It is lovely to be in France again with all their lovely markets and fresh seasonal products…. I don’t know why, but they just seem to do it so much better than we do in the UK.

As you can see we have done a reasonable amount of travelling – well, for us anyway – and time has flown by as always, and somehow, we have already been away for nearly three weeks. We really didn’t have a plan this time, apart from stocking up on wine and olive oil which meant heading anti-clockwise towards the Medoc/Bordeaux areas, so our first stop this time was St-Valery-Sur-Somme….always an absolute pleasure, the views out onto the Somme are spectacular, no matter what the weather or the time of day. There can be mist rising from the water, moody grey clouds, or bright blue skies – just the views of the estuary with the changing tide combined with the higgledy-piggledy abandoned fishing boats and the beautiful architecture make me smile every time we come here.

It was however just a two night stop to lick the windows of a few patisseries – these new gluten and dairy intolerances mean that these are definitely a thing of the past for me …. for now at least – and stock up on all those things that we ‘shouldn’t‘ bring into France, so try to minimalise. We then decided to head to Honfleur to take in our first French market of the trip as well as being honoured by seeing possibly the highest costing Insurance Rally in France….The largest French Porshe ‘get togetherwith approximately 500 Porshe of different styles and ages, all parked up under the wheel…quite a sight!

Having not been to Honfleur for quite a while – and only ever visited Deauville and Trouville once before – we decided to get on the bikes and cycle over there as well as we couldn’t remember too much about it, apart from it being quite a ‘wealthy’ town and having loads of fish stalls and restaurants.

It was a beautiful cycle ride along the coast and up over the hills and we were really pleasantly surprised by the feel of both the towns… and although we didn’t know before hand, we happened upon the local market day in Deauville which was great…..shopping wise, it is definately the ‘Bond Street’ of the North of France…. quite a unique place – in a nice way – and a lovely feel to the town overall. We won’t leave it quite so long before we come back next.

We decided to put in a quick call to Mary and Melvyn, friends who live in Bagnoles de l’Orne, where my parents used to have the house, and they were going to be home for the next few days so we did a little detour to meet them and check up on the sleepy town as it is so beautiful. It was lovely to see them, catch up on all the news as well as be introduced to their new favourite French Bistro before moving on again slightly further south, back to La Fleche.

La Fleche has both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ memories for me….The ‘good’ – are very good, as they are the restaurants and the market, the ‘bad’ being where my problems all started 18 months ago with a running injury which turned into a little more.

La Fleche is one of those little hidden gems that is still quite ‘local’ but appears to have a very high quantity of culinary delights, from local produce to excellent restaurants, serving everything from ‘proper home-cooked food’ through to ‘Gastronomique’ and ‘Gourmand’. We followed our noses and found a lovely artisanial chocolate shop, where we bought a couple of bars to see whether they, like many other chocolate at the moment, trigger any issues. We are starting to get to know alot more about chocolate and especially the taste profile of 100% cacao.

Naturally, we also headed back to one of our old favourites La Table de Lauren to eat delicious home cooked bistro food. Not quite the same for me as previously, but they were still pretty good considering. Keith, once again enjoyed the flavours to their full, including the delicious baked Alaska for desert.

After three nights of tranquility – as the Aire is out by the lake – we moved further south on the Friday to Nantes for the long weekend. France, as you would expect, takes full advantage of any time to take a day off work and May specifically, has a lot of ‘Bank Holidays’. Like every other country in the world apart from the UK, France takes the ‘date’ off, rather than shifting the holiday to the Monday… so in May we have 1st May (Labour Day), 8th May (Victory Day in Europe), 14th May (Ascension Day) and 25th May (Whit Monday)…any excuse, but they do lose the days holiday if it falls on a weekend.

For this reason though, we had decided to book into the campsite in Nantes as we were concerned about lack of space and fancied re-visiting the Elephant and seeing how much the city has changed since we came last, just under 12 years ago.

It was dryer that we expected on Friday and Saturday – but the heavens opened on Sunday, in proper ‘April Shower’ style. Really heavy downpours for about 10 minutes at a go, during which we were luckily enough each time to find somewhere to dive into so we managed to stay mostly dry. It was a good re-visit and we explored both on foot and bike, the campsite is great, and the Elephant and Jules Verne ‘Ile de Machines‘ is still as spectacular as ever!

It will probably be another 12 years until we come back again though, but if I had my time again at university studying French, I would be looking to come to Nantes.

With the weather still looking a little ‘changeable’, we decided to head to an area we hadn’t ever been to before on the coast and found a little town called ‘La Baule Escoublac’, which was developed for Parisians to explore the seaside when they selected it to put in a train line for easier access in the late 1800’s. It later was developed based on the ‘Deauville’ concept as a Victorian seaside resort, but although the architecture is very similar, and it definately shows alot of signs of being another ‘affluent’ area, it doesn’t quite reach the levels of Deauville. A nice balance of beauty, elegance and tranquility with what appeared to be a good selection of shops, cafes and restaurants as well as a long, long beach. A great little stop for a few days.

Another little short hop along the coast and we found ourselves in a place called La Pree, just outside Prefailles where the sun was shining, enabling us to catch up on some washing…boring stuff, but it still needs to be done!

The area was beautifully tranquil once again with just the bird song to keep us company. Although we are sure it would get busier as the season goes on as we left on the Friday of the bank holiday weekend and by Thursday night it was obvious that there were more people arriving at the coast.

The walking was just as we like it, dishing up miles and miles of rough and rugged coastline, although not as many hills as we are used to in the UK or even slightly further north in Brittany.

Wanting to take advantage of another French market to restock the fridge, we had found a little town called Challans where, although it wasn’t their weekly ‘outside’ market, they appeared to have a good sized ‘Les Halles’ which is the indoor market that has stalls every morning and Saturday was no exception. It was an excellent ‘Les Halles’ with a huge variety of producers from fishmongers and local vegetable producers, through to cheese stalls…. enough for us to restock for the next few days at least, and another location that we will add to our list to come back to if passing through the area. A great little town with an excellent variety on ‘normal’ shops and restaurants.

We have been cooking as always, but only really ‘tweaking’ existing recipes instead of searching out too many new ones at the moment. Except for an unusual sounding ‘Carrot Cake Flapjack’ that popped up on one of the wholefood suppliers we use which Keith tried, then adapted to use quinoa flakes instead of oats for me, and it is a lovely. The quinoa flake version is more dense as they are far finer than oats, but if you can eat oats the texture does give that additional flavour/texture combination boost.

…and of course the map, just so you can see where we are and where we have been these last three weeks.