Sleepy Suffolk

Part I

Again we had decided to wake on the brink of dawn - at least respectably late dawn - around 8 AM or so. The weather was grey but not inclement and we were grateful for the sole fact it was not raining for after all this was November in France, not the mellowest month of all.
We made our way down to the ’stable’ where our hostess had laid an even more impressive breakfast than the one we’d had day before. She had concocted several jams of her own devise: one could read on the handwritten labels such intriguing mixtures of pumpkin and lemon, zucchini with orange, apple with carrot… She had carefully laid the jam preserves in an S shape across the table. There were surely 10 or 15 different flavors to choose from. And to go with them, we had bread of all sorts - fresh from the baker’s - as well as croissants. This time we were the only guests present and had the table to ourselves though it could have easily catered for 10 or more. We soon got to banter and happy chit chat with the lady who soon pulled out a folder where she’d proudly maintained translations of her ‘Welcome to the Buisson’ text. And believe it or not, although the folder did contain 10 or so languages, it had neither Spanish nor Portuguese which are 2 of the most widespread languages in the world. It did have however such remote languages as Corean and whimsical ones as Creole. Disheartened by this absence in her booklet, JuanLu and I decided to translate to Spanish and Portuguese. While Spanish was a wheeze, Portuguese proved more gruelling to the point that I could not recall some basic words. For instance, I was incapable of remembering the word for pillow. We knew it in Spanish (almohada) but could not recall the Portuguese equivalent. A few days later we had the opportunity to check and as it turns out, we were a mere letter short as almohado translates to almofada in the lusitanian tongue. Eventually, in spite of my lack of vocabulary, both JuanLu and I managed to produce a scraggy translation that would have had Camões and Pessoa uneasily shifting on their seats.
Shortly afterwards, the morning melting away into early afternoon, we headed off to Chenonceau for a slice of French history.

Part II

to be continued…

And so it came. The grand day out, the day we took JotaLu’s cherub, his very own talkative Ford Fiesta out on the wide roads going North.

In spite of the Internet  being much like God, i.e. ubiquitous, you’d think it would have answers to all questions metaphysical or life-pending.
Well it so happens that booking a hotel (hostel / B&B) room for three revealed to be more arduous than one would think. And so, it took me a few calls, hundreds of clicks, patient perusing through the Gîtes de France website before finally spotting a winner.
We’d initially planned to stay in or around Saint-Emilion, a famous vineyard but luck has once again its whimsical way about things and put us up in a small village on the shore of the Gironde: Bourg.(33710).
We will be staying at the Poissonneaus, Annick & Jean in their small château (see inset). When I called, the lady (supposedly Annick) greeted me with a lovely southern accent that echoed lazy summer days and ripe vineyards. A few minutes later we had a room booked for three and the happy news that our room was next door to a billiard room.
We will be posting pictures regularly hopefully. It’s good to know the trip is finally shaping up. It’s one thing to have the map figured out. It’s a much different can of worms to actually have hotels booked. It’s reassuring to know I won’t have to share the back seat of JuanLu’s Ford Fiesta with him & his brother. I like Spaniards just not this close up.
A few hundred kilometers due North will lead us to our second layover. Alongside France’s longest and most majestic river, the Loire, lies an old farmhouse which will harbour us for the night. Mrs. Baquet will be our kind hostess. The location, Mosnes, is a perfect starting point to go discovering France’s famous Loire Valley Castles among which Chambord, Chenonceaux, Cheverny, Blois all within a stone’s throw.