Tag: Travel

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Week 25 (France 20 – Brittany, Puy du Fou, Nantes and Le Mans)

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Where were we?

This time last week we were in Brittany, with one more coastal day ahead of us.  On Monday we retraced our route south and east, past Nantes to the small town of Mortagne-sur-Sèvre.  This was chosen entirely for its proximity to Puy du Fou, allegedly the world’s best theme park, and where we spent the next three days.  We left Puy du Fou on Thursday and went back to Nantes.  A day and a half and a brief stop in Le Mans later and we are now in Paris.

Where should we have been?

After Hiroshima and the Seto Inland Sea, this should have been our Olympic week.  We had tickets for the judo yesterday and women’s rugby 7’s today.  We should have been based in Atami, on the coast outside Tokyo.  We had hoped to spend a bit of time on the beach too.

What did we actually do?

Mont St Michel

Mont St Michel is an icon, an almost impossible island of layers of buildings rising to a perfect point.   It’s also one of France’s major tourist attractions, with organised parking on the mainland and bookable shuttle buses to and from the island itself.

Our travels seem to have become much less obviously “cultural” since we left St Pierre de Chartreuse and it was in that vein that we decided not to visit the island itself, with its medieval streets and Abbey, but to drive around the bay at high tide and eat our sandwiches overlooking the island as the waters receded.

We did wonder whether the sight of it might inspire the children to want to visit but although there were votes in favour, the thought of the parking guddle and the compulsory masks at all times while on the island was enough to send us heading for St Malo.

The view looking the other way

St Malo

If we had wanted to avoid a guddle of parking (our preferred French phrase is bordel de merde) St Malo was the wrong choice, but happy chance and about 20 minutes of driving round and round eventually found us a space.

We were, therefore, all a bit hot and grumpy when we walked through the imposing walls.  An ice cream later, however, and St Malo began to work its charms on us.

It is set on a spit of land jutting into the English Channel/La Manche and surrounded on all sides by walls.  On the seaward side the high tide line laps at the walls themselves and in a wintry storm the waves crash over into the city.  On a beautiful day in July however, a glorious strand was revealed.  The tide was going out and what had been off-shore islands when we arrived were soon a gentle stroll away across the sand.

We settled down to hunt for worms (none), crabs (five) and other seaside delights. We enjoyed a paddle in our third salty body of water of the trip. (Is there a collective noun for sea/ocean?).  The water bubbles up through the sand and makes excellent moated castles.  Our beastie of the week (despite stiff competition later) was a determined winkle, solemnly trudging across the sand towards the receding sea.  Rumours she was hoping to find a whale for a world trip remain unconfirmed…

Ben heroically undertook to return to the car for swimming things and some of us also enjoyed a dip in the huge lido with its iconic diving platform (although no one was brave enough to take the leap).

One small leap

We had such a good time that it was after 9pm when we got back to Ploërmel.

Josselin and Mortagne-sur-Sèvre

We left Brittany on Monday, stopping first in the nearby town of Josselin. We knew nothing about it, and so its lovely château (sadly closed on Monday mornings) and multi-coloured half-timbered houses were a surprise and a delight.

After a sandwich we we on the road again, broadly following the route of the Loire towards Nantes, and round the delights of its ring road, before heading past vines being farmed on an industrial scale to the small town of Mortagne-sur-Sèvre. 

This was an unexpected treat.  We merely wanted to be near Puy du Fou for an early start the next day, but Mortagne proved (if only to Ben and Harriet – everyone else having opted to stay inside with the WiFi) to be surprisingly interesting and beautiful.  We enjoyed ancient walls, a walking route based around notable local women (including the embroiderer of Princess Grace’s wedding dress, and a counter-revolutionary martyr (not the same person)), lovely riverside gardens and a rare breeds farm.

We finally identified our plant of the week here too. A Persian Silk Tree. We wonder if it would survive in Scotland….

Puy du Fou

Where do we start talking about Puy du Fou? It’s one of craziest, most over the top, most full-on, most jaw-dropping, campest, silliest, most unbelievable and most EPIC places we have ever been.  With a permanent sound track to match.

It is, loosely, historical, although we suspect the professional historian in the family (new book coming out in September: get your copy here) might be horrified at the lack of any subtlety or nuance in how various events are presented.

We did start to notice after a while a recurring theme of traditionalist, Catholic, French victory over evil foreign invaders.  A quick google led us to its founder, Philippe de Villiers, a politician, historian, entrepreneur and author whose closest UK equivalent seems to be Jacob Rees-Mogg.

But if you can put that aside (and we did), the sheer exuberance, effort and excess is extraordinary.  There are 20 separate shows or experiences all based around a different period or event, and using an extraordinary array of actors, animals, special effects, fire, water, music, magic, costume, engineering, artistry, agility, and more.

We are not normally (whatever it may look like from this blog) a theme park sort of family but we had been told that if we were going to come to Puy du Fou we needed more than one day. So we booked into one of the history-themed hotels on site. We could have gone for a Merovingian stilted hut, a Gallo-Roman villa, a medieval citadel or a belle époque chateau (to be honest that one was a bit like a conference centre) but we ended up in the Field of the Cloth of Gold. With loos to match.

It is, of course, all in French, but English maps and daily guides are available and there was a “simultaneous” translated voiceover available on their app for most of the shows. That said, the epic soundtrack and deafening volume made the translation rather hard to hear much of the time and so our children tended to resort to us, which was sometimes fine, and sometimes very hard indeed (the Musketeers show was particularly incomprehensible, in any language).

Generally, too, there was a natural assumption that we would have a basic level of general French historical knowledge. Even though Ben has lived here and Harriet has a degree in French, we didn’t always. We didn’t, for example, know anything about counter-revolution in the Vendée or the ill-fated expedition of Laperouse. But in a way that was a good thing – at what other theme park would you end up discussing Robespierre, the Reign of Terror and the novels of Victor Hugo over lunch with your children?

A few highlights:

The evening show: so good we saw it twice.  The most ridiculous confection of classical music hits, fountains, flying cellos, floating violinists and a lake like a magician’s hat, out of which appeared lights, fire, a piano, a glowing carriage pulled by giant swans, six ballet dancers, a sparkling pagoda, and an entire organ blasting flames from its pipes and played by a man on fire. Bach will never be the same again.

The circus show wowed Magnus, Aurora and Sophie, with gladiators, a man herding geese, a parade of ostriches, a tiger and lions and a chariot race in which one of the chariots lost a wheel and another charioteer ended up dragged behind the traces.

Jacob Rees-Mogg aside, and although the children liked them, the big cats were the one part that made Ben and Harriet very uncomfortable. In 2020 using wild cats (even if all they did was run into the arena and lie down) doesn’t feel entirely appropriate. The lionesses in particular looked very cowed by their handler.

Generally though, the use of animals was astonishing in a good way. Any of them was a worthy contender for our weekly title. We will long remember the vicious Viking hound bringing down a runaway peasant (his tail giving away quite how much fun he was having), the amazing horsemanship and teamwork in the jousting and in particular the extraordinary bird show. This was far and away Harriet and Ben’s favourite with over 300 birds and 80 different species, including eagles, owls, hawks, marabou storks, spoonbills and even a secretary bird. Harriet is now wondering if it is too late to train in falconry.

Nantes

Nantes was really (sorry Nantes) a stopping point between Puy du Fou and Paris.  It does, of course, have its own rich history, being the seat of the Dukes of Brittany.

However we were shattered after our three full on days of history (however bowdlerised) and there was a vote for no more.  We couldn’t, in any event, have visited the 14th Century cathedral which is sadly currently closed following a serious fire (allegedly arson) earlier this month.

Instead we went for miracles of visible engineering, and spent an afternoon being wowed by the Machines de l’Ile.   An entire area on the banks of the Isle de Nantes has been taken over by the theatrical engineers of the Compagnie des Machines de Nantes.  In their workshops they build fantastic moving animals and plants from wood and steel.  We visited the gallery, where they display and test their prototypes and maquettes and had a glimpse into the workshops.   The current project is a 30 metre high, 50 metre wide tree which will rise from a disused quarry further along the Loire. It will be home to caterpillars, hummingbirds, sloths, predatory plants, birds of paradise, ants and two enormous herons, which will take wing each carrying up to 16 people. 

Lucy was asked to test the mini heron, and Ben and Aurora were in charge of the mating dance of a male bird of paradise,  with Magnus providing the sound effects.

The centrepiece of the machines here in Nantes though is the Elephant, extraordinarily realistic, despite the visible driver and workings, who promenades around the island, carrying up to 50 people in his palanquin.  He’s definitely a he – we saw him having a wee….  He also, understandably, gets hot, so cools himself off in an inimitably elephantine way.  If you happen to be nearby, you may get wet.

He is awe-inspiring (and free) to see but we decided to go for the full experience and ride on him too.  This was a wonderful (and wet) 25 minutes, a very smooth journey with an entourage of excited children (and adults) and an up-close view of the extraordinary feats of engineering and craftsmanship that go into creating such a fabulous beast.

Le Mans

Lying halfway between Nantes and Paris, Le Mans plays host to the annual 24 Hour motor race. When we were planning our Tour de France home-leg, one of our number had given the Le Mans 24 Hour Museum a “yes please, we must absolutely go there”, while the other three had said “meh, whatever”.

Despite all of us enjoying the Le Mans ’66 film this week, it was only Magnus and Ben who paid a visit while the girls went to the supermarket.

The museum itself was quite small, but completely packed with a history of motor racing, with cars dating back to 1889, as well as jaw-dropping supercars of today.

Magnus was particularly impressed by the Ford GT40s, which won several races from 1966 onwards, as featured in the film. There was a section of the museum dedicated to the film with cars, props and costumes.

The room containing models of every car to have raced was spectacular – a collector’s dream, and Ben gave a wistful look at the 2CV, adorned with flags, which made it to Tokyo from Paris.

We did at least make it to Paris, four and a half months later than planned, to a beautiful flat which will be our home for the next few days.

La vie est belle à Paris

How was it?

Good bits:

Magnus: Le Mans Museum (CARS). The Circus at Puy du Fou and the Vikings at Puy du Fou. They were cool because they had fire and excitement. I liked the chariots and the Viking longship rising out of the water.

Lucy: I enjoyed Saint Malo, it’s a lovely town and I had fun on the beach. Puy du Fou was AMAZING, I loved the birds, the evening show and the history. The mechanical animals were beautiful and really cool, I enjoyed going in the heron and the elephant.

Harriet: A week of amazing sights, as you can probably tell from some of the gushing paragraphs in this post. I could have watched the bird show at Puy du Fou over and over again. It was utterly astonishing. I loved the evening show too for its utterly shameless extravagance.

The Machines de l’Ile were extraordinary as well. I was slightly reluctant to ride on the Elephant as I thought it might be better to appreciate it from the outside but it was amazing to be inside the beast and to witness both its workings and the brilliant reactions it receives.

I adored St Malo too. I’d love to have stayed longer. It felt somehow more “real” and less tourist oriented than some of the other walled cities we have visited. As a bonus I treated myself to a Breton jumper.

The yellow one is Lucy’s..

Aurora: Everything in Puy du Fou was soo fun, the beach pool was quite cool. I liked watching loads of Friends. I thought the elephant was really great because it was so extremely big and really just cool!

Sophie: I have loved all of Puy du Fou. One of my favourite parts was the bird show because there were so many birds and they all got so close to us. I’ve also watched lots of Glee (a program I have been watching a lot) The elephant was amazing because of the view and when we were hot it sprayed water on us! Sleeping in a four poster bed was super comfy.

Ben: I thought St Malo was stunning.  I would happily come back. Our unexpected highlights – Josselin and Mortagne-sur-Sèvre – were more examples of things we would never have seen by not being stuck in France.

Puy du Fou was a riot. Huge eagles diving from a suspended balloon, over a soundtrack straight from the blockbuster school of soaring strings, pounding drums, heavy brass chords and a wordless choir, was breathtaking. Watching the horses accelerate and gallop at the chariot racing was another eyes-on-stalks moment, and the whole Baz Lurman meets Game of Thrones meets Liberace shazam of the place was great.

Engineering meets biology meets art makes smiles

The Machines de l’île joined Puy du Fou in making me appreciate the artistry and bloody-mindedness of the people who don’t just dream of these things – why don’t we make a 3-times life-size moving beautiful elephant out of wood and hydraulics? / why don’t we have vikings attack out of the water on a rising submerged longship? – but actually make them work and give people a thrill watching them. How many times must they have heard “it will never work” and still found a way to make it happen, and be beautiful and successful? There’s a lesson in there.

Bad bits:

Lucy: I got rather grumpy at the Machine place.

Sophie: There weren’t any bad bits this week really.

Ben: The increasing heat and crowds on successive Puy du Fou days didn’t sit well with my peely-wally grumpy side, and as I read about rising Covid infection rates across Europe, I started to glare angrily (from behind my correctly-worn mask) at the hordes who made no effort to socially distance / wear a mask properly / wear a mask at all. Despite the months of exile, I’m clearly still British, with all that glaring, though you will be able to guage my grumpiness by reading that I did actually ask people to keep their distance at times. By the mid-afternoon of day 3, I had had enough of Puy du Fou. It was amazing, and I would thoroughly recommend immersing yourself in the full experience, but perhaps it is like eating meringue and marshmallows, dipped in chocolate, rum and sprinkles for every meal…

Magnus: Being hot and angry at Puy du Fou.

Aurora: Not having Duplo A and I am missing the Chartreuse.

Harriet: There have been times this week when my desire to do has clashed with others in the family and I have found their lack of enthusiasm very irritating and upsetting. I got very vociferously cross with Lucy for losing a brand new mask (subsequently found) and very similarly disappointed with Aurora and Sophie who spent much of our time in the Galerie des Machines on their phones looking bored. I think we are all quite weary.

It’s been too hot to wear my new jumper. Not really complaining though.

What did we eat?

It was perhaps a less exciting week for food, although we did have more pancakes and cider in St Malo (the plan was to head home for supper but we were having too nice a time). Excellent ice cream there too.

The food at Puy du Fou was probably better than your average theme park but still not enormously noteworthy. The children did though enjoy the surroundings in the 18th Century dining room, and Ben and Harriet were particularly chuffed that Sophie declared a vegetarian panini (with aubergines and courgettes) “delicious”.

What’s next?

We are into our last week. We arrived in our apartment Paris a few hours ago and plan to make the most of our three days here.

After Paris we had planned to spend our last night in Ghent, revisiting its medieval finery and its waffles.  Once again, though, Covid-19 has other plans. The infection rate in Belgium has increased, restrictions have tightened and there are rumours that quarantine will be reintroduced for those who have visited.  So instead we have one night in Angres, still in France and as close to the border as we can get. We will then drive straight through Belgium, stopping for neither petrol nor wees, and on to the Netherlands, Amsterdam and the ferry home.

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Week 22 (France 17)

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Where were we?

Here. For the last time.

Though we will be back.

And also here.

Carcassone, where we arrived yesterday

Where should we have been?

In that parallel Covid-free universe, this is the week that Tweed got to Tokyo.

We had a great few days in Shanghai before leaving China on Wednesday on the ferry (slow boat from China?) to Osaka. It has a mahjong room and a karaoke suite…

We got the train from Osaka – our first bullet train – to Tokyo and arrived here yesterday. Ben has enjoyed speaking Japanese, which he has been practising daily on our route here. We have a long list of things we want to do here. Including, by popular demand, Disneyland Tokyo. Some of us are terribly excited.

What did we really do?

St Pierre de Chartreuse

Ben found Harriet’s bank card. It was in Lucy’s pocket. Lucy had apparently looked everywhere.

It’s not here…

On Monday our landlords unexpectedly announced they were coming for an inspection visit and arriving on Thursday. As five of us are their direct descendants this was actually pretty good news, but we did want them to feel we had been looking after the place so a cleaning and tidying frenzy ensued.

The conservatory as no one has ever seen it before.

Shuggie and Ele, Ben’s parents and our enormously kind and generous landlords, duly arrived on Thursday evening after an epic drive from Rotterdam. It was utterly lovely to see them.

We had about 16 hours with them but we managed to cram in a swim, a garden inspection, a meal (and some wine) and a lot of chat and cuddles. Lucky us.

Earlier in the week we had another strawberry-fuelled walk. This time we headed up to the Source du Guiers. The Guiers Mort is the river which features large in many of our pictures, although possibly not quite as many as that mountain. It rises in a deep cave in the cliffs behind the village before tumbling down a waterfall and is a pleasant two or so hour walk up.

The route passes through the usual birch woods and up forest tracks, where the strawberries were thick on the ground, before opening into an enclosed meadow. Harriet and Ben did this walk on 21 July 2004, the day they got engaged, and, although it sounds like they made it up, really did find a four-leafed clover in that meadow. It hangs in a frame on the kitchen wall. A few years ago we did the walk again, as a family, and again Aurora found another clover.

Hopes were high, and we were determined, and ten minutes of searching produced not one but three good luck charms.

The cynical ex-biology-teacher among us points out that having four leaves is clearly a mutation that is simply passed to many of the clovers growing in that field but we (including the cynics) are refusing to let that ruin the magic.

Makes us all smile

We also met a lot of our tadpoles’ country cousins, happily swimming in a large puddle. It was reassuring that they too showed no sign of having legs.

The three girls spent a lot of time with their American friend Riis this week, including a movie night, a trip to the mini golf down the hill in La Diat and an ice cream party.

Aurora and Riis got on particularly well and are now trying to work out a long-distance relationship…

Harriet had her second girly drink in two weeks, again with Debbie and Carol and this time with the addition of Debbie’s daughter Chloe. It turns out that having a giggle, and a glass of rosé in the sun, is very good for you.

Magnus meanwhile discovered an ancient bottle of bubble mixture and drove everyone mad leaving a snail trail of soapy water on all the clean surfaces. Harriet then found an online guide to making bubbles within bubbles and she and Magnus had lots of fun (and some frustration) with that. In an appropriate location.

Magnus was also invited to spend an afternoon with his friend Sam. This was a great opportunity for four of the rest of us to go “climbing in the trees” and for Ben to head into Grenoble to claim back the cost of his doctor’s visit, tests and drugs, and to run some other errands.

The climbing in the trees (Is there an English word for this? – in French it’s accrobranche) was great as always, but Ben had a rather more frustrating time in Grenoble. He didn’t have exactly the right forms in exactly the right order to reclaim the money (although this can be done by post) and the china shop, where he wanted to replace some broken plates (astonishingly dating to before our arrival) wasn’t open when it said it would be, and when it did open didn’t have the plates we needed.

So he consoled himself by buying a fondue set. Retail therapy of the most cheesy kind…

At Sam’s, Magnus made a new friend: Oli, whose dad lives in the village. Oli has a trampoline and a scalextric set. Magnus was very happy there for several hours on Thursday while the rest of us cleaned and packed.

Carcassonne

On Friday morning, 117 days after arriving in St Pierre de Chartreuse, we packed up the car, left the fondue machine in the care of Shuggie and Ele, said our goodbyes to our wonderful friends and headed off South and West to Carcassonne.

This wasn’t the most fun journey we’ve had. The traffic was very heavy and it was extremely hot: 37° when we stopped outside Nîmes for a wee and an ice cream. Nonetheless we arrived safely in our home for the next three days, a very nice flat in a rather less nice corner of Carcassonne.

But this is just around the corner

It is a bit of a shock being back in a hot city and none of us slept brilliantly – the bikers of Carcassonne seemingly holding a rally at 2 a.m. didn’t help – but we were up bright and early to take advantage of the welcome overcast skies and cooler temperatures.

We have left the garden and wildflowers of the Chartreuse behind, but the agapanthus in Place Gambetta in Carcassonne were a pretty good replacement

We walked into La Cité, the medieval walled town of Carcassonne and found it just as beautiful as we remembered (but less steep, says Harriet) We were delighted that all four children asked to go and visit the castle and its ramparts.

We were hugely touched by the response to yesterday’s Instagram/Facebook post. People were enormously kind about what we have written and posted in the last 117 days and in particular about how we, especially the children, have coped with this unexpected situation.

We celebrated how proud we are of them all with a lolly/ crêpe/ very large ice cream in the shadow of the ramparts of Carcassonne.

How was it?

Good bits:

Ben: For our Friday Instagram post, I described the process of losing the dream of our transcontinental journey as conforming to the seven stages of grief. I’ve been through anger, denial, bargaining, sadness, etc. The last of these is Acceptance and Hope, and (for the moment at least) this has been my mood during our farewell to the Chartreuse.

I’m delighted my parents came to see us in our / their home, and pleased with how pleased they were with what we had done to (and in) the house.

I am very grateful to the people who discovered antibiotics. I am feeling much better than last weekend.

On a lesser note, it is good to see our “where we are” dot on the blog move, even if it’s not going to get as far as it was meant to.

Sophie: I really enjoyed Riis coming over lots, the ice-cream party was good and I had loads of fun watching a movie on Riis’s terrace and playing with his cat. I had lots of fun at Indian forest although I got lots of wedgies. I adored being able to see Ele and Shuggie.

Lucy: I enjoyed the Source du Guiers walk especially when I found a four leaf clover because I feel we need some luck in this unlucky year. I enjoyed spending time with Riis especially the film and obviously Shuggie and Ele coming was awesome. I love climbing in the trees so Indian Forest was good. Carcassonne is lovely but I don’t have much to note about it.

Magnus: Oli’s house was good because we got to play on his Scaleletrix. I had a blue Mercedes AMG.

Ele and Shuggie coming was good because, well, Ele and Shuggie are really nice. I mostly hugged Ele.

Source du Guiers is one of my favourite walks, because it has these metal crates that you jump across to get across the waterfall.

Harriet: The Source du Guiers walk is always a favourite and didn’t disappoint. I loved the climbing and in particular being aware of how much more physically able I am than I was five months ago.

It was lovely to see Ben’s parents and (honestly) a massive relief that they seemed delighted with the condition of the house. It is good too, although tinged with all sorts of regrets, big and small, to be back on the road again.

The children hate me saying it but I am so proud of how they have grown and changed over the last wee while and the people they are and are becoming.

Aurora: Hanging out with Riis made me smile loads. Indian Forest was fun but I got loads of wedgies. Seeing Ele and Shuggie. The movie with Riis was fun. I loved doing the ice cream party for Riis, skipping bits of cleaning to have lunch with Riis and making Tiktoks with Riis.

And cleaning windows with Riis…

Bad bits:

Aurora: Not having Duplo A and saying bye to Riis.

Harriet: I am sad, for lots of reasons, to be leaving the Chartreuse. There is the big picture of the fact that this really does mean we have failed to do what we set out to do. We will not get to Tokyo in 2020. There is the medium picture of the fact that we have, over the past few months, really begun to put down roots with people and place in the Chartreuse and I will miss them all. And then there is the small stuff – I didn’t see the tadpoles grown up. I never made any wild strawberry jam. There are walks unwalked and rivers unforded.

I am, and I know it’s a controversial opinion, underwhelmed by Carcassonne. The Cité is of course spectacular, but as medieval walled cities go, I think I preferred Aigues Mortes, and the more modern town feels a bit run down and depressed (though the umbrellas are lovely).

It looks great from here though

Magnus: Riis coming round. Cleaning.

Sophie: I am already missing my friends from Saint Pierre (Riis and Milly).

Strawberries can’t help with that.

Lucy: We didn’t do a red Indian Forest run which I wanted to do, there was a lot of waiting around for Daddy after our climbing and it was VERY hot yesterday.

Ben: My trip to Grenoble was a frustrating one, which made me a bit grumpy, and I didn’t enjoy the drive to Carcassonne – too hot and too many cars, and (I’m sure) nothing to do with the nice wine the evening before.

But at least the car was (briefly) nice and clean.

What did we eat?

A lot of leftovers. And the contents of the freezer.

And some very large lollies.

What about the tadpoles?

One of the many lovely things about Ben’s parents arriving is that they can take charge of the tadpoles. This had previously been a cause of concern. We will be following their progress from afar and will keep you updated.

This week they have continued to swim happily, though appearing only when the sun is off their respective pools.

It is nonetheless a sadness that we didn’t see them grow up. We knew exactly where we were going to release them and Harriet in particular was very much looking forward to having, temporarily, an actual box of frogs…

What’s next?

We are here in Carcassonne, fulfilling all Ben’s nine-year-old Dungeons and Dragons dreams, until Monday when we head to the West Coast, between Arcachon and Bordeaux for a bit of beach and wine. It’s not sake and sushi, but it could be a lot worse.

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Week 13 (France 8)

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Where were we?

Yesterday was day 90 of our trip. We are now over half way through the six months of our trip.

It will surprise no one to learn that we are still in France.

Where should we have been?

Back in that alternate reality, we had a wonderful couple of days in the amazing city of Khiva before getting back on a train (a mere five hours and in the daytime too) and going from the sublime to the, well, even more sublime in Samarkand and Bukhara. Harriet had been dreaming of Samarkand for over 20 years and it was worth the wait. We spent five days between the two stunning cities before returning to to Tashkent earlier today. Another new country tomorrow.

I find it hard to express just how much I wish we were here. Image from Pixabay

What did we actually do?

The Door

Ben is not a natural DIY-er and so it was a real act of love that he suggested to his parents that he would remove, sand and revarnish the front door.

Having done the research and bought the necessary equipment a couple of weeks ago (which is sometimes as far as these things go) Sunday saw the door crowbarred off its hinges, laid flat, and sanded. Magnus, Aurora and Sophie helped with the sanding, at least where using the electric sander was involved. They were less keen on the fiddly paper hand sanding in the corners.

Wednesday saw the first coat of varnish, with another applied on Thursday. The fittings got a polish too, and overall everyone is slightly amazed at the result and utterly amazed at the lack of swearing during the job.

What else?

On Monday we headed down to the river to forage for wild garlic (not difficult, it’s everywhere) and on Tuesday we turned it into what Aurora described as “eggs and garlic” but most recipe books would call a frittata.

A minor disaster was avoided through another act of kindness when we ran out of butter for breakfast and the shop was shut. Ben asked at the boulangerie if they would sell him some (plenty of butter in your average croissant so he thought they’d probably have plenty). They flatly refused and instead gave him the largest slab of butter you’ve seen in a very long while.

But it won’t fit in the dish…

More kindness later in the week too. Word of our presence has clearly got out and an American family we didn’t know lived here popped round with armfuls of children’s books. After years of resistance Magnus has spent most of the time since in Narnia.

On Thursday night we attempted to create the feeling of all those nights we haven’t spent in long distance trains by having a family sleepover. The room is rather bigger than your average train carriage, but with six of us in it, four on the floor, it felt cramped enough. In true sleepover style we had takeaway pizza (very exciting as takeaways have only just reopened here), sweets, a film (The Goonies – the children were slightly bemused but Ben guffawed his way through it) and truth or dare. We also all got about eight hours sleep so it clearly wasn’t a real sleepover at all.

The morning after. We lured them out with croissants.

The forest must be feeling amorous as clouds of yellow pollen have been gusting around the hills and valleys like some sort of toxic waste. It settles on everything and is visible for miles. Ben and Magnus both suffer from hay-fever but either the drugs really do work or this is, fortunately, one of the few types of pollen neither of them reacts to, as apart from a slight sore throat, and a feeling of heaviness in the air, no one felt any ill effects.

That yellow haze on the hills? That’s pollen. All of it.

Great excitement on Monday evening when we were on the front page of the online edition of the Border Telegraph. The paper edition came out on Wednesday and a copy is winging its way in the (very slow) post to us.

Monday and Wednesday the Borders… Friday and Saturday the world! Yesterday we featured on the BBC Sport homepage and earlier today Harriet was interviewed live on the BBC World Service’s Sports Hour. It was surprisingly nerve-wracking, and she found herself shaking afterwards. But it was fun. We’d do it again.

And here it is. Just in case you missed it.

The weather has been quite changeable with rain and storms frequently threatening. This has made for some spectacular views and even more wonderful pictures of that mountain.

This one is going on the wall.

All that rain makes teaching science very simple – we have been able literally to see the water cycle as the early morning sun burns off the night’s rain in clouds that rise off the trees in the valley below us. The snow clings resolutely on in patches on the high ground but the rising and falling water levels in the river and over the waterfall just below us make it demonstrably clear what happens when it melts.

Ben has turned the tables in Trivial Pursuit and the score now stands at 10:9 in his favour.

In a moment of irony, the primary school distance learning topic this week was France, and, in particular, what would it be like to visit Paris. If only we had been able to find out.

Harriet had another moment of wild flower excitement this week when she spotted not one, but two different varieties of wild orchid. Everyone else remains unimpressed.

Lady orchid and Early Purple orchid. In case you were wondering.

We have had moments when emotions have run very high this week, but we think, maybe, we are getting better at bringing the temperature back down when necessary.

The girls finally finished all the Harry Potter audiobooks and have moved on to The Hobbit. Stephen Fry is proving a hard act to follow.

Local “solidarity” groups have combined forces to make 60,000 masks for free distribution to all residents. Despite not officially living here, it was agreed we counted and we picked up six on Friday. We are looking forward to being ninjas.

It hopefully goes without saying that we are also enormously grateful.

Harriet had an uncharacteristic moment of technical brilliance mid-week after a black dot appeared on all her pictures. After some internet based research, she uninstalled and reinstalled the camera, reset all the settings, and diagnosed a speck of dust inside the lens. As a last resort (“By definition it’s always the last thing you try”, says Ben. He’s right.) She hit it, hard, on the table. Problem solved.

Now you see it, now you don’t

We had an interesting email from British Airways telling us that our flight home (from Tokyo to Gatwick via Qatar) has been cancelled. That’s less dramatic than it sounds as in fact it is the second leg that has been cancelled and they have automatically rebooked us on a flight at almost exactly the same times but to Heathrow. We do though have to accept the change. We haven’t done so yet (although almost certainly will). It remains the case that we can’t come home, so we continue to hope that going somewhere else (maybe even Tokyo) may become a possibility.

How was it?

Good bits

Magnus: Finishing my Minecraft house (nearly completely). The barbecue was fun. The sleepover was AWESOME. Getting MarioKart back on my phone.

Lucy: The sleepover, obviously. The barbecue was lovely . It was great to get new clothes (a birthday present). I liked winning the quiz again too but my favourite bit was watching the sunset over the pool.

Sometimes she looks angelic

Harriet: The sleepover was a surprising success, despite some grumbles about the pizza. Our walks continue to be lovely and an ever more necessary part of the day. It’s not a specifially “this week” thing, but I love how Magnus skips down every hill. I enjoyed my moment of media fame (though I was suprised how adrenaline-filled the knowledge of being live was). I get a little hunter-gatherer glow out of foraging for anything (you should see me with blackberries) so I felt very pathetically smug about our wild garlic. More generally, it gets ever more beautiful here.

Skippety hop!

Sophie: I loved the sleepover and last night when Daddy, Aurora and I were in my room and she fell off the bed and couldn’t stop laughing. Watching the Goonies. The small lightning storm. Also recreating photos and watching the sun set by the pool. Last but not least finishing the Harry Potter books.

Ben: It was pleasing to have successfully completed the door project. Rather like running not particularly fast, but very fast for me, last week, this is the sort of thing that some people could do without really thinking, but was a real challenge for me, and I’m proud of the results. I was very proud of Harriet on the BBC too.

The kindness of people in the village (and in the wider world) has struck me again this week – the books, the butter, the masks, our friends sending things, or commenting on our social media, Ade with new Duplo – all acts of kindness which help bring happiness. I loved the photo recreations we did too. Looking at each of them – originals or recreations – makes me smile.

For the others, scroll down to see our Instagram feed, or head over there and check us out.

Aurora: Falling off the bed laughing. I couldn’t stop for about 30 minutes. The barbecue was fun. Watching the Goonies. The sleepover. Watching the sunset at the pool and the pink mountains. The Beeley quiz. If I do two more days of not fighting I will have tiktok.

Bad bits

Aurora: Not having Duplo A (Editor’s note: the new not-Duplo has been despatched from the eBay despatch centre and should be with us next week, although as one of Lucy’s birthday presents still hasn’t made it we are trying to keep anticipation to a minimum)

Sophie: The pollen made my throat really sore. Duplo A.

Harriet: If anything is going to drive me to madness in this whole experience it could well be the wordpress app, which consistently loses data, reverts to old versions without warnings and generally seems designed not to work. But apart from that, and the usual scuffles, it has been a pretty good week.

In bigger picture stuff, the halfway mark is both utterly depressing – how little we have done in comparison with what we had hoped and planned – and strangely encouraging – the world has changed so much in the last three months, maybe, just maybe there is room for hope that it will change again, at least enough for us to move on.

Ben: In itself this week has been fine, and apart from the odd fracas not many “bad bits”, though passing the halfway milestone, still being in lockdown, and not being somewhere unfamiliar and new, is not good. I do worry that maybe we will not be able to go further than here this year, and for all that many of our long-held dream destinations will be there for the reaching / exploring / experiencing / enjoying in future years, there will never be this opportunity for a long family trip again.

If I spend too long thinking about this, money worries, job worries, family worries, education worries, political worries, economic worries, all creep in, and they don’t serve me well, so they can all just politely “go away” for now.

Lucy: Nothing major. The hoover breaking was annoying.

Magnus: The toilet seat broke.

How are the frogs?

Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Not frogs. Still tadpoles. But getting there, maybe. Close up you can see where their tadpole skin is coming away from the froggy body underneath. Or at least we think that is what is happening.

Legs by next week. Maybe?

Nine out of ten storm refugees, who had managed to migrate to a smaller pool in the bird bath, have met an sad and untimely end. The tenth is still there in quarantine, waiting to be returned to the mothership.

What did we eat?

“Eggs and garlic”

Ben bought strawberries. They weren’t Scottish and we hadn’t picked them ourselves, but they were nonetheless delicious.

Just add cream (Don’t worry, we did)

It was common consent that the takeaway pizza for our sleepover was not as good as the ones we made ourselves the week before.

What’s next?

We get deconfined on Monday which means we will be able to travel anywhere we like, for as long as we like, as long as it’s not further than 100km. While we are not planning a trip to the Mongolian embassy in Paris for visas yet, it does mean that if we want to go for longer on our daily walks we can.

We can also socialise, distantly, in groups of up to ten people so we will be celebrating on Monday evening with drinks with our new chums Debbie and Philippe.

Shops will reopen too so we can finally buy some clothes that either a) fit or are b) appropriate for the weather. We’re quite excited. The children will be able to go to the boulangerie too. They can finally use some of that French.

As for heading further afield, that is in the hands of the governments of the countries we want to go to. We wait and hope.

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Walks within a km and less than an hour

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The Chartreuse massif is a walkers’ paradise, a designated French Regional Natural Park, and as such is comprehensively signposted, with well maintained paths criss-crossing the hills, forests, streams and mountains. The signs are a distinctive shade of yellow, with small yellow stripes painted on rocks, trees and walls to tell you that you are on the right path, with crosses indicating a wrong turn or false path. There is also a trail running centre in the village, with marked trail runs too.

Signs and markers

Without Confinement the map of available walks is enormous and looks something like this.

The Massif de la Chartreuse

During the current “Confinement”, the French authorities require us to have a written statement (attestation) when we leave the house, signed, dated and timed, and giving the reason for the excursion (déplacement) as one of seven permitted reasons. We use the shopping one, and the exercise one, and that’s it.

The full wording is “Déplacements brefs [Brief excursions], dans la limite d’une heure quotidienne [limited to a daily hour] et dans un rayon maximal d’un kilometre autour du domicile [within a maximum radius of 1km from the home], liés soit à [for either] l’activité physique individuelle des personnes, à l’exclusion de toute pratique sportive collective et de toute proximité avec d’autres personnes [individual sporting activity, excluding all team sports, and all proximity to other people], soit à la promenade avec les seules personnes regroupées dans un même domicile [or walking with only people from the same home], soit aux besoins des animaux de compagnie [or for the needs of pets].”

With the current restrictions, it looks more like this.

Not such massive options during lockdown in the Massif de la Chartreuse

So, mainly for printing out and leaving in the housebook here in my parents’ lovely house, is the definitive, exhaustive, most probably useless (given the lockdown restrictions will be eased within a week of publication) guide to walks from the house, within a radius of a kilometre and able to be completed within an hour.

The Piggy Walk and The Reverse Piggy

The Piggy Walk was our standard walk when the children were much younger. It is just about feasible with a pushchair, if it is a more rugged variety. It involves going down the path to the left of the Hotel Victoria, which descends quite steeply down to the bottom part of the village (la Diat). Watch out for dog poo on the path, and llamas sometimes in the field to the left. Having met the zig zag of the road for the second time, there is a short section of walking still downhill on the road, on the outside of the bend, then over the stream Couzon at the bridge, then immediately right, up a farm track by a yellow sign.

This is a steepish, rough track, going past a farmhouse, usually with a variety of farm animals (hence the piggy walk), zigzagging up to Bernière and a great view of Chamechaude. From here, the road surface gets better, passing Carlinière and Patassière, before it takes you back over the Couzon and up to the St Pierre to Col du Cucheron road. From here, walk down the road into the village, back to the house.

The Piggy and Reverse Piggy

There is a path which cuts across the valley about halfway from Bernière to the main road (utterly unsuitable for pushchairs), well signposted, by which you can return to the Plan de Ville at the Malissarde restaurant. When we were avoiding the farmer at the bottom of the hill, we would often take this way (in either direction), which we knew as the Reverse Piggy, even though we haven’t seen a single piggy on either route this year…

The turn to cut across the valley

The Too Steep Too Long, but Very Beautiful

One day I realised that there was another, higher, path off the Patassière Road (the Piggy route) which did not take us outside the permitted 1km radius. What we discovered, though was that it did take about 10-15 minutes longer than the permitted hour. There was some whinging due to steepness too. Harriet and I loved it, though, and it was very pretty with beautiful views back to the village and the ski slopes.

The extra loop, close enough, but not enough time.

At the highest point of Patassière, there is a road leading higher still, with a yellow signpost, indicating Col du Cucheron. Following the road up a steep slope, there is a wooded path off to the left just before the last (homely?) house. This goes up and up through a steep gully, keeping left if in doubt, until it begins to turn further left, eventually cresting at a wide fork. Turning right would take you to the heady heights of Grand Som, over 2000m up, and left takes you gently down to Bernière. There are great views to your left, between the trees, with an eventual choice of left to Bernière or right to the monastery (outside the permitted km radius). Home either way on the piggy route.

Steep ups and gentle downs

The Chapel

Looking down on St Pierre de Chartreuse is a small chapel, more of a shrine really, which is often lit at night. There is a good loop to get to it. We have on occasion taken croissants up there and had breakfast looking down at the village.

Leave St Pierre along the road to Perquelin, turning right at the Mairie, Post Office, Tourist Office, and just as you reach the sign telling you that you are leaving St P, there is a path on the left, with a yellow signpost, where you can follow the Chemin des Amoureux (Lovers’ Lane) up to the Chapelle du Rosaire.

The Chapel Route, and a large carved lizard

There’s only one diverging path, on up to the top of the Scia mountain (the summit of the KMV – 1km vertical – trail run), but keep to the signs and you will be fine. From the top you can head down the marked path, past a carved wooden lizard, or wander down the grassy ski slopes back into the village.

Down the Hill Variations

Turning right, straight out of the gate to the house, down to the sometimes trickling, sometimes roaring, Guiers Mort river gives the greatest variety of possible routes. Being careful to watch out underfoot on the way down, this being a regular dog walk, at the bottom of the hill, there are three options over the Pont de la Laiterie. It can be nice exploring around here too. A laiterie is a dairy, and there are good scrambles to be had, as well as wild garlic in May.

The three options follow the path of the river downstream or up, or climb the hill up to Mollard Bellet above.

The Parting of the Ways at the Pont de la Laiterie

1) Downstream leads to La Diat, where you can turn right over the bridge to climb up the road back home, but this is a bit dull and exposed, so turning up and left is preferable. There is a signed steep path, almost a staircase, which laces backwards and forwards, and very much up, eventually coming out of the woods, where the path continues up, through a small copse, arriving at the head of the direct route (2 from the Pont de la Laiterie) Just below Mollard Bellet.

2) Straight on from the Pont de la Laiterie leads steeply up through, and out of, the woods, arriving below Mollard Bellet and the road.

Straight on to Mollard Bellet

From this point on either walk we normally take the road signed towards the pretty corner at Les Antonins.

3) Upstream from the bridge at the bottom of the hill is very pretty, and tracks along as far as a small bridge, the Pont de Belmond, (almost exactly 1km from home) to the Perquelin Road. There is a signpost along this path which allows you to climb up right to Les Antonins.

The Variations Down the Hill

From Les Antonins, the options are a descent (the reverse of the path above) or continuing along the road away from Mollard Bellet. There is a marked drop off, which leads to a short sharp path down to the Pont de Belmond bridge. Return is by either side of the river, the Perquelin road being the rive droite and the reverse of the upstream (option 3) being the rive gauche.

If you’re going to have a 1km radius cage, it’s not the worst one.

All of these can be done (have been done during lockdown) forwards, backwards, and in multiple combinations providing a little variation within a limited palette. The full outside perimeter of these combined options takes about an hour without dawdling.

By Ben, with thanks to my parents for our extended stay here.

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A week in – Routines and Flashpoints

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So we are now over a week into our adventure, due to our early start, and perhaps this is a good time to look back, as well as forward. We’re now at our second main stop. Brussels, and in our fourth country, Belgium.

What have we achieved?

  • Everyone is still alive, present, and no-one is ill.
  • We have all eaten new things, and enjoyed them.
  • We have travelled over 1000 miles, by car, foot, train, metro, tram, and bus.
  • We have experienced new things, old things, sweet things, beautiful things.
  • I don’t think anyone has lost anything, although I may have lost a pair of pants. (No big story there, but it peeves me to have lost them.)

We are in the process of settling into our routines, if such a thing is possible over a journey of 26 weeks, but I wouldn’t say we have settled into them yet. Is such a thing, a cadence if you like, possible, required, or wanted?

We have tended to start the day with a short exercise programme, based on the classic Royal Canadian Air Force 5BX and XBX programmes. These have 11 and 12 minutes routines of increasing intensity. They are not too horrid, mainly because they are so short.

This is followed by breakfast, then 15 minutes of maths for Aurora, Sophie, and Magnus, using books the school provided, or science or music for Lucy, either also provided by the school or grade 5 theory. We usually do the work one to one, and it has been sold on the basis of “this is all the school you are going to get today”, which is only partly correct. It generally is the only formal structured learning they get. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, such as the day we were leaving Amsterdam for Brussels. I think this is balanced, and supplemented by, the learning they get from just being and living where we are, the conversations we have about what is around us, and what we are seeing, as well as all the interactions in shops, bell towers, galleries, metro stations, etc.

There has been conflict too, about this and more, as we find our feet on the road. Tiredness is often a contributing factor, and sleeping in different beds is always hard. Travel is tiring (I found the first three days of driving particularly draining) and not just for the driver. Later nights, especially for Magnus, and irregular daily schedules don’t help, hence the routines above.

Phones are also a bit of a flashpoint, and it is difficult for us to “be the change you want to see in the world”, as so much of what Harriet and I are doing – researching, blogging, and other things which would normally be analogue, like reading – is on phones or a tablet. I have removed all the games I had on my phone, so as not to be a complete hypocrite…

I do get annoyed when phones come out at the slightest lull in activity, particularly when it is for pointless games, in a beautiful town square, or the like, and sometimes I’ve snapped when they’ve been taken out to take a photo (snapping at snaps?) which is wrong of me.

So how to manage it?

Originally, each of the children had a phone time limit through FamilyLink, which we removed when we realised they were restricting their (our perception of) “good use” (photos, research, learning, blogging) so they could play more games and chat and message with friends. Most car journeys are phone-free, and that has worked well in general, at least until the final hour of a long journey. The car is not wifi-enabled anyway… We tried restricting apps by temporarily blocking them in FamilyLink but that took them out of their folders upon unblocking them, which didn’t go down well.

We’ve come to realise that some activities need to be “physical with a point” like climbing a windy bell-tower in Ghent, instead of “aimless and cerebral” like wandering round a museum. The Instagram photo competition we had last Friday worked well too, so that might become a regular feature.

Clockwise from top left: Photographing the photographer of the photographers – how meta do you want this to get?; Aimless and cerebral in the Mauritshuis; The windy bell-tower of Ghent; Relaxation and Connections

I think it comes down to chat and compromise, and we are all still learning and adapting. They don’t have a lot of the things we have at home – no-one has watched any TV (just another screen…) since we left – so phones provide a distraction, some privacy and a connection to missed friends at home after all. And we are still talking about it in a (mostly) civil way.

Enough musings for one post, methinks.

Ben

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Resilience Training 101

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So here we were feeling all “ready to go” and “we’ve got this”, when we heard that our ferry from Newcastle to Amsterdam has been cancelled.

The very first thing we have booked has already been cancelled. Fair enough – there is going to be the mother and father of a storm this weekend – and crossing the North Sea then would have put our consitutions, and possibly minimal packing, to the test.

The alternative we have been offered is a sailing on Wednesday evening, which doesn’t work for a number of reasons –

  • We have paid for our accommodation in Amsterdam
  • We have tickets for Keane the night we arrive
  • We have tickets for Anne Frank’s house the next day
  • Our lovely friends who are staying in our house are expecting to move in on Tuesday

So, we have accepted the challenge, and will be leaving home a day before we expected. We have booked the Eurotunnel, which is not going to be wind-affected. We will stay with Granny in Essex on Sunday night, and get to The Netherlands for Tuesday via France and Belgium on Monday.

Some sleep-overs will be cut short, a nice evening with friends will have to wait half a year, and it is a very good thing I didn’t go to the Calcutta Cup.

Ben