February 26, 2018 - Calanque de Sugiton and Sainte Baume

At the suggestion of one of Mark's co-workers who grew up in Marseille (Thank you, Louise!!!), we went to one of the most beautiful places we have ever seen.  Calanques are fjord-like canyons going out to the sea along the coast near Marseille.  We hiked out through the Calanque de Sugiton to the sea.  It was spectacular, with white, limestone cliffs all around us and crystal clear, turquoise water below!  We felt like we were in a dream, and we wished we had more time to explore more of the calanques.  Heather had the flu and was struggling through fever and aches and pains, but she still thoroughly enjoyed the hike.  It was unseasonably cold, so we had the place to nearly to ourselves for most of the hike.  During the summer the place is certainly packed with people.   














While we were down on the beach enjoying the solitude of the place, an older man came down behind us and promptly began undressing.  We worried he may be going all the way, but he stopped at the undies and began doing various exercises using rocks as weights on the beach.  Mark snapped this shot to capture the moment!  Welcome to France! (He was very nice!)

Sainte Baume:

Another suggestion Mark's colleague made was to visit Sainte Baume, a church/monastery built into a cave on the side of a cliff. It is a shrine to Mary Magdelene, who is said to have lived here after the Crucifixion. It has been for cared for by goat raising, Dominican Friars, since 1295. By the time we arrived there in the afternoon, it was snowing hard and quickly accumulating on the ground.  Mark's colleague later told him that she only saw snow once in the 21 years that she lived in Marseille.  I guess we're just lucky like that!  Heather and Hannah didn't feel like making the hike up to the church in the snow (Heather having a fever and chills), so Mark went by himself.  He said that the snow added to the mystique of the place and that it felt kind of dream-like.














Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

July 31, 2018 - Scotland Trip Day 2 - Hadrian's Wall, Gretna Green, Glasgow, & Inverary

Image
Day 2 included exploring Hadrian's Wall, Gretna Green, a tenement house in Glasgow, and a stay in Inverary (See map below). Hadrian's Wall Though Hannah had studied Hadrian's Wall in school right before we left Utah, some of the rest of us (namely, Mark and Heather) did not know much about it.  For those who are less informed about it, Wikipedia provides the following: Hadrian's Wall (Latin: Vallum Aelium), also called the Roman Wall, Picts' Wall, or Vallum Hadriani in Latin, was a defensive fortification in the Roman province of Britannia, begun in AD 122 in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. It ran from the banks of the River Tyne near the North Sea to the Solway Firth on the Irish Sea, and was the northern limit of the Roman Empire, immediately north of which were the lands of the northern Ancient Britons, including the Picts. It had a stone base and a stone wall. There were milecastles with two turrets in between. There was a fort about...
Read more

July 24, 2018 - Bolsover Castle

Image
We got home to Utah Friday night, but we really want to chronicle the rest of our trip so that we have a record of what we did.  We were able to see some neat things with Heather's sister, Heidi.  One of these was Bolsover Castle.  From Wikipedia: Bolsover Castle is a castle in Bolsover, Derbyshire, England (grid reference SK471707). It was built in the early 17th century by the Cavendish family, on the site of a medieval castle founded in the 12th century by the Peverel family. The site is now in the care of English Heritage and is a Grade I listed building and a Scheduled Ancient Monument. One of the really neat things about Bolsover is that you can take a recorded, self-guided tour through it all, at your own pace, and really explore the whole complex. It has three main sections:  the stables, the ruins of a once great manor house, and the castle.  Each section is quite interesting in its own way.  We included the aerial photo we found on the in...
Read more

July 1-End of Trip, 2018 - A New Home in Duffield

Image
On July 1st we moved from Cromford to Duffield, a town of nearly 6,000 people that is about 5 miles north of Derby.  Like other accommodations in which we have stayed, we found and booked this home through AirBnB.  We have loved staying in this pastoral and peaceful place, and in such a nice and comfortable apartment! The maps below show how this house is unique in that it is located in the middle of the Chevin Golf Course, which has been an operating golf course since the late 1700's.  The house can only be accessed via a narrow, private road that goes right through the golf course (Yes, we occasionally have to dodge golf balls as we drive to the house!) to a small cluster of buildings, called Courthouse Farm.  All of the buildings are owned by one woman, who lives in one of the buildings and has renovated several others to rent out.  Our house is circled in yellow on the map below. According to a handwritten history of Cou...
Read more