Hotel Melusine La Roche-Posay

We spent our last ten days of travel at the family farmhouse in Coussay, reunited with the French family and introduced to the brand new and shiny swimming pool which was constructed whilst we were away. I managed to try the swimming pool 2 minutes after arriving, and we managed to ...

... of some pretty unusual buildings surrounded by a proliferation of cheap touristy hotels.
Undettered we paid our money and got there early. It's good to be pleasantly surprised sometimes. We had a fantastic day and only left at 10pm.
Basically it consists of a series of buildings housing different audio visual experiences ranging from Imax theatres, 3D experiences, 4D experiences and culminating in a fantastic evening show with amazing light and sound effects. We ...

... o)

What else, window cleaning - I am disturbed to have the 'satisfied by window cleaning' gene, but I do, so I shall embrace it! Moving wood to the wood pile and the poplar sticks for kindling - again, hot work in this weather. Bumping off, plucking, learning about gutting and eating one of the cockerels (not sure of it's age, so maybe a rooster) - it was interesting to see it done as they shoot them with an air rifle, of course, it's ...

... lost in the city centre. Then it started raining so much you could barely see.

30 miles down the road it was still raining and we pulled into a shopping complex for some food. Then the sun came out, our hangovers were gone, and we started cooking. . . . just sitting outside the shop on the ground on the edge of the car park. Every other car beeped at us in confusion. Can't a man just cook himself a meal! I ...

... the house and a lovely dinner of chicken with veg and met Alexandra, Amanda and Scott's (Scott is away working this week) daughter a lovely 9 year old. The next day I got to meet the 2 barn cats, Sophia and Midnight and the chickens (Alex would know their names, I have forgotten).

Monday was spent in the garden with Jan working on the veg patch clearing the weeds around the pumpkins and the like - I know a bit more about these veggies now (I've never really ...

Well, I'm here with the Young family at their home in an old railway station house near Berthagon in France. I am so grateful fo them for letting me come early and spend this week here until I move to help a friend of theirs for a few days.

Sunday as you know from my last entry was fairly relaxed - just a few bits and getting to know the place really. On the monday, we (myself and the other volunteers) did some cleaning, then mid ...

... from the train. We met up with a couple who had been caught in this at our Gites that night who told us they had been tied up in the traffic for 4 hours! Awful.

Settled in on the first night. The gites living up to everything I wanted. A gorgeous setting, converted farmhouse and buildings - prob built in the 18th century, but not sure....now four self contained cottages and one for the owners, a lovely ...

... originally planned to go), a small town with an old castle on top of the hill by the river, which was under restoration/excavation works but still very picturesque. The very nice man at our campsite also suggested a few places for us & we went to two different castles - though we didn't go in the first and only arrived in time to walk around the grounds of the second! But they were lovely. He also ...

... my thing; once I am on the road I just like to get to my destination and once arived to chill out and take a look around. The result is that once on the bike the pedal is down, literally! But on this day the pedal was down but the progress was slow. The bike itself is heavy and that combined with the weight of the bags and yours truly means the climbs are really hard work. I only covered 85 km today and that at the miserly pace of 17 km/hour. So imagine my delight when my ...

... station and we walk around. Poitiers is SO much different from Nantes. I thought Jeff was exaggerating when he kept saying that last weekend, but he was right. Poitiers is so dense and compact. At one point on Friday I even asked Jeff if he ever feels closed in. I was totally feeling clausterphobic. I'm used to open areas and crossing a river everyday, it was just not like this at all in Poitiers. It was a really pretty town though, I enjoyed ...