Days 628-631, 22-25 Feb '16, Meukow Cognac House. Our dear friends from the north of France drove 5 hours south to spend a few days with us. They arrived late Wednesday evening and we were up bright and early Thursday for our trip to Cognac. We headed directly to Meukow Cognac House and kicked off a fascinating tour at 11 am. We officially know about 1000% more than we used to about the production of Cognac (anything less than 40% alcohol... and it's just pla...

Days 623-627, 17-21 Feb '16, Saint-Jean-d'Angely. If one were to simply look at our blog, one could assume that France was having the finest, sunniest winter on record. One would be wrong. It's certainly not the coldest as we've had no snow and only a few hard frosts. It's been gale force winds, rain, fog etc quite often. But when it's fine we beat the land-speed record for leaping into the car and heading off to explore. It's not that fine weather is 100% nec...

Day 622, 16 Feb '16, Saintes - Arches, Gladiators, Saints! It never ceases to amaze us how far and wide the Romans set up camp. And cities for that matter. Saintes was the Roman city of Mediolanum Santonum and whilst a lot has disappeared in the last 2000 odd years, a lot remains - such as the stunning Amphitheatre pictured above. It's actually not usually this stunning, but due to the heavy rains which have flooded parts of the city, the arena is full of water...

Days 615-621, 9-15 Feb '16, Chinois! Vegemite! Gales! And not much else... OK. More Gales! If I said it was a quiet week, I'd be lying. We are actually lucky the house wasn't picked up in Wizard of Oz fashion and dropped on Paris. We had howling gales and rain for a fair old part of the week. Major highlight of the week was the receipt of a shipment of vital supplies - not from the Red Cross per se... but rather from James's mum Joan - an absolutely vital shi...

Days 608-614, 31 Jan-8 Feb '16, Massive Week of Outings. But before I tire everyone out with what we have been up to... have you ever heard of the concept of re-gifting? It's ecological, economical and environmentally friendly in the extreme. Just now I was out in the laundry, stroking Felix (the black and white puss) as he snuffled up his friskies for dinner. Then heard "meow" in Hero's attention getting tone of voice... (he's the huge blond cat). Hero had s...