Les Flots at Chatelaillon-Plage

On our way to play golf at La Jarne (just extended from six to nine holes and renamed Golf La Rochelle du Sud) we visited Chatelaillon-Plage the other day for a walk along the front and to have lunch at Les Flots.

This picture is from last summer and shows the "conservatory - extension" that seemed to indicate it was thriving. Well now its is gone and in its place is a building site on which a major expansion of the hotel side of the business is being built. The new building is way bigger than the current one and it will be interesting see it when it is finished.
Cheers P

More O'Reilly musings

Well what’s been happening in Marsilly for the past few days, I know you are sitting on the edge of your seats waiting to hear so here goes.

My first thoughts are spinach, I know how you might ask does spinach appear so definitely in my thoughts. Suffice to say that this is quickly becoming the spinach holiday. I have had it three times with meals over the past week that equates to about the same number of times I have eaten it so far in my lifetime. Somehow yer man has got it onto his shopping list and clearly forgets to cross it out when he has purchased it so it appears again and again.

Who took out the plug?

Monday was a lovely day out as we tootled around the coast and little towns that make up the extreme south of the Vendee area. Driving cross country to Jard Sur Mer we never got above sea level and when there has been as much rain as the past 6 months many of the drainage channels and ditches are full. After a long, well ok longish, walk along the harbour wall yer man needed a wee (age) and we headed to the only place in town open, which also happen to be serving up the classic French dish of, hold your horses, guess, yup, pizza. So how could we resist.The restaurant also had further evidence that French children don’t know how to behave in restaurants. They cried, they screamed, they ran up and down the place, they wouldn’t eat their food – all good stuff for my first book “French Why Can’t We Be More Like Them”

We also spotted an amazing job being done both in Jard and later in La Tranche Sur Mer in that we saw a man, or in some cases two men sweeping sand off the roads. Now you might at first sight think, oh wow how industrious - a real social service. However, visualise the job, it is taking place on a pathways which runs alongside a beach, on a very windy day. Correct me if I am wrong but sand is not actually going to stay stuck on a beach when it’s windy, so the upside of securing this job you know you’ll be employed for life; the downside is that you just might never move from that same spot.

Tuesday has seen a highlight of our holiday, yer man has achieved fame in the local boulangerie - Yup that’s right - somehow they spotted he was English, no idea how but there you go. And he was asked “comment dites-vous 'et vous ceci' en angalis” At first he kept saying "non merci c'est tous" until his poor brain heard the comment dites-vous bit. This all means that the checkout time for him going through the till has increased to the extent that he is now managing to build up quite a tidy little queue behind him as he coppers up, speaks his French, the girls ask him to say a phrase in English and then with smiles and au revoir and bon journee all round, everyone is happy.

Let's get this sand swept up before the next blow of the wind

O'Reilly réflexions du dimanche matin

It’s hard to appreciate it but we’ve been here over a week and I wonder what have we actually done?

Yeah ok, I have hovered downstairs and upstairs as well as dusting around and we’ve cleaned the bathroom, oh what exciting lives we live. I brought very little actual work with me as I was lucky enough to action most of it before I left as well as leaving a number of tasks to the team – they made the mistake of saying “no” when I asked if had they much on their plate to work on!

However I do “have to read” the 10 books that are on the Independent Bookshop Book of the Year as the judging lunch is the day after I get back. Lunch; yup we make the decision of the best book over lunch, that’s what really swung it for me when asked.

So the piles of books are placed on the shelf above the fire and off I read. A week in with seven down and now I have just three left. So far it has been immensely enjoyable which is just as well as I have said yes to being a judge for another award and that involves 40/50 books. I felt the need to repeat the 5 weeks in the summer we did last year as time is needed to read that many books.

It’s now Sunday morning and there’s a storm brewing, weather wise I mean. The wind and rain is very strong so I am proposing to yer man that it’s soup (which I am making) and then an afternoon by the fire. However, the most exciting thing that’s happened this morning, is that someone else has parked outside our house… yes I know outside OUR HOUSE. This is just like being at work when I leave to do school deliveries and someone else parks outside the bookshop in my parking space. At the bookshop we put up signs saying no parking, and though it makes no difference, but I am not sure we can actually do that on a public road in France… I’ll put it to yer man and see what he says. Himself was off buying food for dinner, firelighters and a pain au raisin as a treat for us this morning and had to take the car because it was raining.

I did text him to say someone had parked OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE but he had his phone on silent so he didn’t know until he swung back around to park! 

The phone was on silent because, I think, he was out of the house and thought to himself phew a break from yer one and her requests of “let’s move this” or “let’s clean that”.

WHY US?

The most exciting thing of yesterday was that we bought a new pole to open our new Velux windows and a new toilet seat – how good does it get, I ask?We needed a new toilet seat because the guy who was fitting the Velux windows either stood on the seat to reach the window, or else he thought he’d piss from a height. Whatever it is not the toilet seat we left here in August and dos not fit properly. Now that’s a mystery that we’ve been unable to get to the bottom of (excuse the pun) but there you are and currently the gnomes are taking the blame.

The new Velux windows look good, there’s no more rain dripping into the third bedroom however, say if I am wrong here; you ask for the job to be done, it’s spec-ed up and all looks good. We turn up and what do we find, he didn’t think it was worth including a pole to open the bloody things! What did he think we were, 10 foot giants, I mean did it not cross his mind that one of the thing we just might want to do is open the windows. So whilst we were shopping for the toilet seat in our favourite shop in the whole world (Leroy Merlin  cf B&Q), we spotted they also sold Velux windows and thought, would they, would they just maybe, sell the poles to reach up and open them. They did and because we knew the price of what they were in England (doesn’t everyone) we thought we’d check the price before buying, just in case there’s the slimmest chance that they are more expensive in France – as if.  We wanted to know the price in particular  since we’d only found the telescopic version, whereas we wanted the normal version, we are not the smallest people in the world. A simple task you’d have thought but took three members of staff and you’ve got to ask how come there’s 15% unemployment here?
First up it took two guys to scan the bar code and read it, or not in this case, on the computer. After a couple of attempts and blank faces one of the guys took us to another till point where a third guy got involved. In the middle of all this I helped a small woman lift a huge plank of MDF from the top of an enormous pile of wood – all without exchanging a word (that’s female solidarity for you)

Whilst my back was turned helping the little woman, himself managed to somehow ditch the telescopic pole and have in his hands a normal pole. I only had my back turned for a minute and I say wow how did that happen and he said he didn’t know, they third guy just gave him the smaller version. So it might take three of them to sort us out but they are telepathic – whose says French workers are not the real deal. So as the tale goes, all’s well that ends well though we still didn’t know the price.

And we did more, yup once you are on a roll why stop. We decided we head out for lunch, over to l’Aubrecay which is a little enclave about a mile away so we cycled. There are lots of pluses to cycling there including the fact that you can have a glass of wine. The restaurant is on a roundabout with about 30 houses backing onto it, we have already had reports from Michael and Ann that it was great and so thought we’d check it out and are delighted to confirm that it lived up to all our expectations. By not being in London this Saturday morning himself missed his French class so it was great to get a bit of chat with the Madame of l’Aubrecay which included her telling him that it is a long time since she spoke English. I was in such relaxed and chill form that I choose not to have anything vegetarian but went for the fish stew, the daredevil that I am. Once I’d passed over the langoustines and scallops to himself, I was grand.

After all that stress and exertion we thought we’d take a rest and watch Pointless Celebrity, no wonder no one wants to come on holidays with us.

Parfois, je pense qu'il est tout totalement inutile

Excusez-moi, avez-vous vu ma balle?

The Easter weekend has flown by and everyone in Marsilly is settling back to their normal work routines, except us! We have thirteen days ahead of us before we set off back to the UK and whilst we both have things we need to attend to, workwise, we aim to switch off the metronome of regular life and have a good break.

Golf clubs at rest

Sunday was a lovely day and the afternoon saw us on the golf course for our first game this year. Not just the first game of the year but also the first since we were here in August last year, so the first game in eight months. We had picked up from the various local newsletters delivered to the house in our absence that that the management of the club was undergoing change and it was clear that things were beginning to change but only superficially. We learned for a member of staff that the new management had taken over in January so it will be interesting to see how things develop.

We were both decidedly rusty and this was a bit awkward since we were joined up into a foursome on the first tee with two blokes. One was on holiday from Bordeaux, visiting his brother who lives in La Rochelle. The second was a local, a club member, who was delighted to be able to play with a fellow Frenchman who could clearly play golf. By the third hole we had all relaxed a little and something resembling a conversation (in Franglais) was struck up and the whole thing was very amiable.

The “local” only played the first nine holes and left the three of us to continue. At the tenth tee we met our fellow golfer’s wife, brother, sister in law and a third women whose relationship was beyond our French to comprehend. They formed a mini gallery and followed around the rest of the course, this did not do very much for my golf but had the added bonus that they were keen to join in the search for any ball lost in the long grass – as mine was on several occasions. This also helped them realise we are not native French speakers and that we were actually quite friendly just a bit short language skills. We developed a  series of friendly exchanges around “Le golf est tres difficle” – a bad shot and “Le golf est tres facile” – a good shot. Interspersed with a bit of “pas mal” and the odd “pas problem”

We arrived back from the course about 7.30pm and knew that the four hours we had spent chasing little white balls along 6km of uneven ground would ensure a good night’s sleep.

Monday was mostly sunny but cooler and with more of a breeze – not really warm enough to lounge in the backyard and read. Our trip out was to La Rochelle in the afternoon. WE parked in a near deserted Place de Verdun and strolled down towards the Vieux Port past the market place and the main shopping streets. Much to our surprise lots of the shops were open, but everything was very quiet. With the sun shining it was no surprise to find that all the activity was at the pavement cafes and market stalls overlooking the harbour.

After a rather indulgent sit-down ice-cream we decide to take a “cruise” – or rather take the ferry over to Minimes and enjoy the sea air and have a gander at how the marina extension work was progressing. I is clear that they are near completion and the work of commissioning the new has pontoons already begun and will be complete by the summer. When complete there will be moorings for 4,500 boats, up from 3,500.

A quiet evening in – reading and snoozing to prepare for the rest of the holiday.

Visitors and locals stroll by the pavement cafes

Thinks "perhaps ride on the ferris wheel"

Boats at rest in the Old Port

The embarkation point for the ferry to Minimes

A view from the ferry arriving at Minimes

The first 24 hours – it’s magic

Just about 24 hours ago we cruised along the “minor” roads of south east England to Portsmouth for the St Malo, overnight ferry and now we are settled in Nantilly, its 20c and we have 18 days of R&R to look forward to.

It is seven and a half months since we were last here and there is lots to catch up with: the new paint of the outside shutters, the new Velux windows in two of the upstairs rooms, what’s been happening in the Commune, how the olive tree fared over the winter, are the vines still alive, would my 12 weeks of French lessons at the Alliance Francaise make any difference to my competence when talking to people, and what sort of welcome would we get from the caretakers?

Well it seems that the lads have been applying themselves to language studies and a bit of pottery. They have been hanging around by the vines, that clearly produced fruit as there are signs of shrivelled bunches of grapes left on them. A bit of pruning needed.

The exterior paint work is not a 100% success. The colour works well when everything is shut up but when the shutters are open and the wood finish of the windows and doors are visible it clashes quite badly with the colour of the paint….

The journey here was fine but not with its own niggles. We were the 54^th car checked in at the port, one of the last cars to board and one of the last cars to disembark. We stayed too long in the cocktail bar of the restaurant to actually get a table in the restaurant and ending having a late supper in the self-service – the food was pretty good but the ambiance of the dining room is definitely more transport café than fine dining.

This morning on hearing that the deck of the ferry on which were parked was going to be last off and discovering that we couldn’t actually get into the car as the cars around us were packed in tight, we went and waited in the (closed) bar. And this is where the “magic” came in – two young French lads, probably 12 years old, came over to us and asked if we wanted to see a magic show. We said yes and one of them produced a pack of cards and proceeded to go through half a dozen brilliant card tricks. We applauded them warmly and they wandered off with big smiles on their faces. And what is more once they had decided that our French wasn’t good enough, they did all the patter in English. Good for them but it doesn’t auger well for the benefits of 12 week at the Alliance!