The reason it’s been so quiet is that I’ve been working more hours and suffering from a really nasty bug that we must’ve got from the plane back from Paris (love that recycled air!).  Last Sunday was my day off and despite us both feeling a bit ropey we decided to watch the leaves turning-colour in our local country park.  It was beautiful.  The sun hadn’t risen to it’s zenith and the light was that toned-down, warm autumnal light that we all love so much.  The light, though still bright, was being broken by the leaves on the trees and caught on it’s descent by spider’s webs.

It was chilly already, warm in the sun but under the leafy canopy there was a chill in the air.  It made us glad of my cardigan (and my Parisian scarf!) and Mr. VP’s coat.  The whiff of leaf-mould carpeting the floor, ripening fruit and wind-fallen apples all filled the air as we dipped through the valleys and steps until we came around another corner, to find yet another wonderful sight to behold.

I don’t tend to go much to this particular place except in the autumn months.  I’ve been there in long, icy frost-fallen days and also in the warm Indian summers of September and October.  It’s a nice place to walk during the week, when there aren’t children running around to keep you from your thoughts.

There are little streams dotted around, weaving their own veiny-web throughout the park. They are all tributaries to the main river. A behemoth it flows through a good chunk of south-east Northumberland on its way to the sea. We paused for a moment and I took my first little timelapse, watching the leaves fall from the trees and be taken down-river by the gentle current.

Short Timelapse River from Vintage Pretty on Vimeo.

Our walk looped us all the way around the park, and before we knew it we had emerged (up a steep flight of steps from the valley-bottom) to the hay-meadow at the top. The sun was strong and shining and we sat on a bench watching the clouds.

In my mind I was listening to Emiliana Torrini’s “Sunny Road” and enjoying the last few rays of summer-ish sun. It was really quite, quite beautiful.

Paris is a wonderful place.  It’s constantly busy, noisy, smelly, bright, interesting, terse and fascinating.  It’s not all good – there are things that Paris doesn’t get right, but it’s also full of things that it does.

We have been to the top of the Eiffel Tower – and embibed €10-a-glass champagne whilst watching the sun set over the Seine from the very top.  We have shopped in the very loveliest of shops (the Galeries Lafayette are something to behold!), eaten a lot of French bread, sat in street cafés, watching the world go by and experienced the Seine by night.  The Eiffel tower is well-worth the wait, it was fantastic.  We loved every moment of it, in fact I’ll go so far as to say it was my favourite bit of the trip.  I’ve always seen it, on the TV, in photos, but to be there, to touch it, was magnificent.

The Paris métro is something to behold.  It is amazingly clean, reasonable (buy a Paris Visite pass when you arrive, unlimited travel for 2, 3 or 5 days) and always on time.  The longest we ever waited for a metro was 4 minutes (and we used it a lot!). The stations are all being renovated at the moment, and so Concorde (with it’s letter-filled tiles on line 12, spelling out the Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen – the declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen), the ship-themed Arts et Metiérs and the Palais Royal - Museé du Louvre which looks just like a museum, are wonderful just to spend some time visiting.

The Parc de Belleville was one of the things I had deemed I had to see when in Paris.  Belleville is now the trendy-chic place to live in Paris and the house prices match, but from this parc you can see pretty much all of Paris laid out before you.  It’s free to visit, we used the Belleville metro stop and walked the 5-odd minute walk to the parc.

Oh, and the Louvre is well-worth a look-around.  Luckily, we went on the first Sunday of the month when it was FREE admission.  The Roman, Greek and Etruscan bit was fantastic!  Dude, we also saw the Venus de Milo.  Not that I’m name-dropping!

These are the things that Paris gets right, the things people love and what they do well.  However the smelly streets, the beggars, the sometimes extremely stand-offish French people were less pleasant.  However we never really felt threatened (and I’m the person who clutched my handbag to my body in Edinburgh - of all places! – after being told about the pick-pockets there!).  We found a local baker who made amazing chocolate Religieuses (my favourite French cake) just a couple of minutes from the hotel and we had a great time.  We’ll go again, perhaps in January when it’s cold and not the 35ºC it was when we were there!

Paris was good.  From chestnut-covered walkways, parks-a-plenty, the wonderful café culture to the best yogurt in the world and the Eiffel Tower.  It was just brilliant.

The past few weeks have rushed by, with a whirlwind of excitement over an impending holiday, a visit from Mum and lots of work.  With lots of things on my mind, I am now usually awake at 6.30 am, and despite not having to go to work the other day, I still got up before Mr. VP and sauntered downstairs to make myself a solitary breakfast.

I listened to Martha Tilston’s wonderful LP ‘Ropeswing’ (free to download from PondLifeStudios – whilst you’re there, download Carrie Tree’s wonderful album for free!) and considered what today would hold.  I was going to start on another quilt, with fabric that Mr. VP had bought me from the mighty Liberty (oh how lucky a girl I am to have a husband who buys me lovely things from Liberty!), so whilst I sat and ate toast with Mum’s homemade lemon curd and drank a cup of tea, I pondered the day ahead.

As luck and fateful chance would have it, I managed to get quilting done, and it is my icecream quilt because it’s made from lots of squares of re-purposed fabrics, from old ticking pillow cases to floral table cloths and damask towels.  Quite lovely.  But not finished yet, due to me needing to get packed and ready for our holiday (our much-wanted and much-needed holiday) to Paris.  We leave tomorrow and fly on Saturday.  I can’t wait!

There is a nip in the air now, and Summer – if the weather is anything to go by – is well and truly gone, paving the way for Autumn golds and leaf-kicking, quiet peaceful thoughts, autumn apple harvests and cinnamon in everything.  The lull before Christmas.  It’s one of my favourite seasons for a reason – it’s the season of home.

I’ve got a lot to tell, but this is going to be difficult to do before Paris, so I’ll save it all for when I can blog more properly.

I’ll leave you with photos of the journey my Mum and I took around Rothbury, the Cheviots and Simonside last week.  It was a magical day out.