14th of July is a national holiday in France with celebrations throughout. To kick off the festivities, Bagnoles De L’Orne mowed the lawn on the local racecourse (it only happens three times a year) and rolled out the horses for a bit of trap racing …. with a bit of sunshine thrown in it definately helped the French summer holidays get off to a good start!

The evening was finished at Pascal’s house looking over the lake (through the trees) with a lovely firework display …. can’t complain 🙂

Do you ever have times when you don’t see many friends for a while, and then for a number of subsequent weekends you are blocked up seeing one friend after another?

We hadn’t had any visitors, apart from Gail’s parents who live here from time to time, until the last couple of weeks when we had Keith’s mum immediately followed by Gonzo; we dropped one off at Dinard airport and picked up the next – talk about conveyor belt… 🙂  It did help as it’s about a 2 hour drive so it saved a bit of travel time.

A week later we had Stevie B and family stop over for the night on Saturday on their way down to their summer holiday.

It was great to see them all.  It will be the last lots of visitors we have here in Normandy as we now only have about 4 1/2 weeks here and 10 days of that will be on a trip to Brittany…

Not bad for a mornings work, with the obligatory homemade rolls as well 🙂

I know that beetroot chocolate cake sounds strange, but it is very moist and tasty, you can’t taste the beetroot!!!

Finally, after all the looking we have found something that Keith and I both like and think may actually suit the purpose….

It’s ok – I know what you are thinking, ‘it needs a lot of work’ and I guess more importantly … ‘where will you stay when you come over’  – it does have a granny annexe – we aren’t so kean, but I am sure that over time we would be able to get it how we want it….

Ok – you win, it is Chateau de Carrouges…. we quite like the gatehouse, but Keith’s mum persuaded us to go and have a look round the Chateau as well – definately worth a visit if you are over here.

All,

Although there are 1000’s of travel  books and internet sites about places to go and see when we are travelling around Europe, which we will use to a degree, we thought that we might as well tap into the personal knowledge of our friends and family 🙂

As such if there are any outstanding places that you have been to on your holidays or trips to Europe, generally outside of main cities as we can do these on city breaks, then can you please let us know and we’ll add then to our list of potential places to do?

Thankyou

It is amazing what you can do with a few little wild strawberries from the garden! 

I made lemon sorbet last week (on the left of the photo), but after a visit from one of the neighbours who asked if he could take some of our little wild strawberries to make some jam I decided to have a go at a bit of strawberry ice-cream today ….. yum 🙂

Lets hope they grow back quickly so we have a chance to make some more before we go!

This was started in France to celebrate the amateur music artists, who perform free on this day at various locations around France; maybe in some other places now as well.

There were about 4 sites within Bagnoles itself in the evening, all of which we visited.  As with all of these things, not all the music is to everyones taste, but there was a very good duo that played in front of the Lake 🙂

Apologies in advance for any French followers … but you are a little backward in your processes.  Today we went to Caen to pay a deposit by card (face to face) for some work on the motorhome. Having thought that I had cracked it and managed to confirm exactly what we wanted done and that the work conformed with UK standards etc the company said they would send me an invoice that I would need to reply to as confirmation before we could book a date for the work.  WIth days disappearing quickly in my naivity I sat watching my inbox for the next couple of days thinking they were busy…… nearly a week later (and a couple of chaser emails) it turned up in the post (yep, that odd looking box at the end of the driveway that generally carries supermarket offers and not much else nowadays) requesting a cheque to cover 30% as a deposit before we could get a date in the diary…. I did see a pigeon hanging around the post box and I do have my suspicions 🙂

When I called them to try and pay on the phone I was obviously talking greek – which to be fair I have been known to do on occassion – only two options 1) a cheque sent from the UK which would take another week, or 2) ‘popping’ over to Caen….. so over we popped 🙂

Anyway, we are booked in for the work now and they were very friendly … just the french process. 

On the way back we thought we would go and visit at Falaise … birth place to William the Conquer.  Unfortunately most of the town was destroyed during the war, but what was left has been lovingly (and some not so lovingly) restored.

It was worth a stop, but why it is twinned with Henley on Thames I will never know ….

Last night the club where we play tennis here in Bagnoles de L’Orne had a social event which about 55 people attended.  Obviously being in France they did a Paella… however, the Camembert was very local, French and fantastic 🙂

Gail had brought 5 raffle tickets for a total of 10Euros and we had already won 2 prizes before the big prize, which was drawn last.  This was for a TV, but as we had already won a few prizes and are going to be in the motorhome, we told them to redraw the prize.  As luck would have it one of our companions opposite on our table won it and was very happy; we didn’t lose out completely as he brought a bottle of bubbly to celebrate 🙂

Later on they even put the England v Italy game on without the sound on, midnight over here, just a shame about the result…

Whilst we are in the house in France our 2nd TV to enable World cup viewing, without annoying Gail, happens to be in the motorhome… game on 🙂

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