Lost and Found: One new blue bicycle --- Surprises in the Dordogne River

Living in a little chateau that has its feet in the water of the Dordogne River, the river very much becomes a part of my every day life. As the levels of the water change, the rate of flow changes and so the sound of the river changes, and often I wake up in the middle of the night and immediately know that the river is different: when it is quieter, I know there must have been a massive storm somewhere upriver, or perhaps a particularly warm few days in the mountains that caused a fast melting of snow, or, when the river becomes much more noisy in its journey over the rocky river bed in front of the chateau, I know the barrages upstream have been closed, or the drought in the Eastern part of France has not yet been broken. Every different sound sends a different message.

There are the swans and ducks on the river that seem to bring their own messages, just as the changing colours of the leaves in the forest on the opposite bank signal the changing seasons.

And then, like messages in a bottle, there are the little surprises every now and then.

Last summer I wrote about the moon that my son had put in the river for me (an old car hub cap that had been washed downstream and looked exactly like the reflection of the full moon in the water) --- and then the kayak that had come down and got caught in the rocks when continuous storms caused the river to flood and caused huge damage all along its way.

And what should I find this afternoon when I returned from a few days away and opened my window? There, in front of the chateau, under the water and snagged in the rocks, a beautiful blue (and green?) bicycle!

Ah! The stories one could conjure up around these bits and pieces of life and of people, somewhere upstream.........




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