Chartres cathedral, and other matters

This evening I thought "Right! That's it!" and so here I am.

I haven't blogged for over a month (a month! my biggest lapse ever?), not since we went to France at Easter. Golly, how time flies. I'm up to my neck in Ofsted inspection prep at the moment, but I've had a glass of wine, it's gone 9pm, and xxx it, I'm going to stop doing paperwork and do this instead!

Yes, we went to France. After a horrendous end of spring term, due to allergies (now tracked down to birch pollen, which also apparently explains my new "funny mouth and throat tingle" after eating unskinned almonds and hazelnuts, and peaches and pears - all related, allergy-wise), we were just about ready for a holiday.

But it was a long way.  Mostly motorway, but with a large detour around Paris via Rouen, Evreux, Dreux, and last but not least - Chartres. Of the cathedral fame. The whopping great cathedral you can spot from several miles out, looming on the horizon. 

Here is a photo:

Do you like the digger and the caravans? No? Here is a better one:

Like the graffiti...the cathedral is behind that bush, honest.

Anyway, several many lots of hours later, we arrived somewhere just south of the exact middle of France. The next morning there was a bread van, and funny croissants:

The weather was glorious. We had a lovely enclosed garden, one sun lounger to fight over, four different sitting and eating spots

a view over the nothingness of the Creuse

a rope swing in the cherry tree (there is a Girl in there if you look closely) 

and a gate, so the Whippet couldn't chase the three cats (oh go on, Mum - please can I?)

The garden had a lot of nettles, so I proceeded to embarrass and horrify the Girl by brewing up daily potions of nettle tea - it's a natural antihistamine, apparently. Seemed to work a bit, but relaxing with my feet up on the woodburner with a glass of wine to hand, and having hours of lovely sleep also seemed to work their magic!

Having learnt our lesson last year, the first thing on the list when looking for a gite was said woodburner. Here is the Whippet, after a busy day on the sun lounger. He's still on the sun lounger cushion here...

It may have been warm during the day, but the evenings were tres nippy. And there was still snow on the mountains, so we went to have a look.

Blimey, Mum. Didn't know we were going skiing!

We can also say that we took our bikes to France and went up the Puy de Dome. Here is the Boy with very uncertain ears, on the train going to the top of the Puy.

And here is the view:

What we didn't realise when we booked it up, was that the towns of Aubusson and Felletin were a short drive away. Aubusson, famous for the tapestries, and Felletin, home of the European wool and felt festival! Who knew???

So I obviously had to buy some wool (I may have wool, but I haven't got any from Felletin...) and I proceeded to make a miniature pot for the gite owner's 50th birthday. Possibly the tiniest, most strangely damp present ever!

and I found these wonderful spindles and ball of (linen?) in a junk shop. I wanted to go back for more, but they shut for their three hour lunch break so we ran out of time. Boo.

Then home again home again, via Chartres as before. Look!

I think this is my favourite shot:

gotcha!

one parting glimpse...

Right, got all that lot out of my system. Next time, some embroidery! We've been busy in the classes (as usual) and I've got to get my bottom in gear for Art Trail, so lots of embroidery will be appearing here soon - promise! Just got to get Ofsted out of the way first....

Brrrr

We're back, from very chilly Normandy.  Possibly the coldest holiday ever, in a lovely but quite basic and VERY COLD gite....with no woodburner.  

It was so cold the simnel cake I packed nearly froze and needed to be hacked into pieces with the one and only sharp knife provided...

and the well-known brand of hazelnut spread needed to be chipped out of the jar...

But at least it was sunny.  Most of the time.

I have no idea what you call these stacks of wood, but if we'd had a woodburner we'd have pinched them.  We almost burnt the furniture in desperation as it was...

But despite the cold we managed to get out and about every day.  Random photos of old road signs were taken:

I indulged in the obligatory embarrassment of the Girl by taking photos of cheese:

We couldn't find any pirates, but we did find lovely chocolates and pastries within:

And we ran the legs off the Whippet with a 19 mile walkies (bike ride for us) on a resurfaced railway line.  Here are the Girl and the Boy disappearing off into the haze...

We didn't mean to go that far...

When we weren't out and about we wore as many layers of woolly clothes as possible without restricting the use of our arms, and sat in the sunshine on hideous velour-covered armchairs.  Or Mum, as the case may be...

Warmer than a hot-water bottle...but it made my cutting and sticking and sketchbooking a bit tricky...

We weren't completely without our comforts.  Gite cooking always starts unpromisingly, given the basic equipment and uncontrollable gas cookers, but I was very chuffed with this leek tart invention baked on a pizza tray:

although we all picked off the cherry tomatoes....

And come evening, what could be more cosy than a glass of wine by the fire?

Hmm.  I have a few thoughts....

But a sign of a good holiday must be that we were glad to be home, and appreciative of our warm house with a well-equipped kitchen and the lack of any need for woollen fingerless mitts while chopping vegetables, or the need to wear a hat in bed.  

And I got a ton of cutting and sticking and organising finished, and I'm all inspired and ready to go for the summer term, so that's very good indeed.

It's been a month now

So probably about time to download the holiday photos and resume normal service around here!

I can't believe it's a month, we haven't stopped since getting home - new school for Girl, new classes to teach for me, a ton of washing and tent-drying, a car-full of sand and shells and pebbles (some of which are still in the underfloor lockers). 

Ah, Brittany.  How we miss you.

You're so beautiful.

And we all love our home away from home:

Same campsite, different pitch, but a good one.  Maybe after 8 years we get to have the same one next year?  Maybe...some people have been going there for over 40 years...they usually get first dibs.

It's a stone's throw from a magnificent sandy beach with bands of pretty shells:

I'm particularly fascinated with the endless ripples and reflections...

(I spent three weeks trying to work out whether I was a "big picture" or "small picture" person, creatively.  Whaddya reckon??!  I think I've worked it out now...)

The sky is always interesting, and there's such a lot of it:

Just as well we walk and cycle and swim so much when we're there, as we all love the food - the bread, the patisserie, the picnics, the yoghurt pots to lick out, the moules (shared with about 4000 locals in the town square) - note the bottom pic of the Boy, who worked out where the biscuits were kept and just helped himself!

And we are all happy catching up with a year's worth of sleep, reading, swimming, being blown about by the wind, riding tiny ponies, paddling, drawing in the sand...

but not so happy being stung by jellyfish (Girl's knee, top left). 

(Afterwards, she wasn't sleeping in a little tent: it was more of a tentacle, ha ha)

She wasn't impressed.  Even less impressed with having to "frotter" her leg with "sable" to get the sting out!

Ah well, onwards...a busy year ahead, with lots of different projects to share, but all in the knowledge that we'll be going back next year - hooray!

The Holiday of the Chickens

As mentioned previously, last week we effected an escape from the country.

Basically, we packed the Girl off to school with her suitcase on Monday morning, then legged it.  We even had the theme tune from The Great Escape in the car on the way to Folkestone...and while the Girl and her teacher and classmates were chugging their way across the Channel in their ferry, we were under it on a train on our way to France.

And after many hours of tunnelling and driving, we arrived at the Gite of Chickens, somewhere in Normandy:

Yes, we spent our holiday photographing chickens.  And watching chickens.  And teasing chickens, by making them run for breadcrumbs.  (Have you ever seen chickens run?  Hilarious)...And that cockerel, he was well and truly hen-pecked - the chickens even stole food from his beak.  Didn't stop him waking up at 5 every morning, though...

Chickens, the last Wallander book, a cold beer....bliss.

We did venture out occasionally, to enjoy a meal a deux

The John Steele being this chap, suspended on the church at Sainte Mere Eglise by his parachute on D-Day.  You'd have thought someone would have helped him down by now...

Inside there's quite a bit of stained glass dedicated to the American parachute regiments (most notably 101 Airborne, of Band of Brothers fame)

But mostly, we just sat around and looked at this

Heavenly.





Hitting the ground running

Boy are we back from holiday!

We've driven 1500 miles since we left Brittany 10 days ago. 

About which more later. 

If that makes sense. 

Probably not.

We've hardly been in the house and still haven't put any of the camping stuff away, but that hasn't stopped me having a massive clear out and reorganisation of the kitchen cupboards:

It must have been not having a kitchen for three weeks that has made me appreciate the one I've got at home, and realise what is and what isn't essential or necessary.

I've also just finished making about 20lbs of jam whilst simultaneously trying to catch up with blogs and concurrently breaking my new resolution to stop trying to multitask...

Either way, the laptop is feeling a bit sticky now...

This isn't jam:

Only a sort of holiday memories jam.

Sigh.

I'm in heaven

or at least I soon will be.

We've finally made the decision to go here again this summer:

Deciding where to go wasn't really the hard part.  After all, this will be our seventh year going to the same place: the Girl doesn't remember spending summer holidays anywhere else.  Depressingly, the decision rested on whether Mr Gonecycling had had just a little too much time to go cycling this year and not enough time writing words in exchange for hard cash.

But in the end it was this weekend's weather that swung it for us.  Wrapped up in waterproofs for our whippet walks, with the drizzle dripping off the end of our noses, someone sooner or later pipes up "Camping, anybody?" and we know we just have to go again.  It doesn't always rain...and if we do get wet, someone will dry us off with big fluffy towels:

And so, despite having a mountain of preparation to do for the Art Trail, part of me is in heaven already.  I've dug out lists and notebooks from previous years, packed full of indispensable advice such as "red fruity teabags are good", "take a large ginger cake", "bottle of cold rosé from the bar 7€" and not forgetting gems such as "Best baguette from yellow bakery 1€, exploding bread 85¢".  I've even got the drawing I did of how we packed the car last year.

And most fun of all, I've started a chart of Eurotunnel crossings, arrival times and estimated driving times, taking into account the time spent queuing for every single blimmin' autoroute toll on the way home last year...

Bliss.