H is for Heligan: finding The Giant

Andrea recommended a visit to Heligan en route to Fowey and we marvelled at the story of the rebuilding of this historic Cornwall estate. It was a self sufficient community for centuries and WWI changed everything. It fell into disuse, brambles taking over and it took the vision and work of Tim Smit since 1990 to recreate its former glory.

Fred bought a children's book called The Giant by Sandra Horn and Karen Popham for Baby Hadfield, as The Giant is the star attraction for children in the garden - and for me too.

Joy of a garden!

B is for Bubbles: two times 60 celebrating

A bottle of Taitinger.
A sunset over Fowey.
A who would have thought moment for Andrea and me, both celebrating our sixtieth birthdays with a little bit of French panache.

S is for summer in St. Ives: people at leisure

St. Ives, high and dry at low tide.

Height of summer, St. Ives beaches.

Seeing Ashleigh for lunch in St. Ives, last time we met was in the Bahamas
for Craig and Shawni's wedding!

 Pretty as a picture, St. Ives in the sunshine.

Our plan was to ride the train into St. Ives from St. Erth, but a local fire disrupted the service. So we walked the Coast Path instead, parking at Carbis Bay and following the sweep of the bay with lovely views across to St. Ives.

It is peak season.  The summer crowds make for some interesting viewing, beach after beach is colourful with wind shields, umbrellas, children with buckets, nets and spades, people milling, some happy some decidedly grumpy, I manage by being among it all but keeping apart at the same time.

Our lunch hook up with Ashleigh was so nice. We spent the hours chatting and bemusedly watching the tide of people pass our window seat. I rather enjoyed my Cornish Cider and fresh crab linguine too.

Fred and I pottered among the crowds along the narrow back streets of St. Ives, found Cornish cheeses and mushrooms for breakfast before heading back to our timeshare to watch Rio 2016.

L is for Lizard: most southerly point, Cornwall

Kynance Cove from the Coast Path, Lizard.

From the furtherest west at Land's End yesterday, to furtherest south in Cornwall today. We headed to Lizard, and even with the summer crowds it was peaceful and beautiful. I chose the walk for today because I loved its name: "Three sides of the Lizard"! And for the possibility of seeing Cornish Choughs, still no sight of these iconic coastal birds but the walking along the undulating high cliffs was a delight. 

As were the Cornish Pasties from a bake shop tucked behind a house in one of the side roads of Lizard. I carried these hot pasties and we found a spot with a view and enjoyed them immensly. Ah, when in Cornwall....Just as well we spend many hours on a path, the salted caramel ice creams are rather good too.

Rugged cliff top walking with the delicate detail along the way.

Beauty of a coastal walk from Lizard.

S is for South West Coast Path: walking on the wild side in Cornwall

Over styles, across moors and spectacular views!

On the Coast Path.

An afternoon on the South West Coast Path was our first introduction the to beauty of the Cornish coastline, the moors and its fascinating mining history. We peeped at land's End, but quickly moved on, it has a tourist luckiness. 

Walking from Cape Cornwall we were treated to the remnants of the tin mining industry, chimneystacks, engine houses, old walled paths, mounds of waste rock from the mines, kerstels hovering, bees in the heather, thorny brambles along the stone walls....

I can see why this part of England has inspired writers and artists. The photos speak for themselves.

Z is for Zawn a Bal: a dramatic Cornish mining site

"Zawn - a fissure in a cliff (used as a word and also as a place-name element, in use after the year 1800, from Cornish language sawen, or saven, meaning a cleft or gully. Bal, Cornish for a mine."

Dramatic Zawn a Bal

The most westerly Cornish Mining World Heritage Site is around St. Just. 

We had a perfect Sunday afternoon to appreciate the big skies of western Cornwall, the jagged rocks and cliffs, the stark moorland purple with heather and delicate summer flowers adding pops of colour as we walked along the Coast Path.

The engine house called Zawn a Bal is a wonder with its dramatic location; it floats above the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean on a cliff edge!

D is for Design: half-timbered houses of Normandy

Our early walk for baguettes this morning took us past the old wooden and stucco houses of Orbec, a Calvados County village.

The style of half-timbered houses in Normandy dates back to the middle ages from the late 15th century to the early 19th century.

The design, colour and texture of the walls makes me want to design and make a  quilt - maybe one day my quilt group back home will help me!

V is for Vaches: 'a lunettes' in Normandy

Famous Normandy cows - vache a lunettes 

Ratisfaite, the statue in Vimoutiers, celebrating the Norman breed of cows whose rich milk makes the famous Camembert cheese.

There was no question I had to find one of these fabulous brown and white Normandy cows milked for Camembert!

So Sally spent an hour driving up and down little rural roads to find the perfect 'vaches a lunettes' for Fred to photograph.
Cows with glasses! Yay!

The real thing in a field near Friardel.

C is for Camembert: a Normandy village with a story

Visiting Camembert, a village, cheese legends and the museum "Maison du Camembert"

The tiny village of Camembert is not far from John and Sally so we spent an afternoon learning all about this iconic French cheese.
According to legend, Marie Harel, a farmer in the village developed the definitive recipe in 1791! Such an interesting story linking a priest from the region of Brie who she sheltered and from whom she learnt about cheese, to the role of Napoleon III in making camembert famous and then during WWI, a million boxes a month sent to the French soldiers. And now the most famous of all French cheeses.
We tasted, bought gold award 'lait cru' camenbert for dinner, so yummy.

M is for Memories; time with John and Sally.

"Excepts from Memory by David Whyte:

Memory is not just a then, recalled in a now, the past is never just the past, memory is a pulse passing through all created life, a waveform, a then continually becoming other thens, all the while creating a continual but almost untouchable now. 

Memory is an invitation to the source of our life, to a fuller participation in the now, to a future about to happen, but ultimately to a frontier identity that holds them all at once. Memory makes the now fully inhabitable.

The genius of human memory is firstly its very creation through experience, and then the way it is laid down in the mind according to the identity we inhabited when we first decided to remember, then its outward radiating effect and then all its possible future outcomes, occurring all at the same time...how we live the story we have inherited. 

We can be equal to the story we have inherited, no matter its difficulty, by stepping into its very centre."

One of my letters from France written to my mother in 1986 - Sally is fetching me to take me across to Mme Brimaud, we rented her home in Marly-le-Roi. Sally features in so many of my memories of those years we lived here in France.

Here I am, visiting John and Sally, friends from our years here in France.

John and Fred had met through Telemecanique while Fred still worked for the firm in South Africa, so when we arrived in Paris in 1986, John and Sally helped us through the settling in and we got to know each other well.

How I love the flow of memories from our times together and also the story telling to bridge all these years and how life has played out for all of us.

Friendships, 30 year memory, Paris - Andrea, me and Sally, 1986.

And here we are today, around a lunch table, in a quiet corner of Normandy, how lovely:

A is for Angers: the 13th C Citadel

Massive and austere, the Chateau d'Angers dominates the city of Angers.

We walked around the citadel and marvelled at man's patience, this is a mountain of stone work and in two tones.

People have lived here since Neolithic times, making a safe place to live on a rocky knoll above the Maine River. This fortress takes safe to another level, 3 meter thick walls, a deep moat, and protected by 17 towers!

And these towers were reduced in height in the 16th C when Henry III used the stones to build the village and pave the streets of Angers.

Early evening view of the Chateau d'Angers.

S is for a Cold Soup: Honeydew and Cucumber Soup

Cold Honeydew and Cucumber Soup. 

A  blend of melon, cucumber, lime and a drizzle of basil oil and black pepper, it was the most refreshing and delicately flavoured cold soup I have yet experienced. 

A thing of beauty from Les Petites Tables in Manosques.

I am going to trawl and find recipes to test until I can replicate the soup - thinking ahead to Christmas!

C is for a Chateau: Plessis-Bourre, Maine-et-Loire

Built between 1468 and 1473, Chateau Le Plessis-Bourre is a hidden gem in the Maine-et-Loire, reflecting both the end of the Medieval period building style and the dawning of the Renaissance architectural style along the Loire.

Off the beaten track, in a tranquil setting, it was a lovely way to start our day. We have driven across France, from the hot, hazy days in Province to the Maine-et-Loire region, just north of Angers.

The weather here is cooler, crisper and the buildings are imposing and glow white with blue slate roofs.

The Chateau is privately owned and used as a place for displaying some impressive collections of furniture, art and books. We enjoyed the tour, especially seeing an original chateau door from the 15th C with all sorts of secret carvings and encoded messages - alchemy and royalty woven together by Jean Bourre who was Louis XI's Finance Minister.

This was a place of intrigue at the highest levels.