Chateau Keyboard

Thursday, May 22: Nice day out

I finish the column pretty quickly this morning before we head on over to Gordon & Patricia's for lunch with them and Sue & Angus.
Daisy, of course, wants to spend the whole lunch rolling on G&P's beautiful lawn - once she's finished examining it for stray slices of ham, that is. Unfortunately for her the sun's rather strong today, so we keep making her come and sit under the table in the shade. Life's hard for dogs, I tell you.
Lunch is very pleasant and the conversation even better, so it's with reluctance that we set off at 4 to go walking. Mrs K's organising a walking club for us - check the details via her website at http://www.chateaukeyboard.com/wendy - and we've got to check out the first proposed route.
It's a little outside Nimes, a few hundred hectares of garrigue that was destroyed by fire in the '90s. Now the city has taken it over and is re-establishing the area as a public space, complete with marked walks and lots of markers describing what you're looking at. All very interesting.
Ms Dog accompanies us in her new rucksack - she's quite happy to walk around with us, but wants to do it at her pace these days, and that would mean we would still be walking at Christmas. The rucksack means she can come with us and jump out for a trot every now and then but she won't get too stressed and tired. Which is good for her.
We do the four kilometre part of the full seven kilometre walk in about an hour and a half, including lots of pauses to read the explanatory signs. The area was settled as far back as 2,500 BC and there's a reconstruction of a group of buildings excavated on the site. Very good.