Bonjour from France! Hope you're all well. You look great, I love what you've done with your hair.
It's been three weeks since we set off on this journey, so high time for an update of what we've been up to. First stop was mother England, specifically London. Not to kick things off with a negative but this was not our favourite city of all time. We did see some great stuff however, namely Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, the Rosetta Stone, Westminster Abbey, The London Eye and Trafalgar Square. But probably not a place I'll spend the rest of my life dreaming about (what up NYC!). Highlights from the week were the pub quiz in our borough of Hackney where we came dead last but won a packet of crisps for our fabulous team name 'A Salty Surprise' (feel free to use this at your next trivia night. You're welcome), exploring the Camden Loch Market, a visit to Abbey Road where we tried not to piss off too many drivers with our posing and Dave's ridiculous bare foot pilgrimage, then spending an hour later that day researching the dead Paul McCartney theory and deciding we are 100% on board, hanging out at our 'local' pub for the week which was called The Cock (tee hee) and had a great range of cask beer, checking out Lords from the outside because we were too cheap to pay for a tour (still, it's a lovely stadium and so petite), the Hackney drinks festival on Saturday which gave us the chance to sample a whole bunch of locally made gins and then sprawl out in the sun for the afternoon drinking beer and listening to a band, a Sunday picnic in the sun in Hyde Park, an afternoon spent at Camden Brewery where we tried every single variety of beer they had and the delightful bartender kept bringing us popcorn, and a night out in Shoreditch with my old mate Kristen (now a proper Londoner) and her friends.
Paris was, as always, charming and delightful. We stayed for five nights which gave us time to see some of the things we missed out on last time, like the Eiffel Tower at night, Musee D'Orsay and Versailles. We were lucky enough to have a whole day to spend at Chateau Versailles, which was just the most beautiful and awe inspiring place. The amazing gardens, the palace itself, and the few pieces of furniture and art which survived the French Revolution were all just magnificent. Favourites were the hall of mirrors and the clock that was commissioned for Louis XV, which is the most accurate clock of its time and can even show you where each planet (of the 7 that had been discovered at the time) are in their rotations of the sun. It was specially designed to last until 9999, so no worries about the Y2K bug for them.
The best thing about Paris is probably the food, and we made the most of the abundance of cheese by picnicking a lot, always with a baguette, cheese and some delicious jamon. The accommodation we had was lovely, a nice apartment in the 13th arrondissement, which is the Vietnamese area of Paris (felt like being back in Footscray!), and yep we went out for pho and it was delicious. Our host and his housemates were great, so helpful with tips for exploring the city and also for exploring their countries when we finally get there - one of them was Colombian, the other Moroccan.
From Paris we travelled to the region of Brittany and met our wwoofing hosts for the week, Bev and Lucienne. Bev is originally from England and is a retired physics professor and Lucienne is from Paris. They now live in a small village called St Senoux where they have a large kitchen garden and a small business selling woollen garments that they have made from scratch. Literally from scratch - everything from collecting and picking the fleece to cleaning the wool, spinning it into yarn, weaving the cloths and constructing the garments is done by them and by hand. It's an amazing process and very time consuming. They were excellent hosts, very giving of their time and we were so well looked after - omg the food! Lucienne is a fabulous cook which we learnt on day one when we were welcomed on Sunday afternoon with a veal roast and a bottle of red wine. Actually, the very first thing they served us was a palate cleanser of cantaloupe, which you may know is the ONLY thing I don't eat. Well, I couldn't very well refuse our hosts the very first thing I was offered. So I ate it. And then I ate it again the next day when it was served at lunch, because I'd already eaten it once I couldn't then admit that I hated it and was just being polite the day before. You'll be relieved to know that I survived this awful episode. But everything else we ate was just delicious. Lunch was typically a salad straight from the garden and a selection of cheese, dinner was always something different and there was ALWAYS dessert, often made with fruit from the garden. One day we picked some cherries and then that night we ate cherry clafoutis for dessert, as fresh as you can get. I spent a morning picking white currants and on the day we left we were given a jar of white currant jelly (jam) that was made from the currants I had picked. There was certainly no waste from the garden, excess fruit was quickly made into something delicious, or frozen for future use.
Our work in St Senoux was generally the upkeep of the garden. We did a LOT of weeding, as being organic, they obviously don't use pesticides. We also picked fruit, Dave helped tackle some overgrown bamboo and stinging nettles (he did get stung), we helped prune trees and then put the branches through the wood chipper, and we cleared out some overgrown plots so that they could be replanted. I've always mocked people who refer to gardening as 'exercise' but I can now confirm that spending three hours kneeling/squatting and pulling weeds out of the ground is hell on the glutes and the back. I had serious muscle soreness all week. Move over Kayla Itsines, I got a REAL full body workout for ya. Dave was lucky enough to go out for the day on Wednesday with Bev and help him collect the wool that they will then make into clothes. The farm was about a three hour drive away and when they arrived they were greeted by the farmer holding two bottles of red wine, as it was lunchtime. They were then treated to a three course lunch, where the wine was polished off and after all that Dave was expected to spend the afternoon catching sheep with four other blokes! Despite being kicked in the leg by a particularly angry ewe Dave managed to catch around 20 sheep (his story anyway, I wasn't there to substantiate it) which were then sheared. His main job though was collecting the freshly sheared fleece which Bev and another helper then picked clean. This was hard work, and a very long day but Dave had a lot of fun and it was certainly an experience he won't forget in a hurry. Despite being the only person there who didn't speak French everyone was very welcoming and helpful, teaching Dave what they could and laughing at him for not being able to understand them. It was also the day that Dave developed a taste for Rose, drinking plenty of the local Loire Valley drop that was offered after their days work was done.
Our working days were usually only four-five hours in the morning, then after lunch we were free to explore the local area. The town centre of St Senoux was about a 45 minute walk away and it was so quaint, they have a boulangerie/patisserie, a church, 2 schools, a hairdresser and a bar which of course we dropped into. The surrounding area is beautiful, lush green farming land and we took a couple of really nice walks, one of which ended at the top of a cliff where a massive crucifix was erected. It's called La Croix des Juanes, which translates to the cross of the youth and it commemorates a group of teenagers who died 100 years ago when their horses bolted and they and their buggy were driven off the cliff. We stood on the edge and it was definitely a long way down and not a nice way to go, but the views from up there are really breathtaking. While we were up there we ran into a local guy who was wearing a Gold Coast t-shirt, we got to chatting with him and it turned out he had lived in Coolangatta for a while. He had no opinion on Gary Ablett's future. Okay, we didn't ask, he probably did.
One thing we were lucky enough to experience while we were there was the Fete de la Musique, or festival of music which is a festival celebrated all over France in June, generally to coincide with the summer solstice. It is a celebration of music and dancing continuing into the night, with the sun setting at around 10:45pm so there's plenty of daytime to celebrate. The fete in St Senoux was a great mixture of traditional songs and dances of Brittany as well as more modern drumming and bands. There was a beatbox performance, I didn't get up on stage as I didn't want to steal their thunder. A folk duo even performed Angus and Julia Stone's Big Jet Plane - no, we cannot escape that song, even in a tiny village in France! Lucienne was also involved in the show, she played the bombasa, which is a traditional wind instrument of Brittany, similar to an Oboe. She played while a group of school kids performed traditional dances which were very cute. Of course, our focus is always on the food and we were not disappointed. We ate galette saucisses, which is essentially a pork sausage wrapped in a rye pancake. It's the French version of the Bunnings sausage sizzle (or a banger in the mouth for all you Arrested Development fans) but much fancier and tastier. Gateau and ice cream for dessert finished the evening nicely. It was great to be able to experience a community event so far from home and feel welcomed by everyone even though most people didn't speak English and our grasp of french is only marginally better than when we left home. We even got invited into a traditional dance line, which was a pretty special moment.
With our working week over we are now headed to Bordeaux for a few days of relaxation and wine drinking before we start another week wwoofing on Wednesday in a small village about an hour from Bordeaux. If all our wwoofing experiences are as good as the week we have just had then we are definitely in for an amazing year ahead!
Hope you're all well and keeping warm back in Victoria. Let us know what you're up to, we wanna hear your stories too!
Love and peace, Dave and Mel. x (that kiss smells distinctly like French rose...)
