Playing truant in the red desert

Although I've got a lot of work to do at the moment, these first real days of summer reminded me how long it was since we'd been on a trip somewhere just for fun. Lodève is a small town but it has a surprisingly good art gallery and museum and in July the unmissable, for me, Voix de la Mediterranée poetry festival. So we drove there to see this summer's exhibition at the art gallery - 'De Gaguin aux Nabis - le droit de tout oser' (From Gaugin to the Nabis (post-impressionists) - the right to risk everything') - through the red desert, an amazing area of red rock and shale with strata of harder rock running at angles through it.



Back through Octon for lunch at one of our favourite cafés in the village square where the fountain bears the date from the French Revolutionary Calendar (used from 1793 to 1805, and commemorated when this fountain was built) - 5 Ventose an 109 (on the other side is the more conventional date, 24 February 1901).

I'll just have to work this evening instead!