After leaving Bernay we headed to Chailland where we’d booked into a chateau, La Sicorie, for a couple of nights. A lovely couple own this beautiful house and they have just two huge rooms they let as bed and breakfasts – home-made jams and yoghourts, fresh yummy coffee and gorgeous French bread. It’s always gorgeous when fresh, though leave it too long (like have a conversation on the way home from the bakery) and it becomes a baseball bat.

Lovely spacious room

The library in the small tower

The main house

Approaching the chateau

Sunrise from our room

The tower housing the library

We stopped here to see our friend Luke who has bought and is renovating the old town hall, making it into a music studio. It promises to be an amazing space once finished. I hope it is a tremendous success once he has it up and running. He will have accommodation on the top floor too for visiting musicians. Such an exciting (ad)venture!

Luke explaining the sound proofing

Chewing the music fat

The front of Luke’s studio

Amazing mathematics involved in designing anechoic chambers, calculated around prime numbers

Looking along the front of the studios from the other direction

We then headed to Londigny to our friends Maxine and Michael who moved here about four years ago. They have renovated a fab property and garden, in the middle of nowhere (literally as they’ve only just been given a yet-to-be-sanctioned-by-the-Marie street name), and we stayed in their small and perfectly formed gîte. Their garden is a delight with comfy chairs and seating everywhere you look – just fabulous. And they are so happy. We had great fun, two days of laughter. We visited a lovely picturesque town called Verteuil, where I bought possibly the best ‘brioche’ loaf I’ve ever tasted from the Auberge Salon de Thé.

Maxine, Michael and Clive

Age range? Pah!

Aged 3 tp 12 ans? Porquoi?

Cooling our feet in the stream

The Chateau at Verteuil

From here we headed further south to Mussidan, staying with Clive’s friends Yan and Sian, along with their four mad as badger, great fun canines. Very hot weather while we were here and alas Yan was working nights (he is given different driving schedules each week) so we didn’t see nearly enough of him. Had a good catch up with Sian and a restful couple of days.

With Yan and Clive keeping cool in the shade

Ted had the measure of Clive

Praying mantis saying hello

Clive, Sian and Yan

Sian with 2 of their pooches

Keeping guard

Ted takes charge of us both…

We then veered from our originally planned route and headed to Carcassonne, booking an Airbnb flat about 2km walk from the old city, where we spent a whole day exploring, having an excellent lunch at a restaurant called L’Escargot (I had snails! Need to learn how to prepare them as my garden is full of the darned things).

And on to Andorra

The view from our balcony this morning, breathtaking every day.