les champignons

This isn't a particularly good example specimen to show all you blippers, but it's my favourite photo from our afternoon of mushroom picking up in the woods of the Montagne du Belly.

Pierre's mum and dad arrived early. We had a cuppa and then Pierre and his dad went to give Paddy a hand with the big granule stove over at his.

For lunch, we ate tapenade and cornichons for our apéritif, Irish stew for main, and apple crumble for afters. It all went down really well with the Frenchies - thankfully!

Our afternoon was spent walking in the hills towards Aubres. Our goal: mushrooms. We found enough to fill a couple of bags - a great bonus to add to what was already a real treat just being out in nature. The weather was sunny and warm and we didn't see any hunters about which made the randonnée a lot more relaxing than we thought it might be - most weekends I see guys in high-vis jackets up in the hills with guns and dogs and lots of shots being fired. Brilliant not to have that today.

Home for a few glasses of pinard and a bite to eat. Pierre's mum went through all the mushrooms we'd picked and got rid of any bad ones or any that her and Daniel were not sure of. We were left with a plateful to cook up tomorrow.

We got a couple of each of the following: lactaires délicieux, pieds de mouton and bolets comestible. There were a few other edible ones whose names I can't remember and then a pile of rejects who were either thrown away because of worms or rot, or because we knew they weren't edible (or at least were not worth eating).

Pierre's dad knew nearly all the different types we found: "this one tastes a bit floury, so we'll leave it"; "this one isn't worth picking, leave it for the sangliers"; "this one puffs out clouds of grey smoke when you squeeze it" (which it did!!); "that one would give you a sore tummy".

We learned loads and I loved it.