Going out out, 20 June 2025

We do not often go "out out"; usually evening expeditions, if any, are to various meetings of one kind or another. The last time I went out "on pleasure bent" was to see a film screening at Brixton Library with my tai chi friends, and I don't remember when the last time the Swan Whisperer and I went to the theatre together - it was at The Landor theatre and was on black plastic ice (friends of ours were skating in it).  But how long ago was that? Also the ABBA experience a few years ago, but nothing since! 

However, this evening we went all the way to Chelsea to see a production of "Swallows and Armenians" at the Chelsea Theatre.  I had bought the tickets some weeks ago, but was not very sure what to expect.  Actually, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The play - it's more of a musical, really - details the relationship between Arthur Ransome and the Altounyan family, on whom he based the original "Swallows" when he wrote Swallows and Amazons.  It didn't end well, with the relationship between Ernest Altounyan and Arthur Ransome going totally pear-shaped (not helped by the fact that he would have liked to have married Altounyan's wife, back in the day), and the children left wondering whether their school friends really wanted to know them for themselves, or as their characters in the books.  My main criticism was that the music was a bit overwhelming in a small space, but I took out my hearing aids for the second half, and that was much better!  The musicians were brilliant, although they occasionally missed the note when they sang.  But the range of instruments they all played was amazing.

After the performance, we could have joined in a circle dance in the square outside, but can you see the Swan Whisperer doing that?  No, me neither!  Had it been on ice.... But it was on concrete, so we came away to find a restaurant, and ended up in a very nice Persian one called Abib.  I ordered lamb chops

(I did not expect five of them - that would have done the Swan Whisperer and me at least twice at home!), and the Swan Whisperer ordered a chicken and lamb skewer.  The waitress strongly suggested we had a starter, as the main dishes would take at least twenty minutes, so we had hummus with garlic bread, and very good it was, too.  I ordered my lamb with garlic bread - the choices were that, or saffron rice or chips, but I find rice difficult to eat when I'm out as it gets under my false teeth!  So I ordered the bread, and then fell free to leave it, but I did, greedily, eat all the meat and salad! 

When we had finished, we found we could go home a different way - we had come on a 317 bus, changing at Sloane Square to an 11, but going home we took a 345 from Beaufort Street, changing at Clapham Common on to a 37. 

All in all, a most enjoyable date night!

Early summer holiday, 13 June 2025

Brixton, London, UK

I was too tired to blog last night, so to catch up on the final day of our holiday: we were able to heat water for our showers using electricity, although cups of tea made with it were disgusting! Once we were both showered and dressed, we made our way over to Auchan, where we knew we could buy gas, only to find that it wasn't yet open - sales are between 09:00 and 13:00.  Fortunately by then it was 08:55, and by the time we had bought diesel, the kiosk operator was there.

So we drove to the car-park of the main superstore and had breakfast, and, once I had finished I did a Last Shop in France, and then we drove over to the Shuttle terminus, where we got on a train half an hour earlier than our booking, which was good.  We stopped at Clackett Lane Services to eat our lunch, including belated Pentecost cheesecake/last day patisseries

and then went straight to No 6, where my mother was pleased to see us.

It is baby-pigeon season, and the results were all too obvious on our car, so the Swan Whisperer had to wash it before he did anything else! We eventually got it loaded and headed back to London about 18:00, getting home just on 20:00.  I'd bought a ready-meal for supper which we had as soon as we'd unloaded the fridge stuff, and then it was a matter of unpacking the basics, plus making overnight oats for the family, who were coming next morning to parkrun and then coming here to shower, breakfast and celebrate my birthday! It was lovely to see them.  And so ends another trip; we will be off again in about a month!

Early Summer Holiday, 12 June 2025

Blériot-Plage, Calais, France

Today has very much been what Anne Shirley would call a "Jonah Day".

It started off all right - the Swan Whisperer went into the town to buy bread and pains aux raisins, and came back saying that it was a lovely little town and we should go for a walk round it. So after breakfast we set off. Just as we got to the town centre - which is indeed lovely, there are photos

- the sky darkened, there was a flash of lightning and a huge peal of thunder, and the heavens opened! I did have my sweaty mac with me, which I put on, but it turned out to be as much use as a chocolate teapot, and I think I was even wetter than the Swan Whisperer by the time we got back to the WoMo and had to change out of the short and t-shirts we had been wearing! Of course, by the time we had done that and the SW had had his coffee, the sun had come out again and the weather has been lovely all day.

We had a pretty uneventful drive up to Calais - village names of the day: Pacy, Miserey and Mercey - and stopped for lunch in Vernon, where we stopped the last time we had spent the night in La-Madeleine-de-Nonancourt, what time it also thundered! Anyway, it has a chateau and an old mill across the stream, so the SW went to have a look at them while I got lunch ready.

Quite a lot of our drive after lunch was cross-country, and we joined the motorway a bit south of Neufchatel-en-Bray. We had intended to head straight to the Cité Europe along the motorways, but failed to notice a contraflow and were dumped off just past Boulogne. We don't mind going non-motorway on that route - it is very scenic - but it delayed us quite badly. We wanted to do a load of laundry in the new facilities outside the Cité Europe, but they were somehow disconnected from the Internet, and it couldn't accept our credit cards, and there is no way to pay cash. So that was a bust, and we will be doing our usual thing of endless washings when we get home. I suppose we might just have finished by Wednesday, time to go all over again. Sigh.

I nipped into Carrefour to get some fresh milk for the SW, and then we headed up here. The fridge started beeping and wouldn't light on gas, although it was fine on electricity and while driving.

For some reason the Swan Whisperer thought the gas needed to be reset, as it must have done an emergency switch-off, but he couldn't find out how to do this. And then he realised - we are utterly and totally out of gas! And there is nowhere local to get the right kind from a 24-hour automat, so although we might be able to have hot water in the morning, no way will it be hot enough for tea, and we won't be able to cook our breakfast. We drove all round Calais wishing we had realised what was wrong half an hour earlier, when we could still just have found somewhere open.

Fortunately, there was enough hot water in the thermos for a rather tepid cup of tea each, but tomorrow will be most unpleasant until the nearest garage opens at 08:30! If the SW thinks I'm going to get washed and dressed without a cup of tea inside me (it's bad enough having to wait 30 minutes after my thyroid tablet!), he has another think coming. Fortunately he is not saying that as we are going home tomorrow it's not worth it - but he had been convinced that we had enough gas to do us - as, indeed, we nearly did! 

Early summer holiday, Wednesday 11 June 2025

La-Madeleine-de-Nonancourt, Normandy, France

Felt much better this morning, thankfully, although not quite 100%, but quite well enough to go for a most enjoyable walk round Loches, which has ramparts and so on - quite steep, but steady.

More photos on Facebook, of course. The weekly market was also on, lots of cheap clothes and (ahem!) I might have been seduced by a couple of blouses.... We stopped for coffee en route, and I asked for a café allongé (American), but what I got was a double espresso! Oh well, no harm done!

Back at the WoMo, we got ready to leave and went to find the services, which weren't where we thought they were, but a very kind man told us where they were, which was rather out of our way, so we decided to leave it, and set off on the rather long drive to here, stopping for lunch and diesel in a random supermarket car park, which is an aire we have been to before, free everything (even electricity, although it seems to have gone off now, but I expect the Swan Whisperer can fix it when he gets back from his walk). It is near Dreux and Evreux, and probably about half-way between Loches and Calais, where we must be tomorrow. Last time we were here, there was a massive thunderstorm, really fabulous, and then an extremely loud and unpleasant noise going on first thing in the morning! The SW has gone for a leg--stretch, but I'm all right for now. I suppose I ought to go and do tai chi, but I'm too hot! It is hot! 

Early summer holiday, 10 June 2025

Loches, Centre-Val-de-Loire, France

We weren't supposed to be here tonight, but at a goat farm another two hours up the road, but this looked like a nice place to visit en route. Sadly, I have had a migraine all day - not bad, but debilitating - so we are staying here so we can have a proper look round in the morning, and have rejigged our tomorrow night's stop to match.

It's actually rather lovely here, by a river (the Indre?) with a robin, chaffinch, blackbird, doves and frogs battling it out! 

Early sumer holiday, 9 June 2025

La Roche-Posay, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France

It was a lovely morning this morning, and, despite having to pay an extra €6 for out staying our booking, we didn't hurry. The Swan Whisperer went for a walk before breakfast to try to find an open boulangerie (successfully, eventually), and afterwards went for a quick walk along the river. I went down to the river while he was emptying the loo and so on; it really is lovely there.

We knew that tonight we would be parked up in a supermarket car park (which does have services, but no electricity), so we decided we wouldn't hurry, and looked up interesting things to do en route. We found a Lidl that was open (today is a public holiday in France) and stopped there for me to redeem my coupon for a free baguette, among other things. The first interesting place we called at, though, was an ancient Roman site at Bouchaud, which was up a very steep hill ("It's only about 50 metres," said the Swan Whisperer, encouragingly. Quadruple that, and you might be about right!) but worth seeing when you got there.

Also lovely views of the countryside roundabout. The visitor centre was closed, but we didn't know whether that was normal Monday behaviour or because of the public holiday. 

We had lunch there and then headed on across country - simply glorious views the whole way, and mostly lovely straight roads - to here, going slightly out of our way to visit a tourist trap called Angles-sur-l'Anglin; this had a rather spectacular ruined castle and was obviously a Thing to Do on a Bank Holiday, as it was rather crowded, so we couldn't stop. Then we drove down through La-Roche-Posay to this Super U out the other side. It will be convenient for the morning, is all I can really say about it! 

Early Summer Holiday, 8 June 2025

Cognac, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France

This morning slightly spoilt by the discovery that I had made a mistake booking the Camping-Car Park, and our stay both last night and tonight was due to end at 08:30. I thought at first I would have to pay an extra night's fees, but, in fact, one only has to pay €6, like you do when you just use their services. Anyway, I got in touch with them and enquired, and they kindly refunded me the €6, which was nice of them. But I do wish they wouldn't advertise their sites as having WiFi when they do not, so annoying!

Anyway, when we were ready we used the services and headed on. Our first port of call was a Super-U for bread and one or two other things - I ended up buying more cheese than I intended, but we didn't eat it for lunch as I bought leek tarts which we had with salad. We stopped to have this in a little village which rejoice in the name of Pissos! And on the same direction-board, but unfortunately underneath rather than above, a village called Ychoux! It occurred to me that if one did the latter, one might well do the former by mistake.... And the Swan Whisperer said it would go well with Cognac, where we are staying tonight.

As it is Pentecost, I might have found us an English church to join in with, or perhaps we might have headed north via Pau, but it is also our own church's anniversary, and we had a very old friend taking the service, so we decided to watch the YouTube stream instead, which we did before eating. 

When we arrived, we filled the WoMo up with water and then had a cup of tea, before heading out to see what was what. We decided that we were early enough to do a tour at a Cognac factory; we thought at first of going to Martell, which is just across the road from the aire, but the visitor centre was up a very steep hill, and anyway, it was nearly their closing time. So we went to Hennessey instead, just along the road.

It was fabulous! The last tour of the day was about to happen, so we joined that. First of all they take you on a short river cruise, mostly to show off the extent of their domain, but also the one remaining mediaeval city gate, and the Chateau (now a museum). The boat dropped you on the other side of the river, where we were shown a short film outlining the history of the company - the 8th generation of the family are still involved! Then we were shown a graphic of how the wine was made - it is a very acid grape to control the proof of the wine, which must be between 9 and 10.5°. This is because any stronger and it would interfere with the distillation process, which we learnt about next. The first and last litres of the distillate are recycled, I didn't quite gather why. The result is eau de vie, which we were allowed to smell, and it smelt gorgeous. This is then put into barrels to mature for a bare minimum of 2 years, and some of the rarest brandies are there for even a century or more! The barrels are kept in cellars known as "chais", not "caves", and there is some ritual involved when a worker places his first row of barrels, and they get their name inscribed on a barrel which has a bunch of flowers left on it and have to bring in cake.... 

The guide then went into considerable detail about the blending process, and I got a bit lost, but I gather the tasting committee meets every morning at 11:00 am and tastes a good hundred cognacs throughout the day (they do spit it out!) to get the finished product just right. And then we had our own tasting. One was the VS, matured between 2 and 6 years. It was horribly harsh, and would not be my drink of choice! Then we tried the VSOP, matured for a lot longer, which was much nicer on first taste, but still a bit harsh. We then tried it on the rocks, which was lovely, and finally a cocktail known as a Henny-Rita, which was like a margarita only with Cognac. The Swan Whisperer loved it, but I thought it a little too sweet for my taste.

Then, of course, but came the hard sell in the gift shop, but we were immune to such blandishments and came away to eat asparagus, pork chops with pasta and an apple-and-onion mixture, followed by home-made yoghurt with strawberries. The strawberries were a bit tasteless, not a patch on the French Garriguettes, which I'll buy some more of later in the week. Tomorrow is a public holiday, and I don't think most shops will be open.