beautiful and bountiful
by Rachael
Cordes sur Ceil (we were going to go to Carcassonne today, but this place is so sweet, we stayed to take a wander and some photos, and add to our memory store)
Maybe it’s because we’re here at harvest-time, but France is overflowing with beauty and bounty. Roadside bounty for us has included blackberries collected in a few different locations until we had enough to eat, plums in varying shades of red, green and yellow, walnuts and acorns. We didn’t know you could eat raw acorns – turns out they are crunchy and nutty, which sounds not dissimilar to the description we gave of eating fried crickets, but the two experiences are worlds apart. Literally.
Everywhere we look, there is a beautiful vista. We didn’t come here looking for beauty, yet you can’t help but see it. I wonder if it is because I am looking through Western eyes. Would a Malaysian see the same beauty or would they find the colourful flowers to be prissy in comparison with their magnificent deep green rainforests? Would someone from a tribe high in the hills of Thailand appreciate the multi-toned stone buildings or would they be overcome at the sheer size of them?
*Bountiful* is hard to argue with – the markets full of produce, barns stacked with haybales, well-covered cows mooing in fields (white cows in the north, golden ones further south and black-n-white ones around here), sweetcorn waving, grass swaying – yes, there is bounty. But how do you define beauty?
Enough musing, come up the hill to Cordes sur Ceil and we’ll take another wander.
Time on the road: none
Distance covered: 0km
Tags: 2008/09, housing, postcard: France
rayres
I’d love to know how old some of those buildings are!