The tiny village of Correns, two villages along, suffered more in the recent fires than we did. Even the green oaks on either side of the narrow road in were burnt to a dusty pale russet brown, like a New England fall but wrong. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I still see the huge wall of flames and smoke racing down the hill to American Cathy’s house when I helped her escape. Here I could picture a tunnel of flames. No lives were lost – people in vulnerable houses left before the fire took hold – but several homes in the surrounding woods were destroyed.

Most of the trees on this side of our biggest hill, the Bessillon, were wiped out by the fire and near the track I took on the outskirts of Correns, half the pines in the huge forest there were also reduced to -blackened stumps. A few telegraph poles, severed by the fire, hung suspended by their cables, -others lay charred on the ground, their cables broken and strewn about.

Good riddance, Monty Don

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Beside the remains of a garage, a burnt out car – and across the road the scorched ruin of a house was -visible through what was left of its garden. Saddest of all, I saw a pair of doves with singed tails and wings........

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