The old railtrack, Gare de Moncontour, late afternoon

There are icicles, perhaps a metre long, hanging where the springs trickle down over the rocks and tree roots.  Despite the lowering light, they seem to possess an inner luminescence.

Approach to Bogard, late morning

A fallen poplar twig has quite big glossy buds, sticky with balsam.  Great tits and blue tits flitter among the branches, there are some celandine around, though few other flowers.

Down the road, evening.

Nearly six and still light. Birdsong, birdsong, blackbirds and a thrush at the corner of every field, though still there's a cold wind in our faces when we turn around.

Up the road, morning

My it's cold.  We're only out because the car wouldn't start and Mol was done out of an outing.  But she struggles and needs encouragement and massage to keep going.

Up the road, afternoon

At the corner at le Boissy there is a particularly good clump of sorrel, the leaves as large as spinach.  I collect a handful to make sauce for tonight's salmon.

Down the road, early evening

The cold moist air is refreshing on the skin, the sky is lit in bands of blue-grey and lilac.

A fieldfare flies from the chestnut tree with a whirring trill.

Tredaniel plan d'eau, morning

The heron has been here often lately, it flies off but reluctantly.

The maples have no more leaves now, but abundant clusters of stiff brown keys linger on the twigs.

Hill above Henon, morning

I have secateurs and gloves, and cut some sprigs of well-berried holly.  Molly loses me, but after I've returned to fetch her, she tracks me back to the holly tree.

Tredaniel plan d'eau, morning

Two herring gulls and two black-headed (their heads winter white), float serenely in a group; they are symmetrical in two planes, sometimes like bookends and always reflecting in the water.

Tredaniel plan d'eau, morning.

The leafmould underfoot is thick, brown and slippery, with splitting acorns making specks of pink amongst it.  A few last yellow flickers of birch leaves still light the uppermost twigs.

Tredaniel plan d'eau, morning.

A  flock of long-tailed tits enliven the trees and bushes as they often do here; are they the same ones or is it just somewhere long-tailed tits like to come?

Up the road, morning

The young bull, foaming-mouthed and bellowing from two fields away, and Ludovic's border collie on the corner, are both excited at the  new heifers being delivered to our field by trailer.

Up the road, afternoon

A swallow in late November, something I've never seen.  It lands on the wire, preens, shits, rests then flies.  I wonder what its story is, and what its chances are.

Up the road, late afternoon

Four larks, then another four, then many more so I give up counting, fly up from the field of young grass.  They  ripple across the sky overhead as I walk.

Down the road, late afternoon

Momentarily a smear of rainbow appears across the massed abundance of cumulus above the hilltop.  Across the sky a lighted window opens in a dark cloud, Cecil B deMille style.