Caen again

Saturday 8th April 2006, Caen, Normandy
This morning we woke to grey skies and the sound of cold rain pattering against the window, a complete contrast to yesterday. We have spent a relaxed day around Caen with Geneviève. Mid-morning we went down into the town, peering into estate agents windows looking unsuccessfully for the perfect property at a give-away price. Around lunchtime we attended a free concert at the Eglise Notre Dame de la Gloriette. The concert was given by young students from the conservatoire as part of their Audition de la Maîtrise de Caen. Entitled Bach Romantique the concert included works by Felix Mendelssohn, Charles Gounod and Peter Cornelius. We were also treated to the somewhat surreal sight of seven ballerinas in tutus dancing in front of the altar. (We imagine this lovely baroque church has been deconsecrated and is now used primarily for concerts.) There was a packed audience of proud parents, grandparents and siblings of the young musicians as well as the general public happy to participate in a free concert of such a high calibre.

Dancers in the Eglise Notre Dame de la Gloriette, Caen

Leaving the concert at Eglise Notre Dame de la Gloriette, Caen

We planned on lunch in a special little restaurant in town but so too had too many others. Unable to get a table we all returned for lunch in the kitchen while the rain continued unabated. During the afternoon it eased and we accompanied Geneviève to yet another of Caen's massive garden centres searching for a selection of shrubs for the newly constructed trellis Ian had fixed to the garden wall.

During the evening we went our separate ways, Geneviève for supper with friends while we visited Claire to receive the happy news that Katie yesterday gave birth to a health baby boy in a Paris clinic. We were delighted too that Marc, Neil's childhood pen-friend who came out to Sri Lanka to join us for his wedding, happened to be at home. He and his mother Claire both speak excellent English so we had an easy, relaxed evening drinking the health of the new baby and its parents while chatting over the many years of friendship we have enjoyed together. Watching our children's friends growing from childhood to adulthood and parenthood is a very happy, long-term experience.

With Claire and Marc in Caen


Sunday 9th April 2006, Caen, Normandy
It has been a day of disasters starting with the lens in Jill's driving glasses falling out when the holding screw got lost. Next the camera packed up so unless we can get it repaired while we wait it will be impossible to continue our illustrated blog.
We had planned on moving on to Brittany tomorrow but until these problems are rectified and Jill can see where she is driving, we are rather stuck.

To add to our worries Neil contacted us to say there had been a leaking pipe on the central heating system in our house requiring the services of an emergency plumber. Fortunately somebody was in the house and has been dealing with the problem but there has been some damage to the carpet, fireplace and wall.

On a more cheerful note though, we have had a very happy day. During the morning Geneviève drove through the sunny countryside to St. Pierre-sur-Dives, a formerly affluent little Normandy town that sits astride the Greenwich meridian. The town's former wealth was due to its geographical location between the flat arable lands of the Plaine de Caen and the lush, undulating pastures of the Pays d'Auge where the region's sheep and cattle are reared. There is a huge medieval market hall in the centre of the town formerly used for trading in grain and livestock. Today it was being used as an exhibition centre for a craft fair. We were impressed with the quality of the work on display ranging from leatherwork, ceramics and bookbinding to ironwork, wood carving and furniture making.

The market hall and former tithe barn, St. Pierre-sur-Dives

Craft display inside the market hall, St. Pierre-sur-Deves

Old butchers' stalls, St. Pierre-sur-Dives

Later we sat on the terrace of Le Greenwich with beers and coffees enjoying the unusual warmth of the sun before taking a stroll around the town to discover the deserted and rather dilapidated abbey buildings with its cloister and crumbling mediaeval statues.

On the Greenwich meridian, St. Pierre-sur-Dives

The abbey cloisters, St. Pierre-sur-Dives

Making friends with the natives, St. Pierre-sur-Dives

After a brief investigation of the public conveniences we continued through delightful, picturesque countryside past beautifully restored manor houses in extensive grounds, now mainly used as breeding centres for sleek brown race horses and known as haras. Scattered throughout the area are tiny hamlets of quaint little picturesque cottages constructed from mud and straw infill between solid wooden timbers. This style of domestic architecture is known as pan de bois or colombage. Mainly the cottages stand in pretty flower-filled meadows or gardens with tiny streams nearby, overhung with bright green fronds of weeping willow trees. Along a winding narrow road that meandered through the leafless wooded countryside, its edges bright with celandines, primroses, violets and anenomies, we paused to investigate the pretty hamlet of Ste.Marie aux Anglais with a tiny cream stone Romanesque church and its timbered manor house set back in wooded grounds.

Ian checks out the facilities, St. Pierre-sur-Dives

Ste. Marie-aux-Anglais

There are many other farm buildings, barns and country houses in similar style, all ancient and twisted with brown timbers and cream infill. One of these is Coupesarte, a mediaeval timber-framed manor house standing directly in a water-filled moat and surrounded by similarly constructed outbuildings. Unfortunately at this point our camera packed up so we have only one rather poor photo of this beautiful building.

Coupesarte


Further on we stopped again to gaze in envy at the former rural home of the writer André Gide. Once the leaves appear on the trees it will be quite hidden from the road. None of these properties are open to the public and most appear to be owned by wealth people from Paris who use them as weekend retreats.

We gradually made our way back to Caen via yet another of France's most beautiful villages, Beuvron-en-Auge which although certainly very beautiful with its entire street of maisons en colombage has been so restored, beautified and crowded with pretty shops and restaurants, it has become a showpiece rather than a living village.

Monday 10th April 2006, Caen, Normandy
Today has been a frustrating round of sorting out yesterday's problems. We went down into Caen around lunchtime – almost all the shops in France are closed on Monday mornings. Getting Jill's glasses fixed was both free and easy. Getting the camera repaired was impossible. We were told it would have to be sent to Paris, the repair taking three weeks to complete! We don't even know where we will be in three weeks time and we need the camera immediately. So we were obliged to buy a new one and will get the original repaired when we return to England. Of course the model has changed and costs more. Even the card from the old camera wouldn't work in the new one. Fortunately the software on the computer is compatible and as the man in the shop said, we have already taken more photos with the camera than most people ever expect to take!

The leaking pipes back home have also given us much anxiety but there is little we can do from here other than notify our insurance company there may be a claim in the future.

When Geneviève returned from a particularly difficult day at work we all decided it was time to stop worrying and to settle down to a pleasant last evening together. We have spent a very happy time here in Caen and have received the warmest of welcomes. It is good to know that we are welcome to return whenever we wish.

Geneviève's house with the trellis proudly installed

Time to move on

Maxted Travels part 2

Wednesday 29th March 2006, On board the "Normandie" crossing from Portsmouth to Caen
Two weeks have flown by during our time in England. Modestine has now been given a clean bill of health and once again we are crossing the channel back to France to continue our travels around Europe.

First of all we would like to say an ENORMOUS thank you to everyone we have seen or visited during our brief stay, for the warmth of the welcome we have received. It was a very strange feeling to find ourselves homeless in our own city and we are indebted to friends and family in Exeter for making us so welcome in their homes. It was wonderful to see you all again and great to be so hopelessly spoilt with lovely meals and comfortable beds! As a couple of retired pleasure seekers, we are humbled to be shown such affection from friends so obviously overburdened with heavy workloads, document deadlines and management meetings, not to mention domestic upheavals such as plumbing disasters, or pressing responsibilities for elderly parents or children at university. We have tried to see as many of you as we could but if you escaped unscathed it was purely a matter of luck. Don't count on it holding when we come back next time.

We also need to thank our children Neil and Kate and their partners Jeev and Joe for the wonderful weekend of our 68th wedding anniversary (according to their "guestimate", we made it 35th) when we all converged on Didcot for a warm and wonderful reunion and a celebratory meal in the local Nepalese restaurant. Jeev and Neil then cooked Christmas dinner at the weekend, complete with crackers and paper hats, to make up for having missed Christmas together last year. It appears that our travel blog has given us a certain amount of credibility with our kids who seem delighted that we have forsaken the traditional retirement role of fluffy slippers and gardening for a vagabond existence on the byways of Europe.

Celebrating in the Nepalese restaurant in Didcot

Late Christmas dinner with Neil, Jeev, Kate and Joe

Having spent the last seven months criticising and observing the countries we have visited in Europe, we have tried to see England in a similar way. When you live in a country it is easy to take for granted what you see every day. Returning as a visitor, rather than returning home, certain things have struck us quite forcibly.

After months of marvelling at the wonderfully preserved old towns and villages in Europe, we still found the English countryside beautiful, even under the drab overcast skies of the tail end of winter. The villages and small towns between Didcot and Exeter were filled with a host of attractive buildings which had an unostentatious charm.

In Exeter the council seems intent on doing away with what little distinctiveness it has as an historic city and Land Securities have done more to flatten the historic centre of Exeter than Hitler and his Luftwaffe ever achieved. A vast construction site for an oversized shopping area dominates the city centre, with blocks of buildings looming up behind the roofscape of the Cathedral Close. Everywhere seems completely tangled up with traffic and parking is a complete impossibility.

However, Exeter has every reason to take a pride in the quality of the exhibitions in the Royal Albert Museum. We were fortunate enough to enjoy a morning viewing a superb national exhibition of ten cartoons by Leonardo da Vinci from the Royal collections and another on the imagery of Buddhism. By complete contrast but greatly entertaining we also enjoyed a colourful exhibition by the Museum of Childhood of 20th century children's toys ranging from Meccano, yoyos and Muffin the Mule, to Masters of the Universe, the Rubik cube and the Barbie doll.

Driving feels far safer on British roads and generally drivers are more courteous. While road signs and road surfaces are better than we have generally observed abroad, we were saddened at the amount of litter along roadside verges which are just as bad as, and frequently worse than, we have seen elsewhere, particularly beside motorways. Canine excrement is definitely better controlled in Britain than elsewhere in Europe but the streets are paved not with gold, but with chewing-gum!

Council recycling mania now means our streets look ugly with unsightly ranks of grey, brown and green plastic bins cluttering pavements for much of the week. This is also happening throughout Europe however and we are not criticising recycling per-se. Perhaps efforts should be directed towards producers rather than consumers. Reduced or eco-friendly packaging would seem a rather obvious way forward.

The work ethic in Britain is carried to extremes with people working longer and harder than appears to be the case in other countries we have visited. All our friends seem to be under the stress of continuous change and endless restructuring. While change is necessary, why can't it be evolutionary rather than revolutionary?

Britain is generally more expensive then the countries we have visited so far. Accommodation, fares, fuel, transport, car repairs, meals and a general shopping basket in a supermarket all cost more. However the quality of English pub meals can hold their own with anything we have seen on our travels and the atmosphere of a Devon village bar should be regarded as a national treasure.

Overall we cannot agree with the views of many of the ex-pats we encountered in our travels who said that they would never return to Britain because it had "gone down the tubes". Frequently isolated on their campsites or in English ghettos, they may not always have appreciated the many social problems faced by the countries where they have made their home.

Everywhere we have heard tales of cold and drought in Southern England. We are told it has been a long, cold, unpleasant winter. For us it has seemed that the cold and wet that followed us around Southern France, Spain and Portugal accompanied us across the Channel to share our visit home. Today though, as we returned to Portsmouth, the sun appeared for possibly the first time during our visit, transforming the countryside, dappling fields with light and shade and washing everywhere with colour. Fields were bright and green, daffodils tossed in the breeze and primroses speckled the base of the hedgerows. Bare branches were tinged with a green haze and at last it feels as if spring may be about to arrive.

Thursday 30th March 2006, Caen
It must be something about us – no sooner have we arrived in Caen than the rain arrives hot on our heels. So the morning was spent in the house, sorting out ready for stage two of the journey, washing clothes and rearranging things in Modestine for what we hope will be a milder few months. In the afternoon we decided to brave the weather and take a tour in the Suisse Normande, the rather ambitions name given to the hilly area about 20 Km south of Caen where the river Orne cuts through rocks in a picturesque series of curves. The rain made the undulating landscape a bright green and the hedges and winding narrow roads were reminiscent of parts of rural England. Everywhere flowers are beginning to appear, yellow being undoubtedly the colour of springtime, from the pale tones of primroses, narcissi and cowslips through the bright shades of the forsythia and the tossing daffodils to the vivid gold of celandines and dandelions that speckle the grassy fields. By contrast, mauve clumps of violets and white patches of anemones add colour amongst the wet leaf mould of the woodland. Unfortunately our sorting out of the morning meant that we did not have the camera with us to capture the pretty little villages through which we passed, such as Clécy, closed for the season, which typically is deemed to end tomorrow. In the evening Geneviève started to look out guides to unexpected corners of Paris in preparation for our trip there next week.

Currently France is in a state of political turmoil with student riots and manifestations across the country that are closing universities and lycées and bringing young people onto the streets in their thousands. They are protesting against the CPE, a first contract of employment offered to young people starting their working career. Simply put, the present plans being put before the Conseil Constitutionnel are interpreted as making it easier for employers to dismiss young staff without needing to justify themselves. Such violent opposition means forcing Prime Minister Villepin and President Chirac to backtrack or risk defeat during the forthcoming elections.

Young people in France certainly have major problems in finding employment of any sort. In Britain the unemployment rate for under 25s is 12.9% while in France it is 22.3%

For such reasons we are slightly anxious about our visit to Paris as further mass demonstrations are expected next Tuesday with official buildings closed, the Sorbonne boycotted and a general transport strike throughout the country. We have already seen something of young people's anger over the CPE when Ian was nearly hit by an egg in Caen before our return to England.

Friday 31st March 2006, Caen
This morning Ian woke with a headache. The fact that he could actually be unwell if he wished and lie in bed until lunchtime may have contributed to his state of exhaustion. It turned out to be nothing that a few hours extra sleep couldn't cure. We have had so many changes of the clock in the different countries we have passed through recently and the changes from summer to winter and back, that we have both found it tiring. Losing two hours over three days takes its toll. So Jill went down alone to the weekly food market in the town where she spent a pleasant hour amongst the stalls purchasing herbs and flowers for Geneviève's dinner party next Saturday.

Ian had recovered by the time she returned home though the rain had recommenced. So we spend a largely restful day catching up on emails and phone calls, arranging to visit Paris on Monday and Brittany the following week.

Visiting Leclerc supermarket for wine and bread we found a collection taking place to provide essentials to needy families. Twice a year volunteers are permitted to collect outside major supermarkets. As we went into the store we were handed a bag, the idea being we would purchase a few non-perishable items which we would pack into the bag and donate to the volunteers as we left. Almost everyone was taking a bag and an entire team of volunteers was packing crates of tinned food, soap, nappies, dried foods and toothpaste into a van to be distributed to those in need during the coming months. There was an excellent atmosphere amongst customers happy to donate, assured as they were that their donation would not be swallowed up in administrative costs as so often happens with donations of money.

Handing our bags for contribution to Banque d'Alimentation, Caen

During the evening, once Geneviève returned from work, we visited her mother Germaine together for an aperitif in her still sunny lounge on the top floor of a local apartment block with open views over the town with the twin towers of the Abbé aux Hommes, burial place of William the Conqueror, silhouetted on the city skyline.

Saturday 1st April 2006
The weekend has arrived giving our hostess a couple of days without worries of work. At last the sun has shone for us and we have been able to enjoy lunch with Geneviève in her garden.

Ian enjoys lunch in the garden

Geneviève and Jill on the terrace

Later we spent a pleasant afternoon browsing the garden centres of Caen together searching for a trellis and plant container for the patio. This evening Yves and Christine, Geneviève's brother and his partner from Rouen, joined us for supper. Trying to keep up with highly animated arguments in French about Chirac's attitude to the CPE and the effect it will have on future elections, young people and their employment prospects, left us feeling quite drained! Supper was wonderful, starting around 7.30pm and continuing until well after midnight. Genevieve is an excellent cook and accomplishes it with a cheerful calm that fills Jill with the deepest admiration. Home-made salmon rillettes were followed by a side of lamb with roasted vegetables and French beans. Later we enjoyed a selection of French and English cheeses and a green salad and we finished with an apricot flan and a citron tart. All the courses were accompanied by several bottles of highly palatable French wine.

Relaxing with an aperitif

Sunday 2nd April 2006
When we eventually got to bed we slept like logs until 9 am this morning. Today has been colder and more windy but generally dry. We returned with Modestine to Jardiland, the local garden centre, to collect the huge trellis we purchased yesterday which turned out to be far too big to fit into Geneviève's car. Later Ian fixed it to the garden wall where it now looks very smart. Before lunch we walked across town to the castle where a new exhibition opened yesterday which offers us a foretaste of what we can expect in Italy. The exhibition is called Splendeur de Venise and comprises a superb selection of over 100 paintings by Venetian artist covering the 16th century. The paintings are taken primarily from the municipal collections of Bordeaux and Caen who have jointly hosted the exhibition. It is a truly spectacular exhibition and includes works by Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Bassano and Palma. We are very envious of the cultural activities taking place here in Caen where there are superb museums, art galleries and concert halls and where money seems to be available to invite major exhibitions, artist and composers to participate.

After lunch – indoors today as there has been an evil wind despite the sunshine - we drove to a little village on the outskirts of Bayeux to visit Chantal, a work colleague and personal friend of Geneviève. Chantal lives in a large, partially restored and very happily cluttered house in the village centre next to the church with its memorial to those who died during the first World War. In a former life it was the village school. Opposite is a field of speckled Normandy cattle. Some years ago, when such things were more common, Chantal made a couple of visits to Vietnam with her rucksack and a carry cot, returning on each occasion with a tiny, orphaned Vietnamese baby. (Not quite as simple as it sounds though, everything being carried out in strict accordance to both French and Vietnamese law.) Today these adorable, happy children are as French as their playmates, bright, artistic, capable and achieving well in their local school. They have bright futures and have brought much happiness to the lives of those around them, including Geneviève who is the godmother of the eldest little girl.

The old school house


Our heads were in a daze by the time we left, listening and coping with so much rapid French conversation. Jill certainly dozed all the way back to Caen where after supper we sorted essential luggage to take with us to Paris tomorrow.

Homeward bound

Wednesday 8th March 2006, Verneuil-sur-Indre
Today has been spent travelling north through a wet and bedraggled countryside. The area of Brenne is one of lakes anyway and most of these have flooded. Frequently we found ourselves driving along minor roads that were no more than raised causeways between huge sheets of water with only ducks and swans for company. The whole of Europe seems to have been nothing but rain and water for the last six months, interspersed with moments of bright sunshine. As we passed into the department of Indre the river had burst its banks with trees that should have been at the edge, now standing way out in the middle. It was the same as we crossed the Cher and the Loire. Normally we have found the Loire to have huge sandbanks along its edge and to have a series of green islands standing in a wide shallow river. Now all the rivers seemed to have converged to form an endless grey sheet of water that matched the sky while the rain and hail continued to fall.

The river Indre in flood

We stopped at Loches – or as Ian calls it, Sploches – parking Modestine, with some reservation, in the only car park, near the river which was almost touching the arch of the bridge as it swirled beneath. As we parked a vehicle drew up behind us hooting furiously and two people got out. Wondering what we had done wrong, we went to meet them. “It is you! We recognised Modestine!” they cried. It turned out to be friends of Christine and Mostyn who had made us so welcome when we were staying at Ambre-les-Espagnolettes! We had met Susan and Ray, who come from Exeter, a couple of times and, during the period that we were travelling around Spain, they had moved up to live in the Loire Valley near Tours. However, their house was not yet ready for occupation and they had settled at Loches for a couple of months renting a Gite. They formerly owned a Romahome so were instantly attracted when they saw Modestine on the wet streets of the town.

Loches and the tower of the Collegiale

The 11th century donjon at Loches

Porte des Cordeliers, Loches

Gateway through the ramparts, Loches

Logis Royal, Loches

Chancellerie, Loches

Declaring this was no weather for camping in a waterlogged field – a sentiment with which we totally agreed – they told us to turn up at their gîte when we had finished Sploching. So we spent a couple of hours exploring the steep streets of this picturesque town with its 11th century Donjon on the hilltop above the town, from where we had a vista over the grey floodwaters covering the surrounding countryside.

Arriving at Susan and Ray’s country gîte, we left Modestine on the only patch of road not ankle deep in mud and were welcomed into the warmth of the old converted water mill with its stone fireplace and roof of huge timbered beams. Here we were "hosed down" in hot water, dried out, plied with the local Touraine wine and given a hot supper, convivial conversation and a warm comfortable bed. (Now do you all believe Modestine is a very special vehicle?)

Friday 10th March 2006, Caen, Calvados
We are now back in Caen staying with our good friend Geneviève for a few days before taking the ferry to Portsmouth for a brief return to Exeter and to visit our family. This for us is the real France, surrounded by French friends, in a city crowded with history – from William the Conqueror to the D-Day Landings. The surrounding Normandy countryside is varied with the pretty orchards and the speckled cows of the Pays d’Auge, the crags, valleys and woodland of the Swiss Normande, the endless flat fields of arable crops out on the Plaine de Caen, and the smaller fields surrounded by hedgerows that form the Bocage, lying between Cherbourg and Bayeux. There are the endless sandy beaches which witnessed the débarquement of the Allied forces along their entire length on 6th June 1944. Here there are still the concrete remains of stone bunkers, cratered cliff tops, and even the rusting platforms of the Mulberry harbour, towed across the Channel from Britain, at Arromanches that provided the landing facilities for the tanks, fuel and soldiers on that day. All around the countryside can be found peaceful, beautifully tended War Graves cemeteries where American, British and Canadian soldiers killed in the fighting now lie.

We arrived back in Caen last night but were too tired to think about blogging, so this is two days in one.

We left Loches on Thursday and headed towards Amboise, stopping at the delightfully pretty little village of Chedigny to look at the home Susan and Ray will shortly be occupying. We continued through the beautiful but wet wooded countryside with its many turreted chateaux, past Amboise to Pocé. Here we stopped to explore. Geneviève’s mother Germaine owns a small house here and for years the family have used it for their holidays. We had been offered the opportunity to rent it over the winter if we tired of travelling but we had never actually seen the village. We rang Germaine in Caen to ask for the address of her property and to warn the family we would be returning later in the day. Pocé turned out to be a typical little French village of stone buildings with a huge church and a small brick built château with pointed black slate roofs set in parkland open to the public. Its greatest asset is its proximity to so many of the delightful towns, villages and country châteaux of the Loire Valley.

Le Château de Pocé

From here we headed across country, taking the most direct route back to Caen. The delight of travelling in France is that it is perfectly possible to travel almost anywhere in the country without touching on motorways or even les routes nationales. Our journey was along deserted departmental routes passing through countless stone villages and allowing us to fully appreciate the wet face of rural France. We stopped for a break at Lavardin, listed as yet another of France’s most beautiful villages, and we soon realised why. Apart from it picturesque main street and the romantic ruins of the castle on the hill behind, it has a wonderful Romanesque church where the interior is bright with colourful 12th century frescoes in an excellent state of preservation. We understand that there are similar churches in the Vendôme area with mediaeval wall paintings. The area merits further investigation one day.

Ruines of the château at Lavardine

12th century fresco depicting the Passion, St. Genest, Lavardine

Last judgment - condemned souls pushed towards the devil, 12th century, St. Genest, Lavardine

Washing of the disciples' feet,12th century, St. Genest, Lavardine

Christ in majesty in a mandorla surrounded by symbols of the evangelists, 12th century, St. Genest, Lavardine

Tree of Jesse, Mary and King David enthroned, 12th century, St. Genest, Lavardine

Capital, late 11th century, St. Genest, Lavardine

Baptism of Christ, late 12th century, St. Genest, Lavardine

St Thibault and St Maur, 15th century, St. Genest, Lavardine


As we continued to Caen we were continuously passing from black leaden skies hurling down hailstones to bright blue skies and sunshine. Gradually the landscape became familiar and we found ourselves driving past Camembert, Vimoutiers and Livarot, all famed for their Normandy cheese and dairy produce. Around 7pm we arrived in Caen to find the same warm welcome we always receive from Geneviève and the smell of a delicious supper wafting from the kitchen. Somehow time seemed to collapse and it seemed hours rather than months since we last sat together with glasses of wine, catching up on news together. It has been a fantastic seven months of travel and in many ways it seems almost unreal. However, we have the blog, over 4,000 photos and 12,500 miles added to Modestine’s milometer to prove we did it!

This morning, Friday 10th March, has been spent cleaning Modestine inside and out. She was pretty filthy after the last two months around Spain and Portugal and the storms and rains of France. The washing machine has been chugging away all day and we are now fit to be seen in public. We’d reached the stage where we were afraid of being directed to one of the many nomad sites we passed across France, called “terrain de gens de voyage.” Now though, we could turn up at a mayoral reception anywhere without the risk of being turned away as vagabonds!

Saturday 11th March 2006, Caen, Calvados
This morning the French news was of floods across the country particularly in Gascony and the Jura. At Salies de Bearn the river had burst its banks. As Ralph and Ruth live only a few metres away we rang Ralph, concerned not only that they may be flooded, but that medical care may not have been able to reach Ruth. Fortunately they have so far avoided being flooded and the waters are now subsiding though many of the surrounding properties have flooded cellars and everywhere is being pumped out.

A phone call to Susanne in Champagne-sur-Loue confirmed that the Loue has also burst its banks and the camping terrain there has been completely flooded. In addition it has been snowing heavily during the night and the Clos and vineyards are under a white blanket. The pansies we left as a remembrance have been flowering but since last night they are hidden deep beneath the snow.

Here in Normandy the rest of the day has been delightful for us although we have done very little of note, simply enjoying being in a big warm house with friends and a convivial lunch with members of the family and a winter walk around the local district during the afternoon. Modestine stands on the driveway glad not to have been called into active service for a couple of days!

Sunday 12th March 2006, Caen, Calvados
This morning we enjoyed our regular Sunday morning treat in Caen. We walked down to the Port on the river Orne in the town centre and joined a large proportion of the city's community wandering around the huge weekly market. Here you can buy anything from a Tunisian couscous to a live chicken, a conger eel to a double bed, or goat's cheese wrapped in straw to a sink plug! It was bitterly cold and we soon sidled off to the crowded PMU café for cups of sweet hot chocolate and to watch the marketers filling in their betting slips as they crowded around the television in the corner. On our way home we bought a couple of 5 litre containers of Bordeaux red wine to take back to England for our kids. The lady in the shop was feeling generous and gave us a very nice bottle of Graves as a present.

During the afternoon we drove down to the Ouistreham cross-channel ferry port and bought our ticket for Wednesday morning. It seemed slightly less cold here than in Caen and we were stunned by the clarity of the light over the sea. No wonder this area has been so loved by artists. The sea and the sky merged together in a wide grey, green, white and blue horizon that seemed to stretch to infinity. Families were out walking along the sea front, watching the ferry leave for Portsmouth, rollerblading, cycling or skateboarding, pushing babies in prams, horse riding or sand yachting along the firm sand of the endless beach.

Sand yachts on the beach at Ouistreham, Normandie

Brittany Ferries ship leaving Ouistreham for Portsmouth

Seafront houses at Ouistreham, Normandy


We returned home in time to discover France has totally beaten England at rugby, and to take Genevieve's son Etienne to the station for the evening train back to Paris where he is studying chemistry at the Ecole Normale.

During the evening we were joined for supper by several friends from Caen library service whom we have known for many years, and by our friend Claire and her daughter Katie whom we have known since she was 10 years old and who is expecting her second baby in a few weeks time. Everyone here it seems has been following our travels on their workplace desktops and came to welcome us back from the first part of our travels. Ian turned out to be the only male amongst seven women!

All the ladies at the supper party

Monday 13th March 2006, Caen, Calvados
This morning Genevieve had left for work by the time we were up and the morning was spent phoning or emailing friends, and loading on the latest addition to our blogsite. Just after lunch we walked down into the town centre to see Odile, another friend still working actively for Caen Municipal Library and heavily involved in liaising between local schools and the municipal library in Caen and inviting many well known writers for young people to give talks in the library as well as working with libraries in Romania. We walked home in the bright winter sunshine, each carrying another heavy container of wine to take back to England.

In the evening Geneviève's mother Germaine rang to invite us round for an evening aperitif. It has generally been a very enjoyable and relaxing day, transferring our bikes Hinge and Bracket to Geneviève's basement until we return and packing everything we won't need again during our travels into Modestine - such as a library of books, maps and dictionaries covering Spain and Portugal, a tent, an enormous awning, assorting cooking pots and a printer/scanner/photocopier! Hopefully we will also be able to leave in England our woolly hats and gloves, spare duvets and electric fire. How could we ever have thought it possible to fit everything into Modestine and still live in her?

Tuesday 14th March 2006, Caen, Calvados
Our last day and already we are looking forward to our travels when we return.
We drove across Caen this morning to see Claire and her daughter Katie for coffee, stopping to top-up Modestine's tank at Super U, the cheapest place to buy diesel fuel in Caen and considerably cheaper than England. Katie normally lives in Paris and is expecting her second baby soon. As we intend visiting Paris once we return, we may even be there to meet the new arrival! We have known both Katie and her brother Marc since they were young school friends of our own children. Marc even managed to join us all in Sri Lanka for Neil and Jeev's wedding a couple of years back. It has been delightful over the years watching them grow up, become fluent in English, and become personable young adults and parents.

Until now the weather has been glacial. Today however we were able to sit out in Geneviève's sheltered garden after lunch to drink our coffee in bright, warm sunshine. Geneviève of course was off at work all day so we have tried to earn our keep by tidying up the garden, emptying the plant tubs, sweeping down and generally reminding the garden that spring is on its way and it had better get on producing a few daffodils and primroses.

Later we made our way into town, visiting familiar haunts, stopping for a beer on a sunny terrace, pinching ourselves all over again – were we really retired and able to do this whenever the fancy took us? Caen is a very pleasant, lively university city with attractive parks and gardens, an imposing château, a range of museums, theatres and galleries. It is set in beautiful countryside sprinkled with pretty stone walled villages and within easy reach of the sea. It is only six hours on the ferry from Portsmouth. We know the area thoroughly and have many friends here. We browsed estate agents windows and tried to imagine living here forever, then thought of family, friends and our home in England. Dreams are wonderful but everything needs to be carefully balanced before making such a major decision.

We visited the hothouses in the lovely Jardin des Plantes. This has always been a delight and a good place to visit on a chilly day with temperatures in the tropical house averaging 35 degrees with a high moisture content. It was almost like being back in the jungle of Sri Lanka – without the risk of encountering any wild animals, though we did see a stuffed monkey or two, just to add atmosphere! There are also aquariums of tropical fish and a covered pool where spoilt terrapins bask in the abnormal heat. This really is an attractive place, attached to a research institution and a great asset to the city.

Terrapins basking at les Jardins des Plantes, Caen

We strolled the city, visited the imposing Norman castle which, unlike the châteaux on the Loire, was built for defence rather than beauty. We noticed police on the battlements and convoys of them started to appear on the streets. Soon it became apparent there was to be a mass demonstration by young people opposing the French Government's plans for the CPE (a first contract of employment for young people entering the workforce) fearing it will make it easier for employers to exploit them. The French excel at strikes, marches and demonstrations – known as "manifestations" or just "manifs." In the event it seemed to have passed off peacefully with hundreds of banner-waving, chanting students banging their way through the city centre surrounded by police motorcycles. An egg was hurled nearby, landing at Ian's feet, so we decided it might be best to leave the fun behind and make our way home through streets crowded with diverted traffic.

Castle battlements, Caen

Students from the University of Caen demonstrating against the CPE

Calling off for a bottle of wine and a dessert for supper we were delighted to discover a huge chocolate and cream gateau intended for 10 people obviously wrongly priced at 1.45€ in the food chiller and we almost got it through the scanner at the exit without anyone realising. Lots of fuss was made by the management but it seems French law is the same as English and if it is wrongly marked, that's the price they have to charge. As Leclerc is a massive supermarket chain we had no compunction about the company's ability to sustain the loss and carried home our prize in triumph.

Together with our hostess, we spent a wonderful evening enjoying pizza and salad, deep red wine and mega-huge quantities of chocolate gateau. It has been such a pleasant end to our visit. Tomorrow we head back to England for a while.

Wednesday 15th March 2006, On board the Mont St Michel crossing between Oustreham and Portsmouth
This morning we left Caen in sunshine around 7.30pm and made our way to the ferry port around Caen's ring road - the péripherique in the morning rush hour. The ferry port is only about 20 kilometres from Caen and we had soon loaded Modestine onto the car deck and made ourselves comfortable in the cafeteria with a full English breakfast! As soon as we smelled the sausages we were lost! After months of continental breakfasts of croissants, baguettes and doughnuts, tucking into eggs, sausages, bacon, tomatoes and baked beans with brown sauce, toast and coffee was unexpected bliss – even after last night's love affair with the chocolate gâteau!

Somehow we have managed to become members of the Brittany Ferries property owners club. This not only gives us a substantial reduction on the price of our fare, it also entitles us to a complimentary cabin on certain crossings. So Ian is lounging back reading one of the first English newspapers we've seen for months while Jill has electricity and a comfortable table and chair to tidy up this final blog before we return to continue our travels in a couple of weeks. We are now off to stroll on the deck. We offer our sincere thanks to everyone for following us so far and hope you will continue to accompany us during the second half of our gap year.

Champagne-sur-Loue at last!

19th August 2005, Champage sur Loue

Modestine has brought us to this little village of 120 souls situated at a height of about 250 meters on a bend of the River Loue in the foothills of the Jura mountains. It is a land of small villages and, as far as we can tell, an internet desert. Yesterday we cycled along the country lanes by the river to Arc et Senans, the nearest larger village which boasts the Saline Royale, a salt works designed as a model village by the visionary architect Claude-Nicholas LeDoux in the 1770s and now housing, in a typical French love of the Great Idea, a Centre pour le Futur. Even here there was no internet access but we discovered small computer shop in the village where we asked whether they provided access. “Non” was the abrupt answer. When asked whether there was anywhere in the locality, the same monosyllabic response. So when this reaches the blog site is anyone’s guess.

We finally left England as planned on 10th August. Right up until the day before when we found the courage to make the final commitment of purchasing our Channel crossing we somehow couldn’t really believe that it would happen! It was such a massive relief when we stood on the deck of the Normandie, crossing from Portsmouth to Caen, to realise we really had done it and were on our way, with a whole year ahead of us to explore Europe, with no commitments forcing us to return. The crossing passed in a sort of haze. We kept thinking we’d wake up and discover it was a dream! We both realise there will be black moments as well as golden ones, but it’s all a very life enriching experience for us to share.

We landed at Ouistreham at 10pm in darkness so Modestine first experience of French roads was straightforward with little traffic around. She had no trouble reaching Caen and we turned into Genevieve’s driveway on the dot of 11pm as anticipated.

Since our arrival we have been as spoiled by our friends on this side of the Channel as we were by so many of you on the other before we departed! We don’t know what we’ve done in life to be surrounded by so many wonderful friends but long may it continue! It gives us a permanent warm glow!

On the first day (11th) Modestine was opened as a show house being visited by our French friends! The weather was wonderfully warm. Sitting in the garden beneath the shade of the acacia tree with a glass of red wine and a selection of Normandy cheeses it was hard to realise this was not just a pleasant interlude, but the first real day of our new lives!

In the afternoon, with Genevieve we visited La Colline des Oiseaux to the north of Caen. Before the war this was the rubbish tip for the city. Later it became the dumping ground for the rubble resulting from the bombardment as part of the D-Day landings. There is a series of gardens of the world including a Devon garden, complete with cob wall and thatched shelter. We had been given a sum of Euros by a group of Devon local history societies on Ian’s retirement, on condition that we spent it on frivolous things. So our first frivolous expense was an ice for ourselves and Genevieve by the Devon garden in Caen.

Friday 12th was an opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with the wonders of the French market at Fosses St Julien where we went to purchase food for the evening’s dinner party. In the evening Genevieve’s table decoration was a work of art, with the cloth being carefully chosen to match the bowl of fruit which formed the centrepiece together with eighteenth century crystal and silver decanters filled with dark red wine. Good food (chicken with tarragon and a selection of Normandy cheeses) and the pleasant company of friends from Caen Library combined to make a most enjoyable evening.
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On Saturday 13th we drove toEmmaüs, an enterprise in the heart of the countryside near Douvres-la-Délivrande run by offenders as part of their rehabilitation programme. It is a national programme with a centre in each department which collects unwanted items from people’s homes and resells them cheaply to raise fund for its programme. Here Jill got asked for assistance by a customer who mistook her for one of the staff. The offenders are accommodated in a beautiful but dilapidated chateau with the sales taking place in a range of dusty courtyards and out-buildings. We spent an hour pottering around with throngs of people from Caen seeking bargains. They seemed ready to buy the most unlikely things, birdcages and kennels were piled up with old shutters and windows, baths and bidets shared space with sofas and saucepans. Everything looked messy and it was necessary to rummage through endless rubbish to find a bargain. That though was the fun, the thrill of maybe finding by chance exactly what you needed, even if you didn’t realise that you needed it – like the saucepan we bought for Modestine.

We left Emmaüs for Bernières-sur-Mer, where families played on the beach like seaside holidays used to be, with no commercial activity at all. We walked along the sea front past the groups of white painted beach huts. This beach, so peaceful, relaxed and evocative of the days of Marcel Proust, was the site of the D-Day landings by the Canadian forces on Juno Beach. The first house liberated here still stands on the sea-front. It was awesome to look around from its front gate and imagine the troops disembarking under heavy fire with no protection on 6th June 1944. Small wonder over one hundred were killed within minutes of landing, perhaps the same number as were on the beach today. It was as if every person in sight had been killed by bullets as we stood there – a very sobering thought. Their brave actions are recorded on an old German block-house and a memorial on the sea-front.

The evening was spent dining with friends where Ian sampled a family heirloom, some very old Armagnac, perhaps dating from the late 19th century. Unfortunately the cork disintegrated on opening but the effect of the drink remained very powerful.

On Sunday (14th) we visited the nature reserve at Salenelles on the marshes at the estuary of the Orne where we had the strange sight of the ferry leaving Ouistreham for Portsmouth, seeming to be travelling along a road behind a distant hedge. Strange too to think that we would not be on it for some months yet! We walked between the beds of reeds and salsify, which is used as a pickled vegetable. An interesting contrast with the nature reserve at Dawlish Warren at the mouth of the Exe.

We left Caen on Monday 15th August aiming to travel as far as possible along routes départmentales. Striking east towards Lisieux we passed the massive basilica to Saint Thérèse and then made for L’Aigle, where we hoped to visit the artificial insemination centre - a candidate we thought, for our second item of frivolous expenditure. But our holiday curse had not left us now we had ceased to be holidaymakers. The centre was closed that day. We made our way on, stopping only at Frazé where we were attracted by a fairy-tale castle beside the road. We arrived ten minutes before closing time, but the young gatekeeper allowed us to wander round the courtyard free of charge, disturbing the carefully raked pathways and admiring the immaculately trimmed hedges and trees which framed the Renaissance gateways and halls. We found a quiet campsite by the river Loir (not Loire) at Châteaudun and found our way over the river and up flights of steps that reached the tops of the cliffs which provided protection for the town and its impressive castle. Much of the town was destroyed by a fire in the early 18th century, so what remains is a mixture of 18th century planning and a huddle of narrow medieval streets around the castle.

The next day (16th) was a frustrating crawl through the villages that cluster along the banks of the Loire (not Loir) with an occasional glimpse of a castle or tower in the towns on either side of the river which, although low (more than seventy departments in France are suffering from drought), was still higher than the last time we had visited the area.

Leaving the Loire just north of Nevers we struck off west towards the Morvan area and stopped in the village of Saint Saulge. There was a strange feeling of déjà vu as we parked in the little square in front of the gendarmerie. The French are driven by a strange impulse to hang things on their churches. In Sainte-Mère-Eglise in the Cotentin there is the macabre sight of a paratrooper hanging from the church tower – a reminder for tourists of the day in 1944 when the hapless American watched his comrades being killed in the square below during the d-Day assaults. Here in Saint Saulge however we rediscovered a life-size model of a cow. It appears that the folk of saint Saulge had a reputation for bizarre actions. Why the cow is there is unclear, but it is said to derive from an event during a previous drought in France when a cow was hoisted up to graze on the grass growing in the gutters of the church – or so they say.

Eventually we found a campsite at Châtillon-en-Bazois, where the wide Canal du Nivernais crosses the road. It is logging country and it is possible to follow the route taken by loggers as they floated their logs down the rivers and canals from the forests in the hills of the Morvan. Rising early next morning (17 August – the day the Trafalgar dispatch arrived in Exeter) we cycled along by the banks of the canal with the little river Aron on our other side where cream coloured cows came down to the banks to drink. We overtook a large river boat named the Adelaide and stopped to look at the first lock, l’Ecluse de Mingot, with its little lock-keeper’s cottage and beautifully tended garden, intending to return to the campsite after that. By then the Adelaide had caught up with us and the skipper, a cheery man of about our age, saw us watching while he tethered his boat to the lock-side. He offered to take us and our bikes up to the next lock. Too good an opportunity to miss, so the bikes were hauled aboard and we glided along the still waters. Ian was even given the opportunity of steering the boat along one of the straighter stretches. It was remarkable how sensitive the large boat was to the slightest touch. The next lock came in sight, with a charming girl of about twenty as a lock-keeper. It seems that lock-keepers, like the rest of France, go on holiday in August and that the job is such a sought-after holiday employment for students that they are strictly limited to one month. Our keeper was a medical student at Clermont-Ferrand and she serenaded our slow ascent in the lock with folk tunes played on the accordion – a magical experience and one which our skipper, who lived in the north of France and owned a boat in the south, had never experienced in the several hundred locks he had passed through in the Adelaide. He offered to take us on to the next lock where, to our delight there was a young man who also serenaded us on the accordion. It turned out that he was a student of politics at the same university and the boyfriend of the medical student. Perhaps it was their love of folk music that had brought them together. Ian helped to open the lock gates, and then we decided that it was time to leave Luc, our good-natured skipper, and cycle back to the campsite.

We continued westward. The Morvan is the home of Francoise Mitterand and it is largely to his influence that motorways have been kept away from the area of the national park. At Château-Chinon there is even a museum in his memory with all the presents he had received on state occasions. If a similar collection of such gifts on display in Colombo Museum in Sri Lanka is anything to go by, it would have been an excellent museum of bad taste and good for another piece of frivolous expenditure of the Devon “research grant” but time was pressing so we drove on through the vineyards of the Bourgogne and across the plain of the Saône toward the limestone mountains of the Jura which we could see in the distance.

Soon the familiar village names began to appear - Villers-Farley, Cramans, Arc-et-Senans and finally Champagne-sur-Loue where we were welcomed by Suzanne and Roland. They had undertaken a lot of work on the basement flat since our last visit. The kitchen had been brought up-to-date from the 1950s to the 21st century, the cramped sit-up bath had been replaced by a shower, but the welcome was still as warm and old-fashioned as before and we were invited to a simple supper preceded by ratafia and wine made by Roland himself from grapes grown in his small vineyard on the hill behind the village.

The morning after our arrival (18th August) we looked round the village of Champagne-sur-Loue, which had received many improvements since our last visit a few years back – and even more since Jill had taught English at the Maison Rurale du Clos in the little château behind Suzanne’s house in the 1960s. The school has now closed and the château has been sold by the Domincan sisters to a Parisian family. The old farmhouses with their massive arched entrances and high roofs are better maintained and are adorned by pots and boxes of bright flowers. The campsite has been overhauled and the war memorial cleaned. No English settlers as yet (apart from our temporary presence) but a Dutch couple have taken over one of the large farm buildings and set up a gite. The wife also practises some sort of alternative therapy using hot stones – hope we won’t require that! We unpacked Modestine and unfolded our cycled. In the morning we cycled to Arc-et-Senans,as already mentioned, passing a snail farm where thousands of the little creatures were basking under rows upon rows of inclined slabs as they were drenched by sprays of the precious waters, of which there is such a shortage. The sight even intrigued a passing French couple who stopped to take photographs.

Arc-et-Senans looked so much busier than we remembered it, but we had never visited in the holiday season before. The Saline Royale contains an excellent bookshop with much on architecture, utopian ideas and, of course, salt, as well as regional literature. We purchased a detailed 1:25,000 map, to guide our future cycling expeditions. The map posted up for tourists by the car park was much less helpful. The railways were shown as routes nationals and the cartographers had even invented complex junctions to enable the motorist to join these non-existent roads – a hazardous undertaking when one of the lines is used by the TGV! How such an inaccurate map could have been accepted by the commune beggars belief, but it is only the worst amongst a number of inaccuracies we have seen on such panels during our recent travels. We stocked up at a small supermarket and cycled home for lunch, in the afternoon making off in the other direction along the Loue past fishermen and bathers to Port-Lesney, where we had a beer on a shady terrace to shelter from the temperatures of 32 degrees in the sun.

We finished our day with a walk round the village with Suzanne, who has to exercise her foot regularly after breaking it earlier this year. We passed the grove of sixty poplars planted by her son Hugues, a forestry advisor, fifteen years ago when his son Thibault was born. They are somewhat taller than Thibault now, standing some fifteen metres high but the leaves are already brown and they are suffering from a disease which is afflicting many poplars in France. They will have to be felled but the price of timber is low at the moment.

After sunset we decided to phone Neil and Jeev from the village phone box. We had purchased a phone card in Caen for such eventualities but on entering the phone box we became tangled in a mass of spiders’ webs complete with their plump occupants who had gorged themselves on the swarms of insects attracted by the light in the ceiling of the box. We decamped rapidly to the flat and returned with a broom to evacuate the tenants and clean up the handset. The box had clearly not been used for weeks – a sign of the universal penetration of mobile phones. Even in these remote parts Roland takes his mobile when he goes to cut wood from his copse or to work on his vines.

Jardin du Devon, Caen

Our dinner table

Salenelles nature reserve

Chateau de Frazé

The Adelaide on the Canal du Nivernais near Châtillon

The lock keeper

Ian working the lock gates

Goodbye to the Adelaide

The snail farm on the route between Champagne and Arc et Senans