We love pancakes, but it is such a pain for the chef (that’ll be Lisa) to have to stand in the kitchen cooking the pancakes and never getting to sit down and enjoy them.

Luckily for us, our raclette grill, which is a favourite in the winter for cooking meat and veg with the special raclette cheese, also makes pancakes. So, with the pancake mixture already prepared, we can all sit at the table and ladle out four pancakes at a time. A far more civilised, and sociable, solution!

Happy pancake day!

While Curtis and Joe started work on the field, I helped Alan with an other “quick” job – changing the inner tube in the tyre of our wheelbarrow. Working in the garden has been a less-than ideal experience for a long time since the wheelbarrow suffered a puncture, so we were delighted to hear that Alan had managed to find a replacement inner tube. It took a good 20 minutes of poking, pulling, pushing, huffing and puffing, but the tyre eventually came loose and the new inner tube was fitted. At last – a wheelbarrow with a wheel that turns! Hurrah

With the tyre trauma behind us, everyone congregated on the field and set about attacking the trees. At the risk of sounding a bit Winston Churchill, never have so many branches been cut by so few. We sawed, snipped, chopped, pulled, cut, swore, tugged, climbed, and snapped our way through trees and branches galore and lunchtime arrived before we knew it. And what a perfect lunch it was – cold beer and bacon butties, courtesy of Rosie & Molly. Just what we needed!

Fully refreshed, we got back into it, with the men climbing the ladders to tackle the big trees and the ladies and kids trimming the smaller fruit trees and brambles. Surprisingly, even though we chaps often found ourselves rather precariously-balanced at the top of tall ladders, there was only one minor injury. Of course I had to be the victim. I had chopped though a huge branch from a tree at the corner of the field. The branch (well, I call it a branch, it was more like a tree) fell straight down in front of me, whipping my head and face as is fell past. I kept hold of the ladder and even managed not to swear! Unfortunately, not having sufficient hair to hide the cuts on my head, I now look like some kind of Harry Potter tribute.

We even managed to avoid breaking the telephone cables, around which the trees had grown over the last few years. There was one close call, with Curtis and myself working the saw and Dee poised on the ground to guide the branch to safety. Unfortunately the branch got hooked on the cables, resulting in a few brief seconds of panic – “Woah! Look out! Grab it! Get out the way! Help!” – before we managed to free the offending article while Dee dived for cover. Luckily no damage done! *phew*

Although the black clouds kept threatening to bring an early end to the proceedings, the day remained dry and really quite lovely. Were it not for the extreme effort required to cut through the branches with our rusty saws, it would have been quite pleasant up in the trees, enjoying the view out over lake and the apple trees!

We were kept well fed and watered thanks to regular tea, coffee and cake supplies by the girls and progress was very impressive. But as the bonfire pile grew higher and higher, so our muscles became more and more tired, until, at around 4.30pm, we finally downed tools and called it a day. Everyone had worked their socks off, and we had broken the back of the work with only one side of the field remaining. It had been a hard day’s work, but we were all very pleased with the progress we had made, and the field looked so different once we could see the horizon at last! After a final tea break, where Lynn amused us all by inventing the “sniccup”, the workers returned home to freshen up, before coming back for a thank-you supper and drinks.

It was a lovely end to a long, hard day’s work, but, even through all the bumps, scratches, aches and pains, we all felt good about our efforts. Once again we find ourselves feeling humbled by the generosity of our friends. It had been an epic day of really hard work from everyone, but seeing our friends and family all working together and having fun made it all worth it.

Well done Sam!

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.

Time to eat…eventually

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.

Cakes and coffee

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

So Molly and Jeanne spent the day slaving in the kitchen (with a bit of playing thrown in as well I imagine ) and the rest of us turned up in the evening. It was a wonderful evening – the girls had prepared a starter of goats cheese on toasted baguette, followed by baked fish with rice, all topped off with some delicious apple tarts.

Jeanne’s dad makes his own wine from the grapes at one of the Vendee vinyards, so the vins de la maison were flowing freely all night. Lisa kindly offered to drive home as it would have been way too rude for me to refuse the top-ups to my glass

All-in-all the meal was beautiful and the company thoroughly enjoyable. Jeanne’s family speak no english at all, so this was a night of us speaking 100% french all night. Quite a big challenge for us, but we rose to the occasion and the conversation never dried up.

I think we are all starting to realise just how far we have come over the last year in terms of the language. This time last year we could never have even considered having a dinner party with only french being spoken but now we are quite happy in that situation, and the kids even more so. They are all doing so well now that I think they have well and truly overtaken Lisa and I in their ability to communicate.

This is great news to us, as giving the kids a second language was one of the big reasons for coming here and we can already see how glad they are to have it. Now, if only they could start giving us lessons so we can keep up with them, that would be even better!

More fun with friends and families

Last weekend was another throroughly enjoyable one.

Saturday was spent entertaining some friends who have a holiday home near Cognac. It was a beautiful day so we erected our big old makeshift table alongside the normal one to make a long surface for Lisa to fill with a wonderful French-style feast.  When we discovered the old wooden door we envisaged it being used as a table for such an occasion and it was nice to finally make the most of it.

We had a really excellent day with great company, lovely food and brilliant Vendéen sunshine.

Then on Sunday we took my parents, who were staying for the week, across to Ile de Re for the first time. As chance would have it the Dixies were also entertaining parents at the time and we ended up meeting them on the beach and having a great day together. The respective grandparents got on just as well as the parents and children do, which was really good to see. The kids were especially impressed with Kevin’s dad, who showed great creative flair in building a landspeeder and a pony out of sand. Very impressive and far more than Kevin or I could be bothered to do could hope to achieve

Our favourite felines…

Charlie and Lola continue to entertain us. In the last week or so they have been exploring the great outdoors, having finally had their injections (thus leaving us another €100 worse off!). They are thoroughly enjoying themselves chasing around the garden, climbing the trees and hiding under the cars. We do really need to get a cat-flap though. The days are still pretty sunny but the autumn winds are getting chillier and having the door open half the day is making the house feel like an ice-box! I feel a trip to the pet shop coming on.

A room with a view

This week I decided to rearrange my “office” (I like to call it that but really its nothing quite so grand). Some friends very kindly gave us a corner desk that they no longer needed and very nice it is too. However, this has meant that I have spent the last 6 months facing the corner of the room, which is not particuarly interesting or inspiring and made me feel rather like a naughty schoolboy! So now I have taken command of the room by rearranging things so my desk looks out of the window and I have the whole room in front of me. A much nicer arrangement which allows me the chance to appreciate the fine view out of the window and down the lane to the lake.

The only downside is that now I look rather like a receptionist. Not physically of course, but the arrangement of the desk is such that Lisa feels like she has come to make an appointment when she comes in the room!

Preparing for Paella

Tomorrow night is paella night – a big social event in the village organised by the school. Everyone will gather in the salle polyvalente for paella (or chicken if you prefer) and a disco afterwards. This marks quite an occasion for us as it was on the eve of the paella night last year that we first came over to see the house with the kids. We met Marion, our estate agent, the morning after and it sounds like it was a pretty wild affair. This will be 2 new firsts for us – our first French disco and our first taste of paella.  Fear not, I will be posting a full account of the evening in due course!

Get in touch

Finally, you may have noticed I have added a “Contact Us” tab to the top of the site. Here you will find details of the various ways in which you can get in touch with us. Feel free to connect with us using any of these methods and say bonjour!

We began, as all good explorations should, with a picnic dinner. Having filled ourselves with bread. cheese. crisps and fruit (NOT eggs…) we marched off into the woods. We quickly marched back out again when the kids heard the approaching sound of hunting dogs – la chasse was in full swing, so perhaps walking through that part of the forest was not such a good idea!

So we diverted round the edge of the woods and wound our way down to la Pont du Deluge. This is our favourite spot due to the lovely stream flowing through the trees that the kids like to try crossing on precarious stepping-stones. There was no chance of them getting wet on this occasion however, asd the stream was virtually dry! What a disappointment.

Undaunted by the lack of flowing water, we set our sights on harvesting the chestnuts that were littering the ground. Always the hunter-gatherers, Kevin and Sylvie were very excited at the thought of taking them home and adding them to the evening’s meal. So we all started trawling the area for the green spiky balls (…behave!) that sheltered the chestnuts.

After pricking ny fingers several times, and being the geek that I am, I fashioned a “gadget” out of a twig for picking them up, for which I was basically laughed at. Meh,,,some people just don’t recognise genius when they see it

In the end we collected quite a haul and, supplemented by a few edible mushrooms, we had our starter for the night:

Or so I thought…….

In fact, THIS was my starter for the night:

Clockwise, from the top, we have spleen, tripe and veal head. Not pictured is the pigs trotter.

Yes folks, Sylvie had lined me up with a traditional French bush-tucker trial as a challenge especially for me! How kind……

So, with the pride of a nation at stake I did my bit for blighty, closed my eyes and sampled some slices of these French treats. I have to say, they weren’t as disgusting as I thought they would be. The spleen took me back to school dinners eating cold liver. And the tripe and veal head were vaguely like the inside of a cheap pork-pie. Pigs trotter was just a fatty pork chop with very little meat. I managed to eat a little of everything and thereby took another step along the path of integration into proper French society

Luckily. the rest of the evening passed without further challenges and I could sit back and enjoy the lovely birthday meal that Lisa had prepared. The company, once again, was excellent. All the kids played like they were life-long friends and the adults could just relax and chat…and try not to fall asleep  *cough*Sylvie*cough*

Another excellent night. With everyone sleeping over it was a very relaxed affair, followed by a very lazy morning. The perfect end to my birthday celebrations and the first of many more such occasions I suspect.

Most markets we have ever seen in France are pretty much the same – a mix of beautiful fruit, vegetables, fish, cheese and bread, with some rather old-fashioned clothes, hats and lots and lots of pants!  Fontenay market was certainly no different.  However, there is something special about the atmosphere of a French market that is really worth sampling.

The fruit and vegetables are especially resplendent in their colour and size. Much nicer than their supermarket-bought cousins. The people are all friendly and happy to chat (not much chatting in your local Hyper U I can tell you!) and the road-side cafés make a welcome break where you can just stop for a coffee (or a pineau ) and watch the world go by.

We picked up a fair selection of stuff to keep us going over the weekend…some mussels, oysters (yes, more oysters!), lots of bread, some roquefort cheese (to go in the sauce for the mussels)… and Molly bought a scarf,  kindly reduced by the merchant skilfully negotiated down by me from €7 to €5. Yes, I know it’s still 22 degrees and sunny here, but you’re apparently nobody if you don;t have a scarf round your neck…

I think we may make a habit of a Saturday-morning trip to the market. The kids will be fine to run riot/sleep all morning on their own and Lisa and I can enjoy a pleasant morning perusing the fine produce, having a quiet coffee and generally enjoying this essential part of everyday french life.

Sounds good to me. What do you think?

First on the agenda was an evening out at Nathalie and Thierry’s house. They had invited us round for a meal, along with Christophe and Gwénaelle, and we were really looking forward to it. This was to be a big test of our language skills, it being the first real evening with only french people and us. Unfortunatley I was full of cold, and not totally on the ball anyway, so we really had to get our brains into gear.

But we needn’t have worried as the evening went really well. The food was wonderful – Nathalie had clearly been extremely busy baking and preparing – and everyone had fun. The language barrier was well and truly broken down for most of the evening, and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. A very successful night, thank you Nathalie & Thierry!

It was around 2am when we got home from our evening out so on Sunday we were all pretty tired. However, we had lined up a potential day out mushroom-hunting with Sylvie & Kevin and it looked like conditions were right for our expedition. So, at 11am Sylvie gave us the nod and we roused ourselves from our bleary-eyed trances, packed up a picnic and headed off to the forest at Benon [map].

We had never met Kevin [link] or Sylvie [link] before. You may recognise their names, as they are regular commentors here and together run the “FuelMyBlog” community site for bloggers [link]. I had “met” them through this channel and spoken on Twitter [link], but this was the first meeting in “real-life”!  Well, we got on like a house on fire. They are a great family, so friendly and good fun to be with. The kids soon got over the initial embarrassment of meeting new people and were off tramping through the woods and playing games like they had been friends for years. MSN ids have been swapped and I’m sure they will be keeping in touch.

As for the mushrooms, although we found lots about 4, most were unfortunately deadly. Luckily we didn’t have to rely on Kevin’s memory to tell us this, as he couldn’t quite remember what Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall [link] had said… was it bitter tasting ones are good, or are they the ones that kil you…?  Thanks Kevin, very reassuring!  Fortunately the well-prepared Sylvie had a book which confirmed the sad truth that none of the ones we found were eatable.   We had brought along a couple of carrier bags, expecting, in our naievity that we would just be scooping them up and stuffing our bags full. Oh how wrong we were! Clearly the french experts had already been up at the crack of dawn and snaffled all the good ones while we were still snoring.

Ah well, c’est la vie. The thrill, as they say, is in the chase, not the capture, and we all certainly enjoyed a good wander through the forest, fruitless though it may have been. 

We ended the day with a picnic in the woods while the children played and had a good chin-wag about our respective lives in France. A most enjoyable day for everyone. Here’s hoping for many more…

On Saturday we entertained Nathalie (Joe’s teacher and the one who Lisa goes in to help with the English lessons) and her family. What a lovely family they are, and we had a really good time. We were a little concerned at our first major “night in” where we would only speak french, but I think we managed it pretty well. The dictionary was out, but we only referred to it on a couple of occasions and made ourselves understood for the rest of the night. Lisa made us all a beautiful meal and we finished the evening playing guitars and singing – something we haven’t done for ages, and we never thought we’d get chance to do again.

The kids meanwhile were off entertaining themselves with playstations and DVDs, breaking down the language barriers in the way that only kids can do. We had a wonderful night and hope to have many more. We are so lucky to count them as our friends after such a short time in the country, and especially sharing a love of music – something that has been sadly missing from our lives since we moved here.

So then we barely had had time to wash up from one evening’s entertainment (oh, to have a dishwasher) and we were preparing for our next guests on Sunday. This time it was an ex-work-colleague of Lisa’s. Helen and her family come to France every year and this year they were coming to Les Sables d’Olonne. As this is only just over an hour from us, it was great that they could come over and see us.

Once again, we had a lovely day. They have two lovely daughters who got on really well with our three – amazing as this was the first time they had met. By the end of the day they were trading MSN addresses and promising to keep in touch. I had finally got some legs for the old door that we salvaged in order to construct a big rustic table, so we set this up on the field, under the gazebo, and ate another lovely meal our there. We ended up all playing cards and taught each other new games to play – great fun.  Sadly the €3 trestle legs the table was resting on started collapsing as the games got more vigorous, so it’s back to the drawing board on that one, but luckily we had another more substantial table to work with.

It was another fantastic day, just the kind of weekend we love, surrounded by great friends. Its funny how you really get to know people so much better when you see them out of their normal environment. We have noticed this with the friends and family that have visited us here previously, but it was especially evident yesterday. Helen had worked in the same school as Lisa, but they had never really socialised before. And the rest of us barely knew the rest of the family. But by the end of the day we felt like we were old friends and hoping to meet up again soon.

And of course, we ourselves have been entertained by our two new additions. Charlie and Lola have settled in well to their new home and are really starting to feel like part of the family. Charlie is clearly the biggest trouble-maker, finding the best places to explore and hide, then calling Lola over to join in. As I write this, they have managed to find the shelf under my desk and are both asleep there cuddled up together. I have the feeling that I may have this kind of company whenever I work from now on, which is really rather nice.