Month: January 2022

Reflections on water

Posted on by SteveH
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

The early part of 2022 has seen a lot of rain. The river Seine is rising once again and puddles are everywhere. The wide well maintained easy walkways are turning into muddy cross country challenges. Water is an unpredictable medium and can give surprising images. On this day I decided to focus on reflections on water. I returned to the Étang de la Galiotte and walked around the parc du peuple de l’herbe. I have published a post about this park before when I visited in June 2021. This post is here and here you will find information on how to get there.

Today I was travelling light, no tripods, filters, spare objectives, and went by chance just to see what the river was doing at the end of the day following a lot of rain. As I have said before (in my post on Urban Settings) I like to set myself a theme so today it was reflections on water.

The Étang de la Galiotte

The lake is separated from the river Seine by a thin strip of land. This forms part of the walkways around the park. The first photo is taken from the viewing platform here looking away from the river. The second from the northern pathway looking towards the south and the floating buildings.

River Seine

Looking the other way, to the west is the river Seine. Paris is upstream (left) from this point. As it’s been raining a lot the river is rising and encroaching on the river banks and viewing platforms.

The parc du peuple de l’herbe

Heading back inland and trying to stick to my theme the paths were wet on sometimes underwater. There are many seating areas and picnic tables and these would be great for summer days out. But in winter after a lot of rain these chairs and their reflections should give you an idea of the general state of the park.

You will find other photos of reflections in many pages, for example Beautiful Landscapes, Using a zoom lens, Spring walk along the Seine.

Some of my photos are available for purchase on my Adobe Stock store or the link in the menu.

You can also click on the widget below.

Weekend in Normandy

Posted on by SteveH
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

I had great plans to travel over the holiday season in 2021 but the emergence of the omicron variant quickly changed my plans. In the end a Winter weekend in Normandy was an excellent compromise. It meant less driving and an opportunity to revisit some classic sites and see some new places. I would recommend Mortain as a base for a Winter weekend in Normandy as it’s no more than an hour drive from numerous sites.

Honfleur

The beautiful, but busy, port of Honfleur was our first stop. It’s a wonderful town and I recommend the all day parking at Gallien (links open in new tabs). While talking of recommendations I am not a big fan of the, often industrial, food found in tourist sites. So we had lunch at the SaQuaNa saison 3 restaurant. The set menu is excellent value. However the main purpose of visiting Honfleur is the historic town and the port.

If you are interested in large bridges and a view of the Seine estuary then head to the Pont de Normandie, it is worth a closer look .

Mont Saint-Michel

The absolutely unmissable monument is very popular with French and international tourists alike. No real weekend in Normandy would be complete without a visit. It’s on the frontier with Brittany too. Mandatory parking has been implemented and shuttles run to and from the car parks to the island. At low tide there is a huge area of sand to explore. The key part of the visit is the Abbey, a UNESCO world heritage site. Check the visiting times on their web site. You can pre-book tickets here too, It’ll take an hour to get from the car park to the Abbey entrance.

As I said about restaurants in Honfleur, Mont Saint-Michel is not the best place to sample high quality French food and you will quickly notice that restaurant to restaurant the choices and prices are almost identical.

Domfront

Moving away from the 2 must-sees, there are many other places to visit. I mentioned Mortain, but first on my weekend in Normandy was the Medieval city of Domfront. The city itself is compact and pretty and is adjacent to the ruins of the castle. Over 1000 years ago the castle was built of wood around 1010. It was rebuilt in stone it was the castle of Henri 1er, the son of William the Conqueror and King of England and Duke of Normandy.

Mortain

There is a 2 hour sign posted walk around the town that you should do if you can. It’s not too difficult but when you get to Mortain you won’t be surprised to hear that it has some steepish climbs and uneven stones to overcome. It takes you around all the important sites of the town. In particular the Abbey which has the potential to be something extraordinary if the projects come to fruition and the the small and large waterfalls. The big waterfall is the tallest in Northern France, with a 25m drop. I’ll leave you to discover that in person.

You can see some of my landscape photos here. There are also more waterfalls here.

Some of these photos are available for purchase on my Adobe Stock store. Or from the menu above, or even buy your art directly below.

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