Tag Archives: travel

A new route for the weekly commute

Posted on by Richard
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For the last couple of weeks I have been saved the torture that is Ryanair and have instead sampled the delights of a “proper” airline.

Air France recently opened a new route from Nantes to London Ciy Airport, and I was there on the first day to try it out.

Upon arrival at the gate we were greeted with free coffee and cake…

As this is a proper airline, I had already booked my seat on the Fokker 50 plane, so there was no need to muscle my way to the front of the queue, elbows out and waving my boarding pass. I could just sit and drink my free coffee and eat my free cake in peace. Very civilised.

As boarding commenced, the 25 or so passengers ambled up to the desk and walked straight out to the plane. No being herded into the glass sweat-box/holding-area as with a certain other airline!

The plane was very smart, with a 2+2 formation of seats, which were very comfy. We had the luxury of seat-back pockets (yeah, posh or what?!) and ample legroom.

Once airborne, as it was the inaugural flight from France, we had a free glass of champagne. A free sandwich and drink were offered too, which is the norm (sadly the champers was just a treat!). The plane is propellor-powered so it was pretty loud, but as the flight is only an hour and a bit so it wasn’t too much of a problem.

It was a smooth flight in the main, with an easy landing at London City Airport [web site] in the heart of Docklands. It’s a very nice little airport, small enough that you can get in and out very quickly, but with a good selection of shops and food outlets. Five minutes from landing and I was standing on the station of the Docklands Light Railway that is attached to the airport. Fifty minutes from then and I was at my hotel in Paddington.

Comparing this experience with my previous journeys via Stansted, it felt like I had just travelled First Class. One just gets so accustomed to the basic level of service from Ryanair that when experiencing a normal airline one feels like royalty! And although there are far more facilities at Stansted, I would be very happy never to see that airport again, especially the ghastly Stansted Express, which has to be one of the worst train services in the country.

And as for the price? Well my initial trip cost just £157 return. Now, considering I booked this just 2 days before I flew, had I booked that late with Ryanair it would have cost me about £250 for the ticket itself, that’s without all the extra payments that one has to take into account with Ryanair. So it was really a great alternative and one that I have continued to use.

There are currently two flights per day during the week, with the outward flights leaving Nantes at 07:45 and 17:15 and the return flights leaves London at 08:25 and 17:45. at the weekend I think there are is only one flight per day. But this is a much more flexible timetable than Ryanair and is ideal for me on my weekly commute.

I am hoping that my travels to Maidenhead each week will not be a permanent feature for too much longer, but for now I’ll certainly be sticking with Air France. Not only is it a more convenient timetable, but the extra comfort, 20kg baggage allowance, easy check-in and boarding procedures, price and frequent flyer points programme all add up to a winner for me.

A mixed bag of news

Posted on by Richard
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A few snippets of news for you today…

Lost languages

Today the BBC are featuring a story [here] which reveals that half of all UK adults have forgotten the languages they learned at school. Luckily for me this wasn’t the case as my schoolboy French had to get me through many tricky situations when we first arrived!

What is hopeful for our kids is the following:

more than two thirds (69%) said they were jealous of people who were able to speak another language fluently.

Of those who can speak another language, 61% said it had been of benefit to their career, with a third (34%) saying their language skills have given them opportunities to travel and work abroad.

This bodes well for the future of our 3, who will leave school being fluent in at least 2 languages, possibly even 3.

Happy Birthday Craig

Craig McGinty runs the superb ThisFrenchLife web site [here], which is on my daily read list. It’s a great read, always full of interesting articles and news about all things French.

Well today is Craig’s birthday (age not revealed!) so what better time to head on over to www.thisfrenchlife.com and wish Craig a joyeaux anniversaire!

Front-page news toady includes Nicolas Sarkozy and his extra leg (!), news about banned Chinese milk products in France and a pointer to some free travel guides.

A busy weekend coming up

I will fill you in on the details next week, but this wil be another busy weekend!

On Saturday we are heading next-door to the apple-pressing barn where we will hopefully see the whole process from picking to pressing to bottling. With a bit of luck we will walk away with a nice collection of freshly-squeezed apple juice, which should keep us going for a while.

Then on Sunday we will be testing our French again as we meet up with some families who have links with Lisa’s nephew through school exchanges. So a trip to Montaigu near Nantes, then over to the beach to La Tranche-sur-Mer.

On the road again

(Photo under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic by krejcirkmira)

Due to some changes at work, I’ll be hitting the road to England quite a bit this month. This is a real pain and not something I really wanted to happen, but the situation is rather unavoidable at the moment.

Hopefully it will only be a very temporary measure and I can return to my rural hideaway very soon :)

In the meantime, if you’re anywhere near La Rochelle, Stansted or Maidenhead, feel free to get in touch and we can have a coffee.

And finally…

Next Friday I will be the ripe old age of 37. I’m looking forward to a majorly-fun-time-friday, and an especially fun weekend with great friends.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on with us. Keep a look out for updates. Or why not subscribe to my email newsletter [by clicking here]? Every time I add something new to La Vie en Foussais  you will receive it in your inbox -  what could be easier?

You’ve got to go there to come back

Posted on by Richard
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I have just returned from a brief jaunt back to England, my first for a long time. My job being what it is, I am able to work from home most of the time, which has been fantastic. Setting up home in a new country is hard enough without the strain of having to leave it all behind every week to return to the rat-race.  It can be quite tough though, working remotely. After a while you do start to feel a bit forgotten and, although there are always conference calls, email, MSN and Skype, there’s not really any substitute for a 1-to-1 face-to-face meeting.

So I actually don’t mind spending odd days back in the office. It serves several purposes.

It keeps my brain active. Being one of the more senior guys there, I am generally a magnet for enyone with tricky questions. This does me good as you can very easily “zone-out” when working from home, especially when home is a quiet corner of rural france and its sunshine and blue-skies outside!

It reminds people who I am. In a large organisation it can very easily become a case of out-of-sight-out-of-mind. And you can find people unconciously excluding you from conversations or going elsewhere for information just because they haven’t seen you in the office for a while. It’s nothing personal, you just start to “fade-out” of their conciousness after a while.

It’s a change of scenery. My desk faces the corner of the wall, so, like a naughty schoolboy, I can see very little of what is going on around me. The lazy spider that lived near the cieling above me seems to have slipped down and is now hanging on his web, looking rather dead. So I don’t even have him for company. Going back to the office gives me a new view of the world, with lots lots of faces around, none of which are generally dead.

I get to earn loyalty points at the hotel. One of the few perks of the job – staying in lots of hotels means one soon collects a stack of hotel loyalty points. I shall soon enjoy spending my collection on a bunch of nice stuff :)

I can reconnect with the organisation. Working at home it’s easy to forget that you are part of a wider organisation. Just visiting HQ for a day reminds me that there is more out there.

But the best thing for me about going away is that I get to come home. As I drive into Foussais Payre and see all the sights that have so quickly become my signals of home, I can feel myself relax and all the stresses of trains, planes and automobiles are left behind on the road.

It’s worth going away just to get that feeling.

Un aller et retour

Posted on by Richard
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Aujourd’hui, j’ai un grand voyage. Normalement, mon travail me prend à Londres, ce qui est bien car il ya de nombreux vols que je peux prendre pour m’en sortir. J’ai même pris l’Eurostar parfois.

Cette semaine toutefois, ma présence a été demandé à Bristol. Qui ne serait pas si mal, si le voyage a coïncidé avec la Bristol à La Rochelle vols, mais il ne l’est pas. Je dois retourner demain, lorsqu’il n’ya pas de vols à La Rochelle. Donc, mon voyage pour 2 jours aller quelque chose comme ça …

Conduire à Nantes, prendre le train pour Paris, prendre le métro à Charles de Gaule, prendre l’avion pour Londres Heathrow, prendre le train pour Londres Paddington, prendre le train à Maidenhead, prendre un taxi à mon hôtel. C’est la fin du jeudi, à environ 11pm, j’en suis sûr.

Ensuite, le vendredi-je obtenir ramassé de l’hôtel, conduire à Bristol, au travail pendant environ 4 heures, puis voler de Bristol à Paris, le métro de Paris à Montparnasse, prendre le train de Montparnasse à Nantes, puis passer à Foussais.

C’est un voyage de plus de 2000km!

Je pense que mon empreinte carbone sera assez grande de cette semaine et par Samedi je serai usé! Pas le temps de repos cependant, que Molly a un autre tournoi de handball le samedi …

A welcome return

Posted on by Richard
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Ah home, sweet home!

We finally made it back to Foussais on Saturday night after 14 hours and 1100km travelling. We had had a strange week back in England – it was lovely to see our family and friends again, and especially for the kids, but it all seemed very strange. Like we now have 2 lives and they very rarely meet. Back in the UK we were part of a circle of friends families that all knew each other and now we have that life, but also another over here. We have some great fiends and a while different way of living, but it hasn’t replaced what we have in England, but the 2 lives co-exist. When we returned to Grimsby we just picked up where we left off 5 months ago and I’m sure we will again, although quite when that will be I don’t know.

The journey back home was pretty easy and uneventful. After driving up to England in 2 cars, it was nice to all be together for the return trip (having left the Picasso in the hands of my folks – it’s being picked up any day now) and it meant that we could share the driving. So I had the job of getting us from Grimsby to Dover, then from Dunkerque to Rouen and Lisa got us home from there. On the subject of Dunkerque I have to speak up in praise of Norfolk Line ferries. The return journey cost us just £38 which we were amazed by. The ferries are fairly modern and well stocked, although the port at Dunkerque felt a bit like we were going to be lifted onto a container ship rather than a car ferry – very out of the way in the middle of an industrial estate! The 2-hour journey was just long enough to have a meal and stretch those cramped legs before embarking on the 2nd leg of the journey. Altogether a grand experience.

Rosie in her new roomUpon returning to our house we were excited to see how the builders had got on with finishing Rosie’s bedroom. What a great job they have done. We are all hugely impressed with the work. Having never really done any renovation before, it’s hard to believe that our cold, dusty loft, with holes in the floor and roof, has now been transformed into a large, cosy bedroom. It really is quite a stunning transformation and makes such a difference to the upstairs of the house. If anyone is in the area and looking for good builders, I would certainly recommend them. We will have lots more building work coming up – I need a study, the kids need a play room and Lisa wants her new kitchen! – and they will certainly be top of the list to do the work. The only downside was that they cleaned us out of tea, coffee and milk! On our departure I had said “Help yourself” and they did…emptying the box of milk from the fridge AND the 2 from the store. Not a huge problem – a quick trip to St Hilaire des Loges on Sunday morning did the trick – but would have been nice to have breakfast in the morning without having to go for a drive first. But hey, they were a great team and I can’t grumble.

Our other surprise was not quite so exciting – we had had visitors while we were away…Ants! The kitchen was awash with the little blighters. I set upon them with the kitchen spray to stem the tide and managed to clear most of them away, only to find them back again in the morning. All part of the fun of living in the countryside I guess… A kettle full of boiling water over their entry point on the outside wall seems to have slowed them down for now until I can get out to buy some proper stuff… Anyone got any tips for shifting Adam and his mates?

Of course, having been away for about 10 days, the grass, of which we have plenty, had grown rather substantially, so I tackled that little job next. The grass by the back-door was first – rather quickly done due to the multitude of buzzing insects round there. I fear we may be providing bed and board for the local populations of bees and wasps in our un-renovated rooms. That’ll be more fun to come. Although I did spot a rather interesting looking red beetle tightrope walking along the washing line, who didn’t buzz and stoood nice and still for a photo…

Little red beetle

Anyway, the grass got half-way cut when suddenly with a loud TWANG the mower stopped. Somehow the drive belt had snapped!

The offending article

So much for our nice short grass – I hadn’t even got round to the front yet, which was the bit that really needed doing. And of course, it being Sunday, there was nowhere open to get a new one, so the now-useless machine went away and we sat in the sun and drank wine and beer with Peter and Judith instead…a much better prospect. I do love Sundays over here…