At home with tourism.

I love walking: stomping around towns, marching along beaches, hacking up hillsides, sliding down scree, I love it all. Well, maybe not the scree so much, it's too tough on the knees. Yesterday we finally walked part of the Chemin de Jean Racine. I was guilty of pre-judging this path as “too touristy”, and we had not, hitherto, condescended to walk it. Our loss! We discovered a lovely woodland walk, on a south facing slope, completed by a red squirrel, watching us watching it from the safety of a high branch. We even met some friendly walkers, who showed us their mushrooms. Both are unusual. This close to Paris it is common for people to walk past you without a word on an otherwise deserted path, and they are often plugged into a telephone or music player of one sort or another. The people who stop and chat are rare. The mushrooms are completely unseasonal, and therefore rare too. We have been finding edible fungus far later than usual, and these people had been lucky enough to find some boletus. No boletus for us, but gorgeous weather for December, fantastic views over the valleys and hills around St Lambert des Bois, and a lovely walk through the oaks, the sweet chestnuts and the silver birches.