After a few days on our own , our good friend Luis and his girlfriend/companion came to stay with us for close on a week by which time we still hadn’t fathomed the new oven which came with no instructions! Burnt croissants aren’t really so bad – especially when there is nothing else in the house for breakfast!
The weather was beautiful and very hot to the point where even Nokky complained (but only a little) about the heat when the mercury peaked over 35c! Thus, daytime activities were limited to a bit of sightseeing plus supermarket visits in preparation for the cooler evening’s entertainment.
Inevitably, I was ‘forced’ to make my paella ‘signature dish’ accompanied by copious glasses of cooling beer. Cooking on a barbecue in ‘cool’ evening temperatures of just under 30c is very thirsty work!
A few days of gentle clearing up after Louis and Penny departed and it was time for a full on week with my two granddaughters, my son Jon and his wife, Fiona. I say ‘full on’ but that was mostly for Mia and Elodie, thanks to the swimming pool
and an inflatable slide kindly donated by a previous guest.
Jon is a great father and totally brilliant as the children’s ‘entertainment manager’ – both in the pool and out.
but even he needed some rest once in a while! I was exhausted just watching (and occasionally joining in) all that was going on.
It was a hugely enjoyable family week! And I thing the prize for the one with most energy must go to the youngest, Mia.
Shortly after the departure of ‘Family Fairhurst’, it actually rained – albeit not for long but it did bring the daytime temperatures down to a more seasonal 28 – 30c which helped with all the tidying and packing up that had to be done prior to our departure a few days later.
An uneventful 7 hour drive took us to the almost Disney-like city of Carcassonne where our stopover gave us time for a bit of sightseeing.
It really is an extraordinarily well maintained mediaeval city with origins dating back to pre Roman times.
Not surprisingly, the walled city of Carcassonne is something of a tourist magnet and has featured in many movies over the years, Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves being one of the more famous ones.
No journey back to the UK would have been complete without a 2 night stopover at my sister’s home in Bressuire, a town of around 20k inhabitants in the province of Nouvelle Aquitaine. For an 83 year old, Di is remarkable, still taking care of guests in her Chambres d’hotes, and doing a lot of the necessary gardening and pool cleaning in her sizeable plot. I was happy to help for a while with some wisteria pruning although the finished result left a little to be desired!
Our trip to mainland Europe ended in an interesting – and quite sad- way. As our ferry back to the UK departed early, we spent our last night in France in a hotel very close to the ferry terminal in Oustreham near Caen in the Calvados region. In the morning, I was about to put my overnight case back in the boot when I noticed what looked like a pair of denim covered knees sticking out from behind other luggage already stowed there. It didn’t take my sleep addled brain to conclude that a body was in the boot which, when I lightly pushed it’s knees, didn’t move so, in my now alert state, could well have been dead! Discretion being the better part etc etc, I closed the boot, and asked one of the hotel staff to call the police.
20 minutes or so later, the local plod arrived and extracted some poor, bewildered and slightly shellshocked looking young man who had obviously been trying to cross the Channel cooped up in the (albeit quite spacious) boot of our car. Apart from a mobile phone he had no documents, no food and no clothes other than those that he was wearing. God knows when and how he had managed to crawl into such a tiny space, how long he had been travelling or where he had come from. And equally, God knows what will happen to him now.
Before we were allowed to leave and (just) catch our ferry, the portly hotel owner shrugged his shoulders and said to us “Eeet appens every day”. Very sad and truly shocking!
A bientot
R
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