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Birds of Corconne
Corconne is a small village in the Gard (30) department, 30 km north of Montpellier, 34 km west of Nîmes [map]. We visited the village yesterday, drawn by the loop hike up through a rift in the cliffs, past the...

Harvesting the Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck's dustbowl family worried that a cotton-picking machine could drive them to starvation, but at least there were grapes to pick, and that had to be done by hand. But even that is changing.In this photo, the village of Galargues...

French Cafés Fewer and Fewer
Wandering through the village of Galargues yesterday, in the Hérault (34) dept, Languedoc-Roussillon region [map], we talked to a local man about the lack of a café in his village, and in many of the other nearby villages.Precisely, he said....

Beasts of Beyond
Sitting in a gite in the Hérault (34) department, Languedoc-Roussillon region. This green beast of Provence came in and sat on our shoulder while we were working on the morning's photos. We took the green beast out to the terrace...

New Beyond Towns-Villages Southwest France
We've added some new Beyond towns and villages from the Midi-Pyrénées region of southwest France. In the area of Limoux, south of Carcassonne and northwest of Perpignan [map], we visited last month the villages of: Couzia, where we stayed in...

Beyond's "Lot" of New Villages - Rocamadour, etc.
Beyond has a batch of new villages online. Brief this time, with one photo per village and a short amount of text giving our impression of each place, we'll expand the text (history and such things) and add more photos...

France Detail Map - Cahors, Montauban
We've added a new France Detail Map, for the Cahors - Montauban areas of the Midi-Pyrénées and Languedoc-Roussillon regions of Southwest France. Added new towns and villages to the France maps of Dordogne Souillac (north of Cahors), showing the places...

September Current Events Calendar
We've updated Beyond's Current-Events Calendar with Sept 2008 events in Provence. This is only a sampling of what's going on during the month (and the ones we could find fairly easily). September is a good month to wander around Provence....

Utelle Village and Hike online
The Alpes-Maritimes mountain village of Utelle is online (sort of) in Beyond, and we have a page for yesterday's Utelle Hike.We arrived at Utelle village well before sunrise, when colorful photography isn't so good. We set off into the mountains...

Hiking Vésubie Valley Cros d'Utelle
We took a day yesterday to do some serious field research work for Beyond. The hamlet of Cros d'Utelle is just into the Vésubie Valley, less than an hour's drive from Nice and the last of the summer crowds on...

Blanquette de Limoux Wine
In our recent visit to the Aude, in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France's southwest, we discovered the town of Limoux and its famous white bubbly wine: Blanquette de Limoux. We weren't the first to discover the world's first naturally sparkling...

Limoux, in the Midi-Pyrénées of Southwest France
We've added a Beyond page for the Midi-Pyrénées town of Limoux, famous for its annual and unique carnival and for its ancient sparkling Blanquette de Limoux wine.Limoux is located in the Aude department, only 20 km south of the walled...

The New Bridge of Limoux is older than the Old Bridge
Limoux [map], a town in the Aude department (and on the Aude river), south of Carcassonne, has an Old Bridge (Pont Vieux) that was rebuilt in the 19th century (our first photo). The Pont Vieux crosses the Aude river into...

Silent Hiking in the Midi-Pyrénées
We spent a week or two doing day hikes in the Lot department of the Midi-Pyrénées region of France. A hike a day on a well-marked PR (petite randonée trail), in the middle of August in a popular tourist area...

Beauty and the Beasts
or, Hiking in Open Season Visiting in the green hills of the Aude department (11) of Languedoc-Roussillon, we happened on the tiny village of La Serpent, about 40 km south of Carcassonne and south of Limoux [map].Approaching the village, low...

Lot's Pigeons
There are a lot of pigeons in the French department of the Lot (pronounced, by the way "Loat", like "coat" or "boat", and not with a silent "t" as one would suppose). And with the pigeons, there are the Lot's...

Travel Advice for July-August: Don't
After decades in France of watching the summer news reports of July-August road congestion, we ignored our own resolutions and hit the road. Early one Saturday morning - 5 AM to "avoid the rush" - we joined the A8 autoroute...

Gourdon is not Our Gourdon
Not far from our gite in the village of Frayssinet (Lot) is the small town of Gourdon (Lot) [map]. Knowing so well our "own" perched Medieval village of Gourdon in the Alpes-Maritimes, we headed up here to check out the...

Beyond is Lot beyond Beyond
Beyond has strayed well beyond the Provence of Beyond, to the Lot, in the Midi-Pyrénées [map] region of France. So far it's low forested hills and farms of cornfields, hay and cattle. Small streams all over, and pretty little villages...

Escarets Lake in the Var
A July Saturday outing took us again to the Var (roughly, between Nice/Cannes [Alpes-Maritimes] and Aix-en-Provence [Bouches-du-Rhone]). The small Escarets Lake (Lac des Escarets) is in the middle of the Var, 8 km southeast of Le Cannet-des-Maures and only 1.5...

Provence Cellphone Towers Eco-Friendly
We recently discovered a nicely-disguised cellphone tower by the Lac de Carcès in the Var. This seems to have taken a special effort and, presumably, a special price. While it's very nice for the forested environment here, this is hardly...

Les Plaines Roman Bridge now online on Beyond
Our Roman Bridge of Les Plaines, on the road to La Garde-Freinet and St Tropez, now has its own page on Beyond, in the Sites-Bridges section. It's also listed on Beyond's Sites-Roman Sites index page.