Bois de Gand, France

We've spent our week up to our ankles in straw and horsesh*t as we've learned the fine points of caring for and cleaning up after horses at the housesit where we'll be situated for the next month, in the Jura region of France. We arrived on Tuesday afternoon after two long days of bus/train/air travel from West Cork to Dublin to Grenoble to this tiny village situated in the countryside in the foothills of the mountains southeast of Dijon. We've been too busy taking notes about which horse gets which munchies and which giant schnauzer gets which pills to have begun appreciating being back in France but now we're getting the hang of it, and although today started out miserably drizzly, by lunchtime the sky had cleared and the afternoon was gloriously warm and sunny, lasting through the long evening. Within a few days we'll be settled, the dogs and horses will have relaxed too, and we can start enjoying field trips and going to the market in Bletterans on Tuesdays for our fresh salad greens and if we're lucky some farm produced cheeses.

Our generous hosts stocked the cupboards well so we shall eat like kings and queens, and tonight Walt did himself proud with the large carp that Alex and Tomas, the neighbor boys, caught in this house's pond the other day. They took home a creel full and brought us a large one, nicely cleaned. It was surprisingly delicious, fresh and tasty, baked with garlic and dill and lots of butter, the chef's secret weapon. The carp was accompanied by a delicately sweet pinot gris, and we thought Hugh Fearnsley-Whittingstall would have been proud, having been known to eat a carp or two himself. The bones were a pain but they helped us pace ourselves, otherwise we might have gobbled everything up much too quickly.

From this large house we mostly see pastures and woods, with one pasture leading down to a large pond. The nearby villages are undiscovered and a little rough around the edges, testimony to this region's slightly struggling economy. This isn't a place overun by Brits, which has its advantages and disadvantages both, apparently, depending on who you're talking to.