31.08.2018 & 01.09.2018 - The boys and myself all gathered to the "Pantouquet", a beautiful domain lost in the "Montagne Noire", for an ultimate night before Christophe's (aka Titou) wedding. Under the supervision of Christian (aka the Godfather), and around a nice BBQ, a pool and a jacuzzi we've managed to keep our futur groom relaxed before the Big Day. Typical "boys night", while Christian (Don Christiano) was taking care of the fire for the BBQ, the rest of the team enjoyed a couple of glasses of Pastis accompanied by some "saucisson" and peanuts. Very "chillaxed" atmosphere !! While enjoying "life" we were joined by one of the domain guardians', Yago the Patou probably attracted by the smell of the grilling sausages. After a few strokes and realizing that he will not get any food from us he gently left. Our meaty dinner finished we all moved inside for a couple of pool games. After a quick dip into the jacuzzi and a gentle reminder by Don Christiano that we had a Big day coming up we all went to bed. On the next day after setting up all the tables for the wedding and another BBQ we all went to get ready for the ceremony. All the boys gathered in Titou's room and helped him getting ready for the wedding. Then, we all left for the ceremony...
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We split and continue to explore the rest of the place that is huge but surprisingly does not offer much "catchy" subjects to shot. I just decide to shot as much as I can and to deal with the pictures later in post production considering it a double exercise. I go through the entire ground floor looking for anything of interest. I finally find what I was expecting in two contiguous rooms, graffitis !! One is a mixture of a large picture and some spray paint drawing and the other just pure spray painted. Very nice colours on both of them.
After those two shots and finishing exploring the ground floor, I decide to move up to the 1st floor to join Thierry and look for more findings. Not much on that part of the house with nothing exceptionnal... We therefore decide to explore the remaining bit of the house and head down to the "basement" to hopefully get to the swimming pool we'd heard about and could see from a broken window.
Very first picture in HDR and I'm quite happy with the result. Made out of 8 pictures with decreasing shutter speed and assembled on LightRoom. Once again, a wider angle lense would have been more appropriated to capture the entire scene. This was almost the end of the trip as we decided to move back to the main house and to give a final go at the ground floor before finally leaving the place. I finished that first Urbex session on that picture.
If you've enjoyed this article you can find all the pictures and others in the URBEX section of the portfolio. Wake up at 4.00 A.M, quick breakfast, loading gear in the boot of the car and here we go on the road to Gruissan ! Main goal is to arrive before the sunrise to take position while the birds are not to active or still resting.
Unfortunately, what we feared happened, the group we were focusing on, was suddenly disturbed by a flock of "screaming" sea gulls and decided to flew away. Nevertheless, this allowed me to take a couple of shots of the pinkish birds in "flight mode".From what we observed, a lot of immature/juvenile flammingos were present and easily recognizable by their greyish color and not the bright pink people usually know them for. Following the departure of the group, we decided to get back to the car and to move a bit further along the coast to another observation spot offering a better hide and potentially closer shots. We dropped the car on a small "car-park" near what must be an abandoned fisherman house. Some fishermen were actually bringing back their nets on board to collect their catch of the day. At that time, the sun had risen above the horizon offering some very bright light while the full-moon was still visible and starting to vanish. Our new observation spot offered more proximity to the birds, a better cover but was not great in terms of light as the sun was facing us. We took a couple of shots and decided to get back to the car. We managed to see other birds, including common terns and Kentish plovers. However, we did not observed any black-winged stilt that are usually numerous in the area even in late August. We decided to take the car and look for them. We hit the road but did not find the stilts at the usual spots. We carried on toward the LPO office and stopped on the side of the road as we suddenly spotted a significant amount of grey herons foraging on our lefthand side (we counted a total of 15). On our righthand side we also spotted some waders which I believe were common sandpipers. But still no stilt... Back to the car and on the road again, we stopped again a few kilometers later as we finally found the stilts. Mainly juveniles but still, there were here assisted by a purple heron and a not so shy flamingo. This marked the end of the birding trip. We moved to Leucate to enjoy a bit of sea & sun and improve our pale faces.
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