I wrote this blog on New year’s eve, but the dreaded internet got in the way. I thought it was appropriate to say a final farewell to France. Of course I am now writing this in Ireland, but this is the final farewell. There will be a flurry of posts this week, so much to write about…..
31.12.2021
So we did it! I suppose if you’ve done it once it gets easier. We said goodbye to France due to arrive in Ireland at 3.30pm Greenwich meantime.
View from Deck
I have limited internet, so here are some photos of Ambrieres les vallees on our last day there. It was a very pretty town, and affluent, as indicated by the Marie’s office. But despite its affluence the town was still struggling to survive, as were many in France.
Enjoy the photos more to come from Ireland
Ambrieres les vallees, taken from the town that’s cut into the rocksI fell in love with this weir and little bridgeThe weirThe Marie’s Office in Ambrieres les vallees
Rosie
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I thought I would share some of our funnier moments in France with you, and this one came to mind because RD and I were chatting and giggling about it in our now jumbled kitchen the other night.
In our first few months here some lovely friends, Katherine and John, came to visit us. I decided to cook us a lamb roast with all the trimmings, including some good thick gravy to soak up the mint sauce.
All was going well, and whilst we waited for the food John fell asleep in our old comfy leather chair (which has now gone to the great dechetterie in the sky) and Catherine, RD and I decided to have a few glasses of red wine. Well lamb is notorious for taking a fair amount of time to cook, as are roast potatoes (especially when you have had over half a bottle of wine, and are putting the world to rights, thereby forgetting to put them in!) A few glasses turned to a few bottles and before you knew it poor John woke up to three pissed people in the kitchen.
Now me being the cook it was not helpful that I was also ‘three sheets to the wind’ and had a roast dinner to muster. But ‘muster’ it I did, the table was laid and out came the food. I can cook, pissed or not, so all the food was looking and tasting good, except I had forgotten to bring in the gravy. Despite RD offering to assist I insisted that I would get it.
Off I staggered into the kitchen, I poured the gravy into two jugs, and all over my kitchen Island, and staggered back into the living/dining room. It was a long way from the door to the table, or seemed to be, but off I set with the two jugs firmly gripped in my hand, but limply where my wrist was concerned. RD, Catherine and John, watched with amusement as I staggered across the room, pouring gravy from the said to jugs as I went, leaving a gravy snail trail all across our wooden parquet floor. None of them dared to laugh, none of them had a lot of gravy either!
Good times seem such a long way away now.
Rosie
Christmas 2019, the gravy was available this time.
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