storks in schierstein.
in march last year we returned to the vosges mountains in france, one of our favourite places to vacation. my family has friends living there and they have a chalet they rent out to us every once in a while and whenever we return it's like coming to a home away from home. the village we stay in is quite remote and settling down there again also means a lot of quiet time, reading, taking long walks through the nearby woods and mountains and dilly-dallying around inside the cutest mountain towns. sometimes we make a day trip to a bigger city nearby or to a different region, slowly expanding our knowledge about this part of france and enjoying the tranquil landscapes that seem so different from germany at times. in times like these ( corona virus being the absolute overpowering factor throughout all of our lives right now ) i love to look back and reminisce about a less sad and unnerving time. i can't wait to head back there this fall and soak it all in again, the fresh air, the mountain life, the people and the lifestyle. especially after all we have to go through for the next couple of weeks.
i would really like to update more often here, but i am not able to stop working, since i have a job in retail and we are in great demand to provide for the wider society that is 'condemned' to stay at home. this means my days look the same as before, though probably without the chance to get out into nature or on city walks on sundays, which i will miss greatly, because it gives me so much energy for enduring my job. i will continue to recall memories of the past during that time through writing this blog, where things didn't look as bleak as they do now. though it needs quite some time to finish one post. anyway, before we headed to france we made a tiny walk by the rhine river in schierstein.
riverside woodlands. we had very little flooding last year, which was remedied later in the year in summer, i think, because it rained a lot during these months. those woodlands are always so cool to range through, sometimes you find curious things lieing about.
like an ancient-looking part of a water well?
and the gnarled quality of the trees and how they succumb to time is also always very intriguing to me.
since spring was still very shy that time of the year you were only able to find colour in the bareness of nature. but i think lichen are a pretty lovely colour find with its mustard hues. some twigs and branches also glow purple and pink, which is another nice colour when everything else is grey and dull.
gnarly and knobby, just how i like my trees ❤
i think these were the fruit of hawthorn bushes, but i find it incredibly difficult to differentiate between hawthorn and several rose hip types sometimes. i couldn't find any 'thorns' though, so my guess is the one-seed hawthorn. these are real eyecatchers in the grey winter months, and it's always really delightful to see them! red is just such a good colour.
getting closer.
and closer! they only start flowering in late may and june, so they were still on the bushes ( about to fall off, though ).
discovered these bugs and got real cozy with them! these are lime seed bugs 🐞 love the pattern on their exoskeletons ▲△
the dyckerhoff bridge ( ulrich finsterwalder & gerd lohmer, 1967 ). i love this bridge so much, it is so elegant in design and it has the best views on the river and our whole region ( reaching from the city of wiesbaden to mainz and to the rheingau region ).
spying on pedestrians ;)
i kinda like the abstract feel of this image.
i was being very experimental that day and tried to take some more unusual pictures. i even waited for a shot like this, lol! very out of character for me. but when i look at this now, i feel like i should probably try to put more thought sometimes into how i take pictures.
the tear. ( what a glorious moment it always is when the sun finds a way through thick clouds )
concrete waves.
cornelian cherry blossoms. these are some of the earliest bloomers in our flora.
the next day we finally made our way to le val-d'ajol in france, for a one-week-vacation! like i mentioned before, it was not our first time visiting and certainly won't be the last time. we have plans to revisit in october and i seriously can't wait. for now we are basically stuck in our homes ( unless you have to work to keep the wheels rolling ), so having a vacation ahead in the future to look forward to is important right now, i think. for now it helps me immensely to look at these pictures and write about our little adventures - reminders that things will eventually turn back to ( hopefully ) normal. there is reason to be optimistic though, if we remain clear-headed, sort of relaxed, healthy and mindful of others. the numbers of daily infections in china decline every day a bit more and i want to believe that the same is happening to us soon.
le val-d'ajol sits in the southern vosges mountains in the great region of grand est ( that particular region of the grand est is actually called lorraine ). the mountains there reach about 760 meters in altitude, which is not very high per se, but the community still feels like a proper mountain location. it is quite secluded in a valley of the combeauté river and always feels a bit forlorn in autumn & winter, but very brimming and idyllic in summer. that's what i really love about this place, those two sides of it.
not far away from our chalet you can find this typical vosgienne house. the most distinct feature of the houses in the vosges mountains are the big round-arched gates called 'charri', that lead through the house onto the other side. back in historic times hay carts were parked here or they functioned as some kind of working space in case of bad weather situations - but these days the passage often gets reworked into a living space, like a sun room. they call houses like this 'la vôge'. the charri ( or chairu ) basically separated the living space from the barn or stable.
within the woods you often stumble upon laid open ground soil that reveal the roots of trees. i always view these as a glimpse into the world of tiny gnomes and fairies and other creatures living in the woods ;)
i mean... this is clearly a hiding spot for them and probably a lure to decoy human beings into their world by letting them believe that they could technically find refuge under here in case of torrential rain.
oh, those mountain sunsets, they are truly special.
a view down into the valley of le val-d'ajol, particularly the leyval & moyemont districts.
this little collection of homes are of newer origin, modern chalets that get rented out to tourists or function as summer houses.
every once in a while you find a really nice rock. the vosges mountains are full of granites, gneiss, schist & volcanic rocks, but also sandstone in the lower regions.
i was so fascinated by the soft and fluffy moss growing on that rock ❤
here's the house again from a few pictures before, this time showing more of the actual layout. the little house further away ( on the left side ) was probably an outhouse. here you can also see a storage annex that arches over the little street. i think the small house with dark wooden panelling right in front of the house might've probably been a chalot, a tiny granary, which is a special building that can only be found in the vosges mountains. here you can also see that the chairu has been closed off and probably turned into a living space.
of course the landscapes still looked quite bare, but if you looked closely you could discover signs of spring! the hazelnuts were blossoming!
here's the little chalet we always stay in. you can book it on air bnb, but also on other sites as well. the owners are friends of ours, we know them through our town twinning visits every year ❤ they surely have one of the best views of the ruisseau de méreille valley ( that's a little feeder stream to the combeauté river ).
of course lichen growth must not be missed! this one looks like a capillary network, right?
this view shows the whole of le val-d'ajol and it was shot from a different site ( a look-out called feuillée nouvelle ). it looks out into the direction of leyval & hamanxard, overlooking the central village.
this cross is a modern wayside cross from 2000.
the lookout was used in the 19th century as some kind of excursion place for spa guests of plombières-les-bains ( which is very close nearby ). nowadays it's just a really nice place for walkers, hikers and cyclists to stop and have a little break, enjoying the beautiful view down the valley.
found some more great rock formations!
these look like heads to me and i imagine them to be sleeping stone entities ;)
so, now that we are back in the vosges mountains, you can expect some more upcoming wonderful posts about a region that feels like home to me and my parents. stay tuned!
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