Anywhere

It varies depending on what part of France you’re in, but where we live French people greet each other with a double kiss. This is always accompanied by an enthusiastic greeting. ‘Ah Bonjour, ça va ?’, ‘Oui bien, et toi ?’, ‘Oui ça va, ça va’. Then a rapid exchange of news often follows. This lovely little process can take quite a while, and will happen almost anywhere, despite the possibility for inconvenience to others.

The other day in Troyes, whilst sitting enjoying a coffee in the sun, we witnessed a typical example of how ingrained this is in the French culture. As we sipped on our Perriers, the lights on the little road that flows out of Troyes centre ville turned green, and a car pulled silently away, but then there was a ‘beep’. Shocked to hear it, as the drivers here rarely resort to the car horn, we looked up to see a couple rush toward the next car in line at the lights, which had obviously beeped to attract their attention. The typical greetings ensued between the driver and the couple through the car window, almost blissfully unaware that they were holding up the cars behind them. After what seemed an uncomfortably long time, the ‘Bonne journées’ were traded, and all the traffic then went on its way without a single beep or cross word. Amazing. It’s those little glimpses into the politeness of French culture that I love.

What a bashing!

I can’t help but to talk about the weather, as it’s just been crazily changeable. The temperatures had been up in the mid 30°s, Brian had gone to check on the pool, and snapped this pic on the way down.

We’d both felt like there was a storm coming, but we’re not quite prepared for the bashing we were about to get!

The heavens just opened, and we were deluged with hail and rain.

At the front of our house is a small river; the ‘Artaut’. It’s normally just a gentle flow, about ankle deep, but this would have come up to my middle. Luckily it didn’t last too much longer, and the rivers rise eventually subsided.

Phew!

Route barrée

Next weekend ‘La tour de France’ will be whizzing between the villages in our local area. It will start and finish in Troyes, so when we visited there yesterday it was lovely to see how they had decorated the streets and open spaces in readiness for the event.

This huge bike and fountain welcomed us on one of the roundabouts as we entered.

The peloton will fly through Landreville, the village next to ours, then it will make two appearances in Loches-sur-Ource, before heading up to Eguilly-sous-Bois. Our decision is where shall we go and watch it. We know that it will actually all happen quite quickly, but I think experiencing the buzz and hype of the event will be what interests me. A number of the villages are organising other activities to support the day, so we will hopefully get to visit one of those as well.

It is certainly a huge focus for the area. Over recent months they have been fixing and resurfacing parts of the route, ensuring things are looking good and that they are as safe for the riders as they can be. We can tell it’s an event that brings a lot of pride out in the villages, and I’m looking forward and excited to see it.

Noyers-sur-Serein

This week we discovered the beautiful old medieval village of Noyer. We visited it with some friends, who had organised a tasting of some local Chablis wines at Bardet & fils on the outskirts of the village. This would be a good start to our day.

Philipe, the proprietor, met us at our car and led us to his cellar. It was a pretty little domaine, which had originally been purchased by Philipe’s father, as just a plot of land. He planted some vines, and began the work of making Chablis. It is now run by Philipe, his brother and his two sons. The cellar, which they had created from scratch, was an excellent place for the tasting, which followed the order of a Bourgogne, petit Chablis, Chablis, Chablis premier cru, Irancy (red) and ended on a Cremant. We were all keen to buy a few bottles, which I know we will enjoy in the months and years ahead.

We then drove into the village for lunch at ‘La Grange’, which was in a really delightful setting. The restaurant is set just off the main route through the town, and situated in a quiet private garden. It was a simple lunch for me of a chilled cucumber and feta soup, then a vegetable risotto, followed by a chocolate brownie for dessert. All rather delicious.

After lunch we had a little wander through the village. It’s full of many interesting little shops, all very creative and arty. Beautiful old buildings line the streets of the village, and on the return there’s a very tranquil walk along the side of the old town wall, along the Serein river.

It made for a beautiful day out, just over an hours drive from us. We will definitely be returning.

Freehand

A few people have been asking how the library is progressing, so here’s a mini update. It has kind of been put on hold until the autumn, as we are focused now on welcoming our Chambre d’hôte guests for the summer period. However, this week Brian found some time between guests, and has made a start on painting the wall. He’s designed a very natural leaf pattern to flow around the room.

He started where the radiator will be, as we didn’t want to leave that part of the wall bare, even though you won’t really see it that much. But we wanted to feel that it was growing from the bottom of the wall.

Having sketched the basic structure of what he wanted to achieve in freehand with chalk, he started by painting the ‘stem’. We’d bought the paints some time ago, so it was easy to set himself up, and get going.

Starting behind where the radiator will be was a good way for Brian to test and develop the look he is after, and it wasn’t long before I could start to see his vision for it.

Can’t wait to see more.

What is it?

You just never know quite how good a ‘vide grenier’ is going to be, but on Sunday morning we were both keen to make an early-ish start to visit the local one at Les Riceys; about a 20 minute drive from us. When we got there it was more like a flea market, with some excellent stalls.

The sun was shining and there was a good variety of bric-a-brac for sale, with a wonderful atmosphere amongst the stall holders, all keen to make a deal.

I think Brian was slightly confused with my first purchase, a galvanised … wait! before I say it, do you know what it is? I want to use it in the garden, as it will make a perfect climbing frame for some nasturtiums.

After a great morning scouring the stalls we came home with a real collection of little items. We are looking for a copy of the 1966 Michelin book, but yet to find one, however we found a pretty good ‘65 copy. The little bellows Brian bought is an advertising prop, such a perfect little item to have on display. All my galvanised containers will be great to use in the garden, and I’m looking forward to finding them a home. I also got a cast iron grill, which I want for the walled garden.

I always need little table cloths, and different cushion covers, and there were plenty to buy. I will enjoy using the ones we purchased after a good wash and iron.

What a superb day with some great finds.

Speedy

I think we’ve mentioned before that the roads we’ve used in France are generally pretty good, and they are very well maintained. I’ve also found that my driving has definitely got slower since moving to France, I think that’s down to how our life here has slowed down. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to go for everyone, as we’ve seen a number of new, armour plated speed cameras popping up.

A good solution you’d think. However not for the French, who protect their freedoms vigorously.

No sooner had these well protected cameras gone up then they were blacked out by spray cans. Anyway, I won’t drive any quicker, however hard they press me.

Sunset

This was the view of the sunset last night from our bedroom window. It was absolutely spectacular and the photo is straight off the camera.

I’m loving this year how the garden slope has developed, with the areas I’ve left to meadow providing an environment for the bees, butterflies and other little critters. We’ve also made some little seating areas which provide us different vistas of the valley and the village.

I’ll do it

I’d been sorting some things out indoors after our guests had departed, and Brian was outside finishing off the storage unit he was building in the laundry room.

I was very pleasantly surprised, when I took some laundry over, to find that he had very nearly finished it.

I thought it was looking great. “Would you like it painted?” he asked. Painting walls or cupboards is not really his thing, so I offered to paint it instead. “I’ll do it“ he exclaimed, “just find me the paint, it will be good to get it finished“

It’s an excellent little job to have completed, and I’m looking forward to getting myself organised once it’s dry.

Excuse me?

This morning we’d nipped into Bar-sur Seine to pick up a few groceries. As I was manoeuvring to park, a white van with a few people seated in the back, started to reverse out of a parking space in front of me. Now it has to be said that generally drivers ignore reversing lights in France and tend to drive right past you. I did the decent thing and held back to let him pull out, but he was not making a great job of it, so I started to reverse to give him a bit more room. For some reason, probably because he was making such a hash of it, he started gesticulating and shouting at me. Not to be intimidated, I simply leaned out of the car window and, in my best English accent, said, “Excuse me?”. He was stunned, and stared blankly at me. I then asked “Do you need help?”. I think this threw him into complete chaos, and he couldn’t quite recover. He looked straight ahead and quietly and calmly drove off.

Sometimes it works in your favour to just be yourself!

Stinky!

We nipped out this morning to collect some bread for our guests dinner tonight. It was nice to make time for coffee in our local cafe, and enjoy a moment to catch up on my blog and social media.

Tonight’s dinner starts with freshly made gougères. All of our chambre d’hôte dinners include local ingredients, and although I use my McDougalls flour tin as storage I have locally produced flour inside.

When serving dinners we like to place a little menu card either in each of the bedrooms or in the hallway, so there’s no surprises and our guests know what they will be eating.

The tomato and courgette tian we’re having tonight is baked in the oven for around 35 minutes, so that the tomatoes sweeten slightly and the courgettes earn themselves little crispy edges.

The cheese board is of local cheeses from Mussy, Chaource, Langres and Epoisse. Epoisse vies for the title of king of cheeses, coming up against the beautiful, salty, blue Roquefort. Epoisse however has a soft richness, that often needs a spoon to serve it. Apparently it’s bad etiquette to call it stinky, so I think strong (fort) is the appropriate term. Either way, for cheese lovers around the world, it is delicious and definitely needs to be tried.

Run piggy run

We nipped out last night for dinner at the little Crêperie in Thieffrain. It’s a delightful little restaurant that serves very tasty crêpes. You start your dinner with a savoury crêpe (or two) and then move on to a sweet crêpe, which could also be flambéed. Brian chose one with Grand Marnier, I stayed simple with lemon and sugar, oh and a little bit of banana. All super delicious.

Driving home we met lots of little creatures on and around the road, deer, hares, foxes, and one ‘particularly’ large boar. Brian got a few distant shots of it as it charged across the field. It’s hard to gauge the size of this particular chap, but we think he was well over a metre tall! I’m always so pleased to see all the little furry creatures, but with this one I was glad we were in our car.

Snug fit

Work resumed on the storage today as our guests had gone to Troyes for the day, so Brian had a few hours to be able to use his noisy power tools.

Progress was good, and I was so pleased with how it was looking. However I did ask for a slight design change, just so I could easily reach across to the garden cushions I wanted to store there.

He wanted the side panel to fit as snug as possible to the wall, so he’d cut the edge to contour with the stones. It’s coming together quickly now.

Maintenance

Brian definitely prefers creative jobs to maintenance tasks, but when a guest had a problem with a sticky door he knew it needed to make it a priority.

So out came his trusty multi-tool, and got on with the job.

The multi-tool is great, because it means that he can work in difficult places without major upset, like taking a door of its hinges for instance.

Minutes later the job was sorted, and our next guests will be able to get to their rooms without having to deal with a sticky door.

Boxed in

In my laundry room there’s a space at the back where the pipes from the boiler room go underground. Since we changed our boiler system we have never really done anything to cover this space up, or use it at all, but the time to sort it out had come.

Brian suggested we box the pipes in, and create some useable storage. He had quite a bit of wood stored, so decided to see if he could do it without buying any.

I wasn’t quite sure when this was all going to happen, so was very happy when he said he’d get started on it, working in between guests leaving and new ones arriving.

He wanted to be able to take the box apart, if at any point we needed to get to the pipes, so he decided to build it in sections, then fit them together in situ.

I am looking forward to seeing what he comes up with.

Pruning

Along with the landscape gardening we’d been doing I also needed to get some pruning done. The gorgeous red rose that grows up the front of the house had already showed us its first flush of colour. If we dead head it, we will definitely get another show of beautiful red blooms, so I got on with that.

However the delicate white rose that climbs up the wall by the steps was struggling to produce any blooms, as I had yet to prune it at all this year, so I focussed on that next. I needed to be quite thorough, getting rid of all the dead wood and any spindly branches

I do love all our different roses, and I’m learning about what they like, and when they like it, more and more every year we are here.

Mildew

When we moved to Champagne we were very aware of the concept of vintage Champagne, or ‘millésimes’ as the French call it. Only made in the best years, and with grapes of only that year, a vintage Champagne represents the art of the winemaker in its purest form. But we didn’t fully understand why there are so few vintage years…until now.

The last few years that we have been here have seen one difficulty or another for the growers. Be it ice, hail, insects, disease, or just plain unruly weather, it seems that a perfect year for the crop is difficult to come by. This year is no exception, with low temperatures and plenty of rain, this years annoyance is mildew, as well as a lack of sun and heat. The tractors have been out almost every week spraying against mildew, and it still keeps raining, so we won’t be holding our breath for a vintage this year.

Sitting comfortably?

One of the other little projects we kind of got sidetracked on is a seating area in the shade of our ash tree by the swimming pool.

Brian had told me there were some stone slabs that had got covered over by grass and weeds near the ash, and he wanted to dig them out. It got me thinking, and I suggested to him that we move one of our benches from the pool to under the tree. He couldn’t quite see the connection between the two jobs, but agreed anyway.

First though he wanted to uncover the slabs.

We soon had the majority lifted, and decided to use a couple to steady the bench, which also needed a few repairs to make it structurally sound.

I have to say I think this is going to be a favourite of ours during those hot summer days.

Great combination

I just don’t know where the days have gone this week. I’ve just seen I haven’t blogged since 12th June, nearly a week ago.

The weather has been very mixed here in Champagne, sunshine and rain, a great combination for the growing garden, but not when I want to cut the grass!

We’ve kind of been making the most of the dry sunny spells, tidying up the borders in the walled garden, and laying some cocoa shells as a mulch. It’s great, as it smells of chocolate, as well as helping retain the moisture in the hotter days.

I’ve also been planting up some of my pots. I’ve tried to chose more drought tolerant plants this year, which is a bit ironic with all the rain.

I know I’ll be glad of the choice in a week or two though.

Metropolitan

After finding our Paris map books at the vide grenier, I thought I’d share some of the pics we took of the Paris metro. Although we never got to use it whilst we were in Paris we never seemed to be far from a station. I couldn’t help but share some of the beautiful art nouveau designs, used across the city for the underground it truly evokes the period of when it was first opened in 1900.