Last August seems a long time ago

The Thursday night ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo was it's usual busy self with lots of family and school groups creating a great buzz. Although delayed in departing it was an on time disembarkation in France that meant we had cleared the Border Control and were free of the port by 08.50 on Friday morning.
We made good time on surprisingly busy roads and were sat down at the kitchen table of No 8 rue de Nantilly by 12.30.

We weren't 100% sure of what business would be open over the Easter Weekend so we did some basic menu planning and made sure that we had sufficient supplies should we want to stay put. This took us to our local shopping district and our first discovery of the trip. Our lovely "new" Ecofrais supermarche from last year has undergone a re-branding; it is now a "U Express". Ecofrais and U Express are all part of the same brand family (Hyper U, Super U, etc) that was adopted by Co-op Atlantique when it moved away from the "Carrefour" association last year. Ecofrais boasted about its "local, sustainable, organic" qualities. U Express - hard to say??? I'd hazard a guess at "convenience" coupled with own brands - but the problem with the idea of convenience is that they have carried over the customer service style of Ecofrais of never having anyone at the checkout until a queue of four has built and someone goes looking for an assistant.

Also in the centre is a new shop selling nice, but mostly pointless, stuff to adorn one's house. As the picture shows it has taken the unit between Toto Pizza and the Florist. What is just out of the picture is that the two units to the right of the florist are also being fitted out. Perhaps by summer we will know what they will be.

The second discovery of the trip is that house building is popping up in every conceivable corner of Marsilly. It clearly has become a place for the local Charentais to live when they need to be handy for La Rochelle but don't want to pay the higher prices in the Communes closer to la ville.

On Saturday we made a point of going in to La Rochelle and today we wandered out ot visit Fouras and Chatelaillion-Plage just to remind ourselves what lovely spots they are. Typically, we have not yet adjusted to the rhythm of life here so were bowled up just after the markets had closed and during the lunchtime closure of everything, except places serving lunch. By the time we thought about lunch (in ChP) - the out of season lunch places had all closed. Still we wont't fade away.