You can spend hours and days in the picturesque villages of the Allier, a region slightly north of the massif centrale. It’s really a lovely area where the weather is good in September. I didn’t touch my camera a lot, but neither did I intend to. Instead, I caught up on reading, took a swim twice a day and slept a lot too.

Instead of ‘flying to the sun’ in November or December, I much prefer to get the last European sun in Europe in September, so I don’t have to fly. Here in The Netherlands our airspace is crowded, because of cheap tickets and AirBnB. The result is that our capital, Amsterdam, has more tourists on an average day than residents. The other result is that there will be a new airport for all holliday traffic with planes flying in and out at an altitude of 1500 meters for hundreds of kilometers, disrupting wildlife and polluting the air.

I don’t want to be part of this madness anymore, unless I really have to. When I was a kid, we drove our car for two hours to get to our vacation destination. We were completely happy with that. I don’t see why I should fly 5000 kilometers to have a fun weekend or week.

Back to photography: it’s great to get out and hunt for good shots. It’s just as nice to let it go for  a while and just read a book.