Brazil - The Amazon - June/July 2026 - Logistics and Itinerary

Logistics

• A nine day guided trip with Bob and Richard, my companions from the first trip to Brazil a few years ago. This time we were going to the Amazon, centering on the improbable city of Manaus and birding on the Amazon and Rio Negro rivers as well Guiana Shield forest around the town of Presidente Figueredo.
• Guide: We were with Brad again, the same guy who led us on the Pantanal trip and drove me to hospital when some ants tried to kill me. It is getting to the point  where I really don't want to travel with anyone else. Although I would rather he guided us and us alone, his company is called Agami Nature Tours and I recommend that you check them out for all your Brazilian birding needs. As I have said before, he is an excellent birder, but better than that he is also one of the least flustered and most calm people you could ever wish to meet. In a crisis, or even just a slight hitch, he is the guy you want. And he is great company to boot.
• Costs: This particular trip is another long one and also quite expensive with a few boat trips. I think it was perhaps marginally cheaper than the Pantanal trip coming in at $3750 excluding the flights, which equates to £3000 or thereabouts. It was worth every penny frankly. This is of course all inclusive - guiding services, hotels, meals, and all transport. A 30% deposit is required up front, with the remainder due three months before departure. You get hit for foreign exchange charges that I have yet to find a way around, so plan for about +6%. Outraged? Yes I am.
• Flights: We flew on one ticket purchased from LATAM from London to Manaus return via Sao Paulo and, on the return leg, via Madrid, which cost around £1200 in economy. The transatlantic leg left at 9.20pm arriving in South America at 5am lcoal time the following morning. This left us with a perfectly easy two and a half hour connection on to a LATAM flight to Manaus which takes a further four hours. With a further one hour time change west we arrived in the Amaaon at 10.30am local time. Brazi is huge. On the way back we left Manaus at 4pm which was supposed to arrive back in Sao Paolo at 9pm local time, which would have left us about two hours. In the event it arrived quite late and we only just made our onward flight to Madrid, needing to change terminals and charge through Guarulhos at high speed. Once back in Madrid we changed to British Airways flight to London. A direct flight GRU-LHR was available but at the point of booking was unaffordable. 
• Transport:  A regular SUV was included in the package with Brad as the driver.  The roads, albeit that there are not many, are largely fine. Be prepared for pothold hell up near Novo Airao. We also went on three boat trips.
• Accomodation: All included in the price, we stayed in regular hotels in Manaus, and in lodges at Presidente Figueredo and Novo Airão. We shared a three person room almost everywhere we went which brought the price down a bit.
• Literature/Resources: The day-by-day trip itinerary provided by Agami told us most of what we needed to know, and I think Richard brought Van Perlo which likely didn't get touched. We eBirded the whole thing. And of course we had a walking talking encyclopedia of Brazilian birds on hand the whole time.
• Clothing - light clothing that dries quickly is recommended, and as this is a wet landscape, also wellies. This is as much for the mud and puddles you will need to wade through as a method for defeating chiggers that for whatever reason cannot conquer a rubber slope of this height. I don't know what a chigger is but I suspect I don't want to know. Fun fact - the same wellies I trudge around Shetland on have now been to the Amazon.
• Food - Vast quantites of stunningly good local fish. You will never want to see a Tambaqui again.

Itinerary

• Day 1 - Mid morning arrival into Manaus. Leaving Sao Paulo the southern Amazon is quite fragmented but after a while all you can see is green. Brad picked us up right on time and we went straight to lunch, In the afternoon we travelled south to the várzea at Iranduba to get the list started. This is the area where the Solimoes and Rio Negro meet to become the Amazon proper.
• Day 2 - An early start CEASA port on the west side of Manaus was delayed by a monster electrical storm rolling in from the east. All morning boat trip around the Marchanteria islands, flooded at this time of year so you bird from the boat amongst the top third of the trees. After lunch a quick twitch for an improbable Agami Heron at the INPA Bosque da Ciencia, and then north to Presidente Figueredo where we managed about an hour of forest edge birding before last light.
• Day 3 - Birded the Ramal do Tucumanduba all morning, and the Ramal do Bacura in the afternoon, both east of Presidente Figueredo. We tried for a juvenile Harpy Eagle that had been seen back at the nest site with no luck. In the evening a successful excursion for White-winged Potoo.
• Day 4 - A quick change of plans this morning involved returning to the Harpy Eagle site and this time the bird was there! This did mean we started our planned birding at the Cachoeira da Neblina a little later than we would have wanted but we all felt it was a wothwhile trade-off. In the afternoon we birded Aldeia Mari Mari, well known for a Guianan Cock-of-the-Rock lek. The birds were magnificent, but this low forest was unpleasantly hot and humid and not for the faint of heart.

• Day 5 - We departed in the middle of the night to head south back towards Manaus, with the aim of being at the ZF-2 Tower at first light. This is permit only and representatives from the university met us on entrance track and as first light dawned we started climbing this extraordinary research tower that extends 40m upwards and above canopy. We hadn't even made it to the top when a passing squall had us scurrying down again. I think we went up and down three times as the weather forced us to abandon birding for lengthy periods. We were away by midday for the long drive around Manaus and up the south bank of the Rio Negro to Nova Airão, our base for the remainder of the trip. We managed an hour or so at the Ramal da sombrinha cor de rosa before heading to the hotel. 

• Day 6 - Boat trip to the PN Anavilhanas with Vermelhinho, also flooded this time of year, starting at the Furo do Tamuata. Words cannot describe how beautiful the Rio Negro is. All day on the boat, simply wonderful birding. In the evening a quick outing to try for Rufous Potoo.

• Day 7 - Morning trip by boat up to some land owned by Vermelhinho where we got off and had a look around his little parcel of forest. In the afternoon we tried the Sombrinha cor de rosa again.

• Day 8 - Birded the well-known Ramal do Medico all the morning before departing for Manaus in the afternoon.

• Day 9 - Morning birding from the MUSA tower in northern Manaus, accessed via the Adolfo Ducke botanic garden. Organised in advance we got early access to the reserve and at first light you have the tower to yourself. Once the gates open a stream of regular visitors start to appear. Back to the hotel to pack, clean up, and Brad delivered us the airport for our mid-afternoon flight back to Sao Paulo.

Pressing on

So that was France, all the way back in late May. I had not intended to write even a single word about it but then I encountered a streak of bloody-mindedness and so here we are. It is done now, and - once started at least - came to a very rapid conclusion by my standards. Part of the reason I raced through it is that I have loads of bird news to share. Ha! As if. I've managed a bit of time on the patch but it has not been particularly interesting. However seeing as I am here typing here is a summary.

June: Only kidding.

July: I saw my one and only Hobby for the patch in 2026

August: Much better, the latter half of the month saw the usual arrival of Spotted Flycatchers and Redstarts. I jammed a Pied Flycatcher on the 15th and a Shelduck flew over my head on the 24th, but it took until the end of the month before Spotted Flycatcher fell.

Somehow I managed to find the time to twitch both the long-staying Long-tailed Shrike in Gloucestershire and the even longer staying Black-winged Kite in Norfolk. This latter was particularly satisfying as I had dipped it way back in January and picked up a speeding ticket whilst doing so. This killed what had at the time felt like a bit of a twitching renaissance, possibly a good thing. I didn't take photographs of either and so I didn't bother writing about them, or at least I don't remember doing so. I got in the car, drove for a bit, saw the birds and came home again. Fun huh? Actually the Shrike was quite fun. When I got up on Saturday morning I had no intention of going to see it whatsoever but then I looked where it was and it was only two and a half hours away. I had to be in Reading at lunchtime for a birthday party in the afternoon, this looked like it was just the other side. We had been going to take the train until I reaslised that I could drive to the Shrike and still get to the party in plenty of time, and furthermore that I would be in posession of a car with which to drive the family home. Brownie Points were in the offing! If you were reading this blog in 2023 you may perhaps remember that this has happened before, in fact involving the same friends in the same house. Back then they had just moved in. Now they are fully installed and even have a pet snail called Long Eye Eye. Eastleach Martin in Gloucestershire is not as far away as Wales thankfully, but it is conveniently in the same direction. And so with no prior planning I set off with a fiver for the famer's field and had seen the bird by about 11am. I was in Reading before 1pm and able to help our friends get set up for the party, I think I made prawn kebabs or something. Mrs L and a child arrived a short time later, we had a thoroughly lovely afternoon and then I drove everyone home like the hero I am. 

Eastleach Martin twitch. I am solidly in the pictured demographic

With the Wilson's Storm Petrel I saw off Scilly in late July that makes four UK lifers this year which feels if not unprecedented, highly unexpected. Maybe I'll make 500 yet? It would require four a year for another ten years. Actually now that I write that, maybe not. No, that seems far too many, far too much like hard work. I intend to get to Scilly in due course, but there is the small matter of Brazil first. I am not going to be fully happy with the way things are going until I've written up Brazil. The prep work is done, I gave my mate Claude a csv file of the relevant checklists and developed a prompt. I kid you not but in less than 20 minutes it "wrote" nine blog posts. This is the difference between me being able to get this done and not. Worry ye not, I have not ceded editorial rights to our machine overlords. It has simply laid out a text version of what were lists. I will not have to type out the name of a single bird, they are all there waiting for me in the order in which I saw them. That 20 minutes a few days ago has saved me hours. I just need to go in and put some words and photos around them. It couldn't do the customary itinerary post, nor did I ask it to. That is my next job.

Wilson's Storm Petrel

Chablis and home

I always forget where Chablis is. In my head it is north-east of Burgundy, closer to Champagne. In fact it is more or less in a direct north-westerly direction. Draw a straight line from Beaune to Paris and you will drive through Chablis. I think the problem is rather that I have no idea where Champagne is, and so if I am trying to find Chablis starting from there then inevitably I am going to get lost. Champagne is in fact more or less due east from Paris, but much further west than Burgundy. Where I think Champagne is appears to be somewhere near Nancy. I digress.

Back in our youth Mrs L and I used to stop in Chablis on the way down to Beaune from Paris. Seems it was on the way, who knew.... My parents lived in Paris for a while, and when we came to visit it was our habit to squeeze in visits to Burgundy. Sometimes as part of a longer trip we would leave Paris in the morning and be in Aix for lunch. Anyhow, as all of you bird fiends may know, Chablis is an excellent source of white wine. Chardonnay, so the same as Burgundy - indeed in my head Chablis is in Burgundy - but the wine is very different. I'll spare you the lecture this time, but the soil there is a mixture of chalk, limestone and follisised shells, and this translates directly into the grapes, and subsequently into the glass. STGT as John Livingstone-Learmonth would put it. Chablis is (or can be at any rate, choose wisely) wonderfully chalky, saline and somehow steely.  A sip from a classical bottle can transport to a beach of wet pebbles and salt spray, like licking seaweed. It pairs brilliantly with shellfish as you might expect, and it is a Chateau L favourite. You need to be quite strict with your selection, stricter than the growers often are in fact, as rising temperatures in the region are causing to Chablis to lose its character. With excessive summer heat the wine takes on rich tropical notes, about the last thing you could want in Chablis. If a critic bangs on about yesteryear classicism in a bottle of Chablis that is a good sign. 

Oh dear, another digression. When we used to drive from Paris and back, half a lifetime ago it seems, we had small children. Chablis was an ideal break point for two reasons. 1) see above, and 2) on the banks of the the Serein, sandwiched bewteen the river and the hillside of the Grands Crus, a gently sloping crescent of vineyards, there is a small public park. It has picnic benches, and crucially it also has playground equipment. Slides and swings. We used to stop there just in time for lunch. If we were lucky there would be a Saturday market in full swing in the town, and there we would source baguettes and Chaource, a locally made soft cheese. Laden with fresh goodies we would head to the park and have a feast whilst the children played. Bougros, Les Preuses, Vaudésir, Grenouilles, Valmur, Les Clos, Blanchots - those are the seven Grand Crus north to south. The park is probably between Les Clos and Grenouilles, at the point Valmur spears into a point and meets the road. After lunch had been consumed and the children had rid themselves of excess energy we would head to La Chablisienne, the regional cooperative. We could not afford the Grand Crus at that stage, but if you picked carefully from the Premier Cru, the next level of wines down, you could come away with really lovely wines. The hillside of Grand Crus continues south and starts to curve east and away from the town. That slight change in exposition is all it takes for the downgrade, and Montée de Tonnerre and Mont de Milieu make excellent wines in their own right. If you go the other way you reach Fourchaume - this was always a favourite of ours and I still buy it and the other two today from certain producers. But I have not had any wine from the Chablisienne for many years. Today was the day we would put that right (and they had half bottles of Montmains and Vaulorent, yay!)

We had a late start from Beaune. A bit of a logistical hassle to find somewhere to park the car close enough to the accomodation so that we could bring all the wine we had accumulated down to the street. The back seats were down, but two adult bikes take a lot of space. In the end we created a thin layer of boxes such that the bikes lay on top of the wine, and off we went. Destination, a small park with some swings near a quiet river. It wasn't market day, and we had no small children with us, but we found what we needed for a casual lunch and headed to our favourite bench to relive the old times. It was just as we had left it. Well, maybe the slides were new ones, but you get the picture. Great.

Les Grand Crus

Nuits-Saint-Georges and the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune

Today we were going north of Beaune into the Côtes de Nuits, Nuits-Saint-Georges is the major village here, sitting just up from the Hill of Corton. We did a tour of the hallowed vineyards around Vosne and Gevrey, gazed at the plots belonging to the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti whose wines are as legendary as they are mythical. I mean they do exist, they are not fictional, but the chances of Mrs L and I ever coinciding with one are virtually nil. I remember them being sold in Waitrose in Canary Wharf in the early 2000s. Would that I had bought some at that point but alas. Instead of ingesting wine we soaked in the scenery, the sense of place - this is genuinely a pilgrimage for some. For my part I wouldn't take it that far, but I adore the entire area and am committed to sampling as many of its wares as I can. Lunch was a picnic at some convenient benches near the Mairie looking out towards Malconsorts and La Tâche. I have two bottles of the former, and zero from the latter for it is a monopole of the DRC. It's not exclusive necessarily, you don't have to be a member of some secret society. I have a credit card and I could go and buy one from Berry Brothers in London this weekend if I so chose. Neither are they especially scarce as something like 20,000 bottles are produced in a normal year. The issue is simply unaffordability for all but a tiny tiny minority of the population. In fact I am not sure that many people actually drink them at all and instead treat them as investment vehicles. Whatever it is that drives demand means that the 2006 is £5,700. That's for a single bottle. Even if money were no object that just seems and outrageous thing to do, to blow such an amount on a few glasses of liquid. Imagine the other things you could do, the places you could go, the good you could do?

Our first visit after lunch was at Domaine Rion, one of two Domaine Rion's on a short stretch of road just south of NSG at Premeaux. I was not sure which it was, and then the dreadful thought occured to me of what if I had booked our visit at the wrong one? It would be easy to do. Such are the laws of succession in France that Domaines have been repeatedly split up, combined through marriage, split up again, a brother takes this, the other brother takes that. Some keep the Domaine whole up the death of the mother or father, it is not uncommon to have one sibling doing the farming and the other doing the vinification for instance. Common family names in Bourgogne include reams of Moreys, Vincents, Colins, Magniens and Bachelets, but I had not been prepared for two Rions right next door to one another. Fortunately the one we wanted, Domaine Michèle et Patrice Rion, was both the one we turned up to and the one we had made an appointment with so all was well.

Great visit with Florence opposite the walled vineyard Clos des Argilliere and tasted through the range of wines, I think from 2023. At one stage Patrice came in, so very nice to meet him. This is what I love about Burgundy, you can actually talk to the people who make the wine. From afar Burgundy might have a reputation of extreme stuffiness and wealth, and it is true that the wines can be obscenely expensive, but almost every single wine-maker I've met at their domaine has been a down to earth farmer more than anything else. M&P Rion is one of my favourite producers, their simple Bourgogne Rouge is from a vineyard near Chambolle called "Les Bons Batons" and produces the kind of tart red-fruited wine I really enjoy. The range of Nuits-Saint-Georges is altogether more serious and will take much longer to come around. Although the prices at the cellar door were excellent versus the UK it made no sense to buy many as storage at home is so limited and these would take up valuable space for years. The way I operate is that the ageing of wine takes place at the merchants I buy it from, and then as the drinking window approaches that is when I get it delivered. But Les Bons Batons doesn't need storing, it is good to go virtually straight away, and so a case of that came back home with us.

Next stop was Le Grappin, recently moved from Savigny to bigger premises in the Hautes-Côtes. This is an up-and-coming area in Burgundy, with climate change a new area that is viable for growing grapes, indeed it does not (yet) suffer the extremes of heat from lower down. Previously grapes wouldn't really ripen, now it is game on and more and more producers are expanding their holdings into this area. As the land is many times cheaper than the Côte d'Or this is also an opportunity for new winemakers to buy land, plant vines or otherwise acquire vineyards and more space. This is what Emma and Andrew at Le Grappin have done. They don't own their own vines but with temperatures in the mid-30s when we visited they were quite happy with that situation. Instead they buy in grapes and manage the process from thereon in. She is English, he South-African, we were introduced by my mate Neil, first to their wines in the UK, and then to Emma herself who he knew as fellow wine nerd when she lived in Kent. Their new premises up in the Haut-Côte are centered around a deep cool cellar of the sort that is hard to find these days, and will be the ideal place for Andrew and Emma to make wine. He is a thoughtful man, entirely unpretentious, a believer in letting the wine do the talking and for the process to be as simple as possible for the land to express itself, working with small parcels of bought-in grapes. It's a double-edged sword of course, and a source of fruit can disappear, as had happened with some of what we tasted. In one instance the vineyard had been pulled up and replanted, in another the owner had died and the descendents had decided to take a different path and so somebody else now gets those grapes. A great shame for what Andrew and Emma make is quite wonderful. We tasted a fair few on top of a barrel - they do not have, nor want, a fancy tasting room. They don't want their name on the gate, and even their online presence is decidedly minimal. It's not an effort to create a cult of mystery; they just want to work hard and make great and expressive wine. That is exactly what they are doing, and it's exciting wine. I detest the word "vibe", but I felt here like I felt at Benda in Montalcino, and that's a good thing.

That evening we had a dinner reservation at the Maison du Colombier in Beaune. Food good, wine list incredible, but I think we were clocked as foreign and dumped in a room with inconveniently low seating and alongside a group of earnest West-coast Americas who were 'making it' by coming to Burgundy. Deeply irritating people, extremely vocal, highly opinionated, each trying to out-cool the other. Young and hip professionals enjoying their ten days of annual leave. I do not begrudge them this, but the timing was unfortunate from our persepective and it did not make for a fully relaxing evening. For those thinking that two people consumed a bottle each we did not, and at least half the Vosne-Romanée came home to London with us the next day. Restraint is my middle name.

Pootling down the Voie des Vignes

We did not get up especially early, there was no need as we were on holiday, and although the body clock of the working adult kicked in at the expected time we were able to loaf about for a bit. A leisurely breakfast in town and then we walked to the car with what we needed for the day out. Mostly what we needed was in the car, namely our two bicycles. Whereas last time I had brought Mrs L's little fold-up bike, this time we had both brought the real thing. How would we get wine in the car as well? I admit this was troubling me a little but it is a big car and I figured that I could make something work.

We set off around the ringroad and missed our turn immediately. Retracing our steps we found the correct road out and were soon headed into the vines. Unlike November 2021 when it had just been me and the vineyard workers, this visit was in prime season and we were far from alone. Nonetheless it was extremely satisfying to be out and about in the fresh air, amongst familiar fields laden with history. Indeed personal history, I've had many bottles from these specific plots and it is somehow very interesting (to me and me only) that the liquid in my glass came specifically from here.

As I doubtless mentioned five years ago the order of villages south from Beaune is Pommard, Volnay, Meursault, Puligny, Chassagne and Santenay. Off to one side, and where better value is to be found, lie, in order, Monthelie, Auxey-Duresses, and Saint Aubin. White wine covers most of the production in all the villages except Pommard and Volnay which are exclusively red. Puligny I think is exclusively white, Meursault virtually all white, but Chassagne and the other villages have a little more red. Red Chassagne can be fabulous, and as the village is so associated with chardonnay can often be a steal (a relative steal) as drinkers and collectors mostly don't know about it.

Despite the heat rising extremely quickly we had a very pleasant ride along the Voie de Vignes. I birded it the whole way, with highlights being Melodious Warbler near the Beaune Tuvilains vineyard and a Hoopoe in Beaune itself. Les Rugiens-bas at Pommard had Cirl Bunting and Black Redstart, both of which were also present around Meursault. 

We glided into Puligny for a late lunch at Maison Olivier Leflaive. The eponymous and debonaire Olivier, now in his 80s, was doing the rounds at the tables. I had missed him in 2021, but was pleased to be able to have a brief conversation, despite being a bit hot and bothered vs his lovely pressed linen - here is a man who knows how to dress in the heat. Mrs L and I have been drinking his wine for what feels like forever so to meet the man who created the Domaine all those years ago after the split was really nice. We drank Lamy with the meal though!

Our afternoon visit was with Ponsard-Chevalier in Santenay. To be honest the very last thing I wanted to do was to leave the cool restaurant and head back into the searing heat, but I got my water bottle filled and off we went. It didn't take too long, and the lovely Coralie was there to meet us in her equally cool tasting room. This was a tip from a buddy of mine called Neil and a very good one it was too - the wines are delicious and very fairly priced. Because they are at the very end of the Côte their holdings are in unfashionable villages like Santenay and Maranges which is good for your wallet. We tasted through the range and placed an order for a fair few that I would subsequently go and collect the following morning in the car. Their white Santenay, Les Daumelles, was particularly good I thought, and I liked the red Cornieres so much I bought a magnum.

Coralie felt so sorry for us having to cycle all the way back to Beaune without a hat that she gave me a cap with a fertliser brand on the brim. My goodness it was hot. We made it back as far as Puligny before deciding we needed a break. Where better than than the Cave de Puligny, a place I'd dropped in at on the last trip. We spent the rest of the afternoon here sampling a few glasses in the cool interior before rousing ourselves for the final leg to Beaune. This last stretch was extremely pleasant, the heat of the day had passed and the large groups of tourists had all gone. We largely had the vineyards to ourselves.

Despite having had a pretty wholesome lunch we decided we were also in the mood for dinner and took a late table at the Relais des Saulx in Beaune. This was fantastic, a small cozy restaurant run by Agnès at front of house and Charles in the kitchen. It was also fully booked but one small table had already become free and they were happy to fit us in. Turns out they knew Andrew and Emma at Le Grappin, our planned visit in the morning, and also introduced us to a new producer called Domaine Chanterêves based in Savigny - another new wave winemaker, I think hailing from Japan. Great food and a great bottle too. I remember sleeping quite well.

Back on the Côte via Champagne

 *** Boring post alert. If you couldn't give a stuff about wine I suggest you stop here! ***

In 2021 when the first COVID restrictions were lifted I high-tailed it to France with a bicycle and had a jolly time cycling around Burgundy. Back then I included the same warning as above, and even though there is some bird content I've done so again.  I've been hankering to repeat the trip, this time with Mrs L. She, after all, dragged me up the east coast from Newcastle to Fife, thus repeating a trip she had done a number of times with children - it felt like it was my turn. And so when half term came along in May (yes, I'm behind again) we put our bikes in the back of the car and drove down to the Channel Tunnel. By lunchtime we were in Champagne eating a picnic lunch in a park having raided a small supermarché somewhere near Reims. The weather was glorious, but unlike being in London and having to suffer no airconditioning and public transport I was sat under a tree near a pond drinking cool apricot juice and eating goats cheese.

With nothing organised until the following day we spent the afternoon chilling out and doing very little until our evening reservation came up and we found ourselves on a nice terrace with a cool glass. The air remained warm well into the evening, as we returned to our accomodation down by the Marne in Bisseuil we realised how lucky we were. I even found time to go birding for a bit in the evening and the following morning, with Nightingale singing alongside the river, Redstart and Grey Wagtail near the bridge, and lots of House Martin over the village.

The following morning, at 9am, we were tasting Champagne. This is not ideal, but equally it beats many other things I could be doing at 9am. I can be quite disciplined when I need to be ( and very undisciplined when the opportunity arises) and made ample use of the spittoon. Sadi Malot is a lovely small grower, quite understated and with a good range of primarily Blanc-de-Blancs, that is to say Champagne made exclusively from white grapes, usually chardonnay. Better still they had halves, and half a bottle of Champagne on, say, a Wednesday night is very hard to beat. It was racy stuff, especially the low dosage cuvées, indeed if you are partial to Grande Marque Champagne like Pol Roger and so on you may find this style a little austere. But it is taut, fresh and incredibly pure, laser-like in some cases. Here is my note on the Brut Authentique which is a nice middle ground.

This is cut from the same cloth as the Zero, another BdeB with that same energy and vitality, but with a bit of dosage (4.3) and more importantly, wood raised rather than stainless steel. This rounds it out a bit and makes it less piercing and more enjoyable, at least on its own. Disgorged mid-2025, so very young. Crucially it is also bottled in halves. Amazing value at the cellar door. Tasted at the Domaine.

I am not exactly Winston Churchill but I always feel I ought to drink more Champagne than I do, and that it should be thought of more like a normal bottle of wine, albeit fizzy, rather than something that is rolled out on special occasions. Half bottles may help me break this cycle.

A propos of nothing at all, it was Rhubarb season. I am very partial.

"Extra"

We stopped in at another house not too far away, Vazart-Coquart, having had a bottle of theirs randomly in a restuarant in London earlier in the year. Also based primarily on Chardonnay their wine was also quite strict and precise, includin the rosé. As luck would have it they too sold halves and so we used up our remaining sparkling allowance on some of these plus a few presents to take home. We had another lovely picnic lunch somewhere or other, and then got in the car for the slog down to Burgundy where I had managed to book the same accomodation in Beaune as in 2021, right on Place Carnot. This had very nearly fallen through at the 11th hour, a week or so before travelling I had received a mysterious message saying my booking had been cancelled. It had indeed been cancelled, but for the most absurd of reasons - the middle man had been fired. As with many things in Burgundy everyone is in the chain, everyone takes a cut. I had booked - and paid! - not the accomodation directly, but with an agent - there is some technical name - who managed the property on the owner's behalf. When for whatever reason that relationship fell apart and he was replaced with a different person he and all his bookings vanished. Incredible! A short phone call to the old agent as needed to establish this set of facts, but it did get me 1) my money back and 2) the phone number of the new agent. From what I could gather no actual reservation had ever been made by the first guy but through good fortune alone the property was still available on the dates we were travelling, albeit that the underground parking had been snaffled by someone else. A bit of a pain, but Beaune has plenty of free parking outside the ring road and we were able to dump the car and forget about it for a few days without spending a cent.

That evening we had an aperitif close by, a couple of glasses of young Pinot Noir, one from David Moreau and the other I cannot now remember as I did not take a note. Then we went for dinner at La Lune, something I had been looking forward to for ages. It is a tiny establishment with under 20 covers, most along a long counter, run by a Japanese genius called Seiichi Hirobe. The food is tapas style with every dish cooked there and then. The chef does every part of the cooking behind the counter so you can see what is happening at each stage, orders and drinks are dealt with by his assistant Antoine. Meticulous preparation is what is happening, what this man cannot do with a knife is not worth knowing. Dishes may come quickly, or may come after some time, and possibly in a different order than you expect, but none of this matters, the food is sensational. Book ahead. A long time ahead, and be prepared to confirm you are still coming the day of your booking or you could lose out.

Given where we were the wine list is so-so and quite short, the prices in Burgundy must make it impossible for small restaurants who cannot tie up loads of capital in a lengthy wine list, but we found a decent bottle of Chassagne from J-C Bachelet and sat down to enjoy the show. Being fusion cuisine there is a lot of fish and shellfish and we were extremely happy with this. Goodness me it was good, particularly the tuna. Although not techinally a fish something called chicken kariage was also incredibly delicious. I try not to sit in restaurants taking photos of my dinner but here, and indeed for a few of the meals on this trip I made the odd exception, it was just too good. We fairly rolled back to Place Carnot. Tomorrow though we would have to work for our lunch as we were cycling the southern Côte de Beaune just as I had done a few years back. Mrs L does not rhapsodise about vineyards in quite the same way I do, how would she take it?

Drought

I have never known Wanstead so dry. As is quite normal I avoided the patch for the entire month of June, but this year the apathy extended well into July and I did not make my first visit until the 26th. It was so poor that I put local birding on hold for what turned out to be virtually a whole month and did not return to the patch until late August. During this period no rain fell. When I finally ventured out again it was cataclysmic. 

Visually it is brown and beige, parched and dusty. But for me it is the smell that really stands out. It smells dead. Burned and broken. There is actually - miraculously - very little fire damage, we have had a lot worse, but it smells in a way I find difficult to describe. Dessicated, hollow, a shadow. 

The ponds are the worst bit. Alexandra Lake has for years been losing water, but 2026 is a real low. Literally. A Mallard could walk to the island at this point, there is so little water. And as the water has receded so the true nature of Alex has been revealed - a grim litany of the presence and lack of care of people. Of us. Personally I have not dropped any litter, but there is nothing like a drought to expose the fecklessness of humankind. The mud is not a nutricious mud, it holds little attraction to birds of any kind, it is just a landscape of exposed detritus and it has never looked more disgusting than it looks now. I couldn't even bring myself to photograph it, you will just have to imagine it.

Visaully it looks like autumn. Trees and bushes have dried up, leaves have been prematurely discarded, some may be dead. It is tragic. Bushes that in a normal year have had a good crop of berries either have a few hard and miniscule fruits or have nothing. Insects seem to have largely disappeared and combined with the lack of fruit the bird activity is low. Warblers are very scarce indeed, one or two Blackcap where in a normal year you would expect double figures. 

Is this the new normal? I lost count of the number of heatwaves there were. Five I think, prolonged periods of over 30 degrees. At times it felt like London was uninhabitable. The speed with which this change has come about is unthinkable. Predicted by a few, ignored by many, this would seem to be the future. Awful. My parents, unwittingly, avoided it by moving to Scotland. I spent a week up there recently and it was a blessed relief. For all the years of jokes about Scottish weather it now appears that people travel up there for it, how about that for a turnaround. The diehard low-carbon brigade are doubtless crowing, but this path was set long before they even existed. It might have happened earlier than had been anticipated, but this was always going to be the result of decades of accelerated and uninhibited growth. When my children are my age what will it be like? All we can do at this stage is make the best of it and if that sounds defeatist it is. No answers, the collective will isn't there, will never be there. Too selfish. But frankly what used to happen elsewhere is now happening here. Will that change anything? I doubt it.  This summer has had me doubting whether living in London is a viable future for us, the city is emminently unsuited to it. I'm looking north at this point I think, I suspect many are. At least I have somewhere to go.