Warm champagne

Well, here we be in Epernay again overlooking the SNCF Champagne Ardenne loco sheds and slopes thick with fizzy grapevines. Warm and sunny. It was a good crossing on the Danish ferry. Spacious, calm, good coffee (unlike the late lamented Myferrylink). Then a pleasant drive through Northern France with its fields of potatoes, sugar beet and beasts- all very bucolic - and occasional old spoil heaps from the coalfields now turned into ski slopes and, amazingly, a vineyard! I like Northern France. Until I was in my late teens this was all the France I knew. In the fifties we drove the straight rolling roads en route to chocolate box Switzerland and Germany. Then everything was tattered and dilapidated, even so long after The War. But the food was a revelation- tasty steak and chips, wondrous whole melons, even ghastly unsalted butter and foul smelling (to a young child) coffee. Stalls selling frites with mayonnaise and crêpes alongside bottles of Grand Marnier where you were exhorted to 'arrosez vous-mêmes vos crêpes'. And tittering at things like the word Piscine! We stayed in hotels in Reims where the cage-like lifts hanging from precarious cables took you to the top of the building and in the morning a girl left a bowl and pitcher of piping hot water for you to wash. Long gone, but it still feels familiar and real and a proper place. I digress...

We stopped for sort of lunch in a pretty historic town called Aire sur la Lys (what a romantic name), and in the square in front of the preposterous town hall we ate cakes called Fromages pralinés. Layers of crumbly meringue sandwiched with hazelnut cream, designed to look like small round cheeses.












And eventually, some hours later, we were here in Epernay in search of pizza and pasta.

Back again

End of September already and our thoughts are turning to grape harvest and shutting up the house for winter. The usual worry of what to do about the heating system. I feel it should be drained - Sablet gets ferocious cold in winter sometimes and we have no means of leaving heat on as Faffner is so ancient, he have no thermostat. Oh well, joys in store.

We have, as ever, planned a luxury trip using Premier Inn outside Dover and DFDS to Dunkirk! Followed by Première Classe (no relation) Épernay and Ibis Budget Thiers. Those of you in the War Office Ops Room can track our progress on a map.

Departure Tuesday 29 September...