Monday, July 19, 2004

Home

That's it. Done. Finished. Travelled-out. We're now back into our old house (although sadly the car had to go back to the company, so it no longer sits on the drive awaiting us). As you can see in the photo, we left a year ago looking like typical tourists. And we've made it back in one piece. Perhaps we're a little more tired than when we left. But we've got a completely different outlook on life, and we've got a fantastic set of family memories to live off for the rest of our lives. We've done some things that we'd never have imagined, and we've all survived living together in 14 countries for 24 hours a day for 369 days, with only a couple of hours away from each other during all that time. Who knows what the future holds, but the recent past will be unforgettable.

Saturday, July 17, 2004

Back to England for the final time

Finally, after one year and a day, we're back to England for the end of our journey. And we're definitely not in backpacking-mode any more. We drive on board the P&O ferry at Le Havre in our own car, loaded with our luggage and shopping, and headed straight up to the lounge to sit and read for the 6 hour trip - which after some of the epic journeys of the last year, seemed too short!

Apart from 15 days, two weeks ago, we've been away from home for a year, and as the end of our journey got nearer, we all realised what a long time it has been.  Although we don't get back into our house for a few more days, we'll be back at Sarah's parents house for tonight, all with our own bedrooms, and we'll have the house to ourselves while they stay in France. It will be absolute bliss, and we'll all begin to prepare for becoming 'normal' again. We are all very excited about our return to our house, and all the normality that brings. Charlotte and Emily are well ahead of us - they're already talking about going to school in September.

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Near La Rochelle

We've been staying with some friends of Sarah's parents, in their lovely house near La Rochelle. They moved here less than a year ago, and have created a marvellous (and huge!) home in an old farm. As well as 5 bedrooms, a lounge big enough for football, and a garden the size of a small Asian country, they've got a glorious outdoor heated pool. It has been bliss.

Like everywhere else we've been, the area is dominated by agriculture - and expat Brits. Everywhere we drive we see fields of wheat, sunflowers, maize and poppies, plus the odd field of cattle. We couldn't resist sending Charlotte off into a sunflower field for a photo, but we did feel a bit nervous  about the farmer appearing around the corner with a shotgun, saying "Allez Off My Land". But our nervousness was obviously a bit foolish - around the corner we drove past a French family stuffing about 20 full-grown sunflowers into their side doors, with a slightly furtive glance! (And the muddy root-ball still attached - I wonder what a Renault Clio looks like when its been used as a skip?)

Sunday, July 11, 2004

Oh no, wrong chateau!

We can't quite believe it, but today we visited 3 chateaux. It seems a bit odd, because you can get into "seen one, seen 'em all" mode with things like temples, chateaux etc. We started in town, at the Saumur Chateau - nice courtyard, but the interior was closed for renovation. The second one was a mistake - we were heading for the 'Sleeping Beauty' chateau, the inspirational setting for the original fairytale story. But we blindly ended up going straight to the chateau in the middle of Azay-le-Rideau, without realising we were 10 miles away from the proper one.

Unfortunately, it wasn't until we'd paid up and completed the interior tour that we realised that the chateau didn't look anything like the one we'd seen on the brochure. And the girls kept saying things along the lines of "Daddy, when are we going to see Sleeping Beauty's bedroom? You promised it would be here!". By the time we'd realised we were on the wrong track, we'd lost an hour and a half. Amazingly though, we were still smiling enough to pose for a photo (just in case you're wondering - we're the upright ones, I reckon the building must be angled because of subsidence. Fancy building it over a moat.)


Later on, after following the directions properly, we did get to the correct Sleeping Beauty chateau, at Ussé. As there are so many chateaux around this part of the world, each of the owners works very hard to come up with their own unique reason to visit. After the normal look-at-my-two-hundred-year-old-dining-room tour, we were let loose into the round tower, with rooms arranged to tell the story of Sleeping Beauty. As you can see from the photos, it was incredibly realistic (I think the Sleeping Beauty dummy had been dragged straight out of the window of the French equivalent of Matalan, or given the state of her, perhaps even through the window!).

We all had a good time, but we've probably seen enough chateaux to last us the rest of the year now!

Saturday, July 10, 2004

Thursday, July 08, 2004

The Golden Triangle - EU style

It’s a bit weird to have travelled throughout Asia, constantly aware that most of the world's opium is produced around there, but to never see evidence of the growing and trading of drugs. But then, hey presto, we visit France and realise that we're slap bang in the middle of Europe's Golden Triangle. In every direction from where we're staying there are fields of commercial poppies, being grown for drug-manufacture.

But instead of being the illegal-type, these will be used to produce ingredients like codeine and morphine, which end up in things you buy at the chemist, like cough sweets. A quick bit of research on the web also showed that poppy oil is also used to make paint and varnishes (might explain that light-headed feeling you get after painting in an enclosed space. Don't try this at home!).
It does feel a bit bizarre though, to see something that you'd associate with the underworld, but instead is supported by healthy EU subsidies (French farmers, like some others, don't get out of bed unless there's a subsidy for it!).

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

The Loire Valley

After spending so long in Asia and other exotic locations, it feels a bit odd to be spending time in France - somewhere so similar to home, and yet so different. Some things are so similar - toilets that flush, unpotholed roads, speed traps - while other things are completely different - driving on the right, everybody speaking a foreign language (well, foreign to me anyway) etc. In Asia, every street corner has a restaurant or food stall, and people are constantly snacking on food. Here in France, it seems impossible to get food between 2.30pm and 6pm. The cafes and restaurants all close, or just serve drinks, and they look at you like a space alien if you ask if they serve food at 3 o'clock. Even in the tourist areas, where not everybody follows the Francophile rules of eating.
 
So after making do with a cup of coffee in a café, and snacking on a packet of biscuits, we went in to visit Cheverny Chateau. The Loire valley is stuffed full of chateaux, some state owned, some private. Cheverny is privately-owned, as was lived in as a house up until 1985. Now its full of French and foreign tourists tramping around all the rooms, filled with everything from the current owners wedding dress to a 6,000 year-old set of Megaceros antlers (a bit like a moose, from Siberia).

Its also reputed to be the house which was used as the model for Moulinsart, the family home of Captain Haddock, Tintin's friend (Yes, I know this has a vague connection to reality, but there are lots of Tintin fans in the world, me included, that find that makes a chateau visit more interesting). Anyway, to cash in on this, the chateau-owners have built a permanent exhibition to Tintin in the grounds, and it added another dimension to the visit for the girls. (It also let me play a bit with Photoshop a bit to produce the picture above - go find a Tintin book to see whether it looks right!)

After Cheverny, we drove north to Chambord, the largest chateau in France, with 400 rooms and 365 chimneys. The weather has been quite chilly and inclement this week - unbelievable for July, compared to last July - and it made the castle look malevolent and eerie, with black storm clouds overhead. Like something out of a Harry Potter film.
 
 

Saturday, July 03, 2004

Le Grange, Losche

At the last minute, we found a great deal on the Internet for a cottage in the Loire Valley, called The Grange. It’s a converted barn, with two bedrooms, a cavernous living area, and a swimming pool, shared with the more luxurious Le Manoir next door. Its tough, but somebody's got to stay in these places when they're empty!
 
 

Thursday, July 01, 2004