We have visited Spain and Catalunya for rock climbing many, many times - in fact we've lost count! We've always visited either in autumn or winter. This year, the rain in France drove us south in springtime and it turns out it was a fantastic time to visit. We had wonderful, sunny days, 3 big, memorable hail storms, cool weather for climbing and we were treated to the best wild flowers we have ever seen.
Both David and I probably said 'Look! Here's a new kind of flower.', about a hundred times in the past few weeks.
Here's the visual story with a handful of the hundreds of photos we did take.
Spanish alpine flowers, Castello Mayor, PyreneesThis plant eventually gets large and leggy, but it's leaves are so perfectly sculptural when small.Flowers in towns abound, both untamed and rampant and in tended window boxes. You can see the sketch I did of this little nook in Rubio in my previous post.Who doesn't love fluffy pink flowers?Lilies? Sometimes there would be so many of these in one spot it would make walking a bit stressful ;-)More pretty whites.
And some sketches....
Alpine flowers near Ager, CatalunyaPretty window boxes in Laspuna, near the Pyrenees, SpainI pushed open this little wooden gate into the cemetry and was treated to rampant, wild, untamed meadow. Perfect!Oh the joy of fields of poppies. Never tire of it!
Part 3 of this series will be climbing, but due to the relatively small number of photos I think I'll probably just stick to the story of climbing in Riglos.
There's something irresistibly paintable about a weathered fence post half-swallowed by summer wildflowers. It's the contrast that does it — rough, sun-bleached wood against the soft, fleeting delic...
Five times at Périgord Retreats, and the magic is still there.. Every single time I hop on the train in southern France and get whisked through French countryside and villages to Gourdon Station — ...
Ater spending time in South Africa recently, surrounded by the kind of wildlife you only see there, I came home with many sketches of zebras, giraffes, warthogs, baboons and more and a strong urge to ...
