Status-Q

A garage at Oradour-sur-Glane...

Just before Christmas, Tilly (my spaniel) and I went to the Dordogne and back in our campervan. I made a video about it, which, while it may be of interest only to travel vlog and 'van life' enthusiasts, does have a bit of novelty value, because I filmed it on a spherical (360-degree) camera.

This means that after you've watched it, you can go back and watch it again from a completely different angle and see what was happening behind you!

I'll put the link here, rather than embedding it, because this is something you want to watch on the YouTube site. Or, better still, in the YouTube app on your tablet, or phone, or VR headset...

You can find the video here.

If I had had more time, I would have made it shorter :-)

This was really just an experiment for me, and I learned a great deal about the challenges and opportunities of filming and editing this particular medium, which I may write about in due course.

Having recently come back from France, I've been typing a lot more characters with accents on them than I usually do! For common European accents, this is really easy to do on the Mac, but I confess that, for many years, I didn't know the trick until a friend showed me.

So in case you're of the anglophone persuasion and you've missed it too, let me enlighten you: all you have to do is hold down the appropriate key on the keyboard, and a little menu pops up; you can select the variant you want by clicking on it, or by typing the associated number.

Newhaven this morning, shortly after I disembarked from the Dieppe ferry.

The sky over my campsite yesterday morning; I hadn't seen any blue up there for quite some time!

And the sky over the same campsite as I returned to it in the evening:

My pitch was just under the darkest bit at the bottom right.

It soon settled down to the standard grey rainclouds again afterwards, though!

It's good to know, As the north winds blow, That there's plenty of eau, And the eau is chaud.

I'm in the valley of the Vézère river, just north of the Dordogne. It's been raining almost all day, but the moisture really adds vibrance to the splendid colours of the trees.

Fangorn

We met some local residents...

No, really! I'm very ferocious too!

Then we had a final brief pause in the rain, just in time for a dog-walk just before sunset.

Tilly (my spaniel) and I are in a very nice restaurant not far from Perigueux. We're the only ones here, having walked over from the campervan, which is parked in an almost-empty campsite. Over the last couple of days, we've visited many very pretty villages, where almost everything has been closed. Not a petit-déjeuner or a café-au-lait to be had anywhere.

Now, I presumed this was just because of the time of year and because temperatures have been below zero for several days, only creeping above it today in order to allow for a steady rain.

But the proprietor doesn't blame the climate, he blames the 'gilets jaunes'. Normally, he says, there are visitors, including English and Germans, throughout the year. But they've seen the news, and they're staying away. "Bordeaux aujourd'hui...", he says, "c'est une catastrophe".

I've seen a few protestors. At Dieppe on Weds, they were stopping all the lorries at several roundabouts, but I was always waved through with a cheery smile. Near Limoges today, they seemed just to be acting as traffic policemen, directing the traffic to make their presence felt. The only things I've seen burning were needed to warm frozen fingers.

Away from the big cities, I've seen nothing except the most mild expressions of discontent, like this decoration of a hydrant in a small farming village:

Roughly translated, it says, ""Father Christmas's sleigh runs on diesel.. a too-expensive fuel. No presents this year."

So, no, this probably wouldn't have been the week to visit any big cities. But in the countryside, visitors are currently a scarce resource and so are particularly welcome. If there's anybody still around to do the welcoming, that is..

The Dutch RTL News programme did a short piece last week on the fact that the webcam was now about 25 years old.

They interviewed me for just a few minutes, after, ironically, having to spend about 45 mins getting their Skype working.

If, like me, you don't speak any Dutch, you can hear me at about 0:16 and 1:24, and, in between the two, see some pictures of a much younger me!