Author: Rose

We’re on our way to Paris…. at 300km/h!

A week and a half after we arrived at Chevanceaux, my mum and dad came to visit for a week. They flew into Bordeaux airport and I drove down with the kids to pick them up.

The first few days the weather was still really hot, so we didn’t do a lot. There was pool time, grocery shopping, chilled pineau and wine, barbecued dinners eaten outside.

On Saturday we decided to get out and see something, so we drove to Blaye, on the coast of the Gironde estuary. There’s a fort there, and on Saturday afternoon there was a market. We wandered around a bit, explored the fort, and ran across rehearsals for some sort of Three Musketeers production with full costumes, horses, and sword-fighting. It was fun to sit and watch for a while. I couldn’t understand much of what they were saying, but then I’m not sure I would’ve been able to make it out even if it was English!

Eric and I were able to go out for dinner on Saturday evening, to the local restaurant. It was interesting, the food and wine were good (and the company of course!), but I was surprised how very large the portions were and I was rather uncomfortably full on the walk home.

The weather really cooled down on Sunday. On Monday we visited Jonzac, one of the bigger local towns. It has a chateau, and was a nice place to walk around for a bit, but on a Monday lots of things were closed and it felt a bit deserted. We walked down a long medieval alley which seemed to go on and on and on, under buildings and around corners. Apparently it was one of the only ways into the city itself, apart from the gates, and it was useful because it was easy to defend, with so many twists and turns where it could be blocked off.

The last day of their visit was pretty rainy, and they encouraged me to go to the local coffee shop with them in an effort to interact more in French. I’ve been generally disappointed with how much speaking practice I’m getting, but part of that is not getting myself out there and into situations that require it. I really will have to try harder.

We visited another lake, further inland, colder and deeper and we all went swimming but much shorter dips! Eric rode there and we drove home together. Beautifully forested surroundings.

My mum and dad came to stay for a week and we sampled the local pineau (brandy/wine mixture), visited Blaye on the Gironde estuary and wandered around the citadel. We came across some Musketeer-era costumed actors, rehearsing something, complete with sword fights. That was fun!

We also visited the local town of Jonzac, with the longest meandering medieval alley I’ve ever walked down. It turns into tunnels under buildings several times. Interesting history – it was the only access to the town outside of the gate and all the curves made it easier to block in case of attack. 

After the first couple of weeks of intense heat, it cooled down and we had some crazy rain. Before that hit, the farmers were all out harvesting their dead sunflowers. They looked quite sad before they were gone, but it’s just a season. 

I’ve been out for a couple of runs (first time since January!) and finally got out for a bike ride too. The roads are tiny and beautiful and really quiet.  

And apart from that, we’re doing schoolwork and working and planning our next stops! One night in Paris in a couple of weeks and two weeks in Portugal from mid October. 

At the beginning of our third week, we drove southwest from Les Bordes to our first long stay in Chevanceaux, a small village about 45 minutes north of Bordeaux. This marked the end of vacation, and our first attempt at living “normal life” in a different place. That meant back to work for Eric, back to homeschool for the boys, and starting studying for me (even though my course doesn’t officially start until 5th Oct, I was determined to get an early start, build it into my routine, and try to stay ahead in case of issues later).

It was a cooler drive this time, but we still seem to take about 50% longer than Google maps suggests. This is partly due to stops for food and toilet breaks, and partly due to going slower than the speed limit because we’re towing a trailer. It was warm when we arrived and the kids got straight into the pool.

The house is a converted stone barn, with 3 bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs and another bedroom and bathroom downstairs, so we have plenty of space. We have a private garden area too, with a big patio table and a barbecue. The pool is shared with a couple of other houses. It was really hot the first couple of weeks, but the pool was having some issues and getting greener by the day, so we couldn’t use it for a while. Once it was fixed (thanks to the great efforts of the neighbour), the kids spent a lot of time in it while the weather remained in the 30s. And the temperature was never really an issue in the house — those thick stone walls keep it nice and cool!

Chevanceaux is a village right by a motorway, with a couple of bakeries, a small grocery store, a pub/coffee shop and other amenities. Ben has been quite determined to get up every morning and walk into town for bread and croissants or pain au chocolat. (Even on our holiday weeks, he’s been waking up early for this! No teen sleeping in on holidays here!) We have to drive about 15-20 minutes to get to a bigger grocery store though. There are several in different directions, so we get a bit of a tour of the countryside on our way. There are dead sunflowers (it’s the end of the season), cornfields, and vines everywhere you look, so it’s a pretty drive no matter which store we go to.

At the end of our road is a voie verte — a railway grade converted into a bike/walking path. On our first day here we all went on a bike ride up the voie verte, about 15km north to Reignac and back the same way. It was nice not to have to worry about traffic, but it was extremely bumpy in places, with tree roots growing under the path.

Met up with some Irish Home Ed friends yesterday for a beach day at a lake. The weather was glorious and the kids spent about 5 hours playing together in the water. Calm, clear and not too deep, so it was relaxing for the parents too. Ice cream and a quick stop at the Atlantic beach to see the waves (wild and not so relaxing!) and then home for a glass of chilled white wine with the sunset.

Evening. Sunset. Lovely light. Fun with silhouettes.

Our Airbnb in Les Bordes was an old village house, filled with hundreds of books (all in French, of course), and art, sculptures and textiles from all around the world. It was colourful and cluttered, cosy and comfortable, with a farmhouse kitchen and a huge garden with grapevines and fruit trees. The master bedroom, upstairs under the eaves, had a beam across the middle of the room at chest height, which was low enough that there was no risk to our heads, but we did have to duck under it to get to the bed. We had a cat who visited us most days and requested food, which our host had in the kitchen despite it not being his cat. We were quite happy to feed him though.

We decided to see a finished chateau as well, so we visited the chateau at Sully-sur-Loire, which was built beginning in the 14th century and has been added to, partially destroyed, and more recently restored. Joan of Arc and Voltaire both sought shelter here at times. Parts of the building are finished to illustrate the earlier history, and parts are much more ornate and lavish in the style of the 18th and 19th centuries. I find the earlier periods much more interesting.

During the week there were a few bike rides — Eric took Nate and Ben west along the bank of the Loire, but Tim and I stayed home because he wasn’t feeling great. A few days later we all went out eastwards along the river, with Nate on the tandem which meant we all went a good bit faster.

Tuesday was Eric’s birthday, so he went for a 60 mile ride alone and explored the region north of the river, stumbling on several chateaux along the way. We celebrated with Melon au Pineau (a specialty from the nearby Charente region which my family remembers from a visit when I was a teen!) and a lovely chocolate mousse cake.

Other points of interest… on the way home from our visit to Guédelon, we stopped at Briare, where a canal crosses over the Loire on a bridge. Kind of an interesting concept! We also drove right past a nuclear power plant, which was a bit weird. I’ve never seen cooling towers so close before! France gets about 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy at the moment, although it is working on reducing this. At the end of the week, we went for a walk in the Forêt d’Orléans. Not quite the sort of walk in the forest I’m used to — the paths were absolutely straight and geometric. A lot of it was closed to traffic due to fire risk as well, because it had been so hot and dry.

Les Bordes is a village on the outskirts of Sully-sur-Loire, a little east of Orléans. Our main purpose for staying here was to see Guédelon, which is essentially a medieval construction site. They’re building a 13th century castle, using only the materials, tools and methods that would have been available at the time. The project has been going on since 1997 and they expect to finish it in 2025.

We spent an entire day wandering around, watching and listening to the craftsmen and women. The boys were most interested in the blacksmith so we spent ages at the forge, and also spent a while watching the stonemasons dressing stones, but we also saw rope and tiles being made, logs being turned into beams with a special side-axe, fabric being dyed with local, plant-based dyes and many other types of work. A bit of a walk away from the main site we found the watermill which ground flour for the village.

Although they usually only offer English language tours in July and August, we were able to arrange one on the 1st September. It was a small group (just us, an English family with two boys, and an older German couple) and we learned a lot from our Dutch guide who spoke perfect (if accented) English and switched seamlessly to German when necessary. Because we were such a small group, all engaged and asking questions, and it was his last day before holidays, he spent a lot longer with us than I think he was supposed to!

Our first week was pure holiday. Riding, reading, pool time, and food — shopping for it, cooking it, eating it. And drinking wine, of course.

We stayed at a caravan site near Carnac in Brittany, with a large outdoor pool complex, as well as both covered and indoor pools, a zipline course, crazy golf, tennis courts and nightly entertainment, all onsite. There was even a circus the first couple of nights, and although we didn’t go to the show, Tim and Nate did take part in a circus skills workshop in the Big Top. Our caravan was quite new and very clean, with 3 bedrooms, a great covered deck and enough parking for the trailer and the car. We were close to the centre but set back off the road, and fairly private.

The pool was a few minutes’ walk away, so several times most days, the kids played in the water and Eric and/or I lay on a lounger in the sun reading. We did both get in a few times to cool off.

We ate bread and cheese, olives and tomatoes, ham and salami for lunch. We cooked meat on the BBQ for dinner, with lots of fresh veggies and salads, and then wandered down to the entertainment show as it was getting dark around 9:15. The kids were surprisingly interested in the shows, despite them being in French. I guess juggling, magic tricks, song and dance don’t need language. There was more interpretive dance than we’ve ever seen before!

We went for a family bike ride on Tuesday, with Nate on his own bike instead of the tandem (we weren’t going to go too far). We found bike paths, meandered into Carnac and along the coast a bit, made our way into Plouharnel to look for lunch, heading towards a pizza shop but were disappointed to find it was closed. However, around the corner we discovered a pizza vending machine(!) which actually looked pretty good. We were very brave and decided to try it. Our first order was goat cheese and honey, cooked in 3 minutes and served in a pizza box with a little wooden knife to cut it. It was really excellent, so we got a second one. Once fed, we kept riding, heading for the Quiberon peninsula. It was getting warmer but the road was flat and there were cycle paths or lanes. We made it more than halfway down the peninsula before we stopped again for ice cream in Saint-Pierre-Quiberon. By the time we turned around and rode back, we’d covered just about 50km!! Nate struggled at times, but for a 10 year old whose longest prior bike ride was 15 or 20km, he did amazingly well! It may have taken us 6 hours overall, and there *may* have been some whining and complaining, fighting and stressing along the way, but I think we were all pleased with ourselves afterwards.

I wanted to get out to visit some picturesque Brittany towns and I had read something about Pont-Aven, so without much further research (crappy internet), we headed there. It was an hour of driving for a town of art galleries and high-end tourist shops which is not really our thing, so that was a bit disappointing. And we couldn’t even find coffee!

However, Eric wanted to get out for a longer ride, so the next morning he headed out northwards on his bike. After a couple of hours, the kids and I drove up to Pontivy to meet him. He had a scenic and hilly 3+ hour ride and we had a lovely drive, and Pontivy was a much prettier medieval town than Pont-Aven.

The caravan site was opposite a field of ancient standing stones, the Alignements de Carnac. There are more than 3,000 of these megalithic stones in the area, standing in lines, erected more than 4,500 years ago. There are theories about why they’re there, but no absolutely certain explanations. It took us until Friday to decide to go on a tour and learn more about them, and after walking/cycling/driving past them several times over the week, it was interesting to walk around and in between them in the field. There are also dolmens and passage tombs in the area which have similar art and style to what we’ve seen in Newgrange and Knowth, and other megalithic sites near where we live in Ireland. Clearly the populations were related.

Another interesting connection to home was the Breton language on all the road signs (along with French, of course). It’s clearly in the same linguistic family as Irish Gaelic, although more closely related to Cornish and Welsh.

This was a week of relaxing and recovering from all the work of getting ready, and a great way to kick off our travels.

We’re halfway to the campsite, have stopped for groceries. It’s 32 degrees and the kids are melting. No AC in the car. Ferry crossing was pretty calm, upgrade to club class was amazingly worth it — didn’t have to buy dinner or breakfast because of the free snacks and coffee!! Trailer is pulling fine and everything has stayed in place. All going well so far!!