Sideway Views: a brief side road - during six days in France

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

a brief side road - during six days in France

post #190
I expected to wait until finishing the Route 32 photos before sharing my current trip, but I just can't. I am eager instead to show at least a few of the photos from where I have been this past week. I set off to visit my stepmother, who is British and lives in the Cotswolds, but I also had wanted to go again to France where I was an exchange student in high school, for a year. I have been close to the family I lived with ever since -- which means for over 50 years. I took a lot of trains from here in England to get to several places in France, but I love trains so it was a big treat -- a lot of work to figure it all out but nonetheless a treat. It helps that I still speak fluent French, rusty though my vocabulary may be.
        Now that I am back in England and have been reunited with my laptop, here are snaps I took during a wonderful walk in the country outside Mulhouse, in eastern France. Maud, my French "sister," knows the hikes near her home very well. I loved that we headed out to where she knew we would see some STORKS. And we did! Mulhouse is in Alsace which has always been famous for storks and for their nests perched high on some building.
      It was a beautiful few hours. I hope the photos share my delight being with Maud in a new place on a lovely Saturday afternoon.

       This is the front door of Maud's house. We drove not far from here to get to the area where she often hikes:

We parked here, near a church and cemetery which face the Vosges Mountains nearby and the Black Forest in Germany across the plain of the Rhine River:

We were soon walking along a system of dirt roads for the farmers in the area, surrounded by a variety of crops, mostly corn but including vineyards. I have taken these photos to show to my neighbors back home who also farm.