Why? I hear you cry. Well my mum has arrived and we’ve been doing things. However there was a slight rocky start to this journey with a delayed train – the first time this has happened to me in France. The station at Angoulême was totally closed down due to a leak of dangerous material on one of the goods trains (which was at the station) 2 hours 10 minutes later I’m finally off to meet my mum at the airport, thankfully we connected (I literally nearly ran into her) got ourselves off to our hotel for the night and then back home on the train (not delayed) safe and sound the following day. We let mum have the next few days recovering (along with lots of walks) and then as mentioned in Pat’s blog, off to Thiviers for the market and lunch overlooking a chateau.
The following week we headed off to Nontron on my day off. We have driven past Nontron a couple of times but never stopped. As Pat mentioned – I wanted to visit a bra shop that had been recommended to me, unfortunately it has closed down and only sells via the internet now (this is very unusual for France), we did get the material shop, so that I now have some material for covering my sofa in the kitchen. However we did have a nice lunch in a lovely square, but don’t think we will worry too much about returning to the town as there wasn’t that much to see.
Thursday, aunty B arrived from the UK and Friday after I finished work we all headed off to Bordeaux. I’ll admit it has been a while since I’ve been in a large city and I’ve forgotten how exhausting it can be. But we had a fantastic time, walking around, and looking at things, lots of good meals and a few good glasses of wine. On our first night we stumbled upon the Place de la Bourse, just as the water mirror was in a state of mist, it was magical. We also were there to see the lights come on, again a magical feeling. It was glorious weather as well, which really helps. We even got up to the new Cité du vin (City of wine) and had a look at the building (we didn’t go in to the exhibition). We will definitely be heading back to Bordeaux at some time.
 Pat at Place de la Bourse |
 Picnic lunch view |
 Tasting wine in Bordeaux |
 Mum with pont jacques chaban-delmas in the background |
So this week we are actually back to being by ourselves as mum and aunty B go off to explore other parts. So it has been back to work for me today along with it being a light day (after all that food and wine it is needed).
Remember Pats blog next week – http://patblog.patbell.co.uk