Thiepval Memorial

Today we finally visited the Theipval memorial to the missing of the Somme in the first world war. It’s only 1.5 hours drive to the North-East of us, but for some reason we’ve never gotten around to visiting it before now.

We couldn’t have picked a worse day for our visit - it was bitterly cold with a biting wind and the steps of the memorial were covered in sheet ice. But maybe that made it all the more poignant when you think of what the troops had to endure in those trenches in the winter.

The memorial is covered with over 72,000 names - these just being the names of the troops killed in the battle of the Somme whose bodies were never recovered so they have no graves… 

The list of names is arranged in alphabetical order within rank within regiment. So the photo below shows not all the Smiths, just the private Smiths from one regiment…

As well as the memorial, there are 300 French graves (all simply marked ”Inconnu”) and 300 British graves (all marked ”A Soldier of the Great War”).

Katie was very moved…
 

 

Hungry cows on New Year’s Day?

Happy New Year everybody! We had a great one last night - went to bed very, very late - and got up very, very late too!

I think the farmer must also have got up late this morning, because when Paul and Katie finally surfaced and went out to get croissants, the cows were very curious to see what was going on and came over to crowd around the fence to have a look. I guess they were hoping we were going to feed them!

Photo of cows taken from the kitchen window…

 

Chateau de Cleres, Normandy

We had planned to go to Bocasse, a theme park for children, but when we arrived we were dismayed to find out that as from 1st September it only opens at weekends!

Luckily, the Chateau de Cleres is in the same village, so we went there instead, and what a lovely place it turned out to be! Beautiful grounds and lots of wildlife roaming free - deer, peacocks, flamingos, monkeys (in a cage), and many others.

We will definitely be going back and taking our friends…

         

 

Blackberry Picking in the Normandy Countryside

Lovely (free!) dessert recipe…

1. Take a bowl, walk to the end of our lane, and turn left onto the road.
2. Fill the bowl with blackberries plucked from the bushes lining the road.
3. Stroll home (trying not to eat them all on the way!)
4. Put blackberries in a small saucepan, sprinkle with a generous helping of sugar, and heat gently until soft.
5. Spoon into bowls and serve with a dollop of creme fraiche!

Mmmm…. Bon Appetit! 

   

 

Forges-les-Eaux - Club Med and the Casino

 
Went for a stroll around the lake near the Casino and Club Med.

It’s the closest casino to Paris: only 110km from the capital. “In this corner of Normandy where Parisians come to to have a rest from Paris, the gaming tables never empty, the shrieks of the players never cease” wrote Voltaire nearly 300 years ago.

Nowadays, little has changed: The Grand Casino of Forges-les-Eaux is one of the top ten gaming casinos in France.

 

Layout of upstairs sleeping area

People have been asking us about the open-plan upstairs sleeping arrangements. It’s so difficult to describe, so we thought the best thing to do would be to post some photos here in an attempt to explain….

This is the main bedroom, with its gorgeous views out of the window. When we stay at the house, we always use this room (the children sleep in the triple bedroom at the other end of the house). This photo is taken from the middle of the house, looking towards the bed. You can just make out the pine wardrobe on the left.

And these two photos are taken from the bed, looking back towards the pine wardrobe and the middle of the house. As you can see, we do have a screen which can be used to help privacy.
 

Now we are in the triple bedroom at the other end of the house. These are two views looking towards the sleigh bed (note that they were taken on different days and just to confuse we have moved the dolls house and the rug! But in the second picture you can see the end of the sleigh bed to the left).

 

This next one is taken from the sleigh bed and looks back in towards the centre of the house. You can see the bannisters at the top of the stairs, behind which is the large central room which we use for reading and playing games (blind man’s bluff is a firm favourite!). Then looking further back you can just make out the main bedroom at the far end of the house…

Notice that this bed has a pull-out “truckle” underneath which incorporates a fully-sprung single mattress, so when pulled out, this room in effect has three single beds.

 

Musee des Maquettes, Forges les Eaux

Went to the model museum in Forges in the little park behind the town hall. It was really sweet - over 100 scale models of Normandy life in a bygone age, all made by a local man, Mr Guillot, after he retired in 1979. He bequeathed his collection to the local Age Concern club and their volunteers run the museum which is open every afternoon except on Mondays.

Not quite Disneyland, but rather charming nevertheless.

(PS - Spot Action Man and Barbie as you have never seen them before!)

 

Visitors from the USA!

We’ve just had a lovely family staying, they are from the US but they are currently living in England and they are keeping a blog of their own experiences during their time in Europe.

I was a little apprehensive about what they would think of our little farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere in rural France, but when I read their blog this morning I was thrilled to read that they had a good time, and they even included a link back to our website so I guess I can heave a sigh of relief that they had enjoyed themselves. I am always fretting about our guests and hoping that everything is hunky dory, to the extent that I feel I have to apologise if the weather is not gloriously sunny every day as I feel personally responsible even for the weather!!!

You can read about their week in France, along with their amusing opinions on life in Europe, by clicking here.

 

Painting the Dining Room Ceiling

The house has lovely old beams thoughout. For some reason, someone in the distant past decided that it would be a “good idea” to paint the ones in the kitchen and dining room in a gloopy chocolate brown gloss paint… They went even one better in the dining room - not only did they paint the beams, but also the ceiling in between! This made the dining room always seem a little oppressive - it felt as though the ceiling was pressing down on you 

We would love to be able to strip off this paint and resurrect the beams to the original wood - but it would be a nightmare job.  So instead, Paul and David went out to the house for a weekend and painted over the chocolate brown in the dining room with white paint. It was a backbreaking job, which took them the whole weekend. But I think it was worth it. it seems so much airier and fresher now. The photos below don’t really do it justice (and we’ve since painted just the beams a pale bluey-green which looks fab!). Will post some better photos next time. 

     

 

Your Holiday Matters (Holiday Rentals from Owners Who Care!)

We love staying at Le Gaillon, but when we are not there, we are pleased to be able to rent it out to holidaymakers. This is good for us as apart from helping us to pay the mortgage(!) it also means that the house is not left empty and unloved. It’s also good for the village as it provides employment for our caretaker, cleaner and gardener, and hopefully our guests also spend money in the local shops.

We take our responsibilities as self catering holiday rental owners very seriously, and we subscribe to a website for gite owners to get together and discuss aspects of renting out properties to holiday makers - and hopefully for us all to improve our service.

One of our pet subjects is the various holiday listing sites, and in January this year, one of the members started off a discussion called “I had a dream” about how we could probably create our own listing site given the range of people contributing to the website and the range of skills and experience we all have. This snowballed and about 30 of the members got together (in cyberspace!) to set about creating this website. It has now been launched: www.yourholidaymatters.com. The tagline is “HOLIDAY RENTALS FROM OWNERS WHO CARE” and basically the main criteria for inclusion on the website is that we would only include properties where we feel the owners REALLY care about providing a superior service to their guests and where we ourselves would want to spend our holidays. The website is being run on a non-profit basis and is free to advertise.

All rental owners who wish to advertise have to go through a detailed and stringent application process, and not all of them have passed as the site is being kept small with only high-quality properties.

 

More Decorating…

We went out to the house for New Year and February half term and on each holiday we spent 3 whole days decorating the bathroom, toilet and finishing the kitchen!

We finally bought one of the Catuffe Rise and Fall lamps from The French House - we’ve wanted one of these for a long time and we decided to splash out now that we have installed the new kitchen! We also bought a lovely set of antique elm dining chairs from Ebay - they really do fit in much better than the hideous ones we had before… 

  

The bathroom and toilet also look much better now - the walls all used to be white, very stark and boring. The bathroom is now Farrow & Ball no 2 Hound Lemon and the toilet is no 22 Light Blue. What a difference!

Our next major project (for the autumn) is to install a new large walk-in shower. Watch this space…

 

New Kitchen!!!

We have had a new kitchen installed and it is fantastic!!!

We had considered various options such as IKEA, Leroy Merlin, Lapeyre and all the other cheaper places which are the equivalent of B&Q and Homebase in the UK. But in the end we decided go for something of better quality so we ended up buying a kitchen from Schmidt (http://www.cuisines-schmidt.com/).

They are a French company (they are based in Alsace hence the german sounding name) and I actually came across them when I went in to a kitchen shop in our home town of Heathfield (http://www.kitchensbycdc.com/). I really liked the quality of their display kitchens and I asked them whether it was feasible to ship them to France. The man was very helpful and rather than sell me a kitchen, he told me that as the kitchens were actually French, it would be cheaper and easier for me to buy it in France!

We are really pleased with the quality of the workmanship. The units are really sturdy and the drawers are great, you can slam them as hard as you like, yet they have dampers that stop them a couple of inches before they close, and then they glide in gently for the last bit. Cool! We decided to go the whole hog and get granite worktops too. The whole thing, including the appliances, the granite worktops and the installation, came to about £5,000 - not cheap, but not mega-expensive either, considering the quality.

We painted the walls using Farrow and Ball no 5 Hardwick White (which as you can see in the pictures comes out more blue/grey than white), and no 221 Pantalon for the fireplace surround.

   

 

9836 has had her Calf!

Great Excitement! David’s favourite cow, 9836, had a calf a few days before our arrival. We went over to the main farm (it’s about 2 miles away from the house) to see them both.

What a sweetie…

  

 

Life is a Bowl of Cherries here in the Beautiful Normandy Countryside…

We were a bit naughty and took the children out of school for a couple of days. It was July 14th (French Independence Day), the house was unlet for four days, the sun was shining, and we just felt a need to be out there! So off we went and had a marvellous few days just chilling out in the sunshine. The garden was looking particularly lovely now that Serin has started doing our gardening on a regular basis.

       

Normandy really is such a lovely place to take a holiday, and we hope that people will like staying in our gite as much as we do!

Driving off along the country lanes to a July 14th barbecue at La Belliere…
(Double-click on the arrow to watch video clip)

 

Yippee - we’ve been accepted by Alastair Sawday!!!

Got a letter today to confirm that we are going to be included in the next edition of the Alastair Sawday’s Special Places to Stay guide. I am so excited - this means a lot to me as I have always been a fan of these books and I always use them when I am looking for a Hotel, Bed & Breakfast or Gite (holiday home).

 

Monet’s House at Giverny

We’ve finally been to Giverny and it was everything we ever expected and more. We’d been looking forward to seeing the garden but had never realised just how interesting the interior of the house would be too. We came home totally inspired and brimming with ideas for paint colours for the interior of the house - particularly the kitchen (which we will be refurbishing in the autumn) and the bathroom which is currently a very boring white. Watch this space…

Giverny is only about an hour from Le Gaillon, and definitely definitely worth the visit…

         

 

An Inspector Calls…

Had THE VISIT from the Alastair Sawday (Special Places to Stay) inspector today… Was very nervous - we had previously had to fill in all sorts of forms and questionnaires just to get on to the shortlist for a visit - and now the day has finally come, just in the nick of time a few days before their cut-off deadline for the 2006 edition which comes out in October! The inspection was very thorough, the inspector spent about 2 hours at the house, and asked loads of questions. They don’t have an exact list of criteria they work to, it just depends upon the inspector’s “gut feeling”. Luckily for us, today the weather was glorious, the children were playing in the garden looking like they’d just stepped out of the Boden catalog (I could have kissed them for being so good!), the cows in the next field had obligingly come over to add a certain air of bucolic charm, and David was just finishing off painting the front facade of the house pink so it was looking much smarter than the rather shabby off-grey that it had become in recent months! Now we just need to wait and hope that we will be accepted - they have had over 1000 applications for just 300 entries in the French Holiday Homes guide. Fingers crossed!  

 

David’s favourite cow

We went out to Le Gaillon for half term with Sally, David and their boys Alex and George. David made a new friend - cow number 9836 (we don't know her real name!). She seemed to be very fond of him and would always come trotting up to the fence whenever he appeared!

 

David is the ideal house-guest. Not only did he endear himself to our bovine neighbours, but he also decided that he was bored just sitting around relaxing in the sunshine(!) and insisted on doing some work. Paul had to go back to the UK for a couple of days to deliver some paintings back to the gallery, and while he was away David painted the front of the house pink! It looks fantastic - what a difference after the shabby off-white it had become over the past couple of years!

THANK YOU DAVID!

 

 

Easter with Jo and Leroy

Staying at Le Gaillon for Easter with Jo and Leroy. This is Leroy's first visit to France!

We took the opportunity to spend a day in Paris…
    

 

New Year with the Fosters

Georgina, Simon, Phoebe and JoJo came and stayed with us for New Year. We went for a bracing winter walk - turned left out of the house and down the lane to the neighbouring village where we stopped at the cafe for a hot chocolate, then walked over the fields to do a circuit back to the house. The weather was moody and dramatic - just right for the time of year!

   

  

 

Hurricane!

Disaster!!!

Last week there were hurricane winds in Northern France, and unfortunately our chimney blew over. Luckily there was no-one staying at the house, but we have people booked in for Christmas, and they will be looking forward to an open fire…

Luckily, we have electric heating in all the rooms and can still use the woodburning stove in the kitchen (different chimney), but although we have had the main chimney made safe, we can’t light an open fire until the chimney has been rebuilt, and this can’t be done until January! I’ve contacted next week’s guests and offered them a full refund if they wish to cancel, but they have been fine about it.

I have made sure that there are plenty of candles around the fireplace, to give an illusion of an open fire, and I sent them these photos as reassurance…

 
       Main Fireplace                   Woodburner

 

We’ve moved to Heathfield!

After living in London all our lives, we have finally made the move to “the country”!!!
We initially planned to go out to live at Le Gaillon, but we realised that this was not really viable due to work and school committments. So we’ve done the next best thing - instead of moving to Forges-les-Eaux, we’ve bought a house in its twin town in the UK!!!
Heathfield is in East Sussex, in the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and we love it. The high street is unspoiled but has all the shops we need, the schools are good, and the countryside is beautiful!
It’s quite nice when we drive into town and see the sign saying “Twinned with Forges-les-Eaux”, and likewise when we go out to Le Gaillon we are reminded of home by the sign “Jumele avec Heathfield”. And one day, when the children are a little older, we should be able to cycle from one house to the other, via the Cuckoo Trail cycleway to Newhaven, Ferry on to Dieppe, then Avenue Verte cycleway to Forges.

 

Deer still around

We've seen the deer loads of times today - they must live in the line of trees at the far end of the cow field. We have been watching them from the kitchen window - there are three of them and they tend to venture out when the cows are round the corner at the other end of the field.
 

 

Deer!!!

Went for a stroll down our lane and saw a mother deer with two youngsters in the cowfield, just 50 yards from us! Stood watching them for about 10 minutes - they saw us but it didn't seem to faze them! Felix then ran back to the house to get the camera, but just as he got back the cows reappeared and startled the young ones who bounded off into the trees. Mum stayed around for a couple more minutes, just enough time for us to grab a couple of blurred shots.

 

Stacking Firewood

  

This morning our annual supply of firewood was delivered - or rather dumped - in a big pile on the terrace, and we spent the following couple of hours stacking it up in the woodshed. I don't know what exactly I was expecting - that it would somehow magically appear and make its way into the shed all by itself? But there's something very satisfying, after all that hard work, looking at a neat stack of logs, knowing that it will keep us warm through next winter…

   

 

Hot Hot Hot!

Fantastic weather this Easter week! Each day has been getting warmer - blue sky, sun beating down, recorded a temperature of 30ºC (in the sun) on the terrace today! The housemartins have returned and have started to build their nests in the rafters of the barns - they swoop in and out throught the little gaps in the wall like kamikaze fighter pilots!

Everywhere new life is sprouting - the hedgerows are spattered yellow with cowslips and you can almost watch the grass growing before your eyes.
 

 

Gerberoy

  

Went to Gerberoy, just 20 minutes drive along a beautiful valley, and one of the "100 most beautiful villages in France", protected as a classified site. All the old houses have been restored and maintained and in the summer are covered in roses.

We had the most amazing lunch at the "Vieux Logis" http://www.vieuxlogisgerberoy.com/ - they have a speciality dish on their 23E menu where each person gets their own little table-top spit and you barbecue your own piece of fillet steak or fish kebab in a Calvados flambé. Highly Recommended! (They also have a "menu sucré" - a five course menu consisting just of desserts! - ONLY for those with a VERY sweet tooth!).

Afterwards we went for a walk around the village. It really is one of the prettiest settings, and will be even better in the summer when all the roses are in bloom.

 

 

Easter

Having a very relaxing and laid back weekend. had lunch at the golf club, then wandered around the "Foire a Tout" (French version of a car boot sale!) in St Saens. Much the same old tat you get at an English boot sale, but with the odd gem to be found here and there. Jo bought us a life-size model hen and couldn't understand why people were staring at her in amusement as she walked around with it tucked under her arm. We've named her (the hen!) Hetty and she now lives on the kitchen mantlepiece.  

 

Easter

Here for Easter with Nanny, Grandad and Auntie Jo. The Easter Bunny camed and we went on an Easter Egg hunt and got lots of yummy chocolate eggs.

(by Felix)

 

Happy Birthday Le Gaillon!

Yesterday was Paul's birthday, which coincidentally is also Le Gaillon's, as it was exactly one year ago to the day that we first set eyes on it!

We celebrated with a trip to Disneyland - left at 7.30a.m. and were through the gates by 9.30. A fantastic, magical day - managed most of the rides, then a lovely early evening meal at the Blue Lagoon restaurant, followed by the electric parade and fireworks - spectacular!

Got home at 10.30 - utterly exhausted - and slept soundly for 10 hours. Disneyland is definitely the most efficient (and also the most expensive!) cure for insomnia…

 

Sunny February day

What a beautiful day! The sun came out mid-morning - after these past few months I had forgotten what a suntrap the terrace is, and how quickly it warms up. Spent an hour or so tidying up the flower beds, then sat on the bench just enjoying the view and the warmth of the sun on my skin.

 

New Year - Snow!

Our first Christmas and New Year at Le Gaillon, and we have had snow…