The Nature Walk

John had seen an advert for a guided nature walk which started from the church square of a village that we particularly like. A famous sculptor, called Zadkine (although I'd never heard of him until we came here) lived in the village and there is a museum dedicated to his work. Consequently the village has a bit of an artist colony in the summer and the "arty" influence has rubbed off on the village. All the buildings are old but one of the "municipal buildings" has had a very modern mirrored extension added. We think this sort of thing works.

Back to the walk. We drove into the car park to be greeted by a group of very "professional" looking ramblers complete with hiking boots, thick socks and walking sticks. But this wasn't the church square. I felt very intimidated so I sent John off to find out if this was" the walk." I breathed a sigh of relief when it wasn't and we beetled off to the church square. When we arrived a large school party were congregated there but no one else. So we went to the museum to see if they knew anything. We ended up with the museum assistant ringing round various contacts, the leader of the professional ramblers trying to help us and a lady doing some gardening also adding her twopenneth. They were all very nice but the upshot was that we should have booked and I guess no one else had booked so it was cancelled.
As we were there we bought a leaflet from the museum and set off on the walk anyway. We got down to the river and thought we could hear a lot of ducks squabbling but we soon realised that it was frogs calling. Then we saw strands of silk coming from the tree above us to the ground with caterpillars going up and down them. This whole region is as rich in buterflies as it is in wild flowers, presumably as they are interdependent. It is the height of the orchid season and we must have seen a dozen different varieties on the walk. The pink ones below are pyramid orchids and are everywhere and no they are not bees on the "bee orchid "they just look exactly like them - even close up.

Then we got lost, and the 4.7km walk became 5.7kms. Not daunted we followed the longer walk signs and at the end of a wood came upon a small church that looked as though it was just a bell tower. Unfortunately we didn't realise that we should have collected the key from the museum to go inside because there are some fantastic fifteenth century frescoes on the walls which were discovered accidently by the parish priest in the 1950s. It was such gem to find at the end of an ordinary walk in the woods. Continuing on the trail the next highlight was a marsh.

Apparently in former times the villagers had to cross this marsh to get to church but now a superb boardwalk has been laid to make it easy. At the end of the leaflet (which was in English) we realised that there are lots of these guided walks in the region and if they are all as good as this we will be delighted.