Good enough to eat

After the Austen Centre and tea I did a bit more shopping and wandering. Throughout the city are a number of lions, sponsored by local companies (Ian's company sponsored one) who pay for artists to decorate the lions. My absolute favorite lion is the one above a sweet shop that is meant to look like a giant chocolate lion.

Sympathising with Austen

After the postal museum I stopped into a few of my favorite shops as I made my way over to the Jane Austen Centre. We've passed this museum to Jane Austen's 5 years in Bath many times and often seen the man at the door in Regency Dress but we've never visited the museum, shop or tea rooms. On entering the JAC one has a short informative talk by a member of staff who speaks about Austen's family and life and her time in Bath. Apparently she visited Bath for a few short stays in her teens and early twenties when she enjoyed the shopping and Assembly rooms. However, she disliked moving to Bath when her father retired and remaining, in reduced circumstances, when he died. She lived in Bath for only 5 years but found the city a hindrance to her creativity and did not write until once again located in the country. Feeling similarly frustrated with Bristol I felt a bit of a connection to Austen, although I absolutely love Bath and find it a welcome distraction from Bristol. After the talk we walked through the displays of Bath regency life and a short video about Austen's Bath connections. Then it was up to the third floor for tea and a tea cake in The regency tea rooms which were charming but I still prefer the infamous Sally Lunn's.

Going Postal

Friday 27 August - While Ian is away I have decided to play the tourist and visit some of the sites that we haven't yet visited. First up was the Bath Postal Museum, which was a bit tricky to find as it is tucked into the basement of the current post office. It is a small museum but has a lot of information and interactive stations. I perforated my own set of souvenir stamps and learned about the post coaches and the different horn calls used along as signals along the narrow lanes by which the coaches travelled. It is said that the postmaster at Bath sent the first mail with the penny black stamp and was sent a letter by the first air mail service.

Adventures in London

Thursday 19 August-Since Ian is away and I was offered Thursday off work in exchange for working a Saturday, I took advantage of two week days free to visit Caryn in London. I arrived in London a little after 12 and made my way to Caryn's flat. We went straight to the V&A where we immediately had lunch. Then with our tummys full we perused the re-opened medieval and renaissance wing of the museum as well as a few other galleries. One of the most entertaining items in the renovated galleries was a number of jars made to look like people. On our way out of the museum we were stopped by a V&A employee who chatted our ears off for about 20 minutes before we were able to escape and head over to the National portrait gallery. After a walk through the NPG we went to Selfridges for a cocktail (very expensive but also very Delicious, I had prosecoo with wild strawberry puree and elderflower cordial). Next was a tube ride to a Lebanese restaurant and a lovely mezze meal with belly dancing and mint tea and baklava for desert.

Wedding in Worcestershire

Thursday 12 August-The big day is finally here, Nat and Tom's wedding. We rented a car and picked Sam up at Temple meads before heading to Birtsmorton Court. We stopped in Tetbury for lunch at a lovely old inn, which had the slowest service ever, and we were consequently dashing out to try and get to the wedding in time. We got lost getting back to the main road. Once we finally found Birtsmorton we pulled in and ran (in heels) to the chapel and made it in just before the bride! It was a beautiful ceremony. the reception took place in the grounds of the court and we were tempted from garden to garden with champagne and pimms. We had a lot of fun but had to rush back to Bristol as Ian was flying out early that morning.

The end of a long Pier

Sunday 8 August - After a successful trip to B&Q (England's answer to Home Depot, I have know idea what the b or q stand for) where we finally found a cute new bistro table (on sale) for the balcony, we decided to go to Cleevedon for a walk along the ocean. We promenaded up and down the pier despite the intense wind. And then got an ice cream and walked along the small beach. Cleevedon is such a quaint little beach, there are always people out boating and kids playing on the rocky beach. Its always a pleasure to visit and take in the ocean and atmosphere.

Nunney Street Fair

Saturday 7 August - As this was Ian's last weekend in the UK before flying out for 5 weeks for work, we rented a car mostly to do errands. However, in the afternoon we were looking for something to do and Ian found that Nunney was having its annual street fair. We had stumbled across this event last year when we were doing a day out to see castles. We had a great time last year and were anxious to go again. We had a lovely time, walking around the town visiting all the stalls and listening to the music. We were able to go up to the top of the church tower and see the lovely view (something we missed out on last year). We also had some of the amazing freshly made donuts that we had had last year. There were lots of treas sures to find at the stalls, we walked away with a wooden step ladder (to be repainted and used as a plant stand on the balcony, but has also come in handy washing the floor to ceiling windows), a framed print of Nunney, a potted succulent, a copy of the Merchant of Venice and a lovely leather covered vintage cigarette case (to be used for business cards).

La Brier

On our last full day in France I really wanted to take a boat ride through La Brier. We'd visited the national park many times on bicycle, by car and on horseback but we'd never travelled on the waterways that traverse the park. A cross between forest field and Marsh La Brier has a little bit of everything, people who live in La brier have communal rights to the land and the park is dotted with ponies, chickens, goats and cream coloured cattle. We took one of the picturesque little barques, maneuvered via a wooden poll (similar to a gondola) along one of the small canals. We had a tour guide who explained some of the flora and fauna. It was a lovely relaxing morning, enjoying the scenery. We saw lots of wildlife, including a large water rat originally from Brazil which has successfully infiltrated la brier. My favorite scene, however was when a barques passed us, using an outboard motor, when he passed we could see about 20 geese sitting on the floor of the boat, so typically french country.

The promenade at Le Pouligen

On the last leg of our journey we stopped for some excellent ice cream on the promenade at Le pouligen which has lots of stalls selling all kinds of treats from Crepes to cotton candy to meringues and taffy-like candy on a stick. Its a fun place to wander along with all the smells and colours, I especially liked the colourful jars of hard candy.

tide pooling

On our way back we stopped at one of the many small rocky coves along the cote sauvage to do some tide pooling. The place we chose was down some rather step rocks and consequently not much frequented, I found a whole treasure trove of seaglass including some rather large thick pieces. We saw lots of mussels and anemones clinging to the rocks. We had a good time scrambling around before returning to our bikes and resuming our ride.

More Moules Frites please

Once we arrived in Le Croisic we parked the bikes and then wandered in and out of the shops and around a few of the back streets. We visited the exhibition held right on the docks and looked for fish swimming near the boats at the quay. We finally settled on a restaurant along the quay where we had an amazing meal of moules frites (mussels and french fires) with some of the best mussels I've ever had. We thoroughly enjoyed our meal and sitting in the sun before meandering back to the bikes and making our way leisurely back to La Baule.

Bread in Batz sur Mer

Monday 25th of July - One of my favorite places to visit near La Baule is Le Croisic. Ian and I often spent a day cycling along the beautiful Cote Sauvage enjoying the scenery to have lunch in Le Croisic. We stopped along the way in another small town with lots of Charm, Batz sur Mer, where we stumbled across another market. I was particularly impressed with these lovely loaves.

Being Bretagne

While in Le Pouligen we stumbled across some Bretagne dancers and musicians. Oddly enough the same group we stumbled across two years ago while visiting. Apparently they were celebrating a three day Bretagne festival. We stopped for a while to enjoy the music, dancing and lovely costumes.

More markets

Sunday 24 July- Another day, another market. This time we drove over to the Market in Le Pouligen. The market had many of the same stalls as in Guerande but also some other ones and a whole new presentation. It was quite crowded so we squeezed our way through all the side streets to peek at the stalls.

No one does food like the French

Once at the Guerande market we took our time perusing all the stalls and visiting my favorite shops. There are lots of various stalls at a french market, clothes, shoes, cutlery, linens, nick knacks, china, and of course food. Fresh baked bread, home grown veggies, meats, cheeses and butter, seafood. They all look and smell delicious. We had a great time looking at all the sites and stocking up on goodies. We got a good deal on oysters which we brought back and had for a starter at lunch.

Fields of Flowers

One of our first adventures out was to Guerande, by bicycle. This was a trip we frequently made when living here as the Guerande market is very nice and there are lots of nice shops there. The ride is an easy one, mostly flat and after bicycling around Bristol it seemed like a breeze. One of the most pleasant part of the rides was coming across fields chock full of sunflowers. Apparently sunflowers are the in crop this year as we saw a number of similar fields on the train but none in full bloom like these.

Wind and Waves

We spent a fair amount of time on the beach. Alexa, Katie and Marty generally didn't make it to the beach until after 5pm (which considering how long the sunlight lasts and how late we ate wasn't too much of a problem) but we usually went a bit earlier and got in some lounging in the sun and a swim before sitting on the beach to make sandcastles with the family. Despite the sunshine it was quite windy for the first few days and we got pelted with sand our first evening on the beach. It was also quite wavy in the afternoon leading to more then a few mouth fulls of unexpected water. We managed a few early morning walks on the beach when it was nearly deserted and very calm and even popped out one night to walk on the beach after dark.

France for the holidays

Thursday 22 July - Ian and I were hoping for some sunny summer weather when we left chilly, cloudy Bristol and flew to La Rochelle France, and we were not disappointed. We had a one hour delay at the airport (I guess all they say about easy jet is true) and then had a mad dash taxi ride from the airport to the train station where we only made our train because two people let us cut in the ticket line and the train was delayed by 5 minutes. We enjoyed a very pleasant ride, as French trains are far superior to British ones and because of the beautiful day and lovely landscapes passing by, to Nantes. Ian's dad picked us up a drove us to La Baule where we finally got to see his parent's recently acquired French house. We had a nice visit with Ian's sister and niece and a lovely dinner with Ian's parents before being dropped off at the studio where we had lived together for 3 months previously. The next day we visited the market on La Jarrige (the road where the studio is located, with its many sausage stalls. I found and bought a beautiful french market basket which was a little awkward to bring home on the plane but totally worth it.