Salut mes amis. Time for another update on Le Blog de Frog! Since the last entry, we had a quiet and uneventful week at home – Matt, working a lot on his French and going swimming several times and me playing a lot of guitar and working out. Beyond that and our daily, local walk, there is little to report until we get to Friday, when our friend Kevin came to visit for the weekend. Being very much low season, there is still only one flight per day to this region, so it was an early start for us (and an even earlier one for Kevin) to get to Limoges aeroport. His flight was delayed, but only by 15 minutes so we didn’t have long to wait.
As is customary, we made Brantôme our first stop – it is on the way home, and we generally end up there at lunch time, so it works out nicely. Friday is a market day in Brantôme, so we had a brief stroll past the stalls and showed Kevin the stunning town centre, then made our way to the restaurant.
Cute-waiter-restaurant is still closed for their winter holiday, so we went to a bit more of an upmarket one called Au Fil Du Temps (“The Passage of Time”), which was a first for us. The food was surprisingly unconventional – traditional French combined with an international twist – and extremely good. We ate three full courses (including, in my case, a spectacular dessert of ice-cream-stuffed profiteroles: mmmm!) and then took Kevin on one of our longer Brantôme walks. 2 hours later and we were back at the car and ready to head home. We gave Kevin the tour, then chilled for a bit before starting on dinner: a delicious, but very filling mushroom lasagne. We stayed up for a few hours chatting, drinking and watching silly telly, then called it a night.
Saturday morning saw us up and about reasonably early, so we bolted a light brekkie then piled in the car off to (you guessed it) St. Jean de Côle. Armed with a walking map, we set off on a new and most enjoyable walk in the nearby area. Despite accidentally going off piste early on, we managed to do the full loop and made it back into the town itself by around 1.15 – by which time, we were ravenous. We called in to the local restaurant in St. Jean de Côle (called, unimaginatively*, “Le St Jean”) and set about eating yet another 3 course lunch. As excellent as it was, we should perhaps have ordered just the one course each: we had already arranged to eat out that evening with Sharon and James, as I will get to.
Feeling full, we had a little wonder through town and then embarked on the afternoon’s planned activity: château-hunting! In the space of around 2 hours, we managed to see 6 different châteaux, all within a half hour of home – they really are all over the place in the Dordogne. St Jean itself boasts a lovely château (Château de la Marthonie) that I have posted pictures of in previous entries – that was #1. Next, we drove by a spectacular one in the town of Villars that looks right out of a fairy-tale – Château de Puyguilhem. We must go and take a tour of that one when it reopens in the Spring.
Following that one was the disappointing Château de Richmont, which just looked like a large house – not very chateau-esque at all. The next one, Château les Bérnadières, was a little better – half of it is still the original, 13th century architecture – crenellation-crested towers etc – but the other half dates to the 17th century and seemed to have been restored rather unimaginatively. Château de Beauvais was next on the tour: an impressive building on top of a big hill, with beautiful grounds too – and literally only 10 mins from our front door. As it was getting late, we decided to head back, but to wrap up the tour, we drove home via Mareuil, a town 5k from our place, which has its own very impressive Château (as seen in one of our earlier entries).
Back home, we had a little time to relax before heading out for our evening meal with Sharon and James. There is a restaurant literally only a couple of km up the road called Le Moulin Vieux (The Old Windmill) that we hadn’t managed to get to until now. An interesting aspect of this place is that the staff is made up of young offenders being offered a last chance to mend their ways. The idea is they get an opportunity to learn new skills and to make a fresh start of it. Makes good sense. It was a truly lovely experience: the building itself is really pretty, the staff was very professional and attentive and the food was exquisite.
We had a complimentary, pre-starter selection of amuse-bouches, starter, main, cheese, dessert, and finally, complimentary sweet pastries and chocolates. As I said, we really should have had less at lunch: we were obscenely full! It was an early start today to get a reluctant Kevin back to Limôges, but we hope we will see him again soon. Bon, au revoir pour maintenant!
*The French language seems to be built on the premise that there is no need to have three words if one will (sort of) do. For example, the word “encore” can mean “again”, “more”, “yet” and also “still”, depending on context. There is a lack of imagination when it comes to naming things: a lime is a “citron-vert” (green lemon), a potato is a “pomme-de-terre” (apple of the ground), a camera is an “appareil-photo” (photo device).
They are crying out for an influx of nouns! Well, we have decided to get them started by helping them with one of the worst-affected areas: numbers. Beyond large round numbers (100, 1000 etc) no number above 60 has a unique name. For example, seventy is “soixante-dix” (sixty-ten) – and 97 is “quatre-vingts dix-sept” (four-twenties ten-seven) – what the hell?! So, we are going to propose the following to Sarkozy:
70 = septante
80 = huitante
90 = neufty
Maybe it will get them started on properly naming things from now on….
It would be nifty to be neufty!