OnVaSortir... or not?

It's now the demi-saison, that lovely time of year with vivid autumnal colours and ideal temperatures for outside activities.

This morning I went for one of my favourite walks in the park of Restinclières. There were few people about, the sun was shining, and as it had rained yesterday, drops of water glistened on every plant. The warm air brought out smells of wet earth, herbs and pine. I took this photo of herbes de Provence growing wild. They look very dry because we've had so little rain, but walking past, they smelled wonderful.

Wild herbes de Provence (rosemary and thyme)

I ambled along and thought how delightful it was to be there, alone, and thus able to think, stop to admire the views and really look at everything.

Walk through a pinède carpeted with herbes de Provence

A group of three people came towards me talking and moaning. They were not appreciating the views or walking 'in the moment'.

It made me think about the website OnVaSortir.com where you can either organise an outing or sign up for one organised by someone else. It's a good way of meeting people and not doing stuff alone all the time. As you can see from the screen shot below, there are lots of different types of activities.

from onvasortir.com 

At 14:00 'Randter' has organised a walk at Restinclières, although no one has signed up for it (1/10) so why didn't I want to go with her this afternoon? Because when you walk with others, especially people you don't really know, you have to talk to them. When I go for a walk, I like to walk in peace. I like to concentrate on smells, sights, sounds and think about how lucky I am to have such splendours on my doorstep.

Call me an unsociable old bat, but I don't want to have someone yakking at me barely pausing for breath, or me realising that I don't like the person and then feel bad for a) thinking uncharitable thoughts; and b) wasting my time being there.

What I would enjoy more is a mountain-bike outing. Not the super enthusiast type that has you going up nearly vertical slopes and slogging over 20km+ of rugged terrain, but a more leisurely ride without too much up and down. Then if you get into trouble, you've got help at hand, and it's quite difficult to talk to people on a bike, so you'd have to do all that during rests. Yes, that is more my thing. My youngest's VTT (mountain bike) club organise family bike rides twice a year so that parents can join in, and they are always very enjoyable. That.

Someone told me this week that people also use OnVaSortir as an unofficial dating site. I suppose this is to be expected because one way of meeting other people is to be active, so you're bound to meet like-minded types, especially if you target your activities wisely.

So, I haven't signed up for anything yet or thought about organising something (no thanks!). There's a time for everything, and I do like to take plenty of it.