France 2019

By shendyNo Comments
We'd been to the same gite in SW France for the last 4 holidays, but this time we booked late and it wasn't available. The one we went for this time was a bit more expensive, but absolutely lovely - and huge for the two of us, given that it can accommodate 16 people!The gite was booked via Halcyon Leisure - we've booked with them since 2000. We really didn't do very much at all - I took a couple of trips out to take photos in Fumel and at Chateau Bonaguil, but that was about it apart from going out to buy food and wine. The first set of photos are from the gite, with a couple from one of the trips out. The second set are images of the sky.Disappointingly we didn't have many good sunsets at all - just in the last half of the second week. Mind you, the main reason for the lack of them was because there...
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France 2017

By shendyNo Comments
We went back to France for our summery holiday, after a slight aberration last year when we spent a few days in a caravan in Cornwall - any mention of that holiday now gets us both whistling the theme tune to Peter Kaye's Phoenix Nights, given the quality of the evening entertainment the caravan park laid on... We went back to a gite we've been to a couple of times before - it's nice, it's a good size for the two of us, it's quiet, it's very close to the local wine producer and it's got very clear views of the night sky. So here's a few different sets: Giverny On the way down through France, we stopped off at Giverny to visit the Monet gardens - we'd been a couple of times about 15 years ago now and thought it time for another visit. The last image is a little different - not taken at Giverny but fairly close by. Slightly inspired by the...
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Summer Holiday, pt 3

By shendyNo Comments
We had two main stops on the drive back through France. The first was the chateau at Villandry, not far from Tours, which was amazing - huge formal gardens, quite spectacular. The other was a visit to Pegasus Bridge just north of Caen, one of the first places (the first?) liberated on D-Day. As it turned out, the hotel we booked happened to be in the village of Benouville so the bridge was only about 5 minutes walk away....
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Chateau and D-Day

By shendyNo Comments
Rather than ruin all that relaxation by dashing back through France in one go, we tend to take our time and have a couple of overnight stops on the way home, which also enables us to do a bit of sightseeing. On the Sunday morning, we went to the château at Chenonceau, just east of Tours - actually on the Cher river rather than the Loire, which is where you tend to think the famous châteaux are. As well as being the one with the arches over the river, it has two excellent formal gardens. And on top of that, it also has a magnificent vegetable, herb and flower garden, which it would be easy to miss - and which you really shouldn't! On the Monday, we were further north and visited Arromanches, Gold Beach on D-Day and where the Mulberry Harbour was - and where bits of it still are. We were lucky that the tide was out, so we were able to walk around some...
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