The biggest Daddy Longlegs in France

When I went into the bedroom yesterday afternoon, I was stopped in my tracks by an enormous leggy insect on the window (outside, I'm rather glad to say). Tim was busy elsewhere so I went and fetched my new camera, which I've just dropped on the floor as I've been told that's the way to treat them. The manual is (a) massive and (b) on the computer so I did a bit of experimenting and got the macro feature to work after a few dud shots. It was the biggest cranefly (tipule) I'd ever seen, and we identified it from the books as a female tipula maxima. It's rather a fine animal, even if those legs make me shiver.