Saturday 27 January 2018

Bambi, in person

Ferme Apicerf
Through a Photo Club we joined some time ago we heard that there should be, somewhere near Cluny, a deer park. Just before we joined, the club had organised an outing in order to do a photo shoot. We often see roe deer around here, sometimes in a meadow, but more often when they cross a road through the woods in the vicinity. In this case however the animals, as far as we could judge that, were a herd of red deer.

Ferme Apicerf
We know Cluny and surroundings quite well, but we had never seen something resembling a deer park. One of the members of the group gave an indication where we had to look to find the deer. That appeared to be in the woods just outside Cluny, and they belonged to a farm called Ferme Apicerf. The farm was not difficult to find, but there was no trace of any deer. Another phone call gave us some more information; the deer were to be found in some fields much further away from the farm building then we thought.

Ferme Apicerf
On our second quest we found some fields, where the gate bore a sign saying Ferme Apicerf. In the fields we could also see some beehives (apis = bee in Latin, cerf = deer in French). Further, the fields were surrounded by fencing normally used around fields where farmers keep sheep. And when we looked even better we saw in one of the fields, at the edge furthest away from where we stood the herd of deer we had been looking for. Unfortunately they stood in the shade of the edge of the wood and the distance was too big to take some decent pictures (even using a 300 mm zoom), but we will certainly go back there when the circumstances are better.

For our own website click here.

Saturday 13 January 2018

Unexpected

Station Cluny
The Voie Verte, the cycle path connecting Chalon-sur-Saône and Mâcon, is located there where in the past an old local railway ran. At some places a few rail tracks are preserved, the small houses for the points operator or the railway signal operator are often still there and in a number of places the old stations can still be found. The former Cluny station for example now houses a place where bicycles can be rented.

Mulhouse, Station Cluny
This station used to have a nice open train shed, certainly for a station this size. We were quite taken by surprise when we found this shed, about 350 km from home, on display just outside the Cité du Train (the National Railway Museum) in Mulhouse (Alsace)!

Mulhouse, Station Cluny
For our own website click here.