House of Wine and wildlife

We must have missed the House of Wine in Bergerac on other trips, or else it has opened up this year. We didn't bother going down into the caves or view the art exhibition. The courtyard was more than enough for me, with its wooden gallery on two sides and old, ivy-covered stone and brick walls completing the square. Beneath the gallery a series of posters details the history of wine in the area from Stone Age times, with lots of info on which wines grew where and why. Philistine that I am, I just like drinking it!

Still the rain continues. It's like being at home, except that it's still warmer here most of the time. The clouds are hanging low over the tree tops and the air is thick and heavy - 94% humidity. We may have to go looking for a lavarie soon - we can wash clothes at the mill no problem, but drying them in this weather is an issue.

There is a field surrounded by trees next to the mill, and we've found that deer come down at night and eat the plums off the tree. They regularly trek through in both directions, going down to drink at the river, or just passing through. We've put up our wildlife camera overnight, and caught one picture where the deer certainly saw or heard something from the camera as it took his picture. He stared right at it, and then vanished into the darkness. The camera caught a few other pictures, sometimes a stag, sometimes a doe. We saw a doe while we were eating breakfast on the bolly one morning, and yesterday around sixish, still daylight, I looked up just at the right moment to see a doe and faun sprinting for the cover of the trees.