Pizza and champagne for 30 euros

Bonjour all

This is the last blog on our recent UK round trip....

On the way back from England we had to see Champagne and I'd read the place to stay was Epernay, the "self-proclaimed capitale du champagne".  I had decided to have a bit of a splurge, seeing it was Champagne and all, and booked a night at this beautiful 19th century mansion by the name of Le Clos Raymi, I definitely recommend it. A certain Monsieur Chandon used to live there. He married a certain Mademoiselle Moet and yes you guessed it, they started the Moet & Chandon wine company. Here is picture of Jane and the kids on the steps of Le Cos Raymi...

We were pretty tired by the time we arrived, about 5pm, so we had a bit of a rest and enjoyed the room. By the time we were showered and dressed it was getting on, we were all hungry. This can be a risky situation when you have small kids. We headed down town to a restaurant recommended by the owner of  Le Cos Raymi. We eventually found the place and then a table, but ahhhhh the attitude of the waitresses, I couldn't take it. This is a very rare occurrence, but I said to Jane let's go, and walked out before ordering, you should have seen the look on the their faces. So there we were walking around this fairly small town looking for a place to eat, a lot of fancy restuarants, not many small kids around, Connor on my shoulders, Sophie wanting to be on my shoulders as her legs were getting sore....., then it came to me, pizza and champagne in the park! I dropped the kids off at the park practically ran to this pizza joint I saw earlier. Right behind the pizza guy was a sign in French that said, "Pizza and a bottle of champagne for 30 euros",  and I thought hey, that's cool, only in Champagne would you see a sign like that.  I ordered two pizzas, went across the road to this champagne shop to try and find that special bottle, found it - Collard Picard (I'd seen the classy looking Collard Picard champagne house earlier in the day), walked back across the road, the pizza guy looked at me with a big smile and said "nice" with a French accent, ran back to Jane and the kids, popped the bottle and you know what, that was probably the best tasting champagne I think I've ever tasted. My wife, the kids happy as, in this little playground in Epernay, pizza and champagne, it was the perfect outcome really, another sweet memory.

Here is a photo of Moet & Chandon HQ, with a statue of the monk, Dom Perignon just behind the fence. I found out on this trip that monks used to drink alcohol to help them get through the traditional religious fasting period of Lent. Now I'm thinking, no food in the belly, plenty of champagne, interesting. Moet HQ sits on the Av de Champagne where a lot of other champagne houses are,

like this grand old building.....

Check out the doors on this place......, you can see a lady further along the footpath, just to put the size of it all into perspective...

The next day we went for a nice leisurely drive along one of the Champagne Routes, we picked the Cote des Blancs Champagne Route which travels south through some beautiful little champagne towns including Oger where we bought a couple of bottles from one of the cellar door vendors, this one being the house of Champagne Henry de Vaugency. I took this photo of Jane and the kids in the cellar cave at Henry de Vaugency. We had a good chat to the owner's son who was running the tastings, he was the eighth generation of his champagne growing family. Beneath Epernay there is over 100km of cellar caves!

The views along the champagne route were fantastic. The photo below was taken from Cramant which is another one of these towns along the way.. ..

 

We headed further south that afternoon and stayed the night in Orleans on the edge of the Loire Valley. Nice town, not many tourists, giving it a real authentic feel. We had dinner at this Chinese restaurant on the side of the main paved street of Orleans. Great people watching and the waiters at the restaurant were so, so nice. It was kind of celebratory dinner marking the end of our big UK round trip, an amazing tour of so many places.

The next morning I went for my usual walk and had a look for the statue of Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc). She is known as "The Maid of Orleans". It's an amazing story. She was a peasant girl who ended up leading the French army against the English in the Hundred Years' War and had several important victories, including the siege of Orleans in 1429. It was a turning point in the war. In 1431, she was captured, charged for heresy and burned at the stake, she was just 19 years old.

Needles to say Jeanne d'Arc means a lot to Orleans and the French people. Here is her impressive statue in the middle of the city.

 

The next day, after driving down the auto route  for about five hours, we rolled up back in our little hamlet, nice to be home really. Headed straight over to Toni and Deni's place to catch the last half of the annual party for our hamlet, and life in The Lot continues.

A bientot mes amis , (bye for now my friends)

nous vous souhaitons bonne chance ( we wish you good luck),

Jane, Sophie, Connor, et moi

    

From Brighton to The Somme

Gidday all

Hope all is well where ever you are. This is another blog from our recent trip to the UK.......

Next stop was Brighton where our cousin Kate lives with her husband, Mac ( an exceptional chef) and two kids, Kimi and Callan. It was great to catch up with them and get to know Brighton. For those of you that know Sydney, it's a bit like Newtown and Paddington but next to the sea. Kate really showed us the real Brighton, and it's cool, we loved it, thanks guys so much. And the lovely home cooked dinners at your place were a real treat after so many days on the road. Here we are the first night walking along the promenade..

Here we are on the beach, it was nice sunny day, Brighton Pier in the background, Connor was in rock heaven...

Here are the kids and I on the Brighton Pier, thanks again guys, we hope to see you in France sometime.

From Brighton we headed along the coast, eastward, to arrive at Dymchurch where our relatives Sally and Steve have a holiday house at the beach. Well, when I say relatives, it's pretty distant. Sally and I think we worked out that her great grand mother was my great x 2 grandmother! We're like brother and sister really. I stayed with them when I was 21 years old on the big backpacking tour of my life. It was awesome to see them again and just basically hang out, including a visit to the local seaside fair ( where I received elbow burns on the giant slide) and enjoying the beautiful wide beach there.  We could see France across the Channel.

This is when the tide comes in, lovely time for a swim, here's Sally pre swim, she's heaps of fun....

Whilst at Dymchurch we took the opportunity to take a drive up to see Aunty Pat, another distant relative but someone that has been close to our family for a long time. She's doing well for a 94 year old, what's in the water up there?

Here is Sally, Jane, and Steve in front of black betty just before we headed off for. Thanks so much for your generous hospitality guys, terrific spot.

After three nights at Dymchurch it was time to head back to France. This meant our first trip on the Euro tunnel. That was an interesting experience, just 35 minutes it takes. You basically drive onto the back of a long train, fill up the train, sit in your car whilst in transit, then at the other end you drive out the front of the train. Remembering to drive back on the right hand side of the road was a bit tricking, a couple of times I did wonder over to the left, but after say a day I was back in French driving mode.

First stop was Saint Sylvester Cappel, a tiny town of about 500 I'd say where one of my favourite beers is brewed, "3 Monts"' you have to try it, you can buy it in Australia. The French are not known for their beer, Belgium is, so it makes sense this little town was close to the border with Belgium. This huge painting was in the middle of town. 

I made it, my pilgrimage to Saint Sylvester's 3 Monts brewery complete!

We then drove down to the Somme to visit the grave of my great x2 uncle Robert Victor Henry Scott. We arrived late in the day at our B&B and headed straight out there. He is in the Caterpillar Valley Cemetery. It took a while to find him. This was something that I've had on my to do list for many years. I will inherent his death medal, this very large bronze medal that was sent out to the next of kin when a soldier died.

A couple of things that struck me was the number of cemeteries in the area, all with a mix of various nationalities, Aussie, NZ, Welsh, English etc, and the number of graves without a name. The next morning I went for a walk around the area near Caterpillar Valley, it's beautiful crop farm  area, but you can just feel a certain presence due to all that went on there.

This photo below shows where the front line was on 1 September, 1916, 14 days later, on the 15th of September, Robert Scott was killed, he was 10 years younger than me at just 35. It was the first day the New Zealand Division joined the Battle of the Somme, one of largest of World War I. It went on from the 1 July 1916 to 18 November 1916 and "over 1,000,000 men were wounded or killed making it one of humanity's bloodiest battles". 

This is an extract from a NZ memorial just near Caterpillar Valley....

"The infantry was in place by midnight of 14 September.....for the New Zealanders it was a grim prospect. They had to advance up a slope towards formidable German positions on a ridge ahead of them, swept by machine gun and artillery fire. Precisely at 6.20am the guns roared into life and the leading waves of infantry from Auckland and Otago regiments leapt from their trenches ..... By 6.50am the German trench line was in New Zealand hands."  

We visited the small town of Pozieres,  where a major Australian memorial is. Charles Bean, an official Australian historian had this to say about the Pozieres Ridge.... it "is more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth." In the battle of Pozieres 6,826 Aussies were killed, 4112 of whom are still "missing". This was what you see as you drive into town.

We also visited the huge Australian memorial at Villers- Bretonneux. It was opened in July 1938, and would you believe it, severely damaged during the 1939-45 war in Europe. It was repaired but they left some of the gun/shrapnel damage to the main tower as a reminder, as shown below. The memorial lists the names of 10,773 Aussie soldiers killed in WWI with no known grave.

Our experience in The Somme was very moving. I'm so glad we saw it. I might leave it there for now.

 

Best wishes

Jane, Sophie, Connor, and I

 

 

Salisbury and some interesting Wyndham family history

Bonjour!

I've just been sifting through the photos from our big UK round trip, so many of them, so many great memories. I've picked a few favourites from along the way....

We stayed in Salisbury in the south of England, an area I've heard referred to as the garden of England, makes sense to me. We stayed there because I knew the Wyndham name ( Jane's maiden name) was prominent there. The name appears in many places in Salisbury, here are a couple of examples...

A pub just up the road from this street which we stopped in for a refreshment..

 

The famous 13th century Salisbury Cathedral has Britain's tallest spire at 123 metres. You can see it here in the middle of the following photo which I took one evening from a few kms away, just near the B&B we stayed at for two nights ....

 

 

 

Almost in the centre of the Salisbury Cathedral there are a row of plaques, showing where the bodies of a number of Wyndhams's lie ...  

Here is a photo of one of those plaques, that of the well known at the time, Wadham Wyndham........

Below, also in the cathedral is the tomb of Thomas Lord Wyndham, who was Baron Wyndham of Finglafs in the Kingdom of Ireland in the first half of the 18th century.

Interestingly the lady in the statue above Thomas's tomb has her ring figure cut off. This, as we confirmed with one of the guides at the cathedral, is a symbolic referral to the famous Wyndham family "buried alive" story about Florence Wyndham. I found the following on Wikipedia..........

"Florence Wyndham (died 1596) was the daughter of Sir John Wadham of Merifield and sister of Nicholas Wadham founder of Wadham College, Oxford."......

Buried alive

Her fame rests on a remarkable escape from a horrific death and her singular importance to the survival of the Wyndham family.
In 1556 she married Sir John Wyndham of Orchard Wyndham and a year later was taken ill and thought to have died. She was buried in the Wyndham family vault in St Decuman’s church at Watchet, Somerset and that same night a covetous sexton opened her coffin in order to remove her rings and cut one of her fingers in the process. She had in fact fallen into some sort of cataleptic trance, and was now awakened by the pain and rose from her coffin. The sexton fled leaving his lantern behind him; and with its aid she made her way home across the fields to her astounded family.
Soon afterwards she gave birth to her only son, Sir John Wyndham, from whom every member of the Wyndham family is descended (apart from a branch of the family in the United States whose progenitor is Vice Admiral Sir Thomas Wyndham, Henry VIII's distinguished naval commander).
Her remarkable survival and importance is celebrated in the family by successive generations naming the eldest son Wadham Wyndham, most especially by the Salisbury branch of St Edmund's College founded by Sir Wadham Wyndham."

Jane's father, Philip's, middle name was Wadham, so the tradition continues,.. Philip was the oldest out of three boys.

With the help of Jane's brother, Ben, we were able to find Philipps House, formerly Dinton House, in Dinton,  about 20kms outside of  Salisbury. This place was impressive, your classic country manor house. Four generations of Wyndhams (a different line to Jane's family) lived at this spot, the last of which included George Wyndham who went out to Australia and set up the well known Wyndham Wine Estate. The house is now owned by the National Trust and we just happened to be there on one of two days of the week it was open to the public.  I took this photo from along the very long drive way....
 

A closer shot with Sophie and Connor enjoying the lawns..

Went into the library room of this grand house and a lovely guy called Ivor gave as some great colour on the history of the family there. Here he is keeping the two kids amused with an old collapsible ladder.

In the local town of Dinton, there was ofcourse another Wyndham hotel, you can see the family coat of arms at the top....

We had a great time in Salisbury. I'm sure the kids will come back here one day to delve into all this Wyndham family history. Connor certainly enjoyed himself this time around, see below....a photo taken at the gates to the "The Close" or the old part of town around the cathedral.

Next we headed to Brighton, "London by the sea", I'll save that for the next blog.

A bientôt

Jane, Sophie, Connor et moi.

 

Back in The Lot

Bonjour all

Well we're back in The Lot after an amazing four week tour of the UK. We saw so many great things, caught up with some friends and family, and met so many lovely people. We stayed at 14 different  places including one night on the ferry from France to Ireland, mostly B&Bs and small hotels. We were able to track down some family roots, including my Irish ancestors in Cork, Galway and Mullingar and visiting Salisbury, England was of great interest to us in that the rich history of Wyndham name is everywhere there. On the way back through France we visited the grave of my great x2 uncle, Robert Victor Henry Scott, who was killed in the Somme back in 1916. That was also very special.

Last time I blogged we were in County Clare, Ireland the day after we visited the Aran Islands where our bus driver gave us a splendid rendition of Danny Boy. From County Clare we drove to Mullingar on route to Dublin. I knew my great grandparents, Charles Henry and Margaret Glasson, were married at the All Saints Church there in 1905. Here we are in front of that church...

I knew that Charles' son, another Charles, my grandfather, was born in the Renmore Barracks in Galway, so it was very likely Charles senior was stationed as a soldier at the Colomb Barracks in Mullingar. With the help of a local historian I was able to find a book in the local library with this picture...

The wording on the page states that the men on the right hand side were in the Connaught Rangers, a famous Irish Regiment in the British Army. They were known as the Devil's Own. I knew Charles senior was a Connaught Ranger. So of course we had to go and see the Colomb Barracks in Mullingar. They had recently been closed, but by chance they were setting up for a, believe or not, strong man competition on the following weekend. I chatted to a guy at the entrance and told him I wanted to enter the competition, ......no just jokes, I told him I was tracking down my Irish roots and sure enough he let me in. Below is one of the photos I took, you can see the same church on the right hand side of the black and white photo above. It was an exciting day.

We then drove onto to Dublin for three nights, party town. We stayed just near Temple Bar, at the Central Hotel, pictured below, which is basically right in the middle of Dublin's night life district. It was pretty noisy at night, but after spending so much time in the country over the last four months we were up for it, in fact we loved the buzz of it all, ... and Jane loved the shops :)

We had fun in Dublin, it's a beautiful city with so much interesting history. A highlight was  going to see Dublin take on Cork in the Gaelic Football in a semi final at Croke Park, as shown below, it was a big game.

And a shot of the playing field... great to watch, a lot like Aussie Rules...

 

Going to the old library at Trinity College and listening to a Sunday session of Irish music at one of the locals were highlights too, oh and then of course there was the Guinness Factory......

From Dublin we took a car ferry to Wales, which was a real surprise for me, a real hidden gem of a country.  We had lunch at this gorgeous little Welsh sea side village, New Quay, as per below.

 

 We stayed with Jane's good family friends Paul and Judith pictured below with Jane and the kids.

 

Paul and Judith were awesome hosts, we felt like we were staying with family really. It was also nice to have some time to regather and get to know Wales from a locals point of view. Where they live was amazing, right on the edge of a national park where the "Preseli Hills" are. This was the view from the front gate......

At the top of the that mountain you can see, known as Foeldrygarn, there is an ancient hill fort, ( see the old photo below from a book Paul owned), I walked to the top of it twice, magical spot.

Ironically looking out from the top of Foeldrygarn, across a ridge was another near by mountain ( see the photo below,.... just right of the pine tree forest), the very spot were the "blue stones" at Stonehenge came from, Stonehenge is about 240 kms away!

We had already planned to see Stone Henge after visiting Paul and Judith's, and we didn't know of this connection between the two sites before our visit, now that's ironic right?

A few kms away was this incredible 3,500 BC stone structure, "Pentre Ifan", part of an ancient burial chamber. How it has been standing like this for over five thousand years is beyond me. I must admit I was slightly hesitant when standing below this huge suspended stone which they estimate to weigh 16 tonnes! You can see the very narrow contact points with the standing stones below.

Here is a photo of an old sketch of two 19th century antiquarians on horseback having a good look at Pentre Ifan......

Here is Paul and Judith flying a kite with the kids at the back of their house...

Here is Judith and I enjoying one of her home brews, lovely!

Thanks again Paul and Judith for your generous hospitality and all those great memories.

We then headed to Hay-on-Wye just next to the Welsh English border.  A local said that they pay taxes to the Welsh government but their addresses are English, go figure. This place is known as the "town of books". There are about 24 book stores there, I was in heaven! Here is a photo of the Jane and the kids in front of the Hay-on-Wye castle and some markets.

I saw some people taking photos of something along one of the streets in this town of books, had a look, and just had to take a photo myself, this obviously means a lot to a place like Hay-on-Wye.

Back on the road trip...when the kids gets a bit hard to handle, usually late in the day Jane sometimes jumps in the back, the kids love it when she does...

So we arrived at Stonehenge, a place I've wanted to visit for many years. Knowing that the blue stones came all the way from the Preseli Hills of Wales, just down the road from Paul and Judith's home made it even more awe inspiring. They were somehow transported there around 2,500 BC! The largest stones, the sarsens, came from north Wilshire about 30km away. The blue stones are smaller but still, not a bad effort.

I might take a break for now and follow this up soon with a second blog on our UK trip. Hope you are well.

Best wishes from us lot in The Lot,

Jane, Sophie, Connor and moi!