Last time, I took you on a tour of my garden in May. I thought you might like to see the wild flowers in the surrounding countryside as well. Here are the photos I took last Friday when we cycled along the Loire from opposite Saint Claude sur Diray to Saint-Dyé-sur-Loire, then through the forest to Château de Chambord, a 30 km round trip.

The first flowers I noticed were all the dog roses (églantine in French) which are a delicate pink.

These are elder trees (sureau). The berries are used to make elderberry wine.

These very tall trees (Jean Michel is on the bike path in front of me) are the Robinia pseudoacacia or false acacias that I mistook for wattle in my last post. It’s a bit confusing as the French actually call them acacias.

These yellow water irises are a little past their prime but I still love seeing them.

Buttercups are everywhere at the moment. These are on the banks of the Loire at Saint Dyé. When I first came to France, I fell in love with the buttercups and used to take my moped out into the countryside and lie down in the fields feeling very romantic.

You see both these flowers on stone walls everywhere. I understand that the lavendar one on the top right is a geranium (what we usually call geraniums are actually pelargoniums). I have no idea what the ones on the left are though.

These pretty little asters are also very common. You can see another geranium at the bottom of the photo.

These cornflowers are next to a field of barley on the path from Saint Dyé to Chambord.

No flowers in this one but I couldn’t resist posting a photo of one of my favourite châteaux!