffee for him green tea for me

Baby feeds and cries until

Nighttime is too heavy to hold

And she is tumbled down

To summoning sleep

Our time now

We sit and watch until

Tiredness kicks in

My turn now to fight the sleep

One more time she drinks

Half awake then back to sleep

A tender hook in

Rudolph pajamas too cute for her not to wear

This late in January.

Mother lies beside

Trusting bundle of the softest sighs

Wondering

What was it like before she began?

Doors open and close

As he lets Holly out

Sound of his toothbrush

Before we wrap together

Musing to the weather

Tired comfort whispers

Glad for

Silences between

Precious in absentia dramatic

That everything is as it is.

And then it happens

At a time

To us unknown

Only silence of sleeping

For there is no-one now to listen

Three have journeyed past the hearing

Surrendering helplessly unto

Heavy weight of day and night

We fall our separate ways

Back into darkness of light

Back to where it all began

To where it all begins again

For this is all there is

We three are one

Of billions

One

This is all there is.

Catherine Wilkie

26/01/2014

Autumn's Fall

Holly Cottage roses

It's the last day of November. This is the day - for me - that hails the end of autumn and the true beginning of winter. And what a beautiful November it has been! We've been watching the leaves tumbling down from the high tops of the beech and oak trees that line the Charleville estate wall from the warmth of the Holly cottage kitchen. Some of those same leaves find themselves floating onto the Holly Cottage garden - leaf litter to add to the soil for next year's harvest. The few small tress that we have in the back garden - probably more like shrubs to tall people ;) - provide a hint of autumnal colour too but one more blast of wind next week and all the leaves will finally have tumbled down. And then the long wait begins, again...autumn falls as winter calls. We already had a taste of snow, but that's always lovely, for a day...especially against the backdrop of a red rose...

News here is pretty scant. It's sleep, walk, feed baby, change baby, walk baby (and dog), and then do that all over again and then finally get some downtime once herself conks out for the night - usually around 9:15-9:20pm most evenings. How does she know that it's the same time every night? Baffling really.

Holly on her leafy way

The walking is good - beautiful even. Some days I find myself walking over the fields and wishing that 'it" would never end. 'It' = this time, this phase, this life - you get the message. And the days are so dry  that we get out and into the woods with barely a splash of mud on our leaf kicking boots. The leaves are piled high and Holly is chest deep - she's having great craic altogether sliding around and sprinting up and down the leafy paths. The pictures really don't do her wild spirit justice to be fair - she is a canine force to be reckoned with, especially on the sprinting u-turns. Apart from our usual woodland Charleville haunt, we've made it as far as Dublin's inner city (in a car mind), Belvedere House outside Mullingar and a short stroll about Middleton in Cork - showing herself off to the gran-aunts and cousins. We find different views everyday, different ideas, different perspectives. At this point we're up on 64/1000 miles...what adventures yet to come?

It's been extremely quiet on the garden front and for the first time in two months I made it out for a (blissful) hour yesterday while herself was carried away and comforted by the lull of the car's engine. Jobs done included - pulling dead leaves off cabbages and sprout plants; turning compost; pruning apple and roses back; pulling up sunflower plants (seeds good for the birds); cutting back last of the pepper plants and a an overall general tidy up and sweep. There's still a lot of food out there, and an equal lot in the freezer. The frozen tomatoes are a gift - add garlic, onion, fennel seeds, chilli and a couple of carrots and a delicious soupy treat is at your fingertips.

The other development here is that we've been baking our own brown soda-bread - no more shop bought convenience stuff. It's so easy and it's probably a bit embarrassing not to have been making it regularly before now, although the day job sure can chew a lot of energy and time - the joys of being at home nesting for the winter eh? Anyway, take 400g wholemeal flower, add 50g oatmeal and 50g of whatever you like ;) for example wheat bran, or other 'roughagey stuff', a teaspoon of baking soda and teaspoon salt - mix all together with a pint of buttermilk and one egg. All goes in a loaf tin @ 200deg for an hour or so. Lovely crunchy crust emerges with deliciously wheaten goodness - great with the soup - and we add pumpkin and sunflower seeds when available in the press for more crunch. Beats anything shop bought and freezes well too. And I'm afraid to say it might just even beat the bread my mother has been making for the past fifty odd years...

As for herself - it's smiles all around and plenty of chat. Nearly, teasingly, sleeping through the night. We shall have to see how we go. Twelve weeks yesterday and truly, truly the new boss of the Holly Cottage...not sure who was the old boss.....but I guess that really doesn't matter anymore now ;)

A Journey of 1000 miles

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

Lao Tzu (604 BC - 531 BC)

The first step marked by blue skies,
not North American but Irish Birch

I must confess my ignorance on this one - I had no idea that this quote came from Lao Tzu, he being  of Chinese philsopher and poet renown. An alternative translation from the Chinese (Bynner 1944) would read as here at your feet a thousand-mile journey have birth. It's an apt saying for all of us taking on new projects, new challenges or setting about making a change in our lives. The first step is taken with the idea in our minds and then if the idea is to come to fruition, feet begin to move step by step forward, onward and onward, inching closer and closer to the goal at the end of the proverbial 1000 mile mark. 

Most of our days here are defined by walking -  walking to the woods, walking up the town, walking around the garden. One of the main reasons I was attracted to this house all those three years ago was its proximity to the woods - a place where a walker could go everyday with a boisterous Holly and always see something new. Or see something that is the same thing yet completely different from a change in perspective depending on my own outlook, or my own frame of mind. So when a call to walkers was issued by a colleague in Chicago to embark on a 1000 mile journey, well of course my interest was piqued. The call comes from Liam Heneghan - ecologist and writer - of DePaul University, Chicago. Liam draws inspiration from the walking of Robert Llyod Praeger. Prager (1865-1953) - for those outside of Ireland - was the veritable godfather of all Irish naturalists and an inspiration to all of us who passed through the Botany Departments of Irish Universities since the 1950s.  You can read all about him in Liam's article. Liam's call is to all interested in walking and those with a keen naturalist's eye - no expertise or qualifications necessary. The call is to walk in the spirit of Praeger in your chosen area - it can be urban or rural or somewhere in between - and marvel at the small things you might otherwise have overlooked in a less attentive mode. There is already a growing community of walkers that can be followed under the #1000UrbanMiles on Twitter. 

Through a portal of Hazel
12/11/2013

For our part, it will be a matter of walking where we can, when we can. For the most part it will be Alannah, Holly and myself but I do hope to rope others in along the way. We consciously became part of the #1000UrbanMiles community last Tuesday, and in the interest of accuracy I have added the #1000IrishMiles to make a clear distinction between the urban streets of Chicago and greater USA cities and the highways and byways of my own Irish countryside. I confess that I am no Praeger and I don't find myself  stopping to identify every last moss and liverwort as I go, despite my great training under the UCD Botany and Zoology Departments (when they existed back somewhere in the 1990s). But I do appreciate everything I see, and I hope to meet others along the way that can point out the more subtle minutia of interest that my macro lens overlooks. And 1000 miles is nothing really - nothing over a year. And walking is such a transformative process, beta brainwaves turning into alpha brainwaves and all that stuff. That is of course once you remember to switch the mobile device off so the ringtones don't upset the perfect wave forms. 

Now if we were to run it, well that would be another story altogether....

Fruit and nut (and some leaves too!) fall

Crunchy beech

It's a dangerous place these days - walking in the woods that is. You run the risk of either being caught in the line of fire of masses of acorns ready to surrender to the draw of the earth, or a shower of drying leaves that are destined to fall to provide the essential ammunition for earthworms and other recyclers of the forest trenches. It's a beautiful place now and even though I love summer, I love autumn best when it appears to us as it has done the last few days - mist-shrouded mornings followed by golden sunshine and leaf-kicking-perfect afternoons before red sky at night takes over just about teatime. 

It's back to walking every day now so no more just wishing I was out there. And there's a feast of colour to be found as reward - sloe and haw berries, acorns and chestnuts, and every shade of leaf on twig and branch and forest floor. Holly has developed a love of acorns so the walking is slowing down a bit as she snacks en route. Alannah is oblivious as she rides in the tight sling and buries her head in the warmth of mother or father's chest. I had to shield her head from unexpected acorn fire a few times - motherhood brings all sorts of new jobs and roles, some expected and most very unexpected! 

Time out from wandering the woods

We follow the same path most days - down the long oak lined avenue to Charleville Castle, off on a tangent to say hello to the majestic beech with abundance of crisp brown leaves carpeting our feet, up and over fallen ivy laden tumbled down pine trunks and then a sharp left turn before the crumbling gates of the castle, and then we tunnel uphill through infestuous (newly coined word for this blog) laurel that really shouldn't be there as it crowds all things of forest beauty out. And then, homeward bound we meander along the margins where oak and 'all sorts' forest meets barley fields and winter beet crops before we turn back onto the car-busy thoroughfare that links the outside world and the midlands small-town on whose edge we now live. 

We have an oasis of woodland and bark and leaf almost right outside our door - a paradise for otherwise housebound dogs that get loosed on weekends, a runners escape in all weathers, a kingdom of the acorn and sanctuary for newborn and new-become mother on sunny autumn days. 

Time to stop and smell the roses

Summer pink - Handel rose..

It's Friday again - funny how it keeps coming round again, and again, and again....but the name of this day lingers on the mind, it settles in deeper and it releases those magical endorphins in the brain that course through the body to make each one of our component cells - from tired toes to limp limbs - tingle. Friday. Well, it does for me anyhow ;) It's the day when energy seems so low at about 2pm, and then you find yourself at the end of the routine working day and then unexpectedly, you're released from some (only a small some) of your responsibilities for two whole days. Two whole days. Days not to be ruined thinking on the past week too much, and never, ever, ever let it be said you ruined a perfectly good Sunday evening by dreading the thoughts of the chilly Monday morning. No! These two days are to be savoured - and these two days begin with the word Friday ;)

Of course, like any normal Friday, I immediately kicked into action and instead of winding down, it all started to wind up. Quel suprise! It started with a blissfully cool and green walk in the woods - far from tarred roads and artificial surfaces. We had to trip our way over roots and branches and brambles, and bare the soft brown, leaf strewn path as we wound our way through the wise silence of the oak woods. The light that flickered through the tall canopy of leaves was like a stream of golden kisses for those of us who chose to hide from the glare of the bared summer sun (no clouds, no rain....I know!!!).

Staying cool

After Holly's woodland adventure walk it was back to the garden. Now, in terms of yoga postures there were squats, cat, forward bends, backward bends, rotations, balancing acts, warrior I and II, mindful breathing and mountain pose - but to mention the obvious few. All these were manifested while graceful hoeing manoeuvres were conducted to the orchestra of potatoes, beans, peas and salads that all played their symphonic masterpieces this evening. All this earthly music while weeding the drills, thinning the seedlings, tidying the overgrowth and harvesting the never ending red torrent of strawberries that cascade down long green stems amongst endless adventurous runners. 

I'm well squatted now and even Holly seemed to be telling me to stop as the sun dipped behind the tree giants that guard the kingdom of Charleville. And that is the best time to smell to roses - the evening air, the setting sun, the scent of soft pink roses drifting over the host of garden compatriots that were readying themselves for the short night ahead - divine. And then there is the feast of colour to nurture the over-stretched mind of the previous five days - starflower blue, rose red, geranium cerise, golden nasturtium, blushing rambler rose and green green green of promising peas and bountiful beans...sweet. And it's only just begun. Have a great weekend....and wherever you are, be kind to yourself and stop and smell the roses - make sure it's a pink one though, those red ones are always a let down - all that drama has a cost. Don't be fooled :)

Summer in the garden - nearly 10pm....
remember this in December!

Letting the light back in

We held our breath for such a long time here in Ireland. We waited, we hoped, some prayed, others took to soul searching. Some took the approach of positive outlook while others grumbled and were ready to take the pain, again. Whatever the outlook you can never be sure until the moment has truly and finally arrived. What is that I hear your curious minds asking. Well, summer of course!

Evening summer sun -
it has to go to come back!

It all started about a month ago really - around the last time I wrote to update on the floral developments in the Holly Cottage garden. At that time - about four weeks ago, a lifetime in some ways - I was embarking on a bit of a tour of Ireland. There was Mayo for wonderful wilderness and Dublin for trashing out EU policy for Biodiversity, and then Cork to catch a plane off this rich and green island. That second week in May was cold and wet in Mayo, with torrential showers mixed with hard winds. I was dressed to the last in winter wet gear. It was great though - you can't beat a trip to Westport and lingering looks across Clew Bay in the morning light. But, yes, it still felt like the wintery summers of the last four years. Then a skip, hop and a jump to the capital and it seemed like the residents there were starting to warm up - people eating on the street and not shying from buying and wearing summer t-shirts and sandals. It was looking good. I spent two days in the regal Dublin Castle with a gang of heads from all over Europe - it seems strange to be setting research targets for biodiversity conservation and restoration inside a cold and regal building - not a butterfly or wildflower in sight - but I guess needs must?

My kind of motorway ;)

That was when we abandoned ship in the bid to find summer elsewhere. After tucking Holly in with two new friends - a cantankerous chihuahua and a less threatening looking King Charles, we boarded a cheap flight in Cork and set off for the foothills of the Spanish Pyrenees. After a worryingly wet first day in Girona for the festival of flowers, we were quickly reminded of how summer used to be in Ireland. The hedgerows near our rented house on the back roads half an hour from anywhere were filled with poppies and borage, wild grasses and plantains, and butterflies frolicked in the quiet back roads and tracks that criss-cross the Catalan Hills. It brought me back to childhood days when it was time to bring the hay in and the only shelter from the heat of the Irish summer was behind three bales stacked in wig-wam style and thirst was quenched by bottles of orange flavoured water out of mi-wadi bottles. Now that was summer ;) More on the wonders of the Catalan countryside and coastline for another day but let me give you a flavour of what happened on our return...

Well, summer happened! For the last two weeks morning begins at 4.30am when the darkness in the room begins to lift and the birds outside in the hedges and gardens and across the road in Charleville Estate provide us with a cacophony of dawn chorus - deafening in ways, but rivalling any Vivaldi piece on summer. From about 5am onwards, we are blessed with blue skies and early twenties in temperatures up until at least 11pm at night. And we have the longest day yet to come! There's no more heavy fleece getting into the car to go for work, no more socks (happy feet!), no more bracing the wind at the morning walk in Lough Boora and the promise of food cooked outside on the BBQ every evening, nicely charred and wonderfully flavoured and appetising with the taste of the summer evening outdoors. 

And all that glorious light is reaching every part of us that has been covered in darkness and cold for the longest winter in a long time. And we might even forget the difficult cold and damp days, and the struggle to keep our heads up and spirits lifted. The light has a way of doing that, it brings us back to ourselves and everything is illuminated. A time for revelation. There is of course a time for the dark of course - and I welcome that too, but everything in balance! 

The garden is coming on in leaps and bounds everyday - early spuds are flowering, broad beans are scaling lofty heights and packed with flowers, peas are looking a lot greener than last year's sickly yellow, tomatoes are tucked into their cosy growbags, cucumbers are trailing, basil and herbs are packing flavour and aroma in every corner, rocket has..well, rocketed, and lavenders are providing a sweet hang-out for bees and all sorts of things creepy crawly. The strawberries are not quite there yet but we will definitely have to make some room amongst the bags of frozen broccoli to preserve their sweetness for the year ahead. There's talk of a polytunnel to help bring things forward a bit next year, but we'll have to see....

Lilac dreams

And what about Holly? Well, true to form - having recovered from the shock at being dictated to for a week by a dog the size of her head (the chihuahua) - she is just basking in the glory of the summer heat and taking every moment as it comes. We still get to walk in the cool green of the Charleville woods every evening until late, and the bluebells and wild garlic are still packing a punch in the colour and fragrance departments. Long may it linger!

There's still work to do here (apart from the day job of course) - cabbages and sprouts to be transplanted and sunflowers to be re-housed, a spot of weeding (just discovered the back saving attributes of a hoe!) and of course everything to be enjoyed. More to come on our Catalan adventures and a few nuggets of wonder from Mayo and a day in Kerry where luck crossed my path in the shape of Rua the leprechaun...there's magic in Kerry you know! In the meantime, have a great weekend and be sure to soak it all up - word is there's rain on Monday, but just enough to refresh the daisies and down the dust ;)

Something from the archives - A Mercantour Adventure

This is a short review article I wrote on returning from a most memorable holiday in the Mercantour National Park in the South of France. I am posting it after finding my picture still in the weblink for it!!! It is such a wonderful place and the photos make you excited for summer - exactly what we need on a cold and wet January night..

Despite the bumpy and stony shoreline, the beach in Nice looked inviting. I had just landed that morning on the (too) early flight from a wet and windy Dublin, where summer seems to have decided to take a year out! I grabbed ‘une grande bouteille d’eau’ and hit the beach to catch up on some much needed sleep.

Mercantour Marvel

Where was I going? Well, let me take you back to a dark and dreary day in the office in January. I was just clearing my desk when a curious e-mail arrived from Amelia at ResponsibleTravel to say I had won a walking holiday in the Mercantour National Park. The park nestles on the French Alps, just an hour from Nice. Not only that, I was to have three days guided walking with Mel of Space Between, a travel company run by Mel Jones and Liz Lord. Disregarding the e-mail as a hoax, I ignored it. A couple of days later another e-mail arrived wondering if I was actually going to claim my free holiday – yes, it was true, yes it was free, and I humbly accepted and arranged my voyage for the last week in June.

June arrived and there was Liz e-mailing me to find out when I was arriving. The holiday couldn’t have come at a better time for me: usual stuff - work stress, and lack of sunlight. From the moment I was picked up by Liz that Saturday evening, which was bathed in a wonderful warm summer sunshine, until the following Saturday morning, I felt that I had arrived at a home from home. The ground-floor of Mel and Liz’s traditional style house has been converted into a self-catering gîte (Mel and Liz live upstairs and they also have a B&B attached on the upper floor) and this was to be my place for the week. The view from my own private terrace every morning was southward and the sun warmed my toes as I breakfasted gazing down the Vesubie valley.

I spent three days with Mel and Liz walking, but there are also clearly marked walking routes within easy access of the gîte. I spent two days strolling through the local pine forested valleys, exploring hidden streams and old homesteads that seem to have been absorbed and naturalised by the pines and sweet chestnuts. It was a good way to wind down and get into the pace of life in the French rural countryside.

On Monday, Mel led the way and we walked through La Madone de la Fenestre. This valley formed the major salt route that existed between the French coast and the Italian towns on the far side of the Alps. The Templar monastery at our starting point screamed of a rich heritage and endless stories of perilous journeys through the snow covered alpine passes with salt-laden donkeys. Enough of the past: the present day valley is spectacular. We steadily climbed up through the valley, encountering a rich array of wildlife - gentians, wonderful orchids, delicate saxifrages and an overwhelming array of pink azalea abounded, set against a rich, verdant landscape with larches creeping up to their limit on the steep alpine slopes. We passed through a picturesque hanging valley, where I had my first marmotte and chamois (antelope-like creatures) sightings, along with alpine chough, alpine accentor, wheatear and definitely the biggest frogs I’ve ever seen swimming in the ice cold glacial lakes. We ate lunch overlooking La Gordolasque valley, at a height of 2400m. That day finished with a gentle saunter back down through another valley, following the path of an idyllic cold water stream.

Crossing from France to Italy - lunch first!

Next day, Mel, Liz and I headed out for a more challenging walk. We walked for about 12 hours, moving from 1600m to 3000m, up through pine forest, up though alpine meadows and even further up (‘where are we going Mel?’ ‘Up, Up Up!’ – probably best not to ask!); onto the rocky mountain tops and ridges that mark the border with Italy. And so I ate half of my camembert sandwich in Italy and half in France. The views were spectacular, but the summit was only a taster for what lay around the corner in the Cougourde valley. We began the descent marvelling at the high views, and then into the valleys where wonderful orchids lined the grassy slopes alongside wild chives and gentians. The Cougourde Refuge was a vision in a lush green valley, embedded with jewel like flowers and sprinkled by crystal clear streams and waterfalls.

Next day I was exhausted, and chose a gentle walk between Belvedere and Berthemont des Bains to give my weary legs a chance to recover. I took my time, stopping now and then to perch on a rock between the shady pines and soak in the green valley vistas, or just to wonder at how naturally-slow time seemed to pass in this peaceful world.

On Thursday we headed south and starting from the pretty village of Utelle, climbed to the hilltop of La Madone d’Utelle. Here the hillsides are lined with evergreen oak, wild strawberries, lavender, and an array of wonderful Mediterranean flowers – very different from the Alpine species that we had encountered just an hour north of us in the Boreon. The church on the summit has a wonderful atmosphere and we bought honey from the local nuns (straight from the bee’s bum!) and a beer in the next town of Lantosque.

I spent my last day in the Boreon – morning time at the wolf sanctuary and afternoon climbing a small mountain (big by Irish standards at 2500m!). The Alpha wolf sanctuary is an initiative to mend the rift between local farmers and those concerned with conservation and re-introduction of the native wolf, largely through education and a captive wolf breeding programme. As I looked into the eyes of the wolves, I could feel a certain primeval excitement at being so close to such wonderful and beautiful creatures. After a rustic lunch of local cheese and bread by the river, I headed up again and my last afternoon in the Alps was rewarded with more spectacular views and more heady alpine scented meadows. I was reluctant to make the descent as I knew it would be my last view of this wonderland.

Sleeping wolf - counting sheep perhaps?

Liz and Mel cooked that night and we shared our meal with a German couple, who had spent the previous 8 days walking across the Alps. Did I forget to mention that Liz is an amazing cook? Well, we feasted on wonderful beef stew with subtle wine and orange flavours, local salads, courgette and spuds, raspberries and redcurrants, cheese and more cheese, topped off with bottles of red wine and a taste of the local liqueur, Genepy. Despite language and cultural diversity, we spent a wonderful evening laughing and sharing our Mercantour experiences.

Next morning I bid a fond farewell to Mel and Liz, the cats and my new refuge on the edge of the Mercantour Park. The buzz of Nice was a shock to the system: a direct contrast to the music of the alpine countryside – the bee-loud glades and heavy cow-bells with heady lavender scents by day, owls and cricket chirping at night.

Highlights: wine and philosophy on the terrace (‘c’est la providence!’); the owls hooting from the forest; the warm scent of pines; the alpine meadow psychedelic floral displays; the alpine air; the endless skies; the views from the top; the winter snow clinging on at edge of slowly warming corrie lakes; the circling alpine choughs; the magic of the Cougourde valley; the iconic blue of the gentians; and the warm hospitality and friendship of Mel and Liz; definitely a Space Between experience, brushed with alpine magic.

June 2007

Breath-taking beauty - worth 10 hours walking!!