Norm and Compains

When we went to Abbaye de la Réau the other day (the days are all blurring a bit) the ticket person asked us how we found the place. I flatly replied, "With difficulty." Google Maps remains fully in beta version for cycling routes. Which is partly how we got to clocking 54.8 km on our bikes today. GM thought optimistically that it would take an hour to get to Availles-Limouzine. Try two. We barely got to the restaurant - probably the only Michelin-starred place for us for awhile - a half-hour before the kitchen closed at 2pm. They were utterly professional and did not blink an eye our state of sweat and thirst. A litre of water for each to start, s'il vous plaît. Two churches today - B might elaborate later (?). One at Availles-Limouzine and another at Mauprévoir. Variations on a theme. Different but not entirely dissimilar. It's been a good week for cycling, as the weather has been very nice at 26-27C and dry. However I don't really cycle - I just push buttons on...

On Saturday we cycled out to Savigné to see the church, and visited Cafe Noir, a little English enclave there. The proprietor was friendly, and very apologetic about the clumps of chocolate that crowned our cappuccinos (the result of his having misplaced the cocoa shaker) - a plus in my opinion. He's been in  business about a year, and with his wife was apparently trying to turn his place into a bit of a hub for the expat community.  You wouldn't want to be a coffin bearer... The church in Savigné had a fine exterior and quite the haul of early medieval sepulchres bunched under an awning outside, but the interior retained fewer ancient features. But from Savigné we went on to Charroux, and that was spectacular. The beautiful town is nested around an eleventh century Benedictine foundation, the centrepiece of which, the tower that housed the chief altar of the abbey church, still looms over everything around. After a good look inside and lunch at the boulangerie we attempted to...

Wednesday. 10:30am. At Rue de Chez Valade, the world is silent except for chickens. The neighbours are inspecting an orange tractor parked in their gateway as it had materialised unexpectedly overnight, though I doubt this is the case. Further out, the cars move, enough to make me worry about the fate of a large caterpillar stumbling across the road to Joussée, but not enough to stop me getting off my bicycle in the middle of the road to attempt to save it. It was the caterpillar of a fox moth, and will grow up to be quite lovely (but then I like moths).  Fox moth: caterpillar form It is a bright, dry day, and should stay that way, though all of my days here (I arrive on Sunday) have featured rain in the afternoon, two of them in large and stormy quantities. Norm needs to get towelled off when he comes in, but the plants are getting a good drink. Despite the rain we’ve been walking in the afternoon, following sections of the  Sentiers des gentilhommières . It was on the way ba...

 Saturday morning, 10:45am. Peace reigns in the house, and there is the sound of kids playing outside somewhere. On the way back from the boulangerie this morning I saw that there was a sign for "Baptisms for sport and collector's cars." I thought that perhaps there were more cars than infants in the village, but I could be wrong. There are certainly more cars than church-going Catholics. The church in Payroux is perpetually closed with no indication of when it is open, whether for visits from devout ascetics, the Sunday pious, bumbling tourists or the unbelieving masses (differences in between each category arguably contestable, of course). However, in mid-October at the high point of harvest, the church is open for business all day for proud owners of vintage vehicles. Incredibly, there are a few here. We saw a lettuce-green Porsche as we snailed our way to St. Martin l'Ars the other day. This being an area with a relatively low density of population, it makes for n...

2am: mioau? Norm, I think, was checking to see who in the house might be up when at 6:45am he would mioau? again. He's the first to be fed because, well, his meow is the first to be heard. I come down, sans glasses, fumbling through things. Friskies, check. Water, check. Packet. Packet? Where are the packets? Ah-ha: The Barn. Fetch those ever useful glasses and off to the Barn I go. Packet, check. The food buffet is spread and the cats spring around everywhere. Polly is under constant surveillance, when eating at the door, and knows it. Patricia (?) is a pretty sneaky one. She morphs into the size of a fly to get through the very narrowly open door, only to morph back into cattish corpulence on the other side -- just to get a bite of Norm's leftover packet bits. Then peace descends, and I enter into some solid hours of travel admin. I called L at the garage. He said that he hadn't heard back from his insurance agency. He also said that neither he nor T could ...

Just a quick first post! It's 4:23pm and do the girls ever know that it's teatime in 7 minutes. P's out for a walk. I've cut up some veggies which are cooking in the slow cooker, possibly ready for soup tonight. Sorted a few things out regarding getting P to Poitiers and B from Poitiers. Dishwasher emptied. Washing half in. Started making an Intermarché order - will see if they deliver here. Here are some pics showing the state of the visible cats at the moment (though I think Norm is on the balcony).