Friday, October 13, 2006
Landes (Southwest France)
The last roll of photos from our trip to France is finally developed. Oh, how I wish I had taken more of the coast!
Bordeaux
We spent a day in Bordeaux, which is a city we really enjoyed visiting. The entire downtown area is either car-free or has extremely limited car access. As a result, throngs of people are out on the streets and it was wonderful to be a part of that. Vancouver has a lot to learn from Bordeaux; our local government and merchants don't seem to understand that pedestrian-only zones create a sense of community and dramatically increase the shopping in the areas where it exists (I saw it myself in Bordeaux!).
Moliets
The surf in the Moliets area was spectacular, but it's really hard to be able to provide perspective when taking photos of the wonderful waves. The photo of the sunset I took shows a little bit of it, as does the one of me playing at the beach, but doesn't really capture just how fabulous the pounding surf was. There were times that the drag created when the waves were receding was shocking; more than once I went ass-over-teakettle, which was undignified but a helluva lot of fun really.
Landes Forest
I have not found a photo online or on a postcard that captures the feeling I have for the Landes Forest. I wish I would have taken a few hours and trapsed through one of the nearby pine groves for a good photo or two.
I recognized instantly upon seeing the forests here that they are planted and not natural; in fact, it was planted over 150 years ago to tame the swamp lands and sand dunes for human usage (a nearby river would change its course as much as 35 km in a given year, so it was impossible to build here). The huge monoculture pine forest is almost eerie - the trees are all the same type and about the same age, they're all carefully spaced, the undergrowth has a limited ecology with only two or three species of ground cover. It felt devoid of life in many ways, but it was also captivating at the same time.
Bordeaux
We spent a day in Bordeaux, which is a city we really enjoyed visiting. The entire downtown area is either car-free or has extremely limited car access. As a result, throngs of people are out on the streets and it was wonderful to be a part of that. Vancouver has a lot to learn from Bordeaux; our local government and merchants don't seem to understand that pedestrian-only zones create a sense of community and dramatically increase the shopping in the areas where it exists (I saw it myself in Bordeaux!).
Moliets
The surf in the Moliets area was spectacular, but it's really hard to be able to provide perspective when taking photos of the wonderful waves. The photo of the sunset I took shows a little bit of it, as does the one of me playing at the beach, but doesn't really capture just how fabulous the pounding surf was. There were times that the drag created when the waves were receding was shocking; more than once I went ass-over-teakettle, which was undignified but a helluva lot of fun really.
Landes Forest
I have not found a photo online or on a postcard that captures the feeling I have for the Landes Forest. I wish I would have taken a few hours and trapsed through one of the nearby pine groves for a good photo or two.
I recognized instantly upon seeing the forests here that they are planted and not natural; in fact, it was planted over 150 years ago to tame the swamp lands and sand dunes for human usage (a nearby river would change its course as much as 35 km in a given year, so it was impossible to build here). The huge monoculture pine forest is almost eerie - the trees are all the same type and about the same age, they're all carefully spaced, the undergrowth has a limited ecology with only two or three species of ground cover. It felt devoid of life in many ways, but it was also captivating at the same time.
