I decided to create a new blog for my holidays this year to keep things separate from my main blog. I'm going to try an post regularly while on holiday but it will depend on when I can get a wifi connection on my iPad. I'm going to be using my Kodak Playsport to take the pics and then do some basic processing on the Camera+ app. I've found that I'm not able to edit the blog using the normal editor for Blogger within Safari (it crashes when I try to publish) to I'm going to use BlogPress instead. One thing I need to edit after the initial posting is the photo size as it creates them at the small size by default and I prefer them a bit bigger.

After a bit more testing I've abandoned Camera+ because it keeps crashing when I try to save my edited photos so now I'm using PhotoForge2 which seems a lot better and has a lot more editing options. I've also found that when I add photos to the post in BlogPress that I can resize them within the editor so that makes things a lot simpler.

Posting the photos separately as the slow connection is causing BlogPress to time out I think.

Saturday 20 August 2011

Day 7 - Lake and Tower de Gurson

It was cloudy again on Friday morning but a little brighter than the day before. The weather forecast was predicting 35 degrees but it was fairly cool when we set off for a walk from the gite. The owners of the gite suggested a walk to the lake would be good. We have driven past it a few times as it is between the gite and Villefranche-de-Lonchat where we fetch the bread and croissants in the morning.

As we walked towards the lake we went past some vineyards where the grapes are black and must be nearly ready for picking. The farmers were harvesting the sweetcorn from the fields to make into cattle feed. At the top of the rise we could see down to the lake and there were cars and vans parked around it. Adjacent to the lake is a campsite which seemed quite busy as we walked past.

At the entrance to the lake we were charged 2.5 Euro to go in, which we thought was a bit expensive but paid up anyway. There was a path around the lake which had some semi derelict play apparatus every so often and there was a lot of dodgy looking picnic tables now and then. We went up a path to find an abandoned riding stables which would have been good for the children.there was a beach area which was quite busy as they had a coach party in. Next to the beach area was a closed water slide and we also saw some pedal boats piled up behind a barn. We guessed that at one time it had been a busy leisure lake which had been left to decay over the years.

As we walked around the lakes (there was a smaller one above the main lake) there were lots of people fishing and camping. The lakes themselves were quite good but the facilities were a bit lacking. We noticed that if we went out of the other entrance we would be near an old fallen down tower that we can see on a hill from the garden of the gite. We decided to have a closer look and when we got there found that it was inside the grounds of a little winery.

The clouds had separated a bit and it was getting hotter but as I was taking some photos of the winery and the tower we started to get big spots of rain on us. As we started to head back to the gite our french neighbours arrived at the winery in their car. By the time we got back to the gite it was very hot but we needed to go straight out again to go to the supermarket for a few more things.

When we got back from the supermarket had a late lunch and spent the rest of the day in and around the pool. A few photos from the walk posted separately.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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