Tuscany - 3

It's been another dull day, weather-wise. After the rain, I left the others watching Spiral (we had contributed our boxed set to the household) and set off for an evening walk. From "our" farmhouse garden, it's easy to cross onto an overgrown track leading into the valley below. A group of three deer gave me a long look before scurrying away: otherwise I saw no sign of wildlife, and certainly neither wild boar nor porcupine, as was suggested might be on view.

But what was this curious lump halfway up the stalk of a dog rose? It was quite solid. Created as a shelter by an aestivating animal perhaps, or a bird?

Tuscany - 2

If we had come all this way for unbroken sunshine, we would be feeling disappointed. The rain has bucketed down at times today, but luckily we weren't caught in the worst of it on our visit to San Gimignano this morning. And it is specially good fun swimming in the rain, as I did on our return, before lunch.

We are just off to eat more - to a restaurant in nearby Casole d'Elsa: we have been warned, it's a menu with no choices. Who's worried about that here though?

Tuscany

It's 13 years since we stayed a week at La Foce, celebrating with our late lamented friend Massimo his 50th birthday. You forget how beautiful Tuscany is, even on a less than 100% sunny evening such as tonight. Here, we are further North than before, looking towards the village of Radicondoli, across a wide valley: there's nothing much between us apart from a very few farmhouses, and indeed nothing that I can at this late hour see to mar the 180 degree view.

We arrived not long after 7 o'clock, met by our kind hosts off the bus from Colle di Val d'Elsa. After traveling all day, to immerse myself in a heated infinity pool overlooking such a view was absolutely delicious.

Paris 12e

Here we are in France - Caroline for just two nights, me for 16. We are staying in Paris with our friend of long standing, Tatou. She has a flat not far that from the Bois de Vincennes, though her local park (where I took this picture) is hardly big enough to swing a cat in. She brings her grandchildren here when they come to visit. It already feels warmer, though there's rain in the air. Tomorrow is 1st May, so of course all the galleries will be closed, but there'll be plenty to keep us amused, not having spent time here for a long while.

Croyde

The heat wave continues - thank God, being that we are on holiday! I’ve surfed today at Croyde Bay, virtually the only one in the sea without a wetsuit. We went there once before for this purpose, a few years ago - 1997 in fact, en route for Cornwall. Today's surf wasn’t brilliant, and the tide was far out, but how lovely to taste salt, and to feel the sand beneath the feet and the warmth of the sea breeze! Not too many people there either, at this time of year. Even so, the lanes are a nightmare.

Old and new in Portugal 2011

We are getting to the end of a fortnight at a rented mill house, Casa do Lagar, a few miles North of Ponte de Lima, in the Portuguese Minho: I have been on holiday from blogging as well as generally. The first week was hot, but the weather has changed rather, and as some of the family has now left, I have returned to the computer, despite snail-like connectivity.

We are only half a mile from the A-3 motorway, with a working quarry a similar distance away the other side, but the main sound reaching us is that of running water, with the occasional ox cart trundling past on the lane. Apart from our garden with its swimming pool, all the land around is intensively cultivated – sweet corn, grapes, cabbages etc. The vines mark the boundaries of small fields hardly bigger than allotments: their owners are out both early and late with hoes, diverting streams of water for irrigation.

In the huge Ponte de Lima market, these same smallholders can be seen seated with their produce about them, or perhaps a basketful of rabbits. They stare at us, as we do likewise by training our cameras upon them.

Off to Portugal

Soon, we shall be away on our travels again. We are taking dog and grandchildren (not to mention three of the children also) for a fortnight in a remote mill house in Portugal, up near the Spanish border.

So, naturally I visited our marvellous local Red Cross bookshop for some ideas, and whilst there I met 90-year-old Eileen Holloway: her hat would do for our trip, don't you think?

Northwards Ho!

On Monday morning, I am setting off by bicycle from the Shropshire farm where my great-great-grandfather lived on a journey North. He made the same trip, 830 miles, in 1835, and wrote it up in a journal. This was later transcribed by his granddaughter, and copied to me by a cousin in New South Wales.

Peter Davis walked more than 100 miles during his fortnight, but for the most part travelled by coach. I shall try to bike the bits he walked, and then put the bike on the train. Bikes weren't available in 1835, and trains only just: he describes catching the one from Liverpool to Manchester.

So it's something of an adventure!

Out of training

Four weeks ago today we were in Paris on the first leg of our InterRail holiday, from which we have just returned. Having embarked at Cheltenham Station, this - our first train - was late, our carriage door was stuck and the loo was blocked. I won't say every continental conveyance - we also had goes on metros, trams, buses and even a funicular - was perfect by contrast. They did all however run to time and were mostly more comfortable than our dear First Great Western.

We are still digesting it all (assisted by 900 photographs). Apart from our 36 trains, we clocked up six capital cities, 11 art galleries, 13 cathedrals, 17 World Heritage Sites - well yes, this does include a couple we saw from the train - and slept in 22 different beds. No opera and only one concert - but what a concert (Dudamel conducting the Göteborgs Symfoniker in Nielsen). Good food (and drink). Meetings with old and new friends, and much kindness of strangers. Hardly any rain, and really warm at times.

Low point: my bag was snatched in Barcelona, complete with credit cards and €100 - boring to say the least, and chastening in view of the specific warnings friends had given us.

More later perhaps, but must now get on with the thank you letters!

Little wonder

Ida was one - and the one - yesterday. A tea party took place, Ida in her Tripp Trapp chair surrounded by friends and relations of all ages at the dining-table. Agnes had, as can be seen, let her imagination flourish delightfully in the making of gingerbread men - sorry, women! - which set the tone for a great celebration.

Now Caroline and I are looking forward to four weeks away. On Friday morning we shall be picking up our rucksacks and embarking at Cheltenham Station on the first of about three dozen train journeys linking five European capitals - Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Luxembourg, Brussels. Our schedule looks like a logistical cat's cradle. We plan to see some architecture: Gaudi of Barcelona; Calatrava of Valencia; some cathedrals - Salamanca, Toledo, Oporto, Toulouse, Clermont-Ferrand... If it's Wednesday, it must be Pau.

And we shall not be taking with us anything other than a basic mobile phone - unlike Stephen Fry with his laptop and "a suitcase full of cables, chargers, memory cards and connectors." So, no more blogging for a bit whilst I range free.

Is the Pope green?

Leo Hickman raised this question last weekend, in the Guardian. It followed Pope Benedict's words in Australia: gazing out of the window on his flight there, he had, he said, been filled with introspection about the plight of the environment.

Benedict is getting something of a reputation as a green Pope. Solar panels have appeared on Vatican buildings, and the Apostolic Penitentiary numbers ecological offences amongst new forms of social sin.

Moreover, Vatican City boasts it is the only sovereign state to have zero carbon dioxide emissions - thanks to the Vatican Climate Forest in Hungary. But, as a theologian from Louvain University points out, where is the justice in this "indulgence-type" method of offsetting one's carbon footprint?

As expected, Hickman's crunch point is to home in on the population consequences of the Church's opposition to contraception - much the same as I reported Jonathon Porritt had concluded in a blog I posted last month.

The Vatican hosts, amongst very many other organisations, a Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerants, headed up by a Cardinal. Travel lightly, it urges: use public transport, carry less luggage and do everything you can to make your holiday environmentally friendly. But what about Vatican Airlines, launched last year to ferry pilgroms back and forth to the world's shrines? Given that a pilgrimage is a metaphor for life's journey, shouldn't we be thinking more in terms of making virtual pilgrimage these days?

Those who may have been gazing down from the two planes in my photograph could also have been "filled with introspection," but it is only we who gaze upwards that see the damaging vapour trails.