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Published: August 15th 2016
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Woolly says – As the bus pulled out of the station I waved a sad goodbye to lovely Lyon before tucking into my croissant and checking my nut supplies. As mile after mile passed we sat in our usual travel modes, Zoe plugged into her ipod, Jo staring out of the window and myself trying to see how many shells I could throw at the man in front of me before waking him up! Having hidden the shells before he got caught and discussed the reasons behind not throwing things at people we pulled onto a service station...... Woolly says – Always good to stretch the paws and top up snack supplies, to our surprize the driver announced that we were in Perigreux and therefore our destination, I looked at Jo and she looked at Zoe. ..... it appeared that not having read the online booking to the end had resulted in the fatal error of not arriving in the town itself as I had assumed, incorrectly as we now found out! Woolly says – I climbed down from the bus and wondered how Jo was going to get us out of this mess, she’d disappeared into the shop and arrived back five minutes later with what I hoped was a plan.
Having exercised the small amount of French that I have and lots of hand signals I established that the town was miles away and way to far to walk but the kind lady who had somehow managed to understand all of my gesturing had rung a taxi for us. Woolly says – I wanted to laugh when Jo paid the driver having paid over the same amount that it had cost to come over 500 kilometres for a ten minute journey but thought it slightly unwise for some reason! The train station was quiet and as we checked the bus times for Tocane I found that we had missed the bus by minutes, spying a shady café I propelled the women over and ordered us some drinks and a snack. The half hour bus ride took us through some lovely scenery and as we pulled up at the small town of Tocane we were delighted to see our volunteer host Fiona waiting for our weary group.
Woolly says – A good nights sleep and I was ready for anything....well so I thought! Fiona introduced us to the two goats, having watched Jo and Zoe being dragged round their field whilst holding onto their leads while having their feet trampled on by the small hooves I decided that maybe that job wasn’t for me, Rosemary goat was also licking her lips as she looked me up and down so I headed towards the chicken runs. Le Grange du Bost is an organic free range chicken farm which has been run by our other host Adrian since 1995 and what he doesn’t know about chickens would fill an egg, as the first lot of chickens were opened it seemed that several thousand came squawking out heading straight towards me, I bolted and took refuge on a fence post! As the chicken mammoth sat trembling, the chickens, all 800 of them, raced around obviously enjoying being outside in the sunlight, the next run was opened and two ducks waddled past at a rate of knots heading straight to the first run. Woolly says – I’ve never seen ducks move so fast! I felt marginally safer in this small rescue run with chickens who have been bullied by other chickens (yes you did read that correctly) or that have been given a home here, until the only cockerel on the farm started eyeballing me, I left the women to it and decided to see if it might be snack time! I saw the furry one disappearing from the field and just hoped he wouldn’t cause mayhem ....well I live in hope of that every day to be fair! Our first day passed happily as we helped to change and clean the bed and breakfast room and one of the four glamping tents that they have recently installed. Woolly says – The glamping tents were amazing, I wondered if I could talk Jo into buying one for me! As the girls made beds, dusted and swept I directed operations until Jo suggested that I help so I offered to go and find snacks for us, apparently that wasn’t what she meant! Our afternoon took us into a new world as we drove round the main runs collecting eggs by hand or by conveyer belt from the five big runs, never have I seen so many chickens or eggs.
Woolly says – The conveyer belt was great fun and as I sat on it I thought it could be a great way of covering many miles for those like myself who have short paws! As I was attempting to see if I could lie down and be moved along Jo rudely yanked me off and put me on egg collecting, she’s such a slave driver. With the back of the jeep filled with trays of warm eggs our first day seemed to be complete and after all my work I happily sat in the huge farmhouse kitchen eating everything that was put in front of me. Our days follow the needs of the animals and having learnt how to box the eggs ready for the shops, our second day was spent preparing a BBQ for the glamping and bed and breakfast guests. Woolly says – what could be better than sizzling sausages on the grill and piping hot potatoes out of the fire, not to mention all the fuss and attention the guests insisted on giving me. As I watched Jerry the donkey giving the children rides I sat next to farm dog, Yshi, chatting about the joys of pistachios, my travel adventures and living on a farm and other than sniffing my behind he seemed quite happy to indulge me.... I think I’m going to like it here.
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
Are you WOOFing for awhile???
You place sounds wonderful.