The maximum temperature here today is 13⁰C, minimum 0⁰C. Dry but cloudy. Wind 10km/h North-Easterly with gusts up to 21 km/h.
This blog will be a bit different today, as I am reminiscing on 12 years of blogging!
When we first bought the house in France in September 2005, we had no internet at all, but after a year or so I managed to get dial-up! Wow, it was many years ago that we had dial-up in South Africa, so I had forgotten just how slow it was. I was only coming to the house for 7 months a year from March until September, as at that time Nigel was still working in the UK. Later on, we got 'a proper' internet connection, although that was very slow and so it remains today, at a prehistoric 0.5mbps! There are rumours we might have fibre by the end of 2022, but I will only believe it when it happens!!
To cut a long story short, I started my first blog as My Life in the Charente on 08/02/2010. That was about the restoration of our house and all the lovely places that we visited in the surrounding area.
It also included a few of our holidays overseas and a fabulous Mediterranean cruise on the Liberty of the Seas, arranged by our great friend Gunter, who was working on the ship as Hotel Director (second in command only to the captain!)
By March 2018 this blog was so slow (possibly too full) I started My Life in the Charente 2. Because this was supposed to be mainly about the Charente, the last few years have seen very few entries, as thanks to COVID we have just not been anywhere!
I mustn't forget of course my third blog My Life Before the Charente which includes our overland trip from the UK to what was then Rhodesia, in 1953!
While these 3 blogs were ongoing, I started up Photodiarydps which originally had daily entries, but this got a bit too much and I never had enough time! More recently, since COVID the updates have been even less than that; I seem to spend a lot more time in the kitchen! I am only managing 2 to 3 entries a month but it is still alive and the subjects are mostly nature around the garden, except on the rare occasion we now go out for a drive.
Just a few years back, I decided to take the bird photos from the photodiary and start a fifth blog that was just birds! Again I have been struggling to keep it up to date weekly, but most of the time I have managed, with help from Christelle who has sent me photos of birds from South Africa. Sadly we do not visit there often enough, and COVID has certainly prevented visits/holidays anywhere!
I also joined Blipfoto on 14 September 2012 on which I enter one photo every single day. It is very seldom that I miss this one daily entry under the name of "Charente" It is a great community and I now have so many Blip friends from around the world as well as blog friends! So much easier to blip a single photo!!
Blog friends that I have met are very special, and outside of France, I have had the pleasure of meeting bloggers from Australia, UK, USA and most importantly South Africa.
A few of my favourite photos from photodiarydps follow :-
