I was taking a long, slow trawl through the images saved in my picture files early this morning.

I was of a mind to collate some shots of my work in Thezan over the past few years with which properly to activate the 'From the Workshop' page of this site.

I made some selections but it remains 'a work in progress'.

But, as I reviewed the files and albums, these oddments caught my eye.

They are all a part of Sue's and my visit to France and Spain last July.

We spent a week in Arguebanes, a hamlet in the Picos de Europa just south of Potes, from which we walked and walked in spanish (sweet) chestnut groves, virgin oak forest, fields and the mountains themselves. It was wonderful.

On one such walk I was some distance ahead of Sue when I beheld this in my path.

I called Sue and.............

...........showed her my find.

Now, for some reason that I cannot explain (except, perhaps, that we were on the edge of the Basque Country and there was an awareness that ETA had not entirely gone away, you know), I was quite certain that what we were looking at, was a half-buried hand-grenade!

Sue pointed upwards and I saw that we were beneath a pine tree!

Enough said and, yes, I did feel very silly!

After we left the Picos we resolved to have a day or two swimming on the coast somewhere between Santander and San Sebastian (Donostia) but it was wet, wet, wet so we decided to go to Bilbao instead.

Although we were there for less than twenty-four hours, we thought Bilbao a most stylish and attractive city and we found, by chance, an equally stylish but very affordable hotel on the edge of a park.

It remained wet and in the morning I took this shot of Bilbaon's scurrying to work in the rain.

I was rather proud of it and I still like it.

We spent the morning in the Guggenheim Museum (we could have spent a week)...

........before setting out for Barcelona where we ended our holiday. Sue caught a plane for Ireland while I drove back to Thezan for another stint of work.

The tasks, on this occasion, involved some spray-painting and, as I set about making an ad hoc spraying area in the undeveloped cellar area of the Presbytere, I came across this.....

They don't mince their words, the French, do they?

The pictures of Arguebanes in the Picos are rather good - I might show you some more some time.