Not their real names of course but, knowing that this blog is so widely read (I think that at the last count I had four regular subscribers), Veronique* and Sebastian* opted to tick the ‘no publicity’ box and I agreed to hide their true identities from an inquisitive world!
Anyway, I’ve known Sebastian* from the age of 14, and although for various reasons we’ve lost contact from time to time, its one of those relationships where one falls straight back into a relaxed friendship notwithstanding the passage of time. Having met up with them several times over the past 18 months they kindly invited us to spend a few days with them in their home in the Bordeaux area in August.
Although the prospect of travelling is a little more daunting these days, the reality seems to be that systems are in place to provide help where its needed; so once again we requested, and received, Special Assistance at both Bristol and Bordeaux airports and even the Sleazyjet flight was painless.
Veronique* and Sebastian’s* lovely home in Salles is both stylish and comfortable, and to say that they made us welcome would be the understatement of the époque. For five days we were chauffeured hither and thither, wined and dined in considerable style and generally treated like visiting royalty. ‘No more than you deserve‘ I hear you say, but frankly it was the most relaxing and enjoyable of experiences and we are both profoundly grateful. Thank you V* and S*, you are true friends.
During our two day stay at the nearby Pen-Guen campsite we’d taken the opportunity to recce the house in nearby St Cast, so we had a good idea of what to expect when we were handed the keys on the Saturday morning. We did a monster ‘Super-U’ shop that morning so all that remained to do was to sit and await the arrival of the family, and by that evening they had all arrived safely and we were firmly ensconced for the week ahead.
La Garde was perfect for a relaxing family holiday and definitely lived up to our expectations: comfortable house with plenty of room, heated pool, large (not particularly well-kept) garden for the children to run around in and a ten-minute walk to the world’s best beach – what more could we have asked for?
Our seven days at La Garde went all too quickly. Frequent trips to the beach, walks into St Cast to collect the morning croissants, lovely meals, a high-pressure game of golf for Richard, Tom and Jennie (well done Jen) and a lot of general lazing around and relaxing. It would be nice to think that we might be able to do the same thing again next year – we’ll see.
Thank you to all the family for helping to celebrate the advent of my eighth decade on planet Earth. I love you all very much.
It would be nice to think that a few days spent in France would be the perfect antidote to all the Brexit crap we’re being fed in UK at the moment. The reality, however, is that if you’re any sort of Europhile all that happens when you spend time in Europe is that you realise just how much our continental cousins have got right and just how dire the UK’s situation is going to be when the umbilical cord is eventually cut. Not that everything in the European garden is completely rosy, and there are undoubtedly many things that the European bureaucrats have got completely wrong, but I have no doubt that five or so years down the line we’re all going to be feeling very sorry for ourselves. Still, that’s what happens when you give peasants and old people the vote. In the meantime I’m sure that I can detect a distinct sense of sympathy in the attitudes of the French people we meet – ah, les pauvre Anglais; ils sont absolutement fou!
For this, our fourth adventure in the ‘van, we decided to go ‘off piste’ and, apart from our first stop at the outset of our journey, we decided not to book campsites in advance. To be fair we’re not taking too much of a risk as we’re right at the end of the holiday season and, apart from the Dutch, who seem to be perpetually on the road, most holidaymakers have returned home and there’s more chance of sites being closed than packed-out.
Looking across the Loire towards Saumur with its imposing fortress
Our first stop was at Saumur in the Loire Valley, home of the French cavalry school and the country’s biggest producer of mushrooms – there has to be a connection there somewhere. We picked a campsite on the Ille d’Offard , which is both in the centre of the town and on an island in the middle of the Loire. It’s a lovely location and within easy cycling distance of the chateau, which is Saumur’s main tourist attraction, and in reality is more of a fortress than a palace. Constructed initially by ‘Charles the Bald’ (the French certainly know how to call a spade a shovel) around the turn of the first millennium, over the next eight hundred years it had a busy and frequently violent history, ending up as a prison for Napoleon’s political opponents. Bizarrely, in the middle of our guided tour we were greeted by Jeanna Ind, a member of the Glavon chapter of the TR Register and someone we know quite well. What are the chances of bumping into an acquaintance like that completely out of the blue when far from home?
Would you believe it? Jeanna, Denise and our guide who obviously thought that the faster she spoke the better the tour. Wrong!
Today we’d planned to take in the Chateau du Rivau, but in the end we instead visited Chinon and enjoyed a walk around its well-preserved medieval streets followed by a visit to the town’s fortress which, like Saumur, has been partially reconstructed and is well worth a couple of hours spent wandering about. After a misty start to the day the skies cleared around midday and the sun shone and I spent some time cogitating about how things would have been very different if some of our medieval Kings of England hadn’t so carelessly lost our possessions in France; and that brought me back to Brexit all over again. Bugger!
Working on that age-old (and probably deeply flawed) principle that lightning seldom strikes in the same place twice, and having replaced the Stag’s steering rack after it let us down at Laon earlier in the year, we decided to chance our luck once again and set off confidently for the Le Mans Classic along with the majority of Gloucester TSSC members.
Preparing for our own ‘Le Mans’ start as we exit the Le Havre Ferry Port – any resemblance to a convoy is purely coincidental
As it turned out the car behaved impeccably from start to finish and thanks to the perfect weather, great classic racing and some very sociable company we were treated to a memorable and very enjoyable long weekend in La Belle France – just don’t get me started on Brexit again!
The real thing! The start of the first race for Vintage cars – Talbots, Bentleys, Bugattis, you name it and it was racing.
….holiday blogs, motoring obsessions and an occasional account of goings-on in the Ewbank household
