Here's a brief diary and some photos from a lovely week:
Saturday
Stewarts travel to Edinburgh with Grigors. Pint at Wetherspoon's
with meal - very busy. Turbo prop plane to Bergerac - pick up hire cars - our
Fiat 500 was small but stylish.
Sat Nav helpful but
followed Malcolm and Susan from airport, stopping to pick up some liquor. Gail
had prepared a magnificent full dinner for us. Richard unwell but house
beautiful - any one of 6 remaining rooms would do.
Keith and Annette arrive from their Ryanair flight to Bordeaux an
hour or so later and Archie and Eileen half an hour after that. Tons of food washed down with gallons of alcohol then finally to bed in the early hours.
Sunday
Early morning pool cleaning instructions from Richard:
Trip to supermarket
in Excideuil then tourist thing at Hautefort, but lunch first at the modest Chez Cathy - 3 course Plat du Jour for €13:
5 of us went on the chateau tour:
There was a classic car display outside, including this Aston Martin:
Another huge Gail dinner in the
evening with BBQ prawns by Richard, but, before that we were introduced to neighbour and house minder AnnaLise over drinks. Gail and Richard displayed their "awards" for best patissieres at a local event:
Monday
Richard and Gail leave late morning after which the rest of us drive to Perigeux. Nice lunch in
square then walk round city then tourist office followed by mini train tour:
Dinner back at the house and first night without Gail preparing everything, but we could still set a nice table - and we had honed our BBQ skills:
It didn't go quite so smoothly when clearing up after dinner, but it turned out alright in the end, despite Annette's fears:
Tuesday
The plan was to try
Velorail at Corgnac but it was too early in season so we did a walking tour of
Thiviers instead, trying in vain to follow the map provided by the Tourist Office. This was definitiely the chateau however:
We then drove to gorgeous St Jean de Cole for a two
and a half hour lunch followed by a short walk round the medieval village:
The wine stocks were building up now and the cumulative effect was plain to see on some of our group when we watched TV:
Wednesday
Each day was hotter than the previous one and we were now hitting over 30 C, but the Grays and Stewarts walked to Dussac and tried to loop back a different
way - failed but got a good 10 km in:
Pool beckoned then we all watched Andy Murray's
Qtr Final.
Thursday
Morning market at Excideuil.
Keith and Annette cooking tonight. Lazy afternoon snoozing and pooling. Jo
suffering. Very little sleep - way too hot upstairs and none of us could figure out how to get the A/C working properly.
Friday
Figured out A/C at last. Intended to be canoeing
at Brantome but Jo unwell and Malcolm still hobbling so abandoned. 3 girls went
shopping and had a coffee and a cake whilst Archie and Malcolm had lunch in
Lanouaille and Keith and I joined them for a beer - under instructions from Jo
to get wi-fi for her iPad and Kindle. The plans to have dinner at the Auberge were also binned and we self catered again. Here's where we might have been:
Nobody wanted to miss
Andy's semi-final match anyway. Line judge Annette vociferous and racist overtones abounded.
Saturday
The house "pet" pine marten returned to the roof/wall space in our room, so our sleep was a little disturbed again. Pool well
used in morning until the rest of Andy's match after which we all headed to our respective airports, lining up for one final team photo before we left:
Great holiday - and for a good cause. Many thanks to Richard and Gail.
No comments:
Post a Comment