Where-ever I lay my hat

It only took just over two hours to get up to the next farm near St Lo in Normandie. We were a bit anxious as we hadn’t heard back from them in a month but they were expecting us and the farm looks great. They are fully off grid for power and have solar and wind power. They are building a straw bale house and have a small completed straw bale house and a mud brick building in which they run a restaurant a few days a week. The petite maison is an exact model of the new house and was built as a practice for the bigger one. They have pigs and a small garden and bake bread and the wife is a trained pattisier. There are 3 other WWOOFers and we are staying in one of the son’s rooms until the Aussie WWOOFers leave on Saturday, then we can move into the yurt (a Mongolian tent). We had a trip into the garden centre to buy some flowers and then chilled for a bit before dinner. Philippe speaks excellent English but his wife and mother don’t so we get a combination of French and English.
Friday (11 July) morning started at 7am to go and help Ashley, the British chef, sort the meat to make sausages later in the day. We had breakfast and then went with Sam, the Aussie WWOOFer to feed the pigs. Then we helped out in the grand maison for a bit, Steve and Sam put up a wall and I did some plastering. I helped (or probably actually hindered) Ashley to make the sausages and the start of a pate de tete by getting all the meat of the pig’s head that he had cooked earlier. Lunch was roast chicken and potatoes on the deck by the pond and it was great. After lunch we started looking with Philippe at our project, which is to put straw bale walls on a wee building that they will use for a kitchen and bathroom for WWOOFers and which also has the electricity centre for their wind and solar power. We looked at the building then sat and looked at some books about straw bale building then discussed the plan as Philippe is going away for 3 days so we need to ask all our questions now. They also have an auberge (farm restaurant), which is open on Friday, and Saturday nights so we helped out a bit in that in the evening. Unfortunately they kind of abuse the concept of WWOOFing with the auberge because it is reliant on the WWOOFers to run and is therefore denying local people jobs which is a thing that is making the French government reluctant to allow WWOOFing. It is supposed to be just to help out on the farm but not with stuff that you would otherwise employ people to do. In France that’s considered just a way of avoiding tax. Also it means that we don’t eat till after the guests are finished and that doesn’t work for me. We had said to Philippe that I would work till 9pm (which made 7 hours for the day and they ask for 4) but that hadn’t been passed on so when I finished there was no food and I went to bed very tired. However Eku (Philippe’s wife) was horrified and promised Steve that it would be better tomorrow. Steve worked till 11.30 and had dinner after that. We are not too keen to work in the auberge because it’s against the principles of WWOOFing but otherwise its quite interesting. I got to cook the sausages over the open fire and watch the bread oven being used and prepared for cooking the meat and potatoes, and Steve helped with the dishing and presentation of the food.
On Saturday things started slowly again, we had breakfast and fed the pigs and said goodbye to the Aussies then got started on our straw bale house. It took most of the day to get three bales up by the time we sorted out how everything was to be done, went searching for old scraps of wood and built a wood frame, and finally put in some bales. We met JB (Jean Baptiste) who is the solar guy working on the grand maison and speaks excellent English and travelled a lot in Australia. We chatted with him about eco building and he invited us out to his place to see their project so we arranged that for Sunday afternoon. We had aperitifs with everyone and then had our dinner while they started work in the auberge and we got an early night. Having aperitifs with the staff before the dinner service starts is a really nice idea (even if the staff are volunteers).
We got a bit further with the building on Sunday and the bales went up a bit quicker and so did the wood frame. We went out to JB’s place in the afternoon and it was a very worthwhile trip. He showed us his pellet burning central heating system and his neighbour’s woodchip one. They have a whole little community who are all doing eco building things and they use the community for teaching about eco building so each house has slightly different systems. We saw several different methods of earth, straw and lime building and there is a demonstration wall, which has different substances and different quantities of the various mixes to show the different effects and properties. The best things to use seem to be a combination of either lin straw (from linseed plants) or hemp and earth and lime. It makes a great soundproof, solid and dense wall that has great thermal mass. We also saw their wind turbine, which creates 10kw of electricity and some different solar ideas including a very cool solar cooker. They are also growing a field of hemp with special permission to use for insulation on one of the houses. We were there for about 3 hours and learnt heaps. The main thing about building with natural products is to make sure the building has good gumboots (wellies) and a good hat (i.e. its protected from water from below and above) and then what you do in between doesn’t matter so much. That gave us a slightly new perspective on how we look at the building we are doing at the moment and also our own house. Philippe and family had gone on their holiday so we had a quiet dinner with just us and Robbie (another British WWOOFer who speaks great French) and Noriko (a Japanese WWOOFer who speaks French about like ours.
Monday was Bastille Day and I was sick so we did nothing to celebrate. We had hoped to go to Mont St Michel but couldn’t find anything on there anyway so we just stayed home and carried on with the straw bale house. It was a nice warm sunny day too so we got the yurt opened up and the mattresses out to dry as its rather damp and cold in there, which we don’t think it should be but it wasn’t well put up and it leaked a lot last week. The straw bale house is starting to progress quite well now and a decent chunk of one wall is done. We had to change tack and build the walls and window frame and line the ceiling before going any further and were quite proud of ourselves for building a wall. The straw bales are going on the outside of the building rather than the inside so the walls are put up first to fix the bales to. It was a lovely evening and we had dinner outdoors on the deck by the pond and discussed climate change and sustainability. It is really interesting to have French as the common language and to try to explain things only in French. Apparently in Japan there is not much talk about climate change and Noriko knew little about the concepts of greenhouse effects and things like sustainable farming and the threats to rainforests. It is very pleasant to be able to sit outdoors in France drinking homemade cider and eating good farm produced food and discussing the world’s problems in French. It is also fairly far removed from the worlds problems and although we felt like we are on the side of doing good by being in a place that all the food is organic and they use solar and wind power and build with natural materials, we also recognise that just by being here we are contributing to the problems by flying to France and driving a car.
Tuesday was a bit damp and we got a bit more done on the house in the afternoon. I had a relaxing morning trying to catch up with life and also buying books on amazon. There are as couple of French cookbooks I would really like and I wanted to see if I could get them in English before I go and buy them in French. It is possible to get them in English but you pay twice the price that they are in French. I did however find some of the other books we want at good prices and we ordered a bunch of books that we will use a lot and would cost us a lot more to get hold of once we get back to NZ. That was a bit of a concern because our money situation is a bit dire and we now have only 200 pounds to last us the rest of our trip. That means the NZ credit card will be in a bad way when we get back. If we can sell the car things will be a bit better and we do have some money that was a gift to go out to dinner or we might buy French cookbooks with it so we can continue to experience good French cooking. We had more lively discussions over aperitifs and dinner and got to bed relatively early but I had a terrible night coughing so was pretty exhausted by the morning.
Wednesday morning was wet and since I felt awful we had the day off. I rested and got things up to date on my computer. Steve got the car tidy and took photos to try and sell it. We were invited to Philippe’s mothers house for lunch and got fed rabbit from the farm that had been killed yesterday. It was a very nice lunch and we are getting rather used to this French way of life of eating a 4 –5 course lunch of really good food. The sun came out a bit in the afternoon and we relaxed and chatted to the pigs. One of the pigs is really cute and whenever she sees you coming she trots from the other end of field, with her ears flapping, to see you. She is also a very talkative pig and grunts and snorts away at for ages. She sees us coming every time we walk from the auberge to the yurt so we keep having to go for a chat since she has run all that way. We decided she needs a name and have named her Gloria. We thought it shows greater respect for the animal when you eat her if you can say these sausages came from Gloria and remember what a great pig she was.
Thursday was back to work on the straw bale house again and we got all the bales up on the wall and Steve started the foundation on the second wall while I hand stuffed all the gaps. I didn’t do a great deal as I’d had another lousy night and was just getting more and more tired. Between us we did our 10 hours work but Steve did far more than half of it. Philippe had returned and seemed relatively happy with our project so that was good. We talked with him about wood ovens and how to build them and he showed us around his brother’s farm and the huge bread ovens he has. He bakes bread for the market and does the whole process from start to finish organically including growing the grain, milling it and mixing and baking the bread. It’s a great setup and was really interesting to look around. They also have a couple of mobile bread ovens that they take to markets and fairs on trailers and they were really cool. Apparently they had been built after the war when bombing had destroyed so many homes and all had previously had their own bread ovens. The French without bread is a thing nearing the end of the world so they quickly set up mobile ovens that could go round all the homes and villages so they had bread again. These ones have been restored and are great. We learned heaps about cooking in bread ovens and building them and saw quite a few different designs. Ashley, the chef, was back and we think someone had sneaked some e-numbers into his food because he was off the wall and Steve just wound him up so the two of them had a riot of a time. He’s a really sweet guy and we really enjoy his company and the kitchen is a fun place to be when he’s there. There was another new WWOOFer from Sweden who hasn’t been on a farm before and doesn’t speak French and looked terrified all evening. Although there’s only two people who are actually French (and 5 English if you count us, and 2 Japanese), French is the common language so most of the conversation is in various versions of stilted French with bits of English thrown in. it must be pretty difficult to arrive into.
On Friday we continued with the hand stuffing which is an odious chore, but then finally got to use the strimmer to finish the wall ready for plastering. We can plaster once we have the second wall done so Philippe offered us two helpers on Monday to get it done so we can plaster on Tuesday and Wednesday. JB was back again and he showed Steve some things about plumbing and joined the melange at the lunch table. We had dinner separately in the evening, as the auberge was open again. At 9.30pm we went for a look at the bakery and actually got to join in and help. We saw the whole process of the bread being made and it was really interesting but doesn’t help at all in learning to make French bread as the recipe starts with 100kg of flour! We worked on the loaf table for a couple of hours and I had a go at each part – cutting and weighing the bits of dough into 1kg blocks, shaping the loaves (which is actually pretty difficult and took me four tries to get my first loaf right), and then arranging the loaves on trays of 20 to rise. We did about 18 trays of 20 loaves while we were there, as part of a team of 7 and it was rather fun. They are really relaxed and have a good time while they work. Robbie carried on working for the night and said in the morning that there was anything really different happened to what we did in a couple of hours so we were pretty happy. It’s the biggest artisanal bakery in France that uses wood ovens.
We had a day off on Saturday and did very little other than eat meals, which takes a big chunk of the day anyway, feed pigs. The weather was miserable but we went into the market in Saint-Lo anyway and took the new Swedish WWOOFer who came to work on farms in France without a raincoat and without any old clothes because she says she didn’t know WWOOFing was on farms and she doesn’t like farms!!! The market was big and pretty nice – certainly one of the better markets we’ve been to but when you’re not buying anything it’s not as interesting. There is not much local cheese but lots of local seafood and all three bread stalls were wood oven bread.
On Sunday we decided we should do a bit of sightseeing and after a late start headed towards the coast with Robbie too. We stopped in a small town for a stroll around their street market and have never seen so much junk in one place before, then continued to Pirou plage which had a proper market and we had to buy some fruit so it was much more interesting. I also found a pair of really cheap shoes, which I’ve been looking for for ages so was pretty happy. We had a wee look at the beach but it was pretty windy so headed down the coast a bit further to a place Philippe had recommended. Lacale is a very cool wee restaurant in a shack on the beach. They cook meat on an open fire and also do cheap seafood. We decided to have lunch and just shared one serving of moules frites and 6 oysters and 6 cockles between 3 of us. It came with bread of course and there was actually plenty for three. It was a gorgeous setting and we sat in the sun with our toes in the sand and the food was great. The view of the coast was really interesting too as there were oyster farms everywhere and the tide went out really fast while we were sitting eating lunch so all the oyster beds were exposed. We went for a paddle among the oyster beds but the sea was nowhere to be seen so we couldn’t swim. There was also a bit of a chill with the wind and we worried that if we walked the kilometre out across the sand to the water and swum the tide might come in again just as fast and we’d have a kilometre to swim back!! We took a scenic route on the way back and stopped for views of a few chateaux that were quite nice but all were private houses so we couldn’t get very close, apart from one where we drove in through the middle of a game of boules and then had to drive out through the game a couple of minutes later. Interrupting a game of boules in France is a terrible thing. Sunday evening meal was going to be fend for yourselves but we ended up having a Japanese dinner, which was fabulous. We had miso soup, delicious Japanese potatoes and veges and some crumbed sardines with ginger and tamari and for dessert one of the patissiers had made a great cake and Eku made a traditional Normandie rice pudding that’s cooked in the wood oven. It was quite caramely and really rich and delicious.
On Monday we were to get on with the house but there were all sorts of hold ups waiting for the water tank to be moved before we could put the wall up. We had Robbie for help but not the second person and we didn’t get it done so there was still more to do on Tuesday and we were starting to worry that we wouldn’t get to plaster. I did a bit of stuff in the kitchen including chopping up a chicken so I tried out Michele’s technique from the farm in the Drome, and it was very easy and quick. Dinner on Monday night was an interesting event with Swedish chicken, Japanese chicken and followed by English bread and butter pudding that I made and a New Zealand dessert that I made too. There were a couple of Parisian visitors who were quite Parisian and she disturbed me because she looked very much like she needed to go back to her psychiatrist to have her medications sorted out properly. It was a bit daunting to serve desserts to patissiers but they went down rather well and I learned a bit and gained a lot of confidence for cooking.
Tuesday was just a long day of work on the wall and we finally got the straw finished and started on the first coat of plaster after lunch. I had a wee outing in the morning to go with Eku to collect a flower that I had been asking about that they use in tisanes. I still don’t know what it is but at least I can recognise the plant. It was a lovely outing with 4 girls in a field collecting flowers in the sunshine with nice baskets and chatting – very civilised (if you ignore the nettles, thistles up to your head and high possibility of snakes. We stopped very briefly on the way back to pick a handful of wild strawberries. It was a hot sunny day and we had lunch on the terrace and decided to have a BBQ dinner. Robbie and I made a couple of bits and pieces after lunch and then we got a layer of plaster done on one wall before dinner. Dinner was great. I had made gazpacho for aperitifs which was great on a hot day and the BBQ was fabulous including bbq’d Camembert just in its box which is a Normandie special to chez Philippe. Robbie had made fruit kebabs for dessert which were fantastic and then we had a version of macarons from one of the patissiers which had not worked because there was not the right type of sugar but they tasted pretty good anyway and she had made grapefruit and basil icecream and some hazelnut crème to go with them. We all just stood around in the kitchen eating from the bowls and it was really nice. The kids and Eku had decide to try out this idea of setting fire to the lake by stirring up the leaves on the bottom so they rise up and release the methane gas and then putting a candle to them. It was fascinating to watch and we were all surprised when they actually achieved a flame a couple of times.
On Wednesday morning it was really hot and we finished the plaster on the second wall and then started the second coat on the first wall. We had to work under a big tarpaulin in the end because the sun was too hot for the plaster. It got us out of the sun but in a wee sauna instead. We got a small section of the first wall finished and it looked pretty good and we were happy with our work. It was certainly a rustic look and there are a few things we would do differently if it was our place but it was excellent experience to have done it. We had Mamy’s gallettes for lunch which was an amazing meal with all the leftovers from the last few days and a few things made especially for the gallettes. We must have eaten about 8 each, as there were huge stacks on three different plates. After lunch we just chilled out for a while and showed our photos to Robbie and Noriko and then got packed up slowly. We left at 5.30 and went into St Lo to the second hand bookshop and got a cookbook of really good regional French food then headed towards Mont St Michel to visit Ashley for the night. He was a bit poorly but we had a really nice evening chatting with him and Caroline (his partner) and Robbie who had come with us. We went for a walk along the river just beside their house after dinner and you can see Mont St Michel from just across the street so we watched the sunset light at Mont St Michel although it was from quite a distance it was very pleasant.
We had a very gentle start on Thursday morning and headed to Mont St Michel. We parked on the land side of the causeway and walked across to avoid the high parking costs but it’s also a very pleasant walk. It was pretty hot but not hideously busy and we had a stroll up through the shopping streets and back down around the ramparts. It’s a pretty stunning place and the streets are really cute with medieval buildings but its extremely touristy. We watched the restaurant of la mere Poulard making their famous omelettes in their famous copper pans on an open fire and then headed back across the causeway. We had some free sample cookies for a snack then dropped Robbie off and headed to Brittany. We found a rest area for lunch that was not too bad and at least had some shade. It took us ages to find the house once we got to Plevin but we eventually arrived with Dan and Ann on their smallholding.

We arrived at John and Karen’s late afternoon and had a drink in the garden then just absorbed into the chaos. We had to get the caravan set up for us to sleep in and it was full of stuff and there were 2 visiting Labrador puppies to be walked and their bed organised and 5 collie puppies to be played with. Karen had got back from 15 nights straight work in England about 3 hours before we got there and there were guests in the cottage so all was chaos. Fortunately its comfortable chaos as we know the deal and can just let the excess chaos wash over us. The caravan was comfortable to sleep in and we had clean sheets and can have our own work schedule and good adult company.
On Thursday we got into the work. The cottage garden needs cleaned out and there’s lots of strimming to do, animals to be fed and of course all the puppies have to be played with regularly. We spent a while getting the 8 month old labs used to the 2 month old collies so they could all run round together and its hilarious to watch the huge labs whimpering when they get chased by a tiny collie. Its lovely to see the goats again and there are new baby goats too. It took us quite a bit of time to get the caravan moved to its intended new site and the awning set up. Having never been inside a caravan awning it was a bit of a mission to set up but we got there in the finish. The ground is too hard for the pegs to go into so we are going to have to use a drill to make holes in the ground! We also got a whole lot of nettles collected to make a nettle fertiliser for the garden and some of the garden weeded and watered. We pretty much worked all day but none of it was hard work and there were plenty of interruptions to play with baby animals. We had a really pleasant evening in the cottage garden with a couple of bottles of wine and chatting with Karen and John and friends of theirs and another of John’s homemade cheeses which was fantastic again. The sun doesn’t go down till about 10.30 so we are tending to stay up late because we’re outdoors.
Friday was ongoing chaos with puppies and one of the labs learned to chase a stick and the little puppies started trying too. Sam, the dad collie loves to play stick and whenever you throw the stick for him the whole 9 dogs start tearing round the yard yelping and chasing each other and trying to stop Sam from getting the stick back to you. Steve did lots of strimming and I did lots of feeding the animals and searching for eggs and a bit of weeding and hedge trimming. It was a very relaxed day but with plenty of unexpected interruptions like the chickens in the top field needing checking because the cockerel was very agitated and we think a fox had been by in the night. We also moved the buck goat up to the top field and later had to intervene between him and the ram who was not happy about having a new male in his territory. We had a pleasant dinner out in the cottage garden and sat around having a few drinks till it was nearly dark then did end of day chores of walking the labs, closing up and feeding animals again.
On Saturday amid the ongoing chaos, Steve strimmed the front lawn and I raked up the grass so Karen and I could set up the eight-man tent. That took a wee while with lots of help from puppies, but we got it done and found mattresses and beds and some kitchen bits to kit out the caravan. Steve found a couple of snakes while strimming the car park area, which added a bit of excitement, one of them got turned into worms by the strimmer. I went up to the top field to get some eggs and check on the state of warfare between goat and ram and somehow got stuck between the two of them both wanting my undivided attention. Although they weren’t aggressive to me they certainly were to each other and there was one on either side of me. It was actually pretty frightening and I decided it wasn’t smart to go up there on my own any more. The crying from this great big ferocious buck was quite pitiful as he is just really lonely and particularly if he hears Karen’s voice he cries like a baby.
Sunday was our day off and after feeding animals very slowly and playing with them lots we just chilled out. In the afternoon we all left eventually got on the road to St Suzanne to go to the jousting but it was much more expensive than we had thought so we decided not to. We cam back to the house and got my painting things and went and painted the wind in the willows scene from below the chateau. Then we had a stroll around the village below St Suzanne, which turned out to be a great decision as it was one of the most beautiful villages we have seen – kind of like the Cotswolds but French. There were even little huts beside the river for washing clothes. We picked the others from the jousting and it sounds like we didn’t miss much. We all went for a stroll around the cute village then and Karen thought it was the prettiest place she’d seen in France. We went home and got things for a picnic and went to the Gue de Selle by the lake for a big picnic dinner, which was very nice and relaxing.
Monday was back to regular chores and we moved the geese from the pig compound, which was an interesting experience. It involved me and Karen running around the enclosure trying to catch and herd geese while Steve guarded the gate and hoped the pigs kept eating their breakfast. Karen and I both got covered in mud and I also got a good face pack from geese flapping into the pigs wallow. However they got there in the end with actually a minimum of distress to them. We also let babe (the baby boar who likes to be tickled under his chin - that could be entertaining when he weighs most half of a ton!) out of the small enclosure he’s been in waiting for repairs to his last lot of damage, and he had a great time and even did a dance up on his hind legs because he was so happy. The weather had packed in a bit and in the afternoon it really rained and we had to retreat to the caravan. It still wasn’t pegged down properly because the ground was too hard and we needed a drill to get the pegs in. Unfortunately the rain didn’t soften the ground enough but everything and everyone stayed dry including the tent and the puppies, who shelter in the caravan awning whenever we are there or from the rain or sun. We let Spot the dog into the field while we were herding the goats to get them to bed and he turns out to be a natural and has really good instincts. It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen this tiny eight week old puppy herding the baby goats. It was even more funny because Spot didn’t quite understand what I wanted and he thought the goats should stay in the field so as fast as I could chase them out he chased them back in.
On Tuesday morning after animal feeding we went into Evron to check our email and look at the bookshop and get bread for lunch. We had a fairly quiet afternoon but got the holes drilled for the caravan awning pegs and finally got it firmly in place. Steve took Spot the dog up the top field with his dad, Sam (who is a great dog and really well behaved but a complete wimp when it comes to sheep). Boy, the ram headed for Steve and Sam sat behind Steve when told to stay here but Spot went and stood halfway between Boy and Steve and barked at him till he backed off and went away. We were really impressed, particularly because Boy is a huge ram and Spot is only about the size of his head. By the time the animals decide to put themselves to bed it is rather late so we got to bed late again. That’s also added to by very pleasant evenings sitting having dinner in the cottage garden and a couple of glasses of wine and just chatting. Its not quite as relaxing as it sounds because periodically pandemonium breaks out in the yard and we go to check what puppy is doing what to the kittens, dogs, geese, chickens or other puppies.
On Wednesday we finished off tidying the cottage garden and getting the tent finished so everything was ready for the new guests and WWOOFer. I built a stone wall inside the tent to try and stop the puppies getting in and using it as a playpen but that only means they just use the door instead of all sides. Then we started on the compound for the chickens in the bottom field and got all the holes drilled for the posts and two corner posts in the ground. We took the dogs for a walk after lunch and the smarter one was a brat all the way. Then we made a trip into Evron to get Karen some groceries, quickly check our email (to find out I have a job and Steve has been asked to apply for one) and pick up Vicki, the new WWOOFer. She is lovely and we spent a while orientating her. We took Spot the dog up to the top sheep again and this time he nearly got trodden on by Boy who decided to charge him. But then Boy ran for it and Spot took off after him so still won the day. What a brave little puppy! We had a nice BBQ dinner with Vicki and the guests and finally got a slightly earlier night.
Thursday morning we woke a bit early and got animals fed and had breakfast with Vicki then got to work on the chicken compound again. We got all the post in and the trench dug and then called it quits for the morning. Karen came out with coffee and cookies so we had a tea break to sustain us while we packed up until lunch half an hour later! We said our goodbyes and got on the road about 1.30. It had been really nice to see Karen and John again and also to be back at the same property two months later in the season and see how things had changed. It only took just over two hours to get up to the next farm near St Lo in Normandie. We were a bit anxious as we hadn’t heard back from them in a month but they were expecting us and the farm looks great.

We arrived in Pierry, outside Epernay in Champagne about 6pm into a fairly weird situation. There were already 3 WWOOFers there who were American kids and rather rich. The guy who runs the farm was leaving in a couple of days as his grandfather had just died and so we would have to use our car to get to the farm which is 8km from the house. They didn’t have a bed organised for us so moved one of the other WWOOFers out of a room for us to have but we didn’t get clean sheets or anything. We eventually had dinner at 9.30pm and I went straight to bed, as I was shattered. We did get a wee glass of champagne with our dinner that was made by Mathieu’s father, which was pretty cool.
We were supposed to start work at 8am on Monday but the American kids didn’t get going in time and we only left at 9am. It was pretty hot and the work was fairly heavy but also fun. We were cutting down a wood of hawthorn and dog rose so we got scratched to bits. There were eight of us working so we got quite a bit done. However it got far too hot for me and by the time we finished I wasn’t feeling very well and just went to sleep when we got home for a few hours. I probably had a bit of heat stroke and was still feeling nauseous and headachy later in the afternoon when I got up and we had to go out and do some more work in the small garden at the house. We were supposed to do 5 hours work in the day but actually did closer to seven and I had to stop before the others did. They had said that was fairly normal and dinner is usually very late. I had to go to bed before dinner so really hadn’t eaten anything all day. Steve eventually got his dinner sometime after 10.30 and wasn’t very happy either.
On Tuesday Mathieu left and we were responsible for getting the American kids to and from the farm. We had said we were starting at 8 but there was a lot of whingeing and we felt like we were babysitting teenagers. They had been partying till 1am and took a while to get going. However we got lots of work done again and cleared a new path through the property and a big area at the top of the path to be made into vegetable gardens. We finished at 12 and went back for some lunch and a brief siesta then out for a drive to make the most of being in Champagne. We tasted at a couple of places and had a nice drive around in the countryside although it was rather hot. We decided we didn’t really want to stay and baby-sit teenagers and also the schedule really doesn’t work for us with late starts and very late meals. We made a couple of phone calls in the evening to Lisa from Provence and to John and Karen from our first farm. John and Karen were having a hard time and said they would be very happy to have us back so we decided to leave in the morning.
We got going at 7.30 on Wednesday and virtually drove all day to get halfway across France to Karen and John’s. We stopped for a glance at the chateau at Fontainebleau and discovered it was free to get into the grounds and they were lovely. There was a big lake which the chateau reflected in and several other ponds with fountains and really good landscaping of grassy areas with pretty flower gardens and architectural trees. We also stopped briefly at Chatres to see the labyrinth in the cathedral. There was a thunderstorm while we were there and we got rather wet so didn’t look at the town at all other than the run from the car park to the cathedral and back. The cathedral front was covered in scaffolding although it is supposed to be rather beautiful. The inside is quite nice with a big rose window but its very dark and hard to see much. The labyrinth is covered by chairs and the centre has been removed so you can’t see much of it, never the less we are pleased to have been there and seen it and even more pleased not to have made a big trip to do it. We arrived at John and Karen’s late afternoon and had a drink in the garden then just absorbed into the chaos.

Sunday was our last day and we had decided to leave a bit early so our drives wouldn’t be as big the next day. We did a bit of work in the moring although they had said we didn’t need too. They have been really generous to us and we have had a fantastic time and it was very sad to leave. We got sent off with a care packeage of farm produce we got away about 1pm after a substantial lunch of leftovers from last night. The liver terrien was great and we also had a chocolate marron cake for dessert which was lovely (and of course some chicken and rice, a fromage course and a salad course!). We drove up past Grenoble and into the mountains to Annecy and it was gorgeous. We nearly decided to skip Switzerland and just stay there. The town on the lakefront looked really pretty and there were mounitans all around the lake and lovely houses along its side and plenty of boats out and a few chateaux on the other side under the mountains. We found a cute little campground run by Gilbert who is an author and clearly just adores having people around. He serves cake in the afternoon around 5pm and it was lovely to have a wee snack. We went for a stroll and a swim in the lake it’s a gorgeous aqua marine coulor and wasn’t too cold. Anyway it was probably still 40degrees and even at 8pm it was still 32 degreees so we needed to cool off. The lakeside is packed with people sunbathing in every available space and if you are female and under 60 you wear a bikini regardless of your shape. I had dressed inappropriately in my swimsuit and got a few odd looks. We had a simple diinner of bread and cheese and farm pate at the tent and Gilbert obviously didn’t see the quality of what we were eating or how much we’d had for lunch because he felt sorry for us and offered us some ratatoille as well. We didn’t have any as we were actually plenty full. We went for a stroll towards town and decided we have the best part of the lake front anyway so it wasn’t worth strolling too far.
On Monday morning we went for a swim and got packed up and said goodbye to Gilbert, who gave us a bottle of local wine and told us to make lovely babies!!! Then we headed for Switzerland. We stopped on the way to get groceries at a supermarket with a view of lake Geneva and then drove along the side of it round the bottom and up the other side past Montreau. We stopped for lunch in Villeneuve and sat on the wall of the lake and watched the scenery and boats go by. The whole eastern coastline is the equivalent of the French riveria and is pretty classy but its much more laid back and more like a real place so actually nicer. Theres a really pretty chateau right on the lake and mountains rising straight up from it. Then we drove over a pretty scary pass and down the other side which was even more scary. However it was really beautiful with mountains and glaciers all round and really cute swiss mountain chalets everywhere and the towns were all built of cute wooden chalets exactly like in the movies. There were wildflower meadows and cows with bells on but they still never coincided for the perfect postcard picture. We drove down into Thun and around the top of the Thunersee to Interlaken. Thun was really cute with the river draining out of the lake through it and pretty buildings along the riverside that were more swiss than other places. Its interesting that its easier to define the differences with swiss architecture than it has been other places. There is a clear difference between Perigord and Pyreennes and Spanish houses but I can’t actually say what it is as they are similar colours with similar building materials and similar design. Hoswever the swiss houses are made of wood for a start and have steep rooves and several balconies on the front under the roofline. The wood is always decorated and there are also lots of flower boxes, which distinguish the swiss wooden houses from French or german ones. Interlaken was pretty but busy and badly signposted and it took us several attempts to get out the other side of it in the right direction but we eventually found our campgound on the edge of the Brienzersee. It is a small campground and we had a site right on the lake wall with our own stone steps going down into the water. The view over the other side of the lake was of the mountains although we couldn’t see the really big ones but we could see a few wee glaciers. The colour of the water was beautiful and we had to have a swim to cool down before dinner. We had aperitifs followed by paella with the Camargue rice and a fromage course and dessert of chocolate. The sunset was fascinating as the sun disappeared behind the hill quite early but then cam out again and shone along the valley and lit up the whole hills again. There was a tiny collection of buildings far up on a really steep hillside opposite us and they got the sun many times – I think they had 4 sunsets! It would have been a huge and very steep hike to get up to them but it was clearly a well established farm or hamlet. What an amazing life that would be – especially in winter.
Tuesday morning started off lovely and the mountains were really clear and the sun shone on us while we had a swim. But during breakfast it clouded over and the haze came across the mountains and the wind came up. The colour of the lake change every 5 minutes depending what the weather is doing and it can be anything from brilliant aquamarine to deep blue to grey and every shade in between. I think every time I looked at the lake it was a different colour and the light on it was different. We had a fairly slow start with a leisurely breakfast and a sudden flurry of packing up when it threatened to rain and we got away from the campground at 9am. We headed up into the mountains to Grindelwald and the scenery was stunning. We got lovely views of the Eiger, the Jungfrau and a dozen other peaks and a few glaciers. Grindelwald is also a gorgeous town and we would happily go back for a weeks holiday to go walking. Most of the walks were from gondolas or trams and the parking and tram preices were really expensive so we just looked and then carried on back down the mountain and off towards Luzern. The road was uneventful although we passed a few pretty lakes and the mountains stayed very hazy all day. By the time we got to Luzern the haze extended to the lake, which was a dull grey brown colour despite the sun shining, and the mountaitns could barely be seen. The centre of Luzern though was really pretty with gorgeous old buildings and an amazing bridge across the river. The traffic was awful and we didn’t stop as we just wanted to get out of the big city. There were a couple of lakes on the way north that we tried to stop at for lunch but it looked like school holidays and the parking was expensive and the lakeside packed with people so we eventually gave up on lunch. We just carried on driving into germany then back into Switzerland then back into germany again. We passed through Brug which also looked rather gorgeous with old buildings built right up to the riverside and a pretty bridge over the Aare river. The Aare drains most of Switzerland and is not very small. We had actually crossed it just after we came into Switzerland from draining the small lakes east of lake Geneva. It starts by draining the two lakes at Interlaken and two other huge rivers join it just after Brug that have drained the lakes around Zurich and Luzern. Then at the border it flows into the Rhein and that is the end of the Aare but the Rhein is already huge before it gets that water. Our next stop was the Rheinfalls near Schaffhausen, which is upstream of the Aare junction but rather a lot of water falling off a rather big ledge – actually about 600 cubic metres per second! We spend ages just strolling round looking at all the different views of it and went up onto the top to see it from above. There were trout at the bottom waiting to go upstream and we saw a couple attempt it but you have to wonder if they ever actually succeed because its so huge and so fast and the waves at the bottom are huge too. When we had taken every photo imaginable we decided it was time to find somewhere to live for the night and drove into the black forest. The drive was really pretty and we could actually see in places why its called the black forest.because its pretty dense in parts and you really can’t see far in. It may have been enhanced by the time of day althoguht the sun was still quite high, nad by the fact we were wearing sunglasses, but it was black in a few places. We found a campground on a lake at Schulesee that was also very pleasant and quiet. It was a bit bigger than the last two and we didn’t swim in the lake because it was 7pm when we arrived and we just cooked dinner, relaxed and had a brief stroll to the lake.
We had a very gentle start on Wednesday morning as we only had a short distance to go and no fixed plans. We wanted to walk somewhere in the Black Forest and go to some terrible touristy towns. Its great to be back in a civilised country that thinks bread is sufficiently important that you can get fresh rolls at the campgrounds every morning and they don’t charge tolls for the decent roads. We had fresh bread for our breakfast and had a very brief swim in the lake but its not that lovely blue colour of the mountain lakes but a brownish colour, probably from the tannins in the trees. Even knowing its clean and a good swimming lake, its just not as nice to swim in a brown lake as a blue one. I guess that’s our modern conditioning about clean water being blue. We got away from the campground about 10am and headed towards Titisee but got sidetracked by signs for the Naturhaus and ended up at Feldberg, which is the highest peak in the Black Forest. We had a stroll up it and it was a really nice walk through lots of wildflower meadows and it was the walking in mountain meadows that I’d wanted to do in Switzerland, only there were no actual alps. Feldberg is 1493m high but we only had to climb the last 150m and usually you can see the swiss alps but not today. However the sun was out and we both got burned having forgotten about the altitude difference in the sun. There were also cows with bells on which I love. We have tried to look for bells for our goats but can only find touristy ones which are really expensive and tacky. The farmers must shop somewhere else. The flowers in the meadows were beautiful and slightly different in each place with lots of colours blue, purple, white, yellow, red, pink and lots of different greens. The backdrop of the forest was also lovely and as we got above the tree line we could layers of hills of different blues and just scattered little pine trees around us. We were actually one a ski slope for most of the time and it would be neat to come back and ski in the same place in winter. Its was funny to see what would be lovely gentle ski slopes just covered in wildflowers. We eventually got to Titisee and bought some local cheese and pretzels and strawberries and a thing called a snowballs which was like a shortcake biscuit crumpled up into a ball. We sat on the waterfront and ate our lunch then had a look around the town. There were lots of tacky touristy shops and it was nice to look around them for a bit but we got quickly tired of it and got on the road again. We were planning to stop at Donauschingen to see the source of the Donau river but we couldn’t work out from the town map what we needed to look for so just carried on to Dieter’s house. It was further than we thought (although we didn’t know since we didn’t have a map) but on the autobahn it was quick at last. We arrived just after 5.30 and had a lovely evening just chilling out and chatting and catching up and meeting Hieke at last. We had a lovely dinner with salad and great bread and lots of cheeses and meats. The semifinal of the football was also on and germany was playing turkey and every time something happened in the game we could hear half the town cheering and setting off fireworks. Germany won and for several hours afterwards there were fireworks and shouting and tooting of car horns. It was an interesting experience but one that it was better to be indoors for.
Thursday morning was fine again and we had a nice gentle start with a leisurely breakfast on the deck. We had a search on the internet for some cow bells and just chatted a bit and finally got going at 11am to go to Dieters parents place. It was fantastic to see them again and we had a great lunch and then went to a lake nearby for a swim. It was very pleasant and we swam a couple of times and lay on the grass and chatted with Dieter. We went back to his parents and ended up having dinner there and then had to say goodbye, which was very difficult for me because they are unlikely to come to NZ and we are unlikely to come back to Europe so it was like goodbye forever which makes me very sad. We drove back to Dieters and had a quiet evening chatting and looking at pictures with him and Heike.
Hieke had the day off work on Friday too so the four of us went out exploring together. But first we had a very leisurely breakfast that lasted till nearly 11am again. We went to hohenzollen castle which is still in the same family that are the swabian line of the family of the kings of Prussia. Hieke is really interested in history so we learnt lots from her and it was really interesting. The castle was also very beautiful and up on a high hill with high turrets so it looks like a fairytale castle. Then we went to castle Lichtenstein which is very small but very fairytale and perched way up on a tiny rock. On one side it can be reached by a drawbridge over a gully that is only about 10m deep and there are other buildings on that side of it too, across the gully. By the time we’d had a stoll about at both places it was time to head home for dinner. We had pflammekucken, which were delicious – ham and onion first, followed by a bread and cheese course then apple pflammekucken for dessert. We sat up till late just chatting and it was really nice. The four of us get on really well and its very relaxed and comfortable.
We had to leave fairly early on Saturday morning and got on the road after another great breakfast at 8.15. we had to stop in Heppenheim to buy bells for the goats and it took ages to find the shop as it was fairly well hidden and not quite where the map said it was but we finally got our goat bells and they sound lovely. We arrived in Cochem just after midday and met up with Hella, Paddy and Esther at their B&B. we had some lunch from bits and pieces we all had and then went for a stroll around the town. We stopped at the campground on the way to set up our tent and it’s a fairly busy camp and not one we’d normally choose but its close to Hella so its easier. The town is really nice with classic german architecture and plenty of nice shops. We also went up to the castle but didn’t go in. its intereseting just to walk around the outside as it has a lovely gatehouse on the spiral road up the hill to it and some interesting statues like the frog prince beside its main entrance. Esther had to get a train back to Koln at 5pm and after we dropped her off we stopped for a couple of wine tastings which were really nice. We bought a couple of bottles of Mosel Reisling for our dinner and went back to the campground and very slowly cooked dinner. It was very pleasant with just the four of us chatting, despite the slightly noisy girls who had set up next door and were singing rather badly to some fairly decent music. They left early evening and it was peaceful for the rest of the evening. we went for a stroll back towards town again to see the castle all lit up and reflecting in the river then Hella and Paddy went back to the B&B. we were woken at 3am by the girls next door coming home and they continued to party rather loudly so we eventually gave up and moved our tent at 4am. We could still hear them an hour later but only because we were still awake.
We slept in a bit on Sunday morning to try to catch up and we just finishing packing up when Hella and Paddy arrived at 10am. We all set off for a drive along the Mosel and stopped for a couple of photos then got to Berncasel Keus. It ia really gorgeous with a tight central town square with half timbered buildings all round. We had a nice stroll about and had some wurst and frites and fantastic icecream for lunch and then said goodbye and we got on the road as we had a long drive ahead. It was a fairly dull drive as it was on motorways in germany, Luxembourg and a bit through Belgium then fairly straight roads in france. We arrived in Pierry, outside Epernay in Champagne about 6pm

We got to St Christophe around 5pm and met the family and the guests (they have B&B). Everyone speaks French and we had a fairly tough evening, particularly beign tired and at dinner there were 12 people which was simply too much to understand. There is a kiwi guy here who speaks brilliant French and helped us out a bit, and we chatted with him about travel and WWOOFing in English. They serve a proper dinner that begins with homemade aperitifs on the lawn at 7.30 and carries on with salad, homemade local specialities, cheese (some of it homemade) and dessert then finishes with a tisane about 10.30 – 11.00. The food was fantastic and they even do all their own meat products so we have great hopes of learning lots. We had to clean out the car as we found lots of ants again and another batch of eggs so we hovered them up and then found their current nest which was in Steves boot!! He picked up the boot and ants just swarmed everywhere so they must have only moved in there in the last two days because you couldn’t have not noticed and he was wearing the boots two days ago! It took about 5 minutes just to hover the one boot! Yuk!
We have a room up in the attic above the family and share the bathroom with the children. Guests live in a separate house with 4 bedrooms or in one of the room in the main house and they eat in the main house.
Tuesday 10 June started slowly and our only chore for the day was to drop Dan off at the train station in Romans, in return for which Isabelle shouted us all a visit to the international musee de shoes. It was actually really interesting with stuff abouthte making of shoes, history, shoes around the world and recent fashion and the great shoe fashion houses of the 20th century, many of which were based in Romans. There was also a small museum of the French resistance which had a major centre in Romans and that was also interesting although also quite disturbing. Today had been designated our day off so we continued and went over to the Rhone to the wine region of Tain l’Hermitage which makes some pretty famous stuff. Steve tasted at Cave du Tain and Chapoutier and was pretty happy that thye taste most of their good wines as well as the average. We drove a bit further along the river and had a very late lunch on its bank then headed back home. We are absolutely terrified of the next two weeks being fully immersed in French but it will be very good for us. Dinner was with guests again but only two and it was much easier, although we still really didn’t understand much. Again it was fabulous food and five courses so we will certainly not starve here.
Wednesday was our first day of work and Steve worked with Noel in the garden and with the animals and I worked with Isabelle in the kitchen and cleaning the rooms of the chambre d’hote. Both of them are very patient in communicating with us and we both managed ok although felt extrememly exhausted by the end of the morning and wondered what we have done to ourselves. The work is not hard at all and for me, I’m also getting constant private French lessons. Isabelle corrects my French and tells me better ways of saying things and really encourages me to just talk regardless of making mistakes. We had some time off in the afternoon and went for a walk in the forest and hills behind the house for an hour. We found some mushrooms which we took back for approval before we actually collected any in case they don’t use them but they were very happy so tomorrow we hope to go collecting. We got caught in the daily thunderstorm and got drenched on the last bit of the run back to the house. There has actually been a thunder storm every since day for the last 4 weeks and rain every single day, except one, for the last 6 weeks. Dinner was for us and 5 guests and was difficult again but we are starting to just tune out when we can’t cope any more – like shortly after we start eating!
Thursday was more of the same work – Steve feding animals and basic garden work, and me cleaning the chambre d’hote. Isabelle was away for the morning so I worked a bit with Noel and a lot on my own. We went for a walk to collect mushrooms after lunch and found 4 good big cepes and quite a few girolles. Its fantastic to just wander about in the woods poking about for mushrooms and actually knowing that what we’re collecting is edible. We found lots in the first hour tehn nothing for an hour then just as we were finishing another two really nice cepes. It is a bit of a tedious activity when youre not finding anything but so much fun when you do that it makes up for it. We also saw the mother of all cepes but she was old and we left her in the woods. The final two cepes Noel and I prepared for aperitifs just raw with salt, pepper and a bit of walnut oil, and they were great. They went very nicely with some homemade saucisson. Dinner was quite nice as there was the two elderly gentlemen still and they are really warming to us and chatting a bit although its difficult with the language thing. They commented how much better our French is already though. There was also a family from Belgium but although they speak fluent French its not their first language and they don’t really mange to chat. I think the ability to chat and to maek jokes means you can actually communicate with people and I’m just starting to manage that with Isabelle, which is really nice. Steve went out with Noel to get more milk to make cheese from the farm down the road and whey for the pigs from the farm opposite that make goats cheese. The daily thunderstorm only came after we went to bed so that’s a big improvement. The other bonus about the weather is that there are not usually cepes at this time of year because its too dry so that makes up for some of the rain.
Friday started with usual work and I made icecream and then omelette with the remaining mushrooms for lunch. It was fantastic and definitely makes up for the tedious bits wandering in the woods. We had a wee siesta as its pretty exhausting still with all the communication being in French but it is improving every day. Steve is reading a French comic book, with the help of a dictionary. The dictionary goes everywhere with us and one of the elderly gentlemen called it ‘le bible’ so that’s what it now is. There’s also a second bible, which is a French book of plants so we can identify what plants are that come up in conversation and we don’t know the French name for. I think our vocabulary of French plants is probably better now than most peoples in English! After siesta we went for a walk to collect more mushrooms and tried a few new places and spent 2 hours finding nothing. Then we went back to the same trees and found lots of girolles again and a couple of cepes. One of the cepes was good enough to make aperitifs again and the rest for lunch tomorrow. There was a Belgian couple staying and they were struggling a bit with French as it is only their 4th language and English is their 2nd so they were very keen to speak in English with us. I actually found that really difficult because there were too many sounds in my head and most of the table was speaking French and I’d been speaking French all day so hearing French in one ear and trying to answer in English from the other ear was really difficult. In the end no words came in either language and bits of German kept coming out again as they also speak Dutch between themselves which is a similar sound. Three languages in my head at the same time was too much for me. I don’t know how the Belgians manage to jump so easily between languages. The meal was great again with aperitifs, a salad and fromage tarte, farm porc casserole, fromage, and apples with my icecream. However I was shattered and even Noel noticed I was staring blankly into space and not hearing anything. It was actually only 10pm when we got to bed but felt more like midnight for me (which is really really late).
Saturday was a busy baking morning for me as the guests were really slow in having breakfast and leaving. We made mint and cheese cake, chestnut and chocolate cake and started a brioche. There was actually only one room to clean and then lunch to be made. It was fantastic mushroom omelette again with leftover tarte. In the afternoon we had a lesson on conjugating verbs from Isabelle then I had a wee siesta and Steve went for a cycle into Hautrives to look at the Palais Ideal which is a folly built by some important guy but not that great from the outside so he decided we probably wouldn’t bother to go in. We had dinner by ourselves in the evening so just had leftovers form last night but it was nice to be able to relax over dinner and not concentrate so hard to understand and also not feel like I needed to be looking after the guests all the time. We didn’t have to eat so many courses so finished in time to go for a walk. It was a gorgeous evening and we could see the cliffs of the Vercors (a national park area) and a nice sunset. We had a quick look for mushrooms but there were none under the same tree. We think maybe because it hasn’t rained today and it was fairly dry there. That might mean the end of our mushroom hunting unless it rains again so we are a bit torn. Its certainly nice to have had no rain or thunder for 24 hours.
Sunday was a day that all the guests changed so we started work later so they could all have breakfast and leave and I could start on cleaning rooms. So we had breakfast and then went for a walk before work. We finished at lunch and had a few hours break before animal and guest feeding times, so went for another walk. This time we took a different route and went across the other side of the valley where the goat farm is that our chevre comes from, and we were looking back across at the house. It turned out to be rather a long walk although very nice through the woods and through farmland and old stone cottages. After feeding time we had our own dinner separately again although did have aperitifs with the guests. A couple of other French ladies were eating their own meal in theother kitchen too so we chatted with them a bit. Apparently at dinner there were more people who preferred to speak English than French so for me it was good we were’nt there as it would have confused things even more. We also managed to get an early night.
On Monday all the guests changed again so I cleaned rooms but there was no evening meal preparation as it is the couple of days off for Isabelle so if guests are here they cater for themselves. That also meant we got the evening off and Steve had worked a long morning helping to weigh all the young sheep to see which ones could go to the abattoir. That involved lots of chasing, tackling and lifting sheep. After lunch we went for a drive into Tain l’Hermitage again as we’d found out that the Valhrona chocolate factory is there and do free tastings. It was easy to find and we ate rather a lot of chocolate. We could just taste their whole range of estate chocolate as well as pralines and other chocolate things. The smell on the street was also gorgeous – not a bit like the Cadburys smell but much more rich and sophisticated. We went for a walk afterwards and strolled across the Rhone to Tournon and around its old town a bit. It probably would have been very pretty but it started raining properly and we got drenched as we didn’t have coats. We stopped in the tourist office and when the man spoke to us in English we even asked him to speak French to help us learn and got treated very differently to the English people who came in after us and spoke to him directly in English. The church in Tournon was really pretty with old medieval arches and iron chandeliers and very simple but attractive lines and décor. We stopped under the arch of the old bridge in the middle of the Rhone on the way back and discussed education (!!!) for fifteen minutes and in the meantime the rain eased. By the time we got back to Valhrona we were soggy but not drenched and we tasted a bit more and bought a couple of bars of chocolate and got given a huge handful of bite-size bars as well. We got back to the house still rather soggy and got into dry clothes for a very simple dinner with the family and an early night.
Tuesday was the first of our two days off and the weather looked like it was lifting a bit towards the hills so we got organised slowly and got sent off with picnic lunches and dinners and headed to the Vercors. The first part of the drive just got wetter and we nearly called off the trip but it still looked a bit clearer in the hills and we eventually drove into them. We were fairly pleased we did because although the scenery was not as grand as it could have been the cliffs were moody with clouds hanging over them and rather pretty. We’re sure the views along more of them would have been magnificent but we couldn’t see it. We went in to a cave called Grottes de Chorance and decided to pay the money for a visit as it was not a great day and the caves looked pretty cool. It was actually the best cave we can remember visiting. The stalactites were incredible as they were just tiny threads hanging down all of uniform diameter but different lengths up to three meters. They were white and glowed in the lights and there were lots of them. There were also some regular stalactites and an underground river and a couple of lakes that were all lit up beautifully. We walked along a couple of bits of the river, which were also lit really nicely and up a wee rapid to a higher chamber with another lake. We arrived there in the dark and they did a sound and light show to show off all the features of the chamber and it was really spectacular. The river looked like the volcanic terraces in NZ but surrounded by amazing cave formations. It was certainly a very worthwhile visit. After the cave we strolled down to the waterfall which was also beautiful and through a cave underneath it, and to another underground lake, which was pretty but not like the ones on the tour and was open to the general public. They also had some good displays of the archaeology and artefacts found in the caves and the geology of the caves and the local area. Another great thing they had was decent toilets – flush toilets, with toilet paper and basins with soap. Usually the public toilets in France are ghastly and I try to avoid using them. At the farm with the composting toilet we just got very used to having a pee in the bushes and that is certainly preferable to the toilets which are basically squat platforms that are open below and always stink and are surrounded by millions of flies. As a consequence we ‘find’ ladies rooms in all sorts of places I’ve used some pretty spectacular ladies rooms – with views of the snowy tops of the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, lavender fields, Provencal villages, flamingos in the camargue. However it was so exciting to have a proper toilet that we had to use it twice. It was too late for a boulangerie to be open (everything closes between 12 and 2 for lunch including boulangeries) for bread for our lunch so we carried on sightseeing. It was a shame really because this is one of the first areas in france we’ve seen that has decent picnic areas. Actually they seem to just randomly drop picnic tables in lots of places, often in the middle of wildflower meadows, with some basic pull-off area from the road. We drove through the Gorges de la Bourne which had some lovely steep cliffs and interesting roads under and through cliffs. However I think we are getting a bit blasé about gorges as we’ve seen some amazing ones now. We headed to La Chapelle en Vercors and looked at campgrounds and the weather then drove to a viewpoint from which we could see nothing and back to a quiet campground outside La Chapelle. The weather actullay lifted and we sat and enjoyed the sun for a while and had an early dinner/ very late lunch. It was a good thing we ate early because we saw the weather coming in and just as we finshed dinner reckoned we had about 15 minutes before we got wet so cleaned up and I got into the tent. Steve was still away doing dishes when the storm hit. He says he has never seen rain like it including in the tropics. We had moved the tent under a tree so I didn’t get hit with the full force of the rain but it was quite loud and there was enough thunder and lightening. Steve was worried about me after it had been raining like that for 20minutes and it eased a little so he only got wet getting back to the tent not drenched. It carried on raining normally for a couple of hours then cleared up a bit and when I got up at 3am I even saw the full moon although couldn’t see much at ground level for the fog. The people in the other tent down the track told us in the morning they had a foot deep of water in the tent overnight and had to move.
We slept in till 8.30, we must have had fairly fitful sleep with the drips from the tree all night and occasional rain although we think it was better to have been under the tree than in the full force of that rain like the other people. Steve went off to the boulangerie and got bread and croissants for our breakfast and we headed away about 11am. We drove up the valley again and it is really pretty – nearly the quintessential alpes with meadows of wildflowers, pretty chalets, cows with bells on and, although not actally mountains, huge hills with impressive white cliffs. They didn’t all coincide for the perfect photo unfortunately but it was still really pretty and very green everywhere. We climbed a couple of mountain passes – the word ‘col’ always makes us think twice about driving there but we invariably see plenty of cyclists at the top. The road down from the Vercors passes through one of the most stupid roads in the world. There are three other ways of getting to the same place so its absolutely beyond me why they would build a road on the edge of huge cliffs and have to blast lots of tunnels and tack on sharp corners. However the trip was fantastic and the views down off the Vercors plateau and along the cliffs were incredible. There was still plenty of cloud around so we couldn’t see far but it was still amazing. We stopped for lunch by the river in St Nazaire en Vercors and had a nice picnic table beside the lake and I painted the viaduct and town while Steve strolled around it. Some French ladies came over and asked to see my painting and I managed to have a conversation with them in French for a while which I was rather pleased with as a week ago I would have looked blankly at them. After that we drove back to the house and went for a walk to look for mushrooms again but found absolutely none. There was only the family for dinner so it was another quiet evening. it was dry and sunny and we managed to get all the camping gear dried over the fence.
Thursday dawned a gorgeous day and we had fairly gentle chores to do (weeding and cleaning the kitchen) and finished at 1pm. After lunch we just lay in the sunshine and watched all the tractors up and down the valley frantically cutting hay. They are all very concerned because its very late for the hay as its been too wet and will mean a very difficult season for them. We went for a walk up the valley a bit, crossed to the other side and past the farm our chevre comes from. The views of the Vercors were perfect and barely a cloud to be seen. We could actually also see past the Vercors to the Alpes with snowy peaks – what a shame it wasn’t like that 2 days ago! The whole valley here is lovely with pretty farms and nice green fields (the farmers don’t think that’s good) and wee herds of grazing cows and goats and the backdrop of the white cliffs of the Vercors. We had a restful afternoon and evening with only the family for dinner again.
Friday was the day the young cockerels got the chop as they were starting to try to crow in the mornings and waking the guests. Their attempts at crowing were pretty funny at times but apparently there are 13 more cockerels than are needed! So we had a day of processing chickens. Noel kills them very humanely and quickly and efficiently and also showed me and I did the last one. Steve and I were on the plucking table and fairly quickly after they are killed they get plunged into hot water and immedatlely plucked. It certainly makes the job of plucking a lot easier. After the plucking they are processed and I joined Isabelle at that afterwards. The heads and feet are cut off and thrown away, tehn we gut them and keep all the good bits like livers and hearts and gizzards. The skins are fired with a heat gun to get any last feather buds out and tehn they go to the kitchen to be butchered. It took basically two people from 8am till 1pm to process 13 chickens to be ready for butchering. Isabelle had a friend come round in the afternoon to do the butchering. Michele I think used to work as a butcher and just wants to keep his hand in, but it was certainly impressive to watch him butcher a chicken. In the afternoon we just lay about in the sun, which had finally come out with some vigour. We had a stroll to look for mushrooms later on and found absolutely none although some of the old ones we had picked were budding. We joined everyone for table d’hote and had another busy evengin and fairly late to bed.
Saturday was a fairly quiet day too. We had regular work in the moringn although Isabelle got me doing mostly stuff in the kitchen rather than cleaning rooms which was nice. She had a friend come to help out with the rooms as there were lots to do and she was really busy with 14 people for dinner. I made a chicken liver terrine and a couple of cakes. In the afternoon we went into Romans to get a map of Switzerland and then went to Chateauneuf-sur-Isere to have a tasting at Paul Jaboulet Aine and I got to taste as well. The wines were lovely and the caves were really impressive where they cellar the wine. It was hot outside again and lovely and cool inside. Summer seem to have finally arrived with a vengence. The temperatures have changed from being in the low 20’s to suddenly high 30’s and the sudden change has given everyone headaches. The farmers are out cutting hay as fast as they can and there is the constant hum of tractors around the house from all over the vballey. We can sit outdoors and watch the landscape changing around us. The fields look different every day and the barley is ripening really fast. Noel comes in from his tractor in time to serve aperitifs and he is nearly black with sun and tractor grease. We decided not to join the huge dinner in the evening but just had a quiet dinner ourselves and since it was also solstice we went up the hill to watch the sun set at 9.30.
Sunday was our last day and we had decided to leave a bit early so our drives wouldn’t be as big the next day. We did a bit of work in the moring although they had said we didn’t need too. They have been really generous to us and we have had a fantastic time and it was very sad to leave. We got sent off with a care packeage of farm produce we got away about 1pm after a substantial lunch of leftovers from last night. The liver terrien was great and we also had a chocolate marron cake for dessert which was lovely (and of course some chicken and rice, a fromage course and a salad course!).