Onions, garlic and all things stripy.
It is now Saturday, and our French adventure began on Monday. Leaving Essex/Stafford behind, we headed for Dover, and for more 'French' pastures. After a rather uneventful ferry crossing, we arrived in Calais.
I drew the short straw of being the first driver on French soil (neither of us had driven on the wrong/right side of the road before) and started to follow our Aussie speaking sat nav west across France.
There were no major incidents during the road trip, we both successfully drove on the right side of the road with no mishaps. At one point in the journey Alex accidentally posted her bank card through a gap in the car so it was stuck behind the radio, and I had to reverse 400 yards into a petrol station, but that is by the by, nothing major to report.
We eventually arrived at our lovely residence, La Plissonnais, about 5 hours later. We were greeted by Jon and Henry (Henry is a dog) and shown our home for the next few weeks, Maison la Cidrerie. It is lovely here.
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| La Cidrerie |
Whilst we are here, we are going to be doing some DIY, gardening and decorating, in return for our accommodation. We didn't start this until Thursday, so had a couple of days exploring our surrounding area before we got stuck in to the work.
The local market at Saint Hilaire du Harcouet was a bit of excitement on Wednesday, Alex loved the caged animals, whilst I was constantly tempted by the delicious smelling crepes.
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| Jellyfish at the beach, Alex enjoyed poking them with sticks |
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| Land surfers on the beach |
We bought some garlic from a lady at the side of the road. Alex has been teaching me the health benefits of garlic and we have pretty much eaten it every day. Neither of us know how much we stink as we are now immune to it. Luckily we haven't seen many people yet...or maybe this is the reason why...
Work has now begun. Our first job was digging out the weeds around the cider press in the garden...
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| Before we started digging (well, technically, just after we'd started) |
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| After we'd worked our magic... |
...followed by weeding around the crazy paving on the patio.
We have now moved on to the house, where we are doing some redecorating. Our first task being wallpaper stripping. Alex taught me a new, much more delicate approach, giving me the ability to now strip an entire piece of paper, whilst keeping it intact. Amazing.
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| Before we started |
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| The special 'Alex technique' |
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| One wall down... |
We have already experienced 'baguette mouth' (the sensation you get from eating too many baguettes/mild jaw ache) and excess consumption of cheese. Hoping to visit Paris in the next couple of weeks, do some more exploring and crack on with the decorating!
Incase you're interested, the weather is pretty similar to the UK right now. We've had a few sunny days and a bit of rain.
Au revoir.
Some good work Hazel (and Alex)! Keep the blogs coming. I'm enjoying this French chapter of your life by you.
haha you two make me smile....keep these posts coming they cheer me up!! :) xxx
oh that was me by the way!! Chrissie!!