Sunday afternoon in St Antonin

After another morning at the glorious market under an overcast sky, I went for a walk around the village with my camera. Myles and Elspeth had taken off for a walk about half an hour earlier with Alice. I bumped into them as I turned a corner.

I took more photos of lanes and houses where people have taken care to put flowers where they can - being a shortage of dirt in which to plant.

I thought this just might be a project for Kevin's Grand Designs. There must be some rules about demolishing houses here - they must be protected and would cost an absolute fortune to rebuild and renovate. I came across a little shop that makes what I thought were plaster and the shop lady said were resin moulds of angels and curlicues and things to put on the house walls. I couldnt work it out as she didnt speak English until she showed me that she had just spray painted one - I thought it was really dull until I realised she had coloured it the colour of stone to hang it on the walls. A bit tacky. But it would have looked like stone in the colour she made it. I thought of seeing if I could get her to colour a small one in terracotta for my courtyard renovations where I would not be pretending that it is 12th century.

Today is the last day the rest of the family will be here. They all take off for Andora tomorrow - for Richard to fish in the Pyrenees, for Thomas to perhaps see snow or his only chance to do so. A lady in a shop Elspeth was talking to said there was snow on the mountains last week so he is hopeful, although I have been trying to tell him it is not guaranteed.

Elspeth is busy packing their clothes at the moment and trying to reduce her luggage again, having posted 2 boxes home. More when I am solo. Wendy and her mother, Lyn and Angela arrive on Friday evening at about 7 pm. The others are driving from Andora directly to Toulouse airport so I hope the meet goes OK with swapping car keys and the GPS. Their flight leaves at 6.05 and the others arrive at 5.15 all being well. There is a back up plan as to the keys being left with INFORMATION if they will permit. I have emailed Wendy a photo of the car and she has the rego details. We all just have to cross our fingers that it works.

The village of Cordes-sur-ciel

This is an amazing place, so high and so steep that it is difficult to walk around. Firstly you park your car at the bottom of the hill and catch a train (little motor vehicle pulling carriages decked out like a train) up to the top. It is a bastide which is a walled town built during the 12th and 13th centuries to keep out the warring factions - alternately the crusaders sent by the Pope to oust the Cathars and later the English and so on in the hundred years war. It is now mainly a tourist precinct with lots of restaurants and outlets for the various craftspersons - jewellery, leatherwork, wood work, art and even a special knife maker. I bought a small pocket knife which I must remember not to keep in my hand luggage.

You have an amazing view of the beautiful countryside from the walls at the edge of the town. I took photos but they dont really show the depth of distance etc.

Sorry I didnt get all the photos on here I wanted to and some got doubled up. I like the one of the lads mending the wall. I wonder how many times that has been done over the years. The photos do not do justice to this place. I will go back again with Lyn et al and maybe I can do better when not struggling up and down the cobblestones with the children.

Nan is into extreme sports says Uncle Richard

For those hanging out for the photos of Cordes-sur-ciel, you will have to wait another day. I have attempted to put them on this blog 3 times and each time they keep slipping back to their position ie sideways as that is how I took them. I will keep working on it and when I get the time will put them on.

However, today, Richard and I went not quite white water rafting - but canoeing down the Aveyron River for 10 km. We went through 8 weirs and water falls - it was amazing. Got thoroughly soaked and I cant wait to do it again with Wendy when she gets here, I know she will be up for it.

You pay 30 euro and tell the man how long you anticipate you will take and he comes down in a van to meet you and bring you back. You can only canoe one way as once you are over the first weir there is no going back. It was great!

We opted for 3 hours but it actually only took us 2.5. We then were collected at the same time as the previous couple who took off before us. When I go with Wendy I will say 3.5 hours and take a picnic. It is so beautiful. It is extremely isolated, the variety of trees, birds, fish and the water was just wonderful. We even saw a little deer by the waters edge. Richard took his fishing gear but was happy to just keep meandering downstream. The river runs between huge overhanging limestone cliffs at times and at other times just forest either side. I do have photos but not of the really spectacular stuff as you are given a barrel that is waterproof to put your camera and so forth in and it is difficult to get it out to use except when the water is quiet and calm and you feel confident you wont turn over the canoe in retrieving it.

The first weir you come to you have to tackle down a water race which is unbelievably good fun. Scary but fun. You are told how to tackle each weir, ie to the left the right or the middle before you take off and you are given a map. This one was on the extreme left and it was about 2 inches wider than the canoe and at a 45 degree angle. You sped down in about one second and hit the bottom, become submerged because of the height coming from and emerge dripping wet but exhilerated. The rest were not so dramatic.

This is a photo of Richard that I managed to take over my right shoulder in a split second and it turned out remarkably well. I was in the front of the double canoe and he was obviously behind me.

I will now try again with the scenery.

The village of St Antonin Noble Val

Here is a photo of our house at 1 Place de la Jougario

And this is the view of the village from the bridge. Our house is one little lane back from the river and near to the church - the spire you can see.

And this is another view of the village from across the river

And this is a typical lane - the village is a myriad of them

And this one is of the market lane an hour or so after the market finished and was cleared away.

Belmont Market eat your heart out

Sunday in St Antonin Noble Val is market day and what a market.  I dragged the others out of bed, telling them we had to go early, that it closed at 12.00 given that it is sometimes frustratingly difficult to get them all to move before about noon.  Myles, Elspeth and the children were finally ready by about 8.30 and we wandered about 100 m down the lane to the beginning of the market.  It went on and on and all through the market square, down the lane to the main shopping street and beyond into a car park and just kept on going.  Every type of food you could imagine, fruit, vegetables, meats, cheeses, wines, cakes, breads, jams plus clothes, bags, jewellery, pottery and even a stall selling tagines which I admit I fell in love with and knowing I cannot carry it home bought one to use here in the next 4 weeks.  And yes, that is my thumb in the top left hand corner.

The unglazed ones were 8 euro and the glazed 15.  I bought the glazed one in the middle.

I left Myles to buy the charcuterie and he got a bit lost in the translation and ended up with something he didnt want, so later when he went back to the house to tell Richard to join us, Richard was able to negotiate something that looks disgusting on the outside but inviting inside.  I trust it will taste good with the kilo of white asparagus that I bought for 3 euro.  We had a meal at a Basque restaurant the night we arrived to celebrate Richard's birthday and our first course was asparagus with something like parma ham.  I am hoping to recreate that as it was fantastic.  Our next course was lamb chops from de quercy (nearby region) which were the best lamb chops I have ever tasted.  I was anxious that it might turn out to be lambs brains and very grateful when the plates arrived.

These photos are taken in the market square.  I also bought goats cheese, duck breasts, a chicken piece to make soup, vegetables and cherries for 2.50 euros for the kilo.  Again, just the best cherries I have ever tasted.  I should never have eaten breakfast before I went down. There were croissants and breads and pastries and crepes and on and on and on.  A stall was selling coffee, another escargot and so much duck everywhere as this is the region - foie gras in jars, tins, packets.  Also confit.  I will buy some of that next week.  I bought some foie gras from the supermarket on the day we arrived as we were all starving and called in on the way to the house.  Added milk for baby and bread and butter.  It was bliss.  The foie gras cost .71 and that is about $1 which was enough for us all to slather on bread and some left over.

We are having roast chicken for dinner tonight - wrapped in bacon (having bought those yesterday) with potatoes, parsnips and carrots roasted with it.  Still havent found any pumpkin which I am hanging out for.  I also bought some beetroot that I will roast with garlic in foil at the same time.  I bought peas in their pods  thinking that Thomas may enjoy the experience of shelling them with me.  I think the last time I did that was about 50 years ago.  I also bought flat beans, as opposed to haricot verte the ones we get we call french beans.  Also some broad beans.  I dont know how long it will take us to work our way through all of this but we will give it a good try.  I made a huge pot of pasta with a sauce made from traditional sausage for dinner last night thinking the children can eat the left overs throughout the week while we eat something they may not enjoy.  They loved it and have had it again this morning both for breakfast and also Tom, for lunch.  Not much left.  I made french onion soup yesterday for lunch and it was a perfect day for it as it rained all day.  That is why I have not yet taken any photos of the village as it was too wet yesterday to get my camera out. I will go for a walk later and take some of the incredible lanes, buildings, bridge, roc d'angler etc.

The house is great - set on 3 floors with big rooms.  Myles, Elspeth and Richard are on the top floor, with the bathroom and toilet. I am on the middle floor with the children, the kitchen and living area and the bottom floor is a big garage which the boys and Alice play soccer in. It has another toilet and the laundry facilities.

The house is well equipped but I think the laundry lady hasnt returned all the bed linen and towels that are supposed to be here.  Lots of beds and doonas and pillows and only just enough sheets and a towel each when there is supposed to be a lot more.  I got an email from the owner saying that the hot water system was being replaced and it should have been done before we got here.  It wasnt, but the old one still works.  The man came yesterday and spent hours and hours getting it installed and ran out of both time and patience to connect it.  He said he would be back during the week some time.  He had real problems drilling through the basement roof to the kitchen floor - he had a drill about 45 cm long and it was not doing the job.  The walls are all well over a foot thick.  Anyway it was amusing to hear him swear in English although he only spoke French.  It was a new turn on the phrase "excuse my french".

There is no garden, but a climbing rose up and over the front door as a lot of houses have.  Also two window boxes that were bare.  I have planted some basil, thyme and coriander in them as I will be here long enough to enjoy them.

One last walk around the neighbourhood...

We are off to St Antonin Noble Val tomorrow morning and so I took one last walk around the neighbourhood to incorporate lunch.  I thought I ordered a beef crust (which I thought was a pie) with sauted pomme de terre but I ended up with something much nicer - a shishkabab of fillet steak interspersed with red, green and yellow capsicums with the potatoes and salad.

There are many florest shops around and this one particularly took my fancy.

I was also rather taken by this decoration in a restaurant window of three fish carved from wood.

On the walk back to the apartment I took a different view of the Basillica.

And here is one of our apartment taken from half way down the first set of steps up to the Sacre Coeur. We are on the third floor above the cafe called "No Problemo".  We havent tried it, but it sounds very cheery and chatty in the evenings as well as at lunch time.  Myles did venture into it on Sunday night looking for some milk for the baby's bottle and it was freely given.  I went shopping on Sunday morning and found all the supermarkets were closed and although I was able to buy food for dinner at specialty stores in the market area (some sort of spicy sausage that I made into a pasta sauce with pasta shells) I couldnt find just milk anywhere - many different types of yoghurt, creme fraiche, cheeses all milk products but not just  milk.  We then discovered that Monday was a public holiday for VE day but the locals clearly were not too interested as everything was open.

I have been very taken with the tiles on the apartment building opposite us and have taken a few photos of them. This was taken at the same place as the one of our apartment.

I had better turn my hand now to packing for the morning pick up by our taxi man who will come to the apartment and carry out bags down to drive us to Orly airport from where we fly to Toulouse and pick up the car.  Next post will be from St Antonin.

Paris on Wednesday

Alice is asleep, Myles and Richard have gone off to have a moules dejeuner and then the Pompidour. Elspeth has taken Thomas to Disney Studio, having been to Disney World on Sunday. Frankly I don't understand the attraction, but that is just me.

The children have been picking up some French. Tom is very keen to say merci whenever appropriate in a shop or cafe etc.  They both say Bonjour grandmere to me in the mornings which is delightful. We all say the French words we know about whatever we are doing and they repeat them.  Tom keeps count of how many words he now knows.

What a shock this morning when we (Alice, Thomas and me) walked to our local boulangerie which opens at 7.30 to purchase our croissants, and it was closed!  Tragedy! Thomas immediately threw a tantrum and sat on the footpath.  It was obviously a known fact that it would be closed on Wednesdays because there was no quieu as there has been every other day.  I managed to placate him by promising banana pancakes for breakfast instead.  I remembered we had one egg left, certainly some flour of whatever type it might be and some bananas.  They went down well and Alice enjoyed them also.

I dont recall if I mentioned the flour story - not knowing whether the package was SR or Plain, but yesterday I was in the super marche and an Indian man asked me about the milk, if it was the type of milk to have in tea.  It was.  I asked him if he knew about the flour.  We both went and examined the many and varied options we had and finally he pointed to the one that made chappattis.  Not a lot of help really.

I have not been all that well - sore throat, cold sores, billious attack etc etc but seem to have recovered today.  Richard gallantly brought me back to the apartment yesterday across Paris and two changes of Metro when I couldnt decide if I wanted to faint or vomit.  Fortunately I did neither and spent the next 18 hours in bed and have as I say recovered.  I think the amount of butter in everything is getting to me - and I love butter!

The worst thing about being ill last night is that I missed out on Richards lapin stew.  It smelled good and the children loved it, I could hear them all laughing at the way both of them were sucking the bones clean.
Thomas and I climbed the steps the the Basillica on Monday - everyone else having done so earlier.  He got annoyed that I needed to stop and rest between several of the flights.  Elspeth ran up and down them yesterday 11 times for exercise!

This was taken still a way from the top but I couldnt get it in the frame any closer.

Tom didnt want to go into the church saying he didnt believe in churches.  I told him that as we had climbed all the way up, it was appropriate that we went inside and sat quietly for a few minutes to have a look.  I told him he needed to be respectful of others views and he was.  He asked about the candles and I explained what they were for.  I was waiting for him to ask me to light a candle for Edward but he didnt and I didnt raise it with him but in retrospect I should have as he talked about Edward incessantly the rest of the day.

On the way down we took photos of each other at the fountain.

Ah Paris...

The trip on the eurostar went smoothly, we all met as arranged and were met at this end, again as arranged by a lovely young man who not only loaded us and all our gear into his mini van but unloaded us and helped get it all upstairs to our apartment.  We were met by Karina, also as arranged at the fabulous apartment with fresh flowers, bottle of wine and large bag of croissants and brioche.  Wow, the apartment is amazing with views to die for from all windows.  Sacre Coeur is truly next door.  We are on the third floor with one of those tiny French lifts that are big enough for 2 people or 2 suitcases but not both.  We have 3 large bedrooms - 2 bathrooms and an incredibly well equipped kitchen.

We had not booked a seat for Alice on the train as at that stage were unsure if Richard was joining us or not, so decided to book for Richard and if he couldnt come, it would be Alice's seat.  So that left Alice without one.  As it turned out there were spare in the carriage, but upon arriving at the train, Alice realised she had been the bunny who missed out and pushed her mother determindly out of hers to occupy it. She immediately grabbed for the magazine in the seat pocket and began browsing to show that she was very comfortable being in the right place.

The view from my bedroom window.
Richard cooked us atlantic salmon on a bed of mash with asparagus beautifully presented and gratefully eaten by all after a lovely array of cheeses and crisp bread as an entre. Thomas wanted to know what was for dessert and was most dissappointed to know there wasnt one.  I am cooking a peach cafloutis tonight for dessert to be eaten after a risotto.  Exploring the local supermarket was interesting, trying to find the items and then trying to decipher whether the flour was plain or self raising - the packets appear to refer to the type of wheat grain and where it is grown and I couldnt see any reference to a raising agent on all the many and varied coloured packets.  As I wanted plain flour, it probably doesnt matter what I got.  I found out when I got to the till that I should have weighed my own loose veg but as the only such item I had was an endive to add to the lambs lettuce salad with cherry tomatoes and avocardo I let it go and we will be endive less.  I couldn't find a cucumber for love or money but did find the packets of cooked beetroot that Sue told me about.

Westminister Abbey post Wills and Kate

I met up with Wendy to explore the abbey - me to complete the historical exploration I started in 1982 with Janie, and Wendy to view the flowers that remained from the wedding last week.  What a shock. Firstly the last time I was there I was among about 10 people visiting that day - today there were about 10,000.  I should have realised. The second shock was the cost of 16 pounds to get in, I am sure it was free last time and thirdly there was a total ban on photographs.  So instead of any photos of various memorials to kings and queens, I have some other old rocks that were lovely that  I found at Greenwich as fill around a pylon holding up the Millennium Dome.

After the abbey, Wendy and I took a Thames Clipper to Greenwich and onto O2 where I took the above photo plus some other interesting structures including a sculpture that stands in the river and looks like mobile phone aerials but in fact it is lengths of square steel soldered together.

Wendy who was having the day off, spent much of it on her work mobile phone responding to crises about logistics relating to various film premiers her employer was responsible for.

Here she is, clutching one of my bags containing a kilo of Mondo Nougat from home that I brought her for her birthday yesterday. I hope it partly made up for me stuffing up arrangements she had made for us to go to the ballet on Wednesday evening.  Due to communication problems (partly my phone and partly my interpretation of arrangements made weeks ago by email) I didn't meet her as arranged thinking it was Thursday night and not Wednesday.

I am looking forward to meeting up with the children Friday to travel to Paris.  Each day I have phoned Myles and Elspeth when they have been breakfasting.  When Elspeth answers and says Hello Margaret, I can hear them in the background crying out, Nanny, Nanny etc.  I have to speak to each in turn before they will stop. Elspeth commented this morning that it must be good to have a fan club.  Alice's language has developed much since I saw her 3 weeks ago and we will have to add some French to that over the next 3 weeks.

Arrived safely in London and living in a brothel?

Richard and I arrived safely after an uneventful flight.  I sat next to a muslim family who were all reading newspapers in arabic with photos of Bin Laden on every page.  I didn't use that as a conversation starter.

As for the brothel - well, having deposited our luggage in what appears to be a modest little hotel 300 metres or so from Kings Cross/St Pancras, we took the underground to the Embankment and walked to the Tate Brittain on a lovely crisp sunny spring day. Having explored the William Blake paintings Richard wanted to see, my dodgy leg was a bit stressed and so we grabbed a cab to bring us back to the hotel for a rest.  The cabbie told us that all of the litte hotels in Argyle Square less than 20 years ago were brothels.  He said he knew this because his neighbour had inherited one from some distant relative and when he inspected it, was totally shocked and spent some time getting the neighbourhood residents to petition against such use and was ultimately successful.  The brothels he said moved to Battersea.  The rooms are advertised as cheap, small and close to the railway stations. They are that.   Small boxes containing a bed, shower/toilet cubicle and have a breakfast room in the basement.  I can see it suiting the previous use very well, not that I have ever explored one of those establishments.   When we first arrived at about 7 am, I enquired where we might get some breakfast as the only food outlet we saw in our walk from the station was Macdonalds.  The receptionist told us to just use the hotel breakfast room and we went down the stairs to do so but it was full of young blond scandavian girls with no room for us. Richard caused a bit of a titter, being the only male, and later when we heard the above jokingly wondered if it was still part of a sex trafficking outfit.

Here is Richard on the Embankment decyphering the obelisque clutching a bag of blueberries that he bought from the fruiterer at Temple station (memories - Joan and Judy and I bought fruit there in 2007)

I promised more about Elspeth's marathon.  Well, I can report that she completed it, ran all the way.  She took longer than expected because being number 48,000 and then some, she found it very difficult to get through the pack to get going.  However 5 hours and 5 minutes sounds an awful long time to be running.  Elspeth was exhilerated by her successful completion and not too concerned about the time.

I am looking forward to catching up with Thomas and Alice on Friday morning, and their parents as well.  Today I am supposed to be meeting up with Wendy and going to a Black Ballet in the evening.  We are having communication problems, I can text her but not phone. She can neither text nor phone me.  I received an email too late asking me to meet her at 6.30 last evening, so I texted my apologies, I havent had a return email as yet....     Richard is meeting up with a mate from school, Trent who has been living in London for many years and is working as a stock broker. It will be interesting to see if they still have anything in common.