Friday and Saturday 9 and 10 August 2024

Our hosts head off to Ill de Re (on the coast off La Rochelle and as crazy as Sorrento at Christmas!) early this morning for a traditional family day out at the beach. Loaded up like all the others with three bikes strapped to the fully loaded Subaru Outback. We are to mind Truffle the dog, which proves to be easy, as she sulks in the garage all day, awaiting the return of her master.

Saturday morning is spent discussing forthcoming engineering works, including the construction of a fence, once the10 tonne, 30 metre long, 2 metre high, concrete wall separating the yard from the secret garden comes down. This is long overdue and frustrating, as Fabrice the digger man, keeps making excuses.

Then there is the question of the proposed new kitchen extension. So, much stomping about with tape measures and Lady P’s scale drawings, before we depart for a week in Brittany, around mid-day.

July and August are summer holidays in Europe and the seaside destinations are like Christmas on  the Mornington Peninsula - on steroids. We didn’t think that today was another ‘Black Saturday.’ Well, it was. A long queue and crawling traffic on the on ramp, so we did a U’e and headed north by a different route. Long story short, after some country driving, mainly on good D roads, we arrive a bit tired and emotional at our beautiful, quiet country Gite, in Amanlis, Brittany.

This is located just south (1/2 hour) from the capital of Brittany, Rennes and reached via Nantes, the end of la Loire on the Atlantic coast. The usual 3.5 hr drive took us over 5 hrs, but our host Stephan, spoke excellent English and welcomed us with good old country hospitality.

He did inform us that it was his birthday and that his sons and friends were coming for the party tonight. They live on-site. Mmmm.

Once we settled in, he arrives with two glasses of Champagne and it’s ‘happy birthday, mate.’ We take our gins under the shade of a large, fruiting walnut tree, in the spacious garden and say hi to Goaty McGoat, the friendly goat in the pen nearby. Our gite is brand new, having been converted from a shed to a very modern, two-story, two-bedroom little cottage, by Stephan. It also has a very big rain head shower!

Next thing we heard, was some extra loud, head-banging music coming from a little car arriving with two young lads. Tonight will be interesting. As it turned out, it was a very quiet party and we got a sound night’s sleep.

The big concrete wall. Surprisingly, such 'fences' are not uncommon in France.
Our gite with the walnut tree in the foreground
The friendly goat. I think her real name is 'Roast"

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