Just so you know, I haven’t forgotten you, lovely readers! I have been very busy at work, suffering from a broken laptop, plus doing lots of stuff over here.
A nice big update will come next week, when I’ll give you news of our trip to the local pool, some news on that wedding photo I found, plus some news about my job.
All this to come some time early next week.
So yesterday we tried once more to reach the Vendée Globe village. And this time we made it!
Sam Davies, the first British competitor had arrived back earlier in the morning, after more than 95 days at sea – an amazing achievement for the 34-year old from Portsmouth. So obviously we wanted to go along to celebrate the return of her and boat “Roxy”.
Lisa and Joe had visited the village with Joe’s school before the start of the race and had thoroughly enjoyed it. With all the boats there, it was a great experience. The children at school have been following the round-the-world race ever since and closely monitoring all the progress as the boats navigate their way south, round the south-pole and back up to Les Sables d’Olonne.
We managed to find the village fairly easily, after some initial worries that we may be driving round Les Sables for hours due to the usual lack of any signs. But find it we did, and luckily it wasn’t too busy. While we waited for Nathalie and Thierry and the boys to arrive, we picked up some Vendée Globe goodie bags for Joe and Molly, who were both mightily impressed with the selection of books, magazines, posters, hats etc that were inside. A nice memento for them.
Once our friends had arrived we went down the ramp to the jetty to go and get acquainted with Roxy. She was not a boat you could easily miss, with her bright-pink flag and multi-coloured paint-job. It certainly made a change from the usual dull white affairs.
To be in the presence of a boat that had just sailed around the world was quite humbling. The pretty colours and flowers festooned across the bows disguised the 95 days of hell that the Sam had no doubt been through as she was tossed around in this carbon-fibre shell in some of the worst conditions possible. Although the boats are all decked out with the latest technology, when it comes down to it the challenge is really between one skipper and mother nature and I, for one, am completely in awe of anyone who can win that battle.
The boat of second-placed Armel Le Cléac’h was also still at the port, and, having surveyed both of them we wandered back up to the village to check out the exhibition.
A huge TV screen was at the top of the steps, showing clips from the video diaries of the skippers. It was amazing to see how remarkably high-spirited some of them were, even in the most harrowing of circumstances.
In a huge marquee was the exhibition, that Lisa said was sadly only half the size that it had been when they visited last time. Still, it was an interesting area with lots of details of the skippers and the boats, as well as computer screens showing live progress of the boats and access to the statistics for the race. We could see that Dee Caffari, the next brit to return, was due in within the next 48 hours – a shame that it is just too far for us to pop over and see her return too.
After exploring the exhibition, everyone was getting hungry, so we decided to drive to the sea-front and find a restaurant. We followed Nathalie and Thierry as they knew (“allegedly”!) of a nice restaurant. However, we hadn’t bargained on the sea-front being blocked off by roadworks. Round and round we drove trying to find a way down to the front, but failing miserably. At one point we found ourselves on a diversion that took us down the narrowest backstreet possible – I was seriously considering folding in the wing-mirrors to make sure we could sneak in between the parked cars and the drain-pipes either side!
Eventually we found our way to an underground car-park and set off to walk the length of the sea-front in search of the mythical “nice restaurant”. When we finally arrived at what Nathalie and Thierry thought was the place, they didn’t seem too sure. But by this time it was 2pm and we were all starving so we stayed and gave it a go.
It was all a little surreal.
We sat. We waited. For 15 minutes. Then a “lady”, looking like some relative of Lily Savage, came to take our order.
“What would you like?” said she, oblivious to the fact that she hadn’t yet given us a menu…
“Have you got a menu?” I asked. “Oh,” said she, “didn’t you look at the menu outside?”
Well no, we didn’t, as in any normal restaurant you get given them at your table. But never mind…”Moules et frites pour les adultes et steak hache pour les enfants s’il vous plait”. And off she went.
Hunger was, by this time, driving the kids to start fighting. Soon this would lead to them gnawing on each others limbs in sheer desperation.
The “lady” came out and we all looked up expectantly…..then sighed as she was just bringing food to another table.
Minutes later she returned again…only to bring the bill to someone else.
The clock ticked on…and she appeared again. This must be us! Well, it was, but just paper table-mats. Bah!
A very tanned chap dashed out and jumped in his car, and still the “lady” came and went
This charade continued for an hour. Yes, ONE HOUR! She would come out, we would get excited, only to find she was bringing the forks or napkins or such like.
Eventually, the kids meals arrived, which kept them happy for a while. But still we waited.
Then the chap came back in his car, carrying 2 big bags of frozen chips. Clearly our wait was due to a lack of chips!
Funnily enough, after another 10 minutes, our meals arrived. Lovely freshly cooked piping hot chips, with several very small and rather cold mussels. But by this time we were past caring and just wolfed down the whole lot.
“Du café?” asked the “lady” at the end of our meal. Not on your nelly, we suggested, and payed the bill (no tip, of course).
That had to go down on out Top 10 Restaurants To Avoid At All Costs. Somewhere near the top.
Anyway, the walk back to the car was very pleasant, eating our dessert (donuts from Roger Sicard – no waiting 
) as we strolled along the beach. Nathalie suggested we visit the Museum de Coquillage – a seashell museum. So we drove along the front and found another parking place (easily this time!) but the museum was closed. Just our luck! Never mind that it wasn’t due to close until 6pm when it was only 5pm. This is France and people do whatever they like here! So to finish off our day we headed back to the Vendée Globe village for a coffee.
Back at the village we finished our rather protracted meal with a coffee in the cafe area, then us boys went back out to have another look at the boats. I could have stayed for hours taking photos as the light was just lovely in the evening, with the sun dipping behind the masts, creating some lovely silhouettes.
It had been another wonderful day out, giving us some great memories. We really do feel lucky to be living here with so many wonderful places around us. We have experienced so much since we arrived, things that we had never seen before. It’s all part of the dream that we are living here, and we love it.
Check out all my photos from our day on Flickr here
Today was supposed to be the day for us to visit the Vendee Globe village. This is the “exhibition” that is built up at Les Sables d’Olonne during the Vendee Globe round-the-world boat race. As the boats are now starting to return, there is a big buzz around the village.
Anyway, we were going to head over there to meet up with Nathalie and Thierry as they are on holiday near there. But just as we were about to leave we received a call from Nathalie saying the village was closed! The curse of Friday 13th! However, not to be put off, one quick family discussion later and we were instead heading over to the aquarium at La Rochelle
And what a great idea it was. We took the plunge and bought a season ticket there and then, as we knew we would be coming back with all our visitors this year and we’d make our money back after 3 trips. So we are now card-carrying “Grand Amis de l’Aquarium La Rochelle” and can visit any time we like – good stuff.
Luckily, the aquarium is great. Some amazing fish, with huge tanks and plenty of space to move around. As we are currently on half-term, but the schools around La Rochelle are not, it was really quiet as well. After a couple of hours we were all getting hungry, so we skipped forward and went out to the restaurant at the top of the building. We were slightly surprised by the menu – rather more posh than we had thought, having anticipated more of a cafe than a restaurant. But it was beautiful food – the kids all had roast chicken and chips, while Lisa and I had 2 lovely fish dishes: monk-fish and sea-bass. Delicious! And with our new “Grand Ami” cards, we got 5% off. Result
So, fully refuelled, we returned back downstairs to continue our tour of the aquarium. It was then that the curse of Friday 13th nearly struck again. Our tickets, that we had assumed would let us back in again after our meal, would do no such thing. Only valid for one-time entry, said the security chap. Oops, said me. It’s a good job we have our season tickets and we can come and go as much as we please. Otherwise we’d have had a rather short day…
Luckily then we got ourselves some more tickets and continued our tour. Some of the fish we saw were amazing – and with the place so empty we could get incredibly close to them – lots of photo opportunities!
It was a tiring day, but a very enjoyable one, and we’re looking forward to going back with all the visitors who are heading our way over the next 12 months.
Looks like our Friday 13th didn’t turn out too badly after all
I am a great lover of things with history. I love old buildings, places, books and people. Each of them filled with a million stories of times gone by. So I was thrilled when I made a discovery while out fetching wood from our woodstore last week.
I walked into the room, as I have done countless times before, and there, sitting as clear as anything on a log was a photo. An old wedding photo, just abandoned there.
Who is this happy couple? And why would their wedding photo be in our woodstore?
The photograph was taken by a photographer from Fontenay-le-Comte, so it is obviously a local couple. And the connection to our house? Perhaps it is someone who owned our house previously? We know the poeple we bought the house from were English, so it wasn’t them. And we think the people before them were not this old.Perhaps the parents of this family? Are they even still alive?
With no names or dates to work from, it will be hard to track the couple down, but it would be great if we could. I will show the photo to the neighbours, who have lived in the hamlet for all their lives. Presumably if the couple in the photo lived here at some point, then they will recognise them.
If I can return the photo to the happy couple, even in its damaged state, it would mean so much to me.
Last night was an interesting night.
We had been alerted by our friend Peter in the morning to a violent storm heading our way. Taking his good advice, we tucked all the garden furniture away safely in the garage and waited for the onslaught. By lunchtime it was really raining cats and dogs and the wind was whipping up.
Here it comes, we thought…..wrongly.
The winds we had in the morning were nothing compared to what was to come.
We closed all the shutters by 6.30, lit a fire and made sure all the hatches were suitably battened down. And by 8pm it hit us. A wind so fierce it seriously felt like the roof was going to lift off and the windows would be blown in. It was battering the shutters and in our bedroom we could still feel the breeze coming through. (Note to self: replacement windows required soon!)
There is a wire hanging loose from a pole outside next-door’s house which I am sure was sparking like a live electricity cable – very scary.
The lights were flickering and the power went off briefly. Checking Twitter [here] I could see many of our friends across the country starting to experience the same conditions. Thankfully no-one seemed to be in any danger.
The worst part of the evening came when the wind was so strong it was blowing the smoke from the fire back into the room. This really freaked us all out. I quickly grabbed the remaining log from the fire and threw it outside, where it fizzled away harmlessly in the angry wind. Thankfully this stopped the smoke and we could all start to breathe again!
Eventually we decided we may as well go to bed. All the kids were tucked up watching films in bed and so we tucked ourselves in too, expecting a rather disturbed night. But as it turned out we slept pretty well (well, I did,so was blissfully unaware of anyone else’s problems )
In the morning I walked the perimeter of the house, checking for damage and, rather surprisingly, there was none to speak of. The satelite dish had clearly been blown a little out of alignment as we were unable to get anything at all on the TV (panic!!). A quick trip up the ladder this afternoon soon fixed that. But, as expected, the trampoline did not fare too well. As it did the last time, the wind managed to lift it up and flip it over several times, dumping it unceremoniously upside-down on the field. This just goes to show how strong the wind is, as it normally takes 3 of us to just shuffle the trampoline along a little so we can cut the grass! I don’t know how many more tumbles it can take, but I’m hopeful that I can keep it going for a bit longer yet!
Tonight is, thankfully, a quieter night, with the wind still blowing and bitingly cold, but not at all as bad as last night. We hope that we won’t have a storm like that for a long time to come.
