It’s not finished yet, if you look closely (please don’t) you’ll see quite a few bits & bobs that need doing, mainly skirting boards & the steps – but we couldn’t contain ourselves any longer & just had to put some photos on here.

Here is what you see as you come down the stairs & look to the window on the left:

Here, looking back towards the steps (yup, they definitely need doing!!!):

and finally another view over towards the window, this time from the other corner near the bath:

Pleased with it?  You bet we are

I’m sure that shouldn’t be happening in the middle of January

This new toy means that he can precisely (ok, to within 3m) locate all sort of interesting holes (bombing, fuel stores, vehicle stores etc) and then put them onto a map to have a good overall view of the action that took place during WWII

So – he’s having fun!!!

and here is the end result, there’s lots in nice smart kilner jars and then some in ex-jam jars (for giving away):

started at about 10h30 this morning (whilst watching the All Blacks whop the Australians – boy are the French gonna have problems!!) and finished at around 18h00 – just in time for Apéros

The only thing is that every time we go down there we see the mess that is the chicken park.  Sadly we haven’t been able to do everything and that is something that had been put on one side.

Shame on us.

So I did the pretty, fiddly bits, here’s a couple of before & afters:

and looking towards their ‘house’

you will of course have noticed that in both instances the girls were obviously happy with the improvements as they were out and about

David got to work on the really tough stuff:

Definately a job well done

Now, the reason that we ate this ‘thing’ raw on a beach, along with sea water & sand, is that we’d gone on a “fishing on foot” outing in the Bay of Mont St Michel:

They have an awful lot of myriad outings across the bay, and we’ve always wanted to do something, but being us we need a reason other than just ‘fancied it’.  So when I heard about the ‘fishing on foot’ outing I thought ‘that’s just the thing for us’.

Of course we had to get kitted out, which involved (calm down Ann) ……………. shoes !!!!

OK, so the shoes leave a little to be desired on the fashion front ……….. but they are specifically for wandering around on beaches and climbing over rocks & boy did they prove their worth.

The nifty little bucket & rake were provided by the guide, but we will be buying our own for the future !! Good job we’ve got a Discovery now, we need the boot to hold everything (a bag of riding gear, a bag of dog stuff, and now a bag of beach gear!).

Anyhow, we set off across the beach & spent a marvellous 4 hours finding clams (clams were the only thing available that particular day for reasons that are toooo complicated to go in to), and, would you believe it, part of the journey was at the beach that we ‘found’ with Ann earlier on this year !!!

There is (this is france) a regulation size for clams that you are allowed to take home – it’s 3 cm.  We found LOTS at less than 3cm, and chucked them back, but the one that you saw at the start of this thread was the first good sized one that anyone had found, so of course we had to have the cerimonial opening up & eating of it!!!!  Actually it was better than a raw oyster, less chewy and slightly sweeter.

We really did have a fabulous time, and came home with our catch uncertain what to do with it.  Good old Rick Stein came to the rescue and we found a lovely recipe for carpetshell clams in cider & cream.

Here’s our catch going into the pan:

It’s REALLY easy to tell when they’re ready, the shells open !!!! This happens after about 3-4 minutes:

When they were ready, we spooned them into shallow bowls, with plenty of sauce, and just ate them like that with some crusty bread to soak up the lovely sauce (although plenty was left over to make a lovely pasta sauce the next day).

Here’s the end result:

ALL GONE !

I’d call that a real hit!!!

So, we can pick our own mushrooms, we can collect and cook our own clams ……………….. BRING IT ON!!!

.

and as you approach the house:

I think that’ll do for now !!!

BOY are they handsome !!!

and now a couple of pictures of the Chateau de Sassy that we went to see last weekend – we were scouting for places to go to with Ann when she’s over but the funny part of it is that now that we’ve been there we probably won’t go again so soon

Don’t worry Ann, we’ve got other places planned!

Here is the entrance to Sassy:

It’s a really lovely building but you only get to see a small part of it as it is still in active use, even the bedrooms that we saw are still in use & have to be tidied every day that there are visits!

They’re very proud of their ‘French Garden’ that personally I’m not sure is really worth it’s ‘outstanding’ label but what do I know!

Sassy used to be a stud farm & there’s a bedroom dedicated to a visit by Queen Elisabeth, but unfortunately for us it stopped being a stud farm about 3 years ago

So, lastly, talking gardens, here’s a bit of garden improvement that we did yesterday

I didn’t take a ‘before’ photo because it would have been embarrassing!!

in case you’re wondering, the photo was taken by Derek (Reid) when David joined him & some friends for a boys WWII day out around Bayeux

.