Sail with New Freebooters

Vivienne Mackie takes notebook and camera round homes buried in a hill.
Imagine caves without a single stalactite or stalagmite. Picture caves formed, not by water action, but by human hands. And now imagine those caves along the banks of a river meandering through a bucolic and fertile land. The troglodyte caves along the Loire [...]

Well, we didn’t win any seats, but we got 35% of the votes. Now I understand why established minorities like the British Liberal Party keep rabbiting on about proportional representation. We also created a free ’spectacle’ for the members of the Meuzac commune. Since there was competition for the first time in 13 years, nearly [...]

A month ago, an unknown car came down our untarred country lane and pulled up outside our house (it couldn’t have gone much further - the lane peters out into a bridle path a hundred metres further on).
I went up to the car and asked the driver and passenger who they were looking for. “You”, [...]

Let me tell a little history about the Canal du Midi, and suggest an unusual walk.
Construction of the Canal du Midi started one year before the Great Fire of London. That’s less than eighty years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada. No wonder the Journal des Savants of 7th June 1688 said it was [...]