Portugal. View from our window

Third Blog

It has now been about 6 weeks since we arrived in France, which is amazing, I am not sure where the time has gone. I think mainly with socialising and of course we have just returned from a week in Portugal, more about that later. We are thoroughly enjoying our time in France with respect to all the fetes that are organised for each of the surrounding villages. In our local village SOS for example, there is a night market every Wednesday evening from mid July to the end of August, the great event happens in the local plaza (village square) and in the middle are tresle tables and chairs, then around the edge are all the local producers who sell their wares. The stalls include: wine, food stalls including, chicken and chips, another is escargots, another has local duck pate with salad, their is a boulangerie selling a type of pizza bread, another with tartes and cakes etc etc, so the idea is to go and select your meal from the stalls then sit down with locals and your friends and enjoy supper. Last Wednesday was particularly convivial as we were sitting with some ex pats friends and some French people, there was alot of banter which ended in everyone singing Edith Piaf songs to the local group of musicians. On Tuesday we met up with some friends and a similar evening was enjoyed with a medieval theme. Its hard to keep up with all the different activies happening around the place. However we do try.... We have also had various invites to barbeques, drinks and meals so for all said and done the socialising is taking up alot of time.

Between all this we have actually had some time in our garden which are now calling our parkland, as it is so peaceful and relaxing just watching the wild life. This week we noticed a rather large heron watching its prey in a little pond (frogs) so the intrepid hunter (Terry) runs inside and comes out with his shotgun (air rifle) and quietly stalks the heron to shoot it and yes it flew away. He seems to be having more success with his moles, the grand tally is now 3 dead and a possible 4^th (only possible because he is not sure if it actually killed it as the explosive device went off and there were no more mole holes in that area).

Portugal, or should I say stranded in Portugal, our friends from the UK drove down and picked us up and we drove down to Portugal over a couple of days to meet up with some other friends who own a villa in Portugal. When arriving in Portugal the first disaster was the hotel, it was awful and liken by the others in the group to a prison, probably due to the single beds which were as hard as bricks, then the bathroom was so small we couldn't swing a cat in it let alone one person, the view made up for it as we were overlooking the ocean. Back to disasters, then our friend back ended a Belgium car and caused alot of damage to his car, so much so it could not be driven due to a damaged intercooler, so will need to be transported back to the UK. Our friend ended up having a hissy fit and booked a flight back to the UK for him and his wife, this left Terry and I having to arrange transport back to France, believe it not this was not an easy task and we ended up having to book a flight to London, spend two nights with Helene and Dudley then back to France and hiring a car on the Sunday, a very expensive exercise. Terry did manage to have a game of golf in Portugal and I have a number of hours lazing in the sun taking in the rays so all was not lost entirely.

Just to let everyone know that we are still having various disasters here at Capet, today was flooded kitchen due to dishwasher malfunction. Terry is progressing nicely with his renovation project, the laundry room in the garage, so far we have a tiled floor, plaster boarded walls and now worktops, so progressing nicely.

I am adding some photos of the markets and Portugal,

Abiento