Across the Channel

At the Eurotunnel terminal I find it strange to hear so many English voices, automatically saying oui, s’il vous plait and merci. The attendant on the train speaks to us in French, switching to English when she overhears our conversation – I realise she’s presumed us French because of the car. The border guard asks: […]

Au Revoir France

France has been good to us. It’s presented us with beautiful days, albeit some hotter than we’d like, it’s provided amazing sights for our eyes, gorgeous food for our bellies. We’ve seen nothing more than a few drops of rain; we’ve exercised our bodies with its paths and cycleways and our minds with its chateaux, […]

Cathedrals and Canyons

We arrive to stay with friends in Caplongue, a tiny village near the slightly larger village of Arvieu, both in the lovely Aveyron département of France, as the heat rises. It’s in the middle of farming country, not on the large scale we saw nearer Paris, but greener with tree lined fields and animals, especially […]

Menu Du Jour

These blog posts are like buses – none for ages and then a few together! Unless you’re waiting for a bus in Wellington, that is, when you wait for ages then… nothing. Petit Dejeuner – Saint-Cirq-Lapopie Another day, another incredibly pretty narrow-streeted village clinging impossibly to a hillside. There are strict rules around what you […]

In the Dordogne

Walking in the Dordogne is not as easy as we’d thought. There are many distractions and detour options – cafes, ancient monuments, more chateaux – it is hotter than we could have imagined, and the route is not always obvious. We expected heat but France is experiencing a particularly good summer – fine if we […]

Lascaux

A place as special as this deserves its own post. When we planned our trip and decided to do some walking in le Dordogne I was sold on this itinerary because on one day we would walk past Lascaux IV, the replica of the most sophisticated prehistoric art ever found. I first read about it […]

Recueillez-vous

In 1944 on 10th June, the tiny village of Oradour-sur-Glane was destroyed by the Nazis and its inhabitants, all 642 of them, massacred. No specific reason is known. General de Gaulle decreed that the village should remain as it was at the end of that day in order to bear witness for the rest of […]

Lost In France

The words of Bonnie Tyler are ringing around my head: I’m lost in France. It was an inauspicious start – we thought Heathrow was the worst airport in the world but, arriving at Charles de Gaulle, we may have to revise our opinion. The queue for passport control stretches practically to Heathrow. Fortunately we remember […]