Le Chateau

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Monday 4th July 2011

Woke up this morning from a weird dream involving Sooty and Sweep glove puppets having a pretend fight on a bed – blame it on frites overload! I am taking comfort in the almost certain knowledge that frites contain hardly any calories, what with being French and so chic and all, unlike those nasty greasy chips!

Finally departed Arras around 10 a.m. - and 7 hours later wound up in a little village called Grandcamp-Maisy, which is about 20 kms from Bayeux. The journey was completed in scorching sunshine, which was made easier to bare (sic) by doing it topless, and the highlights en route were (a) taking a deliberately meandering rural road (b) a superb 3 course lunch (when in France….) and (c) the display of Elaine’s European driving skills for the final part of the journey – and the best that can be said about that is it was a definite improvement on her map reading skills earlier.

Anyway we arrived at Le Chateau and like…Wow!!! I shall have to direct you to photographic evidence for this but do bear with (bear with) as the naughty photos seem to have a life of their own and pop up somewhat randomly. We met the owner, Dominique, very briefly as she was just off to collect a Wwoofer from the train at Bayeux and so she left us in the hands of a fellow Helpx-er, Joanne, a very friendly and welcoming Taiwanese girl, who showed us to our room. What an agreeable surprise that was (cue picture) as we have been allocated one of the guest rooms in this magnificent Alistair Sawdays registered chambre d’hote - good start!
We were then introduced to the dog, Belize, a fetching French Spaniel (she looks like a cross between a springer and an English Setter) some attractive, speckled chickens, a pug-ugly turkey (but don’t worry it will soon be Christmas), some bunnies, a gaggle of geese (OK, 3, but one was an alpha male and he had attitude big time), a vast donkey and 3 good-looking goats (I find goats attractive??!!).

During this show round, an English family turned up on spec, looking for B&B – it was hilarious, like a scene from Fawlty Towers – they were greeted by Joanne from Taiwan with her pidgin English and me & Bill who had literally just arrived. We let them try out their tentative French before letting on that we could speak English but then only had to disappoint them further by admitting that, in common with Manuel, we ‘know nothing’. That wasn’t good enough – the woman, whose French was presumably the least bad of the 3 of them and had therefore been sent out to deal with the natives, was insistent that they had come to the right place and showed us a name and telephone number that meant nothing to any of us, by which time her bottom lip was starting to quiver… Bill had to make it very clear that all they could do was wait for Dom to return, and there was nothing more we could do, and we continued our tour with Joanne. Made us laugh though….

So finally Dominique arrives back from the station with Zara, from Galway, Ireland – another lovely (young) girl who has just spent 5 months in Paris working as an au pair. One of Zara’s aims is to improve her French so Dominique is talking to Joanne and us in English (Joanne has even less French than us) and to Zara in French. By this time we discover the water supply (from a well) has temporarily dried up so Dominique has to make an emergency call to one of her seven children, all of whom live within a 30 km radius, for water aid! Once this has been actioned, Bill and I are allocated our first task, to water the tomatoes, beans and carrots in the polytunnel. That was quite a challenge on 2 counts (a) finding a watering can and (b) finding the plants among the cornucopia of weeds. So tomorrow’s job will be………yes, that’s right, weeding. Well it beats making beds and blitzing bogs!

And after that little light exercise it was supper time for me, Bill, Joanne and Zara – Dominique doesn’t do supper (so that’s why French women are so thin?) but she did prepare a tasty pasta salad for us, which we washed down with copious amounts of cool clear ….water. So aren’t we just feeling a tad virtuous – some honest toil, a healthy wholesome meal and not a drop of alcohol in sight……To be continued!


Tuesday 5th July 2011

This place is well off the beaten track so no noisy traffic/people/music noise to disturb our slumbers. We met up in Dominique’s colossal kitchen which reminds us of Pom’s – a lovely big family space - albeit undeniably cluttered (but in a good way)! We partook of a little light breakfast, tea, French bread (which Dominique had popped out to buy from the local market at 6.30 a.m.) and a choice of several home-made jams – plum, blackberry and pear – and cheese. This set us up nicely for the weeding of the polytunnel and Elaine’s first job which was to pick some beans (first pick of the season) and what could possibly go wrong – she picked enough to fill half a bucket and returned to the kitchen only to be told there weren’t enough. Undeterred by this unexpected knockback, she filled the bucket and returned optimistically to the kitchen where Dominique and her daughter, Julie, were in residence. Well, Dominique plucked some beans from the bucket which (apparently) had some baby beans attached and showed them to Julie, who recoiled in horror at the sight and emitted a very heartfelt ‘Oooh la la’ (but not in a good way). Elaine was desolée and très humiliated but tried to put a brave face on it and begged for ‘pardon’ in her best French and assured Dominique that this wouldn’t happen again! She re-joined Bill in the polytunnel pulling weeds (after ensuring correct identification of same) until it was just too hot to continue. At this point we moved on to weeding area #2 (cue picture) which was a row of herbs almost completely concealed by the evil weeds and which we made fairly short work of, overseen by the 3 geese.

We ventured back into the kitchen at 12 midday, to request further duties, but were pleasantly surprised by Dominique saying that it was too hot for more garden work and that lunch would be ready at 1 p.m. Not only that but it would be roast chicken – and there was us under the impression we would be vegetarians for two weeks, but no, bit of a communication breakdown in her otherwise very good English; what she meant was that vegetarians will be catered for and she admits that she doesn’t really ‘get’ veggies….. Needless to say, lunch, complete with freshly cooked beans, was delish and surprisingly accompanied by vino. I am liking this ‘holiday’…

Dominique is a lovely and fascinating lady. Probably one of the least uptight people either of us have ever come across – the English B&B’er yesterday probably displayed more stress in 5 minutes than Dominique does in a year, despite (or maybe because of) being pretty much self-sufficient and having to cope with a constant change of helpers. Admittedly she has got this aspect pretty much sorted – she times the comings and goings so the experienced people brief the new comers before they move on. However there is no doubt she could not cope on her own, despite all the local relatives, and despite her working pretty much from 6.30 a.m. to 10.30 p.m. So she does what she does best, and leaves the rest to a motley collection of passers-by, who she also feeds and exchanges her vast and entertaining knowledge with, without ever making us feel like we are anything other than house-guests who are doing her a few chores as a favour.

After lunch, we helpers (bit of a bond starting already despite the huge age differences) decided we would go exploring on bikes. There is a pile of them in a corner of a barn, right under a house-martins nest so they are covered in bird-shite. None of them work – some have pumped up tyres, some have brakes, some have chains, but none of them have all 3 vital ingredients. After about an hour of cobbling bits together with tools nicked from a shed, we have 4 bikes that will go and stop – ish….. Just as we are about to embark to downtown Grandcamp-Maisy, it starts raining, so Elaine ducks out and eventually just Bill and the 2 girls set out for a brief and very wet tour of the village and a visit to the supermarket before realising Elaine was the sensible one and heading back to join her. However, bike restoration has been decided on as a project and we intend to explore the area a lot more in the remaining time here.

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Comments

[Rohanna]

Wow.
This made me 'laugh out loud', especially the pictures! It sounds like you are having a lovely time. I am surprised you let Mum loose on European roads though!! Miss you both, look forward to reading some more. x