We're officially open for the 2011 season
March 1st and we are officially open for business for 2011, although in fact we did open last week for a wonderful English family to come and stay during the British half-term holiday. Paula, Sonja, Astrid and Alisdair came to stay with us from Devon and hopefully they enjoyed our company as much as we enjoyed theirs!
They were also the first “paying guests” to experience the new phenomenon for 2011 – Le Pub. This has been the winter project for 2010/2011 and was first open for business on Christmas Day to friends and family.
There are still a few things we miss from England and a decent pub is one of them. So, like everything else that we haven’t been able to get in France that we have either had to make or grow ourselves, we decided to recreate an English pub, complete with fireplace, beams and horse brasses! Now we just need a name for it – suggestions welcome!
In the process of converting the old boulangerie in the garden of La Thiaumerie Michael has enhanced some of his building skills by creating a suspended wood floor, installing a woodburner and building a bar, as well as learning new skills like plastering and pointing. In fact we were visited this week by the retired mayor of our village who remarked , on viewing the renovated building “votre marie est vraiment un artiste” (your husband is truly an artist).
Here in Normandy Spring has sprung, the snowdrops, crocuses and camellias are already past their best, the daffodils and forsythia are blooming and the primroses are appearing in the lanes. Now we just need some sunshine!
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April and as they say, "be careful what you wish for". Apart from a short shower on the 2nd the rest of the month has been warm, dry and sunny. The sunshine and early warmth has been most welcome but after a month of no rain the garden certainly needs a drop or two! April has been busy. A late Easter usually means a late start to the season but this year was the exception. We were very busy greeting new guests and old friends alike. One family returned for their 10th visit and brought us a great selection of very welcome English beers as a "pub-warming" present, along with the guaranteed sunshine that they bring us whatever time of year they visit!
At the beginning of April we celebrated Michael's birthday with three charming American ladies, (3 generations from one family) by drinking champagne in, you guessed it, the pub! The end of the month brought Sally's birthday, which coincided with the Royal Wedding, so we were able to make even some anti-Royalist friends celebrate on that day and fortunately the sun continued to shine with only our second shower of the month falling on the 30th.
May and all our roses are in full bloom, a good 3 weeks earlier than usual and the sunshine is continuing and still virtually no rain. The French are now describing it as a drought.
So the next big event to look forward to is D-Day and the regular visit of our British WW2 veteran Frank the Tank. Frank drove his tank up onto Sword Beach in June 1944 and will be coming to stay over 6th June to visit the many friends he has made on his visits over the years and most importantly to pay respects at the graves of his two good friends, killed during the Battle of Normandy in 1944.
June and Frank (88) and Barbara (we don't divulge a lady's age!) safely managed the three and a half hour drive from Calais to stay with us over the 6th June period. As always, we took the day off on the 6th to accompany Frank and Barbara to the memorial service at Bayeux British War Cemetery and then on to Arromanches for lunch. After lunch we visited the Pegasus Bridge museum at Ranville where Frank, as ever, was treated like a celebrity and swamped with people asking him to sign books they had bought and to ask him of his memories of that day back in 1944.
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