Aigueperse

Well, it's Friday, and I'm sick&tired of working. It's not so much the impressive mass of documentation we need to create and/or summarize and/or gather together from diverse notebooks, but the incessant negativity of a particular colleague that has made it such a difficult week.

The work to do, I'm up for it. Evenings, crunch time, alright (as long as it's over in a week or two). But the constant "we'll never get this done" and "what a mess" and "there's nothing behind these documents" (which is false - there's plenty) just makes me want to kick this girl in the butt and out the door. Though I won't, because for all the whinging she has got a lot done this week. I've rarely met such a negative person. It's often a trial to work with her.

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oof. 5 pm Friday and I'm the only one left.

Except for our exceptionally stinky cleaning guy. I almost fell over choking yesterday when he emptied my waste basket, though today thank goodness he's changed his clothes.

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So it's time for a little zen-time. Last Friday I was out and about in the countryside a bit to the north of here, and I never did show you those photos.

This is the village of Aigueperse, which is about 45 minutes north-north-west by train. It's a two-street town. This is the main street, about a mile long, and there's a secondary one parallel to it. And a bunch of little connectors, but they don't really count.

As you might know, churches aren't much my thing, but when I'm wandering about like this I do often stop in, just to see. The church is usually the fanciest building in a small town here. And the light was just right.

The town hall has a fantastic clock tower. I missed the hour, and so didn't get to see the figures move, but figured I could try again on the way back to the station.

The crow condos are filling up for the season.

I know there's a hiking path starting out from Aigueperse; I've read about it in a book I left at home, and it's just out of the area covered by the book I bought in Gannat the previous day. Keeping an eye out for the yellow trail marks pays off eventually, and off I go on the 10km circuit. There's a castle mentioned on roadsigns around - I hope the trail goes there.

It starts off crossing farmland. The wheat is coming up. I'm not sure the corn is in the ground yet.

It isn't the weekend or a holiday, but plenty of people are out walking this trail. At one point, an old woman with a cane is being coaxed along by a younger woman. They seemed to be going visiting, not taking a hike for the heck of it. This couple in the photo I trailed for almost an hour. They walked as fast as I did, but kept stopping to talk, or call their dog. Just after I passed them they turned around.

There is a castle. We haven't been going straight toward it, and every time we turn squarely away I say to myself if we don't turn back soon I'll just make my own way on available tracks. This seems to be a big loop around it - I hope there's a visit eventually.

More tree portraits. I'm going to put an album together some day. Really.

Closer!

And here we are. I realize I've been here before. That's the Taxol tree! Olivier brought me here years ago (in a car, of course), and we visited the visitable part of the castle (closed today - it's only March, after all), and he told me all about this yew tree being the local source of taxol when that chemotherapy molecule had just been discovered.

After the castle, the trail goes more or less straight down a wooded slope back to town. Going the other way around you'd be there in just half an hour!

The last bit of trail back to town.

Then back to the station for the 6 o'clock train. Time to head home. The cats are hungry!

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