Seagulls and replacement bus services: escaping the heat of Entre-deux-Eaux, August – September 2026

by

As well as the highlighted links in the text,
there are comprehensive set of photographs of
Thanet
and
A circular trip around Norway and Sweden

The printable PDF of the text is E2E2026no3.pdf (six A4 pages)

August started with an alert about the contamination of the Entre-deux-Eaux water supply. We went to collect our initial ration of 3 bottles of water from the village hall. Violetta, one of the commune employees explained that our water supply had failed the latest purity test, the commune had been acquiring supplies and the deputy mayor was out in her car distributing bottles to the housebound. When we got home there were 3 more bottles outside. Were we on the list of elderly housebound?

We had in fact, like older villagers, felt housebound during the long heat wave in June/July. Then, after a brief respite, a second heatwave was forecast for August. What a depressing outlook. So the prospect of a couple of weeks cooling off in the sea breezes near Broadstairs was wonderful, thanks to Jessica’s generosity in lending her childhood home. The first couple of days high tide was ideal for a swim before lunch, though the energetic “breezes” made it less of a swim and more of a case of leaping with the roll and crash of the incoming waves. Invigorating after our previous heat apathy! With all the house windows open to enjoy the breeze, the stillness was broken only by the screech of gulls overhead and the voices of golfers over the garden hedges.

Hockney window

juvenile herring gull

When Jessica joined us she was keen to experiment with cooking the “in” ingredient of octopus, as well as sharing the culinary and architectural changes to the area since she and Helen were teenagers there. So picture us eating cakes with coffee in the former village shop, now a bustling café and children’s bookshop; gazing at the sea and gulls through the Hockney Window in Margate’s Turner Gallery; investigating the new steps, flood defences and seagulls on Margate sea front; and sipping cold drinks with the seagulls on the terrace of Ramsgate’s elegant Royal Victoria Pavilion (now a Weatherspoons and Britain’s largest pub). We also spent a day visiting some of the inland flint churches which we never did as teenagers. Back in the nineteen fifties, visitors to Broadstairs and nearby seaside resorts, had a choice of cafes which all served cheap fish, egg and chips with a cup of tea. Now the fish restaurants have gone up market and have wine and cocktail lists. We ate well at two. But one establishment has not changed – Morelli’s ice cream parlour on Broadstairs sea front.

parts of concrete cores

Refreshed by the sea breezes, we returned to Entre-deux-Eaux, where the water contamination scare had been declared a false test result, and the heat wave had ended. Walkers faced a wet day for the traditional end of August village walk and meal. But the rain stopped the next day, which was fortunate for our air-conditioning/heat pump installers, as quite a lot of their work was on ladders outside and involved drilling 7cm holes through 30cm concrete for the piping. They worked hard and did a surprisingly good clean-up job at the end. Since then we have not really needed to use the air-conditioning other than to test it, but have been using it to heat the rooms as it is dual function and currently much cheaper to run than the oil-fired underfloor heating. A few days later our new car went into the garage for the removal of hundred or so hailstorm dents from our Italian trip. So with those appointments and various medical ones fulfilled, and a couple of free weeks, we were ready for another adventure.

an outline of our route

Regular booklets for the Hurtigruten Norwegian fjord cruises had long lain temptingly on our table, but Helen has no love of boats. So in a week John, with the help of AI, organised a circular train journey through Norway and Sweden to fit our limited time. We would see the fjords from the mountains rather than the mountains from the fjords; seeing the aurora borealis would be a matter of chance and weather. Lugging suitcases around is no longer appealing, so overnight hotels in Oslo, Trondheim, Bodø, Narvik, Kiruna and Stockholm were chosen for their proximity to railway stations. With trains and hotels booked, in mid-September we caught a late afternoon flight from Basel to Oslo.

Oslo Opera House

Our Oslo hotel (with its magnificent Mughal warrior/huntsmen wallpapers in the rooms) was in the regenerated harbour area, so rather than heading to the Royal Palace or the late King Harald’s sarcophagus, we spent the next day round the harbour admiring the sleek lines of the Opera House, seeing the exhibitions in the new MUNCH museum, and looking at the new library (not nearly as exciting as Copenhagen’s). The ever present seagulls, new art gallery and a Tracey Emin sculpture made us both feel that we could have been back on Margate’s sea front (a comparison that would no doubt mortify Oslo inhabitants). The Fiskeriet Bjørvika fish restaurant that evening was crowded and the fish gratin and the ale tasty.

Dovre Station

Dovresjell National Park

Black earth, light industries, scarlet rowans, grey lakes, hay bales and black wooden farmsteads flashed past the train windows next day as we travelled north from Oslo to Trondheim, but sadly the promised musk ox, reindeer and eagles in the Dovrefjell National Park kept well out of sight. The smaller station buildings were black wood with yellow or red window frames and door lintels and one was turf-roofed. Finally the train slowed down and followed the river Nidelva with its moored boats into Trondheim. Our hotel there was in a former huge bakery (cold room, lack of bedside sockets, and sloping ceilings that John banged his head on).

Trondheim Cathedral

The old cathedral was crowded next morning (had a Hurtigruten cruise docked?) and rather grim with its much restored soaring Norman black stone. Sadly the industrial art museum was closed for renovation, with no warning on the website. On the doorstep we met what assumed was another frustrated visitor. She turned out to be the directress and helpfully explained that we could see the tapestries that interested us in Madrid. So we stomped off in the rain to explore the old town with its wooden houses and first cycle lift, Trampe/Cyclocable, (up a very steep hill). With tired feet both evenings, we ate close to our hotel, including mooseburger.

Arctic Circle

Early breakfast next day before the 07.49 train north from Trondheim to Bodø. We had timed our journey round the planned closure of the line for repairs. But it seemed as if the work had not been completed. Our train set off late, and had long waits at multiple passing points for southbound trains as much of the line is single track. Around lunch time when we saw railway workers eating iced buns at their picnic table at the side of the tracks, we got out the bag of cinnamon buns we had prudently purchased but kept our sandwiches for later. The train crawled on a bit further and stopped in a dark forest – the kind of forest where wolves and trolls might lurk at night. By now we were running 2 hours late. More golden-leaved birch tress, rivers, forests, bare hills and mountains tops, peaty heath, fjords, wind turbines and even a rainbow. Around 5pm a voice announced in Norwegian then English that a train was stuck on the line ahead, so at the harbour town of Mo I Rana we would board a replacement bus for the 3 hour drive to Bodø. Thus it was that we crossed the Arctic Circle not in a train but on what turned out be a very comfortable coach where we had front seats and great views of the most scenic part of the journey. We followed the E6 road at a steady pace through golden trees, at first behind a tractor then with lorries swooping downhill towards us with head lights full on, and then were overtaken by an unexpected open top blue car as we crossed the imaginary line of the Arctic Circle in its bleak, rocky landscape.

late arrival in Bodø

It was dark by the time we turned off the E6 into small towns where some passengers were headed, then we followed the coastline of the Saltfjorden to Bodø. It must have been nearly 10 pm by the time we reached our waterfront hotel room. Too late to hit the town in search of dinner. What a good thing we had saved our sandwiches.

flight over fjords

We woke late to a splendid view across the sunlit harbour from our 10th floor room. As there was no railway line north to Narvik, we took a 30 minute flight from Bodø airport to Evenes, the nearest landing spot to mountain-encased Narvik. With this combination of train, coach and plane we probably had more varied views of the fjords and curiously shaped mountain tops than we would have had from a cruise ship. The airport bus waited for the flight from Oslo before setting out on the hour’s drive round the Ofotfjorden to Narvik. Hideous hairy trolls in all sizes leered at tourist from gift shops. The Narvik War Museum gave a good account of the Battle of Trondheim (known to Helen only from a Biggles’ adventure), the German occupation and the collaboration dilemmas faced by inhabitants (the hospital treated the injured of all nationalities; the hospital director was highly esteemed by the Germans but used it as a front for his resistance activities). At the Fiskekroken restaurant we chose Arctic char and smoked cod on our first evening and both had halibut in lobster sauce washed down with Lofotpils on the second evening. Delicious. Our best chance of seeing the aurora borealis had been in Narvik, but sadly the weather was too overcast both nights.

Narvik-Abisko bus

Disaster struck on out eighth morning. When straightening up from treating his afflicted big toe, John twinged a disc in his back. We were due to follow a historic train track from Narvik to Kiruna that afternoon and this did not bode well for lugging suitcases and sitting on replacement buses and trains. The track had opened in 1903 to transport iron ore from the mines in Kiruna in Sweden to the ice-free Norwegian port of Narvik (the Baltic ports were not accessible all year). But current engineering works on the Norwegian section meant we took another replacement bus (again comfortable and with good views) over the border with Sweden (where border controllers/customs inspected), picked up a lot of wet weekend hikers with rucksacks and tents, then at Abisko caught the usual train on to Kiruna, a mining town which is literally on the move.

Kiruna was founded in 1899 on land where the Sami people of Lapland used to herd reindeer. However, the world’s largest underground iron ore mine led to cracks developing in buildings as well as subsidence after 2004. It was decided that in order for mining to continue, much of the town, including 6,000 of its inhabitants and the hospital would be relocated to a new town centre 3 km to the east. Our hotel was the nearest one to the railway station and would be moved in the second phase. The friendly receptionist told us that a lot of people stayed there for several months working on projects. Our room was spacious and old fashioned, with plenty of storage space (useful for those long-stay workers). With John’s back not improved by the journey we decided to eat at the adjacent Arctic Thai. It was a large canteen-like room with a hatch along one wall. Thai women stirred huge tureens of food in the kitchen. Men were silently scoffing huge portions of steaming food. Not having endured a hard working day, we were unable to finish all of the tasty food ordered at the hatch and heaped on our plates.

New Kiruna centre

Hotel breakfast next morning did not have the fancy pastries of previous hotels, but included herrings in mustard sauce, finely chopped reindeer in sour cream and pancakes. Kiruna tourism websites recommend spending a day with reindeer or riding a chariot drawn by husky dogs. But, while John rested before the overnight trains to Stockholm, Helen caught a local bus to see the new town centre architecture. There were bulldozers and lorries (and diversions along the bus route) engaged in the first phase of demolition as well as busy constructing the new town centre. The Krystallen, the city hall, was the first new building, whereas the large red timber Kiruna church had been moved intact. The grid of new buildings were not in a uniform style but nor were they very interesting architecturally, apart from the Scandic hotel. However there was a good pharmacy for Ibuprofen supplies and Co-op for food for the overnight journey, as well as the city hall, cultural centre and good library. By the bus stop a large sculpted worker’s fist clutched ore and some crudely sculpted white birds squatted on the pavement, possibly gulls pining for the sea.

Kiruna station sculpture

Back at Kiruna station that evening we noted another sculpture – four railway builders walking along the top of a wall with a length of rail. We passed mountains of black slag as we pulled out of Kiruna towards Boden, where we changed onto the Stockholm sleeper train.

There is still a certain Orient-Express romance about sleeping in a couchette on a train, even if the compartments were narrow and cramped and the ladder to the top bunk rather steep for an octogenarian. We slept for much of the 600 mile journey south from the iron ore mines to the capital and woke to a softer landscape of lakes and isolated red wooden houses. More cinnamon buns with coffee. Our train pulled into Stockholm Central soon after mid-day. Available hotel rooms in Stockholm were scarce that week, and our hotel felt like a converted underground car park or storage unit with its rows of cell-like basement rooms, most without windows (ours did have one but with a view of the railway line). Unfortunately, because of flight timetables we only had one afternoon to explore Stockholm.

Stockholm Dutch gables

We headed for the old town, where we enjoyed the narrow streets, fountains, squares, churches and the colourful Dutch-gabled houses in the Stortorget. As John lowered himself cautiously onto a bench, a bulky American tourist, whose ancestors came from Bergen, commiserated at length about bad backs. We walked on past the cathedral, palace, parliament and the prime minister’s work place (it was former a bank and as there was currently no prime minister to protect between elections, one of the guards chatted and pointed out the coins in the decoration over the doorway). The day concluded with an extremely good Italian meal (with better tiramisu than we’d had anywhere in northern Italy).

Fiskeriet Bjorvika restaurant Oslo

The last leg of our great northern train journey was a five and a half hour train from Stockholm to Oslo, where we stayed at the same Mughal-horsemen-wallpapered hotel. Rain curtailed our exploration of the older part of the town, but the fish at the Fiskeriet restaurant was as good as on the first night. It was a shame our trip ended with a handyman’s late night efforts to unblock our sink (not our fault!), leaving a nasty smell of drains, a leak and a wet floor.

Back in Entre-deux-Eaux after our flight from Oslo to Basel, our neighbour Daniele greeted us with punnets of tomatoes, courgettes, chard and basil from her garden (which must be the most productive in the village this dry year). She also told us the sad news that Nelly Duhaut, the wife of our mayor, had died. Nelly was a kind, homely, modest person who is much missed. We have known her since 1990 when Toby and Leila had played with their son and his friends when we first holidayed in our houses here). The village church was packed for her funeral, with people standing inside and in the graveyard.

SJ Nord Oslo-Bodø rail puzzle

We did not forget our Norwegian travels. While John downloaded his photos, Helen used some of the puzzles for children in a booklet John had found on the train from Trondheim to Bodø as part of the brain exercises for her group. Last time she led a session they had deciphered Franglais; this time they had to make sense of the Norwegian instructions in order to help a little troll find her way from Oslo to Bodø; perhaps the hazards encountered in a snakes and ladders game should have included “line repairs ahead mean you wait one turn before the replacement bus arrives.”

There were reminders of some of our earlier travels during the Geography Festival in Saint Die at the start of October. Helen enjoyed watching “Lady Nazca” about Maria Reiche’s work on the lines and patterns in the Peruvian dessert which we had once flown over in a small bi-plane. But she met none of the promised Romanian gypsy musicians roaming the rainy streets. Perhaps they preferred to keep their instruments dry.

There has not yet been enough rain to enable water-use restrictions to be lifted in the Meurthe basin where we are. But the cows are out in the fields now as the grass gets greener. Newspapers have reported reduced wine production in other regions due both to the decline in cultivated areas and to yields reduced by a hot and dry summer. So we were pleased that one of the wine-makers in Alsace from whom we have previously bought, wrote that their grapes had ripened quickly this summer; the harvest had started early on 20 August; the volume and quality were fine, and the first juices promise a good 2026 vintage. Cheers!

Lethargy, marriage and mosaics: Everyday life in and away from Entre-deux-Eaux, April – July 2026

by

As well as the highlighted links in the text,
there is comprehensive set of photographs of the
Italy and Switzerland trip
including the World Heritage sites
Biblioteca Queriniana Brescia
Capitolium Brescia
Santa Giula Museum Brescia
Massi di Cemmo archaelogical Park Capo di Ponte
Naquane Rock Engravings National Park Capo di Ponte
Seradina-Bedolina Parco Archeologico Communale Capo di Ponte
Saint John Convent Munstair

The printable PDF of the text is E2E2026no2.pdf (six A4 pages)

14 July, Bastille Day. Normally the scene of exuberant firework displays. And this year the added excitement of France’s semi-final world cup match in the evening. But all firework displays were cancelled or postponed because of the heatwave and fires. And to add to that night’s disappointment, France lost against Spain.

hay bales and kestrel

During the June-July heatwave, or canicule, our everyday life in Entre-deux-Eaux was reduced to pre-breakfast sorties into the garden to pick dwindling quantities of raspberries and blueberries, followed by sedentary indoor activities with the blinds down and several electric fans blowing on high. Neither walks not indoor exercise in temperatures up to 38°C appealed as we reclined listlessly, and most of our contacts also stayed indoors. The June activities of the Marguerites club like the final board games session, the BBQ by the pond and the petanque contest were all cancelled. Feux de Saint Jean bonfires and 14 July fireworks were cancelled everywhere. On the last weekend in June, Saint Dié cancelled not only their Feux de Saint Jean but also the shooting competition, World Refugee Day activities, a canine agility competition, a duck race, and a rock concert. It began to feel a bit like the isolation of the Covid lock-down. Only our medical appointments continued as normal. Outside the farmers worked hard, usually by night, hay-making and adorning the fields with huge golden bales.

But the hay bales were to become a danger. One Friday in July, on men’s semi-finals day at Wimbledon, John was just about to make mid-day coffee when the fans and other electrical appliances stopped abruptly. The radio and computers limped on until the several back-up UPS ran out. Time passed with no coffee and no indication of how long the power cut would last. The tennis semi-finals were far less exciting when watched on a mobile phone screen. The ENEDIS (electricity distribution) web site update stated supplies would be restored by 14.30, but eventually changed and just said the power cut was ongoing, Then, over four and a half hours later, the fans whirred back into action. We received an e-mail from the mairie. There had been a big harvest fire in the fields behind the football pitch that morning, fought by over fifty firemen as it spread towards surrounding forest; the power had been cut as a precaution when an overhead cable was threatened by a burning wood pile immediately below it. Residents were requested to be sparing in their use of water as it had not been possible for water to be pumped through from the nearby village of Saint Leonard during the outage to top up the storage. We were initially surprised that we had not smelt the smoke or heard any emergency vehicle sirens, but the football pitch is about 2.5km away on the other side of the hill, so we were shielded from the fire. Gendarmes have been investigating but it is not known if the fire was deliberate or careless. Of course, this village fire was nothing like relentless forest fires affecting huge areas elsewhere, but it was a local drama.

There is now a strict ban on watering gardens and fields, using hose pipes, filling pools and washing cars. Even commercial car washes have had to shut despite their obligatory water recycling/filtering systems.

juvenile kestrels 23/6

This year’s baby kestrels also suffered during the heatwave. The first egg was laid on 22 April and followed by five more. All six had hatched by the end of May but the weakest died a few days later. Kestrels only get water through food, and during the canicule, the adult kestrels found it difficult to find food for their chicks. The juveniles fledged at the end of June, a few days later than the usual time after hatching. They are still in the trees around and have occasionally visited their old home on our attic windowsill during July.

One of our rare sorties in the heat was to a local firm, following their engineer’s visit, to sign a contract to install air-air heat pump/air conditioning units on 20 July. But there have been supply delays, followed by holiday closures, so it will now start at the end of August. Meanwhile, after several years, a reduction in VAT from 20% to 5.5% on air-air heat pump units has been announced (it was already 5.5% on air-water heat pumps). Fortunately the end of July has been a bit cooler but there are further heat wave warnings.

During this welcome lull in the heatwave, we have taken full advantage. Helen joined a walk round Saint Dié’s Art Nouveau buildings, and we booked lunch at a couple of restaurants. We have been going to the Frankenbourg restaurant Alsace over the last 30 years and watched it go up market and also gain a Michelin star. We used to see workmen enjoying the menu of the day in the old more basic restaurant. Now it is businessmen in suits who bring their clients to the spacious up-market extension. Their reminder of our latest booking included the words, “to preserve the refined atmosphere of our establishment, we kindly ask you to dress smartly for your visit. Simple and relaxed elegance will be perfectly appreciated.” Would we be sufficiently refined for them? It brought back memories for Helen of those snooty head waiters of the sixties and seventies talking down to clients. Guillaume explained, when questioned after our meal, that he felt that standards were slipping now when clients wore shorts, jogging outfits and football shirts. Acolytes in Selestat had no such requirements, the clients were well dressed, the atmosphere calm and the 4 course menu delicious.

During the worst of the heat, humidity and lethargy of June and July, it was pleasant to look back on Toby and Rachel’s wedding on 2 May and our early June trip to northern Italy.

In mid-April we drove from Entre-deux-Eaux, via the Channel Tunnel, to Ann and Derek’s in Tenterden. It is always pleasant to start our UK visits catching up with them, and we were able to co-ordinate our plans around the wedding. Ann also mentioned that the bluebells in the adjacent woods were almost over. It seemed early for them to be fading (perhaps another indication of climate change) as Helen’s childhood birthdays were always celebrated in mid-May with a bluebell picnic. So next morning we strolled into the copse, enjoying the delicate scent and the blue/mauve colour stretching to haziness.

When Toby had talked on the phone about buying suits for himself and for Jacob for the wedding, we started to think about our own outfits and rummaged in our wardrobes for formal clothes. The kipper ties, flares and op-art skirts evoked happy memories, but we soon realised that good food and reduced exercise had taken their toll over recent years. Our elegant jackets and waisted dresses of past years would no longer button up. So our first few days in the UK were spent shopping. John found a suit in M&S on Stevenage’s Roaring Meg retail estate (the name always sounds like a raggle-taggle gypsy-O) and Helen found a dress in the ever reliable John Lewis in Cambridge, but John’s Indian silk tie and Helen’s velvet jacket were relics from the past. (Perhaps we should have worn the outfits for our meal at the Frankenbourg as our contribution to Guillaume’s refined atmosphere)

It might have been well past Easter, but UK supermarkets were still flogging hot cross buns in a wide variety of flavours. We tested some of the less outrageous combinations, but you can’t beat the traditional taste. Remember the days when they were only available on Good Friday? The smells outside bakeries as you queued for freshly baked buns?

With wedding outfits and breakfasts sorted, Helen had a last minute thought. The spokes on her folding umbrella had broken, and it might be unwise to attend a wedding with a defective umbrella. We remembered the torrential rain at one family wedding in the Lake District, the barrage of umbrellas at the lych gate and the bride’s wellington boots. We also recalled a wonderful London umbrella shop. As its website proclaims, “The gentlemen of London have entrusted the making of their umbrellas to James Smith and Sons for over 185 years. Whether combining a bowler hat with a Slim Rolled Umbrella in the City of London or using a Solid Stick Umbrella as a walking aid, the little umbrella shop on the corner of New Oxford Street continues to produce umbrellas of the best quality.” But which local shop to try in Letchworth? Charity shops, supermarkets and hardware shops were distinctly lacking in umbrellas. One shop even said it was the wrong time of year for them! However, the staff in the large B&M store thought they might have some, probably in the centre by the garden furniture (no, those were large garden furniture parasols). Finally a bin was found beyond the check-out tills, handy for a wet get-away.

Ann and Derek stayed overnight in Letchworth with us, and we drove up separately to Melton Mowbray the day before the wedding. They had rented an Airbnb, and we were staying in one of the two rooms above the Hammer & Pincers restaurant in Wymeswold, but we dropped off some crémant at Toby and Rachel’s on our way. Toby had just returned from the barber’s and Rachel and Farrah returned later from shopping. It was good to see Toby’s old university friends, Jordan and Ed, again. Jordan would be best man next day while Jacob would be the ring bearer. As the doorbell rang and more friends arrived, we left them in controlled chaos. After we had booked to stay at the Hammer & Pincers, Farrah had co-incidentally started working some shifts there in addition to her shifts at the Tap and Run pub and her college catering timetable, so the owners knew all about the wedding. Later Leila joined us there for dinner after she finished work, along with Ann and Derek.

Beaumanor Hall

The wedding day was lovely and sunny. Who needs an umbrella? We had originally pictured an impersonal registry office, but Beaumanor Hall in Woodhouse is an imposing 1840s country mansion set in extensive grounds and the weddings were well spaced out. We had been asked to arrive by 1.40pm. and the previous wedding couple had vanished in an omnibus bearing their names as our wedding party sat by their cars munching the sandwiches they had prudently brought. (We had stoked up at the Hammer and Pincers on the chef’s full English breakfast before being waved off in style to the wedding by his wife). The ceremony was held on the first floor of the Hall, and we swept up a magnificent carved wood staircase which was illuminated by a large stained glass window. The registrar was welcoming and gracious and spoke throughout as if she had known Toby and Rachel all their lives, so it was very personal. Rachel’s three daughters sat together, elegant in their long dresses/trouser suit (Holly looking a little nervous about her reading), and Jacob sat quietly by them holding the ring box. John and Ed were encouraged to take photos. Then tears welled up as Rachel’s father walked slowly up the aisle with his stick in one hand and Rachel on his other arm, Rachel elegant in a white lace dress with a posy of white freesias. The registrar led a really meaningful exchange of vows and love, Jacob quietly produced the ring, Holly read beautifully, and Leila and Rachel’s sister witnessed their signatures. Toby had requested some photos on the staircase with the stained glass behind, and there was also time for some photos in the garden. Then the guests left the splendour of Beaumanor Hall in search of the contrasting-sounding reception venue of the Old Cow Shed in Kirby Bellars.

Originally guests had been invited for food back at their house, but the event had grown and Toby and Rachel had booked the converted barns, covered yard and bar of a former farm, which made a pleasantly informal wedding venue where guests chatted in the paddock over bubbly, lots more photos were taken and the best man gave his speech. All this time the sky was clouding over. Most people had retreated to the tables and chairs (and bar) in the covered courtyard by the time the pizza van in one corner started serving. After the pizzas, Jacob organised card games with his cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. And then, when we were all warm, fed and entertained, the heavens opened and the roof covering was pounded by heavy rain. And where was Helen’s new umbrella? In the car which was parked in another field. It was late by the time the guests started to disperse after the rain had abated, leaving the wedding party to retire to their on-site stables and shepherd’s hut at the end of a beautiful, happy day.

In the next few days we were able to catch up with old friends in Nottingham over morning coffee, lunch and afternoon tea. Leila also booked a table for Sunday lunch with the three of us, Ann, Derek and Steven’s family in the pub near our former Wollaton house. And we saw Toby and Rachel after their return from the Old Cow Shed. (Their honeymoon was to be in Tenerife a few weeks later). We were pleased to meet up with other friends before we returned to France, though sorry that illness prevented some visits, and that long delays on the M25 reduced our time with another friend before we took the Eurotunnel back to France.

Lac des Quatre Cantons, Lake Lucerne

After the usual medical appointments that awaited us in France, we made some last-minute travel plans to drive through Switzerland to northern Italy, and set out on 7 June. This time we had the necessary vignette for Swiss motorways, so admired the views of Basel from the motorway (remembering our pleasant few days there in March). John had found a hotel off the motorway with views across Lake Lucerne for our first night.

going up the Saint Gotthard pass

The next day we decided it would be more fun to take the road over the Gotthard Pass, hairpin bends and all, rather than queue for the long (16.9 km) motorway tunnel. When we pulled over after one bend to admire the view behind us, John noticed that the car parked in front of us was leaking coolant. The young English owners were already on the phone for assistance, and we do hope they did not have a long wait in the heat by the roadside. The pass itself felt bleak despite the sunshine, and there was still snow to be seen in the crevices, but the views as we dropped down on the other side were spectacular. It was also interesting to be travelling in the opposite direction to our rail journey over the Gotthard a couple of years ago.

Fiat 1100 SM (Gobbone) 1948

We had decided to spend our first days in Italy in Brescia. Mosaics, frescoes, tired feet, re-routed buses, octopus salad, broken sandals, glue and hailstones jostle together in memory. The Mille Miglia vintage car endurance race was taking place that week, so there was little choice of accommodation. We were fortunate in that our ground-floor apartment, seemed newly furnished and equipped; we may have been the first renters. We were on a convenient bus route from our leafy suburb to the centre. But unfortunately all the buses on our first day were rerouted and skirted the centre because of the race, so we did a lot of unexpected walking to reach the Santa Giulia museum and had very tired feet that evening. There were no temporary route maps or revised timetables and the locals were equally confused.

The museum, in a former monastery, was fascinating, though so rambling that among the prehistoric, Roman and mediaeval exhibits we missed one of the chapels with its frescoes and had to go back next day and beg to be readmitted. We found the round Romanesque old cathedral and its crypt more interesting than the adjacent Baroque cathedral, and lingered even longer there when we heard the heavy rain storm outside. We got back to our apartment that evening before a violent hail storm which briefly turned the garden white. Later, John was upset to see that it had also pitted the bodywork of our new car quite badly. The bus route was flooded, with cars sending up arcs of spray as they drove past, and that night’s restaurant staff must have worked hard to restore the courtyard dining area next day. Other Brescia sights included the dramatic remains of the Roman Capitol with the Winged Victory inside, a massive suspended bronze rhinoceros pretentiously entitled the weight of suspended time, and the peaceful Queriniana Library founded by a Cardinal and donated to the public in 1750; in 2026 its tables were filled with students with their laptops, ignoring the shelves of dusty volumes.

Naquane Rock Engravings National Park

Seradina-Bedolina Parco Archeologico

We decided to give Milan and Bergamo a miss in the heat and at the height of the tourist season and next headed north to the Valle Camonica to see some of the prehistoric inscribed rock carvings which have become a World Heritage site. Our accommodation for those two nights was a more basic “bed and living” overlooking the railway line with a breakfast voucher for a coffee and croissant at the nearby Break Bar. As John read some of the more earnest interpretations of the rock incisions in the museum, he wondered aloud whether some of them were just as likely to have been made by bored shepherd boys than as sacred art. Over three days we scrambled round three of the sites in the heat. Some of the incisions were easier to see than others, and we could pick out animals, figures (some with weapons), ploughs, a four wheeled cart and a possible settlement map, but they looked like individual images rather than a design for a whole boulder face.

After a week of “culture” we were ready for a day of relaxation. We continued north up the valley, crossed the Paso del Tonale along with the Sunday strings of suicidal motorcyclists, and dropped down into valleys of apple espaliers around Bolzano. The Hotel Rosa Resort with its turrets and wooden balconies and female staff in traditional long skirts and bodices had a bit of a Ruritanian feel. The décor was “Trentino traditional”, with wood panelled walls, ceramic stoves, gilt framed landscapes, embroideries, patterned sofas, curtain swags and candelabra. Roses were everywhere, blooming in the garden, filling vases, and on the walls in paintings. Beyond the rose garden, a cheerful scarecrow guarded the chive patch, a farmer was haymaking and in the distance rose the mountains. The wifi in our room was hopeless, the food hearty, the apple strudel good and G&Ts potent. Jupiter was bright in the night sky above us.

Saint Johann Kirche

As we drove towards the Swiss border after our rosy relaxation day, we heard a mix of Italian and German dialects. We gave the Bolzano Iceman a miss, paused in the thermal town of Merano for coffee, cathedral and the Hapsburg splendour of the kurhaus and concert hall, and ended up at the Gasthof Stein in the small town of Prato allo Stelvio at the foot of the Stelvio Pass. We walked up to its Saint Johann Kirche, but were disappointed to find it locked and the keyholder on holiday. John managed to photograph some of the frescoes from 1420 and 1948 through small patterned glass windows.

tagliata beef strips

Our last meal in northern Italy that evening was the best of the holiday with John’s tagliata beef strips on rocket, and Helen‘s taglierini and an even spicier apple strudel.

fresco in Munstair convent

We crossed the border next morning to the Benedictine Convent of Saint John of Mustair with its 9th century frescoes. The oldest buildings have World Heritage status, but eight nuns still live and work in other parts and there were recordings in the old cells at the top of the tower of some of them talking about joining the convent and their lives there. The art work of one of the sisters was also on display.

Aarau painted eave

Our last two nights in Switzerland were spent in Davos, which did not impress us, then (after admiring the painted eaves in Aarau) in Olten whose streets were deserted in the evening as Switzerland played Bosnia-Herzegovina in the World Cup. With temperatures going up to 36 degrees, we were pleased to reach Entre-deux-Eaux at the end of our impromptu holiday.

Since we got back, we have had the repair of the Italian-hail-damaged new car assessed and authorised for repair by the insurance. As we sweltered in the heat, it was frustrating to hear that Toby and Rachel in Tenerife and Jessica in Andros were having cooler weather than us! And now, after the welcome few days of lower temperatures, we are in the next round of the canicule in the east.

From pancakes and mince pies to mustard ice cream and hot cross buns: everyday life in and around Entre-deux-Eaux, January − mid-April 2026

by

As well as the highlighted links in the text,
there are comprehensive sets of photographs of
Basel and Sélestat 
The printable PDF of the text is E2E2026no1a.pdf (six A4 pages)

Not surprisingly, life in Entre-deux-Eaux has slowly changed over the thirty-six years that we have known it. The church and mairie still stand in the centre, and the church clock still strikes. But the school has closed and the basic loos have been pulled down. The musty shop and bar, which sold everything from fresh food to overalls and wooden sabots, has evolved over the years into a bright restaurant and bar (still with baguettes for sale). The last of the four farmers has now retired (though he is now part of the newly-elected municipal council, with another ex-farmer, Duhaut, as mayor). A couple of days ago, the death was announced of ex-farmer Vozelle, whose cows would be driven home with curses late at night for milking and whose geese and ducks treated the road as their farmyard. Alas we no longer watch the cows amble past morning and evening, as the cattle are now reared for meat not milk. But Entre-deux-Eaux remains a farming community, the strong odours of muck spraying persist and enormous tractors and farm machines race up and down the road between the fields and cattle hangar.

Striking farmers food stall at Louvre-Lens

We were reminded of farming issues before we got back to the village after Christmas and New Year in the UK. We crossed back (now always by tunnel rather than ferry) on the day that French farmers in tractors were blocking roads around the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe in protest against the EU trade deal with South American (Mercosur) countries that they felt would create unfair competition. Not that we had been planning to visit the Eiffel Tower that day; we intended to spend the afternoon and night in the northern former mining town of Lens where there was an exhibition at the Louvre-Lens art museum that we wanted to see. We parked behind the Hotel Louvre-Lens (an attractively converted row of former miners’ cottages) and climbed up the snow-covered spoil heap towards the gallery, but were stopped by a charming group of young farmers whose protest took the form of cooking and handing out food to demonstrate to visitors the quality of their local products and the threats those products faced. Their pancakes were superb, and would surely have melted Macron’s heart had the farmers plied him with them.

Gothic bulldozer

Wiping our mouths, we entered the atrium of the airy glass museum, and saw a huge bulldozer of delicate intricacy, which heralded the Gothiques exhibition. Belgian artist Wim Delvoye had laser-cut steel into lace-like shapes of gothic cathedral components to form his gothic bulldozer. The rest of the exhibition was interesting in what it showed of the early gothic development in the north of France, but felt limited in its scope.

The hotel was comfortable and we considered staying an extra night, given the wind and rain conditions forecast. But it was as well that we drove home the next day, Friday, as we woke on Saturday to thick white snow in the fields and along our road. It would have been an effort to dig our way into the barn to park and unload the car. We later learned that at some stage in the fog and rain we must have passed Roger and Dorinda as they drove back to the UK after a short break in the Vosges.

Down the snowy road

On Sunday, we put on our walking boots and walked down the snowy road to the village hall for the New Year lunch that the commune offers to its elders. John’s hearing and tinnitus managed to put up with the noise through nibbles and starter. As the accordion music and singer got louder for the dancing, annoyingly accompanied by castanet man, John took a stroll outside. He returned for the venison main course, before reaching the end of his endurance and walking home through the fast-melting snow. As the meal and dancing progressed, non-dancers were wrapping up leftovers for their cats or chickens, so Helen felt no compunction about wrapping up cheese and some dessert for John (though drew a line at the messier chocolate mousse).

Festive food continued through January. We entertained our neighbours to some traditional English Christmas delicacies. It was a shame that Maïté does not like cinnamon as both Christmas cake and mince pies contain small quantities. Fortunately Helen had also brought back an assortment of pastries for her Brain Exercise group, so she broached the Viennese Whirls. Ghislaine, however, seemed happy with mince pies in the midst of our weekly English conversation practice and we later enjoyed galette des rois and crémant at her house. Our remaining goodies (including Battenburg cake) were appreciated by the Brain Exercise group, after they had solved biscuit shapes, snowman shapes, festive menu choices, months of the year, translated some Franglais, solved some logic problems and attempted a crossword around animals beginning with O (Helen wasn’t the only one who had never heard of an ornithorynque).

On our return, the farmers had not been the only protesting workers. At this peak epidemic time, GPs were also striking for ten days over fees and controls. Would our pre-booked appointments take place? Everything seemed open and normal at our surgery. Our GP explained that, rather than piling up work for himself later, he was seeing all his routine, pre-booked patients and sending anyone who rang for a last-minute appointment to the hospital’s Emergency Department to make a point.

The hospital was running as usual when Helen had a lesion on the top of her head checked by a Hungarian surgeon (interestingly it is one of the sons of the former much-loved president of the E2E Oldies Club who has a job in Hungary recruiting doctors to work in the Vosges) and we spent a while discussing the French and their language. Six weeks later, however, it was unexpected to be wheeled back from the day-surgery theatre by Guillaume, the friendly young waiter at the Imprimerie restaurant in 2024. When the restaurant was no longer able to afford the luxury of a second waiter, he had returned to the better paid nursing work. He had noticed the familiar name of Blackmore on the day’s list. It was good to hear from him what the other restaurant staff have been doing since l’Imprimerie sadly closed at the end of December 2025. Damien the grumpy waiter is training as a heavy goods driver and Michael is now the chef at Le 29 in Saint Dié. We had dined at Le 29 in the past, so it would be interesting to sample Michael’s food there, we agreed.

There are disadvantages in having white hair: it shows up both the orange iodine-based disinfectant the hospitals use and the ensuing blood. Helen felt very self-conscious of her pink and orange tints a couple of days later when the E2E club went to the amateur theatre in Saulxures and toyed with the idea of wearing a furry hat throughout. It is always a popular event starting with a meal of smoked ham, potato dauphinoise and salad and a blueberry dessert, with enough aperitif and wine to put the audience in a good mood for a farce, – this year’s about an ill-assorted (and stereotyped) walking group getting lost in the mountains. When the actors were wandering down the narrow aisles between the tables pretending to be lost in the dark and patting the occasional diner’s bald head (French joke about meeting bats chauve-souris and bald (chauve) heads) Helen’s sutured but fortunately not bald head felt threatened, but all was well.

farewell Bluto

Between hospital appointments, and after several years of indecision and test drives, we finally sold Bluto, our larger Toyota we bought in 2004, to a dealer and bought a new hybrid Honda (as it is also blue, it inherited the name of Bluto, after trying out the unwieldy Bluetwo/Bluetoo). It is our first automatic, which sounds simpler, but the range of settings and options and compulsory warnings seems endlessly complicated. However the all-round camera displays when reversing parking are a boon as we age.

dampfnuddle

dampfnuddle

One of new Bluto’s first longer drives was over the Col de Sainte Marie to Sélestat where we had booked lunch at a new restaurant, Acolytes. As John drove down from the col, an oncoming car flashed us, which is usually a friendly warning of police ahead. There were no police as we rounded a bend, but a newly fallen tree blocking the road. More trees were swaying ominously, destabilised by the strong overnight winds. We cleared the smaller branches, but picked a return route with fewer trees close to the road. (The meal in between was excellent: we learnt a new word dampfnuddle for the local dumplings served as a welcoming nibble, and appreciated the unusual celeriac-based dessert. We have returned to Acolytes since, though in better weather for wandering round the old streets of timbered houses and historic churches).

Roche towers

Another longer drive was to Basel at the beginning of March to meet Jessica who had been staying in Prague, then Zurich beforehand. We have been using the airport at Basel-Mulhouse for many years, but we have never visited the town itself. All went well with the new car on the drive, but we have been expecting a hefty fine as we missed the slip road at the beginning of the tolled Swiss motorway for which we had not got a permit. One thinks of pharmaceuticals and modern architecture rather than the centuries-old city of Erasmus and Holbein. So we were glad that Jessica had suggested staying for a couple of nights to explore, and were so lucky with glorious sunny weather.

Basel cathedral

Garden of love with pavilion wool tapestry

We spent the first afternoon in the Kunstmuseum enjoying the Holbeins and being introduced to the work of Swiss artists. Next morning, we rode trams to a modern art gallery, the Fondation Beyeler, on the outskirts, in an attractive building designed by Renzo Piano, and looking out over fields. In addition to its permanent collection, it had a special exhibition of 80 later works of Cezanne. The Münster and cloisters were a contrast in the afternoon, and we spent a long time outside looking at all the grotesque creatures including elephants sculpted around the east end; it was a shame the crypt was shut so we could not see the frescoes, apart from peering through gaps. The paintings on the red courtyard walls of the Rathaus, however, were fully visible and exuberant and there were moving wartime frescoes on the courtyard walls of the State Archives. There was so much we did not see in Basel, but on the last morning, as we visited the Historisches Museum, the beautiful hunting and courtly love tapestries, produced around 1490 in Basel, left a lasting impression of skill and delicacy, along with the wealth of the guilds and the Dance of Death.

Chez Guth

Back in E2E we could not concoct a programme of visits for Jessica to rival our Basel sightseeing. We took short walks in the woods and round the village (stopping to chat to people sunning themselves in their gardens and having a coffee in the village restaurant/bar), were welcomed by the Sainte Marguerite Friday games group, and walked round Saint Dié, including the outside of the Le Corbusier factory and a riverside cafe. One of our favourite Alsace restaurants, Chez Guth, did us proud after a whistle-stop tour of Sélestat, and on the way back to Basel airport at the end of her visit, we stopped for coffee and rolls amid the wine cellars and storks (on their nest on top of the church) of Eguisheim. 

Sélestat

We have spent Easter quietly in E2E. As Daniele and Maïté were coming round for scrabble and afternoon tea on Maundy Thursday, John cooked a first batch of hot cross buns, experimenting with different spices in deference to Maïté’s dislike of cinnamon and serving them with butter and orange-lemon-grapefruit-ginger marmalade or Worcesterberry jam. After they left, we did a quick change and drove into Saint Dié. We had decided to eat at Le 29 and it was only open in the evenings.

Le 29 is a small attractive restaurant on the main street of Saint Dié, with a beautifully painted restful woodland on one side wall. At the back all the cooking operations can be watched through the glass windows and door. We could see Michael, with his head down (still wearing his trademark dark flat cap) concentrating grimly on single-handedly cooking and washing up for that evening’s twelve diners. As there were two menus, one with a choice of courses and one a surprise menu, and the kitchen is small, he had a hard task ahead. Perhaps it was a relief to emerge from his small domaine occasionally to serve his offerings. The surprise menu we chose started with lettuce soup and mustard ice cream, which was delicious. Then we got another surprise — “Look, it’s Guillaume!” exclaimed John who was facing the door. And in came nurse Guillaume, his girl friend, and two friends. It was his first visit too — what a coincidence. We enjoyed the endive with lemon, honey, grapefruit and sauce, and then the tuna, but the main course of venison pie and the coffee and chocolate dessert were disappointing and it felt rather minimal and over-priced compared with our lunch at Chez Guth a few weeks earlier. We had a brief chat with Michael before we left and he said he was currently only contracted there until the end of April. We wondered whether he would continue without a sous chef. John later discovered that the two chefs who had been there since March 2025 left at the end of February 2026.

Breakfasts over Easter have put aside the muesli in favour of a second more-traditionally flavoured batch of hot cross buns with sloe and cinnamon jam. One feels a bit too well-fed to want to go out and do some gardening straight after.

As you will know, we usually return to the UK for Easter, but there is no need to be around in school holidays now that Jacob and Farrah are older. And now, right at the end of this newsletter, the most exciting news. We have a very good reason for coming over a bit later than Easter this year. Toby and Rachel are getting married on 2 May after getting engaged last year. So we shall be coming over in a couple of weeks’ time for their wedding (petrol and Trump megalomania permitting).

 

 

Angels, nonnettes and polar bears: a tale of Entre-deux-Eaux, six villages and three cities, August – November 2025

by

As well as the highlighted links in the text,
there are comprehensive sets of photographs
– Noyers-sur-Serein and Flavigny-sur-Ozerain –
– Dijon –
– Auxerre –

The printable PDF of the text is E2E2025no3a.pdf (six A4 pages)

Commune employees have been stringing their illuminated Christmas decorations between lampposts in neighbouring villages. But Entre-deux-Eaux’s roads have no lampposts. After nightfall pedestrians rely on starlight, moonlight or a good torch to navigate its dark roads with dark shuttered houses. But in recent years the village competition for the best decorated house has led to strings of lights appearing in late November along the fences of vegetable patches, under eaves and along balconies, along with illuminated Bambis grazing on lawns. This weekend the communal hall will probably be blazing with lights from the traditional November thé dansant, and a tall Christmas tree by the steps will be gaudy with baubles.

As if entering into the pre-Christmas spirit our first snow fell last week. We returned from a 9.30 am hospital hearing check in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges to find our new gardener, hooded and gloved, shivering among the pruned saplings in our field and rushed to revive him with hot coffee. It felt cruel to have him slaving away outside in the cold, especially as he had toothache and left shortly after for the dentist in Saulcy-sur-Meurthe. But sympathy faded later when he sent us a larger bill than expected.

Noyers-sur-Serein

Much as we like Entre-deux-Eaux, it is never likely to be listed among the most beautiful villages of France. On 11 November, which is a public holiday in France, while we were taking a short break in Burgundy, we parked outside Noyers-sur-Serein which is a member of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France Association just before two girls with wreaths of red and white flowers led a procession of officials and inhabitants out through the old gateway to the war memorial. The emptied mediaeval village with its cobbled streets, timbered houses, wrought iron and ceramic signs and carved beams was a photographer’s paradise, with a couple of old Renault 4 cars thrown in for picturesque effect. After climbing uphill towards the site of the old castle and admiring the view, we descended a steep passageway gingerly, followed a backstreet, looked round the church and its misericords, then headed for a coffee. The Mairie door was invitingly open, and from the festive sounds within, we deduced that the procession had returned and was drinking to the village’s war-dead. We sat down outside Mimi’s cafe facing the Mairie. Mimi patted his shaggy dog, adjusted his slouch hat and disappeared into the bar to make coffees. The walls of the tiny WC in one corner of the small bar were covered with rude cartoons, mainly with sexual innuendos. A rare political one showed Tintin, Captain Haddock and the Thom(p)son “twins” scanning the ground with the caption a la recherche d’un ministre jamais mis en examen. It was hard to know whether the cartoon of President Macron in frilly skirts, boots and a pearl necklace labelled L’Emmanuel de survie was a sexual or political comment.

Toilets also featured, as they inevitable do when travelling, in the next Burgundian village where we stopped. Flavigny-sur-Ozerain is a hilltop mediaeval village, famous for the pea-sized aniseed sweets it produces in the former Benedictine abbey. The streets of stone houses (with red roses still flowering in November) were calm, the church was closed for renovations, and shops like the book seller and the épicerie were closed on this public holiday. But people were sitting at trestle tables outside the ferme-auberge which is run by a group of enterprising farmers wives to showcase their farm produce. The women were just sitting down with friends and family for their own late lunch when we went inside, but cheerfully served us coffees. Afterwards, as there was no discreet WC sign, Helen asked if they had a loo. Amid appreciative laughter from her friends at her wit, one of them replied in mock-horror that they were not angels and directed Helen outside to a cellar doorway and their immaculate facilities. We read later that in 2001 seven weeks of filming took place in the village for Chocolat with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, but we saw no chocalaterie tourist signs or souvenirs in the sleepy village.

Riquewihr bear shop

In October we celebrated John’s birthday closer to home in the picturesque and touristy village of Riquewihr in Alsace. As we drove over the col de Bonhomme from Entre-deux-Eaux, the forest colours were yellow, ochre and gold against the dull sky. Then, as were driving along the Alsace wine route, a huge rainbow appeared over the black branches and yellow leaves of the vineyards. We parked outside the walls of Riquewihr (glad of our reserved hotel place as visitors had parked everywhere else) and strolled through the gateway and down the cobbled main street of craft, food and gift shops, one with an eye-catching upright polar bear outside, and out through the far gate to the quirky restaurant we have visited before with the unmemorable name of AOR la table le gout et nous. We climbed the steps to the closed wooden door of the restaurant and John pulled the doorbell which clanged noisily. The website describes the chef as a traveller, chef, poet and rocker (so AOR – Album-Oriented Rock – with LPs and CDs as place mats). He’s worked in Hong Kong, South Africa, USA and Qatar (as chef to the wife of the Emir) so uses interesting flavours in all his dishes.

Moni-K-Bill smoking chocolate cigar

We were served a tasty surprise five-course lunch with local Alsace wines. The most exotic-sounding course featured Patagonian tooth fish and the dessert was his signature Moni-K-Bill smoking chocolate cigar.

Riquewihr metal sculpture

We stayed overnight in a comfortable traditional hotel, the Saint Nicolas, within the walls of Riquewihr. When the rain lifted in the evening we had a pleasant stroll round the quiet cobbled streets (all the daytime tourists had magically disappeared). The metal animal sculptures outside the walls looked surprisingly menacing in the dark. After breakfast next morning (the croissants ran out – unheard of in France!) we paid a short visit to the famous Christmas shop on the corner of the street. No-one wants an angel without arms, and our glass angel for our Letchworth Christmas tree had broken beyond repair. We surveyed the arrays of angels in glass, straw, terracotta and faïence, with trumpets, cymbals, violins or harps, and selected a simple one, before driving home to E2E in heavy rain.

damaged radiator

We had spent from mid-August to the end of September in Letchworth, which was longer than usual, but enabled us to do a lot of useful things like repainting the dining room (such alluring colour names – chinoise and elderflower) and arranging boiler maintenance and the reattachment of the radiator which we found had mysteriously leapt off the bedroom wall and was leaning at an angle – perhaps due to the shock of a lorry accident on the nearby road as various items in the workshop had also fallen to the floor.

workshop roof

John hopes that the thermostatically-controlled condensate trace heating wire he inserted in the external boiler condensation pipe, together with insulation, will stop the freezing condensate this winter. While he was overseeing the replacement of the workshop roof by three energetic men from a Stevenage firm, Helen was gallivanting in the Lake District with Jessica and Sue, the sadly diminished Train Gang of three.

Sue lives in the old school house of High Lorton village. You get to see a village when you dog-walk, and stop to chat with neighbours. First stop the village church (and its excellent book exchange) and last stop the village shop. It sounds as if Sue and her husband Hugh have played or sung in choirs in most of the surrounding villages, including at Christmas Nine Lessons and Carols. There were no choirs of angels in September, but Sue was booked to play the grand piano one afternoon for visitors to a stately home, Mirehouse, on the edge of Lake Bassenthwaite. The sound of her music rippled from the music room through all the downstairs rooms as Jessica and Helen walked round and chatted to the charming woman on the desk without realising for quite a while that she was one of the owners who still lived in the upstairs rooms. In the nursery (which had been moved downstairs for the public to visit) there was a copy of a poignant letter from two of the earlier children, “Dear President Kruger”, it began, then begged him to stop the Boer war which was killing so many young men. It had not been allowed through by the censor. The traditional train element of the reunion was a surprise visit to the former Bassenthwaite Lake railway station (the line had closed in 1966) where we had coffee and cake in the stationary replica French steam train used in the 2017 Murder on the Orient Express film. The finale of the re-union was an interesting talk in the village hall about a couple of archaeological sites.

There are no choral involvements for Toby and Rachel in their much smaller village outside Melton Mowbray. The small thirteenth century church has been closed after the theft of lead from the roof, but Toby has been roped into the Holwell Church restoration/fundraising committee. When we visited them at the end of August with Leila, Ann and Derek, another group of volunteers were hard at work in the nature reserve along the disused Holwell Iron Company mineral track. We did not see any orchids as we walked along it, but there were plenty of blackberries and the bushes were dripping with elderberries, and we returned to the magnificent Sunday lunch that Toby had cooked.

Ashwell church graffiti

Back in Letchworth we spent a morning with Ann, Derek and Leila in Ashwell village. Their spacious fourteenth century church has some remarkable graffiti from the 1300s including one about inhabitants surviving the Black Death, a sketch of Saint Paul’s London before the Great Fire of 1666 and a grumble in Latin, presumably from an architect or clerk of works, “The corners are not jointed properly. I spit on them”. Some of the congregation of the Wednesday service which had just finished lingered to chat with us, before we headed for coffee at “Rhubarb and Mustard”.

City life has provided an occasional contrast to village concerns during the last four months. The main reasons recently for driving an hour north from Entre-deux-Eaux to Nancy have been to visit not its art nouveau or late baroque splendours but either the hospital or the Honda car showroom. The hospital has reassured John that all is well after his melanoma removal, but the showroom was less convincing, if not misleading, in the information it provided on a Honda we were considering.

We ended up with a more useful test-drive of the Honda in Colmar last week and as a result are reflecting on purchase in the New Year. We had already visited the Nissan deal in Colmar but had been unable to test drive their offering as the person with whom we had an appointment was not known there. (It turned out it was a new appointee who had not yet started work there!) Rather than waste the journey we drove into the centre and walked round the attractive Petite Venise area. Unfortunately John stumbled on a two-level edge of the riverside pavement and fell flat on to the cobbles, to the consternation of other tourists who tried to haul him to his feet. Fortunately his wrist was all he had damaged, and he was able to enjoy a meal at a nearby restaurant Bord’eau. We had eaten there years ago when it was JY’s with its showy chef, but this time we enjoyed the calmer atmosphere and good food. The wrist took longer to recover.

Auxerre crypt fresco

Our November break in Burgundy had started in Auxerre, where we sampled the annual Saint Martin Fair (which we did not know about before we arrived), had an interesting tour of the Abbey and its ninth century crypt frescoes (some of the oldest in France) and ate Kosovan and Indian meals. But it was the city of Dijon that we fell in love with. We had enjoyed lingering in the two villages described above en route to Dijon but we were glad that we had booked a hotel and parking on the edge of the historic, and largely pedestrian centre of Dijon, even if it meant driving through the extensive outskirts and criss crossing a tram route. Our Ibis Styles Hotel Central turned out to be an elegant 1928 art deco building, renovated in 2021, with a super polite, smiling, efficient staff, and comfortable rooms. Their breakfast spread was lavish and we lingered over it, finishing with coffee and nonnettes, round spice cakes filled with orange jam and coated with honey, a speciality first produced in Dijon by the monks of the abbey of Saint Benigne. Sometimes one wonders if all the monks and nuns did was producing alcohol and cakes to sell. The fancy épiceries we later passed in the pedestrian streets, with their goods temptingly arrayed outside, offered fancily packed little nuns, or nonnettes along side expensive jars of Dijon mustard.

Dijon Les Halles

Our hotel was just round the corner from the picturesque 1845 Boutique Maille with its earthenware jars of mustard, but we didn’t visit that or the Moutarderie Edmond Fallot. Supermarkets are cheaper. The best arrays of cheese we saw were in the covered market, whose impressive iron framework was inspired by Dijon-born Gustav Eiffel (even if another planner and construction firm were used).

We spent most of our visit to the Beaux Arts Museum looking at their magnificent mediaeval altarpieces, paintings and tombs which we knew little about. Leaving the intervening centuries unvisited, we then struggled to find the right staircases or working lifts to the nineteenth to twenty-first century galleries. A different art experience was the Musée Magnin private collection of two amateur art lovers in their still partly-furnished former mansion.

And of course there were all the churches – the splendid portico of Notre Dame with its three rows of expressive nineteenth century gargoyles and highly venerated little statue of Notre-Dame de Bon-Espoir who twice liberated Dijon (in 1513 from the Swiss and 1944 from the Germans); Saint Michel with the golden reliquary of Dijon’s Carmelite nun, Elisabeth de la Trinité, who was beatified in 1984; and the Cathedrale Saint-Benigne whose interesting-sounding Romanesque crypt was unfortunately closed when we visited. Walking past the north transept doorway of former Église Saint‑Étienne we were amazed to see monumental figures which turned out to be plaster casts of Le Départ de 1792 (or La Marseillaise) taken as a precaution in the second world war from the sculptures on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris which had been made by Dijon sculptor Francois Rude. Excavations in the choir showed the remains of the castrum of Dijon and its gateway. Not to be outdone, the nave housed the municipal library, but it was closed for renovation and surrounded by hoarding. We did however come across another library, the beautiful reading room in the former Jesuit College des Godrans. with its long tables of silent readers of all ages and strings of overhead silver fairy lights.

Dijon house wood carving

But we were happy just wandering round the streets of timber-framed houses with their wooden carvings and arcades or their stone mansions with sculpted lions’ heads and huge gates opening into courtyards. In tiny shops we could see woodwind instruments being repaired, chocolates, pianos, a distillery, or antiquities (if a paint-blotched step ladder and piles of old magazines really count as antiques). We encountered fountains and statues (like the surprising Compteur du temps by Gloria Friedmann), and a carousel from 1900. We saw a memorial to a resistance hero, but no plaque marked the six-storey former Gestapo headquarters. We would have missed the tiny stone owl on a cathedral buttress had it not been for the passers-by touching with their left hand and lifting up children to have their wishes granted; over the ages it has been polished and worn till it is almost unrecognisable as an owl.

Pompon bear (replica)

But a replica of Pompon’s statue of a white polar bear in the park was very recognisable, despite the children climbing on it.

After the breakfast spreads, we were not hungry till evening. Our first evening’s Sublime restaurant (contemporary French/Italian) was not mis-named, the second evening’s L’un des senses struck us as having more of a sense of its own worth than of flavour, and on our last evening the more modest Grand Café cheerfully served us their 29 euro Burgundy menu which (especially the jambon persillé and boeuf bourguignon) brought back memories of other visits over the years to Burgundy (though we were glad of a comfortable hotel rather than a tent). As we ate our last breakfast and nonnettes, we were sad we had no longer than an evening and two days to spend in Dijon this November.

Now, as Christmas approaches, the windows, houses and shops in Alsace will be decorated with white bears of all sizes, joining October’s large furry polar bear in Riquewihr. Village friends tell us that nonnettes are a Christmas delicacy here as well. And we must not forget to pack our angel from the Christmas shop in Riquewihr before we set out on December 12 for the UK.

With increasingly ridiculous postage costs, do not worry if you do not receive a Christmas card from us, but accept our very best wishes through this newsletter for a peaceful and happy Christmas and for year ahead in 2026.

Hay bales, gas masks and flying children: everyday life in (and short breaks from) Entre-deux-Eaux, May – August 2025

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As well as the highlighted links in the text,
there are comprehensive sets of photographs
– Maison Heler Metz, Curio Collection By Hilton –
– Around Metz including Marc Chagall and Jean Cocteau windows –
– Shaker exhibition and Vitra Campus and Design Museum (Weil am Rhein, Germany) –
– Bourges including Palais Jacques Coeur, Fanny Ferré sculptures and Brinay l’Église Saint-Aignan –

The printable PDF of the text is E2E2025no2.pdf (four A4 pages)

One summer when our grandson Jacob was very young, triumphant shouts of “Hay bales!” could be heard from the back seat of the car during long journeys when one game involved being the first to spot particular items, including hay bales. The prize was probably a mint sweet.

Alas, the prize was probably more gratifying for E2E children this summer, as they gloated over the flames from burning hay bales which spread towards the forest, as the firemen struggled to extinguish the blazes. Despite the lack of confirming surveillance footage, children are the main suspects in several incidents. Paul, on the other side of the village, actually spotted one of the hay bales on fire as he and a friend were setting out on a photography trip, and they called the firemen.

We are frequently annoyed that bonfires of garden rubbish are no longer allowed. But we would never have lit one close to our house at mid-day on one of the hottest days of the year, as an imprudent retired couple recently did. The charred roof-timbers of their newish house are a sad sight. But at least they are now covered with tarpaulin, unlike the pizzeria in Saulcy which has been untouched for several months, presumably because of an insurance problem.

Although far less severe than the forest fires that have raged in other areas, the village fires have nevertheless meant that the firemen have used up most of the commune’s limited water supply. So the mairie again urged restricted water use (no refilling swimming pools) and we were saving our shower and washing-up water for watering plants. The firemen were seen down our road refilling their tanks from Ludo’s large fishing pond. But we had heavy rain at the end of July, which should have started to refill the village reservoirs.

smoked ham roasting

It was another fishing pond and another hot day for the annual barbecue of the Marguerites (as the club for retired people in Ste Marguerite is now called). Even the barbecue had been renamed this year as a mechoui (possibly to sound more upmarket). In fact it was not north African style lamb, but local smoked ham and we waited and waited as it slowly cooked. The marquee had been upgraded (larger and with lightweight but sturdy metal supports) so we were well shaded as we ate the home-made paté and limp salad starters and drank the rosé wine we’d brought with us. And after the smoked ham and potatoes in a creamy sauce, we had a nice religieuse (a small profiterole wedged with cream on top of a larger one, resembling a nun) for dessert. The raffle afterwards was a bit chaotic; John won a tin mug, someone had already helped themselves to Helen’s “prize”, and Paulette nearly gave us her large dark bottle of Mateus wine in disgust, thinking it was cold tea.

Helen still goes most Fridays to the Marguerites’ alternating games and brain exercise sessions. It was her turn to prepare the mental exercises and refreshments for the last session . “Don’t make them too hard” they pleaded. They struggled with a pen and paper version of battleships or demineur but fared better with calculations on the weight of the bells of Notre Dame and the cost of bunches of lily-of-the-valley! However John had made them a rich almond and chocolate cake to have at the end, which they enjoyed a lot more than the logic exercises. He got all the thanks! The two subgroups also had an “end of term” lunch together at one of the two restaurants on the Col de Bonhomme.

Talking of meals (as we so often do) we stopped after a walk for coffee at the village shop where Stephane is now running a restaurant alongside his catering business. Alas the shop has vanished apart from a shelf for baguettes and all the space is devoted to the bar run by Stephane’s partner. The menu board was chalked outside, but no one apart from us came in while we were drinking our mid-day coffees.

A more successful venue is one of our favourite Alsace restaurants, Chez Guth. After ten years it has, this year, been awarded a Michelin star. The downside is that it is much harder to get a table – we can no longer just ring up the day before. But we were lucky one day in May as they had a cancellation. Every dish was perfect, as it has to be to keep a Michelin star, so quite a burden for them now. The young waitress who had been there a long time has left and has been replaced by a mousy older woman who scurries anxiously – not quite the suave Michelin style! 

We have probably mentioned that our activities this year have been restricted by various medical appointments. We are fortunate that medical services are still quite good here, despite the increasing lack of trained doctors. The Romanian surgeon who removed John’s gall bladder in early June at St Die hospital (a precautionary follow-up after a gall stone blocking John’s bile duct was removed in April) was one of the many Romanian and Hungarian doctors filling the gaps in our hospitals. After operating in the morning, he came round in the afternoon to check on John. Having in the past worked on a research project at Queen Mary College London for about 18 months and lived in Canary Wharf, his English came flooding back and he chatted for an hour about his work, living in France, and tourism in Romania, especially recommending Maramures (his wife runs a tourist agency). Amazing what you can learn after a gall bladder operation! But what happened to his other patients that afternoon?

juvenile kestrel

As for the kestrels (whose return to our attic window ledge we mentioned at the end of our last newsletter) they had duly laid eggs and, at the same time as John went down to surgery that day, the first egg hatched. We had five little fluffy white chicks on the windowsill until the weakest died and was eaten. The remaining four thrived, tested their wings and eventually flew away. Will they return next year?

Metz Maison Heler Hilton room number

Meanwhile, we too were feeling restless. So we planned a couple of short breaks in July between a couple of procedures to remove a melanoma and then the surrounding tissue on John’s shoulder. John had read with interest about a new hotel in Metz designed by industrial architect/designer Philippe Starck with its whimsical 19th century style villa perched on top of a multi-storey concrete block. We booked a room there for a couple of nights as John had an appointment nearby for a bone scintigraph. We began to wonder if the hotel had actually opened as our e-mail about parking was not answered and the phone-line was not working. On arrival the hotel receptionist was off-hand about their lack of response and phone contact, and demanded a deposit (did we look as if we were about to destroy our room or run up a huge unpaid bar bill?). Disconcertingly, our fifth floor corridor was lined with photos of men in gas masks and of explosive devices and was carpeted with strange symbols. Design seemed more important in our room than guest comfort. Stark had written a strange, slim novel about an fictional inventor Manfred Heler and his love Rose which apparently explains the gas mask inventions and coded symbols on the walls and carpets. The restaurants are named after the two characters, but looked pretentious and we escaped to cheaper Italian ones. Sadly the current exhibitions in the nearby Pompidou Centre were also not to our taste. The following day we revisited the Cathedrale Saint-Etienne de Metz with its Chagall windows, the Cocteau windows in St.Maximin and the painted Templars’ chapel.

Shaker apple sauce label

The following week we had a more successful trip to Wihr am Rhein, across the Rhine from Basel, where there was an exhibition on the Shakers, their culture and furniture at the Vitra Design Museum. It was fascinating, not only exhibiting chairs (inventive tilting feet, wheelchairs, shoemaker’s unit), tables, and cupboards (including for sewing) but also details of their worship, community celibate living, and produce and seed trading. The rest of the Vitra site was also interesting with architect-designed modern buildings for their high quality furniture production, the Charles and Ray Eames archive, a good café and attractive gardens. We had a comfortable traditional hotel this time and a very good evening meal in the nearby restaurant Café Gupi, partly furnished and decorated from Vitra.

Fanny Ferré sculpture

Once John had been stitched up after his second melanoma procedure, and the nurse had changed the dressings several times, we again felt itchy feet so booked a last-minute four-night stay in Bourges in early August. The weather got hotter, but the narrow streets of criss-crossed timbered houses around the cathedral were shady and picturesque to stroll around. We spent a long time looking at the thirteenth century stained glass windows in the cathedral apse, with their detailed illustration of the parables and the lives of saints. The most unexpectedly enjoyable visit was to the 15th century Palais Jacques Coeur. Having had his elaborate palace constructed, the wealthy financier was disgraced and imprisoned, and never lived there. But what gave interest to the unfurnished rooms were the life-sized clay figures of trudging, exhausted travellers (like troubadours or dispossessed exiles) who plodded across the courtyard and rested in the rooms. They were selected by their sculptress Fanny Ferré to reflect the themes of the rooms (a child surreptitiously stealing food in the kitchen/pantry, a woman regarding her bottom in a mirror in the steam room, musicians suspended from a ceiling upstairs, a row of puzzled children on a bench in the study). Both of us recalled our childhood sensations of flying as we looked at the statues of winged children (definitely children not cherubs). And what were many of the grouped figures looking upwards towards?

St Aignan church 13th century frescoes

We also explored some of the villages around Bourges: Brinay with its beautiful 13th century frescoes in St Aignan church; La Borne with its disappointing, lumpy pottery; La Chapelle d’Angillon, birthplace of author Alain Fournier, where he returned every summer to stay with his grandparents and the Chateau de la Verrerie which inspired the scenes of the enchanted, lost world of Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes. Someone was playing the piano as we sat in the courtyard of the lakeside château – like an echo of Meaulnes’ elusive love. On the way home we stopped to see the market and cathedral in Sens.

It made an interesting start to August. And, as all was well when John’s stitches were removed, we will shortly be on the move again – this time to Letchworth which has been sadly neglected since our April/May visit. As ever, we are looking forward to seeing family and old UK friends again.

Nazi cows, Ballons and Puys: everyday life in Entre-deux-Eaux, January – mid April 2025

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There is a comprehensive sets of photographs
Around Clermont-Ferrand
Clicking on a photograph in the text will open the image in a separate window
The printable PDF version is E2E2025no1C.pdf (four A4 pages)

Arts and Crafts urn and jugs

As our neighbours were leaving one January afternoon after Christmas cake and wine with us, Jean-Marie, who collects old cigarette lighters among other things, commented on the two metal jugs and the cauldron by our door. We had found them back in 2003 on different stalls in a flea market in Turkheim, Alsace. We thought they might be holiday souvenirs from a village coach tour in Tunisia or another North African country, an impression reinforced when we saw a similar jug in Huttenheim’s flea market a couple of years later. How wrong can you be! After Jean-Marie’s interest, John looked on the internet and found an identical one on an antiquarian website; it was labelled Arts And Crafts: Cruche à Décors D’alpha Et Oméga 1900. It sold for 130 euros. It clearly pays to go to flea markets – Helen’s diary records that we had paid 5 euros for each of our Art Nouveau treasures.

Hanna Cauer plaque

Curiosity aroused, Helen looked for information on other Alsace flea market purchases. We have always said that they have better quality fleas on the Alsace side of the Vosges mountains than of our side. But it was uncomfortable to read about the stylish small cast iron wall plaque which now hangs in our hall in Letchworth. It depicts a young man and woman leading two cows and reminds us of the cows back in Entre-deux-Eaux. It had caught our eye in Ammerschwihr’s flea market and seemed a bargain at 1.50 euros. The German sculptor of the large cast iron relief, on which the smaller plaque was based, was Hanna Cauer. She had complained in a letter of 1933 to the new National Socialist Minister of Culture that “the reigning Jewish-Marxist circles were absolutely hostile to my German approach to art” and appealed for support “with renewed hopes in our national government”. She was awarded a string of public commissions, including a bust for the Reichstag, two statues for the Nuremberg Opera House, and a fountain for the Olympic celebrations in 1936. In 1937, Adolf Hitler gave her a one-off payment of 5,000 Reichsmark, and she received special subsidies for materials well into the war years. Joseph Goebbels, minister for propaganda, called the Olympia fountain ‘wonderful’. He and Hitler visited Cauer’s studio in December 1937. Goebbels wrote in his diary: “Hanna Cauer has created marvellous female sculptures. She has great talent. I’m giving her a whole series of commissions. The Führer, too, who joined us a little later, is giving her commissions and advances. She is very happy.” And we still like our plaque.

Our “flea” researches provided interesting interludes between various medical appointments, car appointments and meal engagements. We had spent New Year’s Eve at Stevenage Hospital trying to get some strong pain relief for John before the long drive back to Entre-deux-Eaux on 3rd and 4th January with what he assumed to be a kidney stone. It was all very efficient in the Adult Urgent Treatment Centre, given all one hears about Emergency departments, and we did not have a lot of waiting around. The downside was banging the car against an unseen low wall in their multi-storey car park! Our Letchworth neighbour told us afterwards that it was notorious for accidents and thought there must be at least 10 mishaps a day there from people who were not forewarned. Both John and the car have had follow-ups. John’s ultrasound and MRI scans (taken long after the pain and the kidney stone had gone) revealed that he had a stone stuck and partially blocking the bile duct, and, although it is not causing any problems, he had an ERCP done in Colmar on 15 April to remove it. As for the car, it has been at a garage in Saint-Dié for bodywork repairs. We tried looking at new Honda cars, but the Epinal salesman was still at lunch, and the Colmar one was half-hearted, did not yet have a model he could sell, and hasn’t followed up our visit. So we still haven’t bought another car.

Our gastronomic engagements have been more interesting though less essential than our medical ones. We are, however, still uncertain about aspects of French etiquette. When our neighbours invited us for aperitifs at 18.30, we wondered how long we were expected to stay, whether to take a bottle or some other offering and whether to have a meal ready for when we got home. John found a useful website, but Paris customs might not be the same as village ones. Ghislaine, who comes for English conversation, said that she and her husband had just been to aperitifs with friends and, as he is so talkative, they had not left till midnight, so their friends had had to make them some bread and terrine. Perhaps that would not be what our neighbours were expecting. In the end we took a jar of John’s marmalade (they always seem to like that) rather than wine. Daniele had prepared several plates of savoury snacks, so we had no need of a meal afterwards. And we stayed for a couple of hours.

In January the Entre-deux-Eaux municipal council, despite Mayor Duhaut’s complaints about reduced grants due to government budget cuts, found funds to invite the over 65s for their annual lunch with music and dancing, unlike some neighbouring villages. Alas the villagers are ageing. The very annoying man who used to bring his castanets and leap around accompanying the musicians was only able to manage a slow shuffle round the dance floor (mainly with all the most attractive females, to his wife’s annoyance). Their next-door neighbour, the wife of the former schoolmaster, used to love dancing, but now has Alzheimer’s and is in a home; she was brought to the lunch and clearly relished the music, dancing and company. The widow of a former fireman had fortunately not brought her inseparable new companion, an excitable, noisy dog (who Helen has noticed at previous events peeing against the drinks trolley).

Another annual event is the Amnesty Book Sale in Saint-Dié in February. This year we got some more old Michelin travel guides, including one for Auvergne. In September as we drove down to visit Val in the south west, we had been very struck by the grandeur of the scenery we passed through around Clermont-Ferrand with the Puy de Dôme and chain of volcanic Puys. So at the end of March when we had a week without appointments, we left the mountains of the Vosges, whose rounded summits are named “ballons”, and headed for the puys, clutching our Auvergne guidebook. We were prepared to be impressed, as the highest ballon is the Grand Ballon at 1424m. whereas the Puy de Dôme summit is1465m. We were disappointed on arrival that, after a previous week of sunshine, the skies had clouded over, and the top of the Puy de Dôme was shrouded in cloud.

Clermont-Ferrand Basilica of Notre-Dame du Port

We were staying in an apartment in the centre of Clermont-Ferrand, off Place Jaude, lively with cafés, restaurants and a shopping centre. So on our first cold morning we turned our back on the obscured Puy de Dôme summit and explored the old town with its narrow pedestrian streets, covered market and 12th century basilica. “Mosaic” conjures up images of intricate Roman floors, but in the case of the basilica referred to the striking patterns in black (lava) and cream (arkose) stone round the outside of the apse. Inside, the nave resonated with the ritual prayers of two men in a side chapel, the carved capitals told their stories, and the miracles of the black virgin in the crypt were thanked on marble ex-voto plaques. Outside, after passing an Art Nouveau bakery and small sewing and dry cleaning shops we warmed up over good coffee and the best-ever cinnamon buns in a café near the black lava cathedral. Inside, the cathedral was noisy with drilling and the crypt was closed, but some fresco remains and early twentieth century windows were attractive.

Next day, we were glad of Waze GPS to direct us through all the roadworks and improvements which are being undertaken in Clermont-Ferrand (the tourist office had said Waze was essential with the constantly changing closures). At the end of all the chaos, the town should also be able to display the archaeological finds uncovered during the works.

Issoire l’abbatatiale Saint-Austremoine

Issoire l’abbatatiale Saint-Austremoine

Inspired by the beauty of the basilica, we made a circuit of Romanesque churches in nearby small towns and villages, starting at Issoire. Its church had a similar striking mosaic stone pattern outside with the unusual addition of sculpted stone signs of the zodiac. Inside it was a riot of colour, as a nineteenth century “restoration” had controversially painted all the walls, columns and capitals, like a rich tapestry. Colour continued in a nearby pretty-pretty pink patisserie with a fastidious pink lady and silent grey daughter.

Saint Saturnin Église Notre-Dame

Fortified by coffee and crumble we drove on small country roads to Saint Saturnin with its Romanesque chapel and church perched on a rocky outcrop and dedicated to the martyred first bishop of Toulouse.

Saint-Nectaire Église

We had heard of Saint-Nectaire, having eaten its cheeses, and we passed plenty of farms advertising their cheese, as we approached the village of Saint-Nectaire in the valley below us. We were ignorant that it was protected not by a saint of cheeses, but by the evangelizer of the Couzes valley, over whose tomb the church had been built. There were scenes of Saint-Nectaire’s life along with scenes of the Passion, Resurrection, Last Judgement and from the Book of Revelations on capitals round the choir – the finest we saw that day. Helen was amused by the wide-jawed crocodile threatening the rescue of the baby Moses from the water on a capital at one side of the nave, while on the other was a donkey with a lyre.

Basilique Notre-Dame d’Orcival

After that playfulness, the volcanic stone and grey flagstones of Orcival‘s church in a pilgrimage resting village seemed cold and unwelcoming despite its reputation. Our route back to Clermont-Ferrand took us close to the Puy de Dôme.

Puy-de-Dôme

On our last day, the weather was clearer, and we drove to the huge, but almost deserted, car park at the foot of the Puy de Dôme. Once we would have relished trudging up the Chemin des Muletiers to the summit, but now we were glad of the eco-friendly electric rack train (or train à crémaillère – just showing off recently acquired vocabulary!).

Temple of Mercury, Puy-de-Dôme

From the station near the top, we climbed the steps almost to the summit where there is a transmitter for FM radio and TV, and physics laboratory/observatory dominating the remains of the Roman Temple of Mercury. We walked on, enjoying the panoramas of the surrounding puys, though they were getting hazy and the wind was cold, before visiting the small museum with its information of the construction methods of the Temple, the Via Agrippa, the quarries and also the Roman remains in Clermont-Ferrand.

Montferrand

After our descent, Waze guided us to the Montferrand part of the city (Clermont and Montferrand merged in 1630), which was interesting to walk round, though the bars offering coffee were dispiriting.

We had tried different restaurants each evening in Clermont-Ferrand, and on our last evening the highlight of our dinner at Popina was the Pariou dessert, a delicious nutty cake based on a Creusois cake, but made with different flour and nuts; when it sank in the centre like a volcano, the chef named it after the Puy de Pariou.

Next day we returned from the Puys to the Ballons, as the clocks changed, and we embarked on a round of rendez-vous, medical (rheumatology and visceral) and mechanical (boiler and car) with light relief of lunch at the Imprimerie in between. All being well with body work (human and car), our next trip will be to the UK just after Easter.

male and female kestrels

As in previous years, a pair of kestrels has been visiting the nest since mid-March so hopefully they will take up residence and raise a family without any of the problems that occurred last year.

Individual sets of photographs:
 Clermont-Ferrand, Issoire, Montferrand, Orcival, Puy De Dôme, Saint-Nectaire, Saint Saturnin

Tamalous, guinguettes and saleuses : Everyday life in Entre-deux-Eaux, November – December 2024

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The printable PDF version is E2E2024no3.pdf (three A4 pages)

Now we are into December, with Christmas fast approaching, the Christmas cake mixed, roundabouts lit up with Christmas trees or miniature Eiffel Towers, and local Christmas markets this weekend, we thought we’d send a short non-festive newsletter before we all get engulfed. So here are three French words to sum up our last two months in E2E: tamalous, guinguettes and saleuses.

These were not words that featured in our distant school French lessons. Tamalous cropped up during a chat with our neighbour Daniele about local hospitals. The system here has long been that your GP writes a prescription for further investigations or treatment and the patient contacts a specialist of their choice to arrange an appointment (increasingly difficult, though GPs are now doing more direct referrals, especially in urgent cases). This inevitably leads to much comparing of notes over the relative merits of different consultants, surgeons, departments and hospitals. Daniele laughingly observed that we were becoming real tamalous and explained that the word refers to people, usually elderly, who are always complaining about aches and pains in one part of the body or another and whose first question on meeting an acquaintance is “t’as mal où?” – “where do you hurt?” or “what’s wrong with you?”

As both Daniele and our other village Scrabble-playing friend had Covid in November, Marie-Therese suffering from a more severe, lingering new strain, there had been frequent phone queries as to the current state of hearing loss, headaches, coughs and loss of appetite. The prevalence of Covid in the village was also why Helen avoided the cream cakes and crémant at the November club gathering of village elders, who have reverted to the germ-spreading habit of kissing on both cheeks. However, a few days after the board and card games and cake, the club also held its annual tea dance, which we hear was a great success with over 150 participants.

There are a lot of skilled dancers in the village. Apparently when they were young, a popular way of meeting prospective husbands or wives was at the dances held in villages on the day of their patron saint. Our neighbour Gerard used to cycle for miles to get to distant villages to meet their girls and dance. And in novels, films and paintings of the nineteenth century the characters might be seen at riverside guinguettes drinking, dancing and dining on freshly caught fish. It’s a quaint sounding word – possibly from guinguet, a type of cheap wine. And there was indeed wine and some fish when we went last Friday (after a hospital appointment for one of us two tamalous) to a village restaurant south of Nancy. Au Bon Accueil in Richardménil calls itself a gastronomic restaurant nowadays, but its website says that at the start of the twentieth century it was a waterside guinguette whose clients would come for its fried fish, fish stew, skittles and the local wine. Through its archway we found a large car park by the canal above the River Moselle – perhaps that was once the dance floor. Alas we found no dancers or skittles, the fish was a sardine served with pigs trotter as a starter, the wines were not from the village hillside and there were only five other diners. It was a lovely sunny day despite the cold, and we took the slow cross-country route home on pretty winding roads through the rolling pastures. We drove past a sign for the Maison de Mirabelles, but did not pause to explore the plum orchards and distillery or to sample their eaux de vie, whisky or mirabelle jam. A pleasant sortie after a hospital appointment.

The third word that was not taught at school but which was useful this November was saleuse or salter/gritter. When Helen had a 9.30 eye appointment in Saint Dié after the first overnight snowfall of the year, it was a relief to find that our commune employee Mickael on his tractor had gritted our narrow road in good time for people to get to work and school, and of course the departmental roads closer to town were well treated. However, the Saint Dié pavements were very slippery, and another client rang the orthoptist to cancel her appointment blaming their commune’s saleuse which had not yet cleared their steep hill.

a frosty morning

Having returned safely from that appointment, Helen needed to drive to Sainte Marguerite after lunch, as it was her turn to provide the exercises for the brain-storming group, and equally importantly, the refreshments. That commune’s saleuse had done a great job of clearing the large car park in front of their Mairie, sports hall and communal rooms. Surprisingly most members of the group had also made it through the snow, though their faces fell on hearing that the first exercise would be in English because we had just returned from England. They were relieved to find it was a fairly easy word search for some of the lyrics of Elton John’s Crocodile Rock – though they might never have occasion to employ words like “bopping”, “hopping” or “crocodile” again. Another exercise was more topical – a visual one involving snowflakes. Just before leaving the UK, we had stocked up with English pastries, so the session concluded with hot drinks and a choice of Bakewell tarts, mince pies, apple and blackcurrant tarts, and individual Battenberg cakes and everyone seemed happy comparing notes – “try the apple and blackcurrant one next, it’s delicious”, “this marzipan is very good and such pretty pink and white colours” and “did John make the mince pies?” John was far to busy to make mince pies as he was struggling with recalcitrant electronic equipment, exploring reasons why his computer might not be starting and why linking various video sources, the new TV and new AV amplifier to work with a universal remote was problematic. The TV issues were eventually resolved, but the computer resisted all attempts. A new one should be delivered tomorrow.

We are planning to return to the UK next week. We joke that all our UK trips and holidays have to be arranged between increasingly hard to get medical appointments. So we will set out after next week’s dental and audiology appointments and return in time for the rheumatology one. We hope that the gritters will have been working hard as more snow is forecast before then.

Jokes about tamalous aside, we know how many friends are affected this year by poor health and losses, and we send you all our very best wishes and hope that despite everything you have a peaceful Christmas and wish you all the best in 2025.

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

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No Northern Lights here with all the clouds of the last week.

Full Pixel 7 image
1/5s f/1.9 ISO:23084

But on 14 October it brightened up just before sunset so I went out to see if the comet (Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was visible. The location in the sky to the west is obscured from the house by the trees along the road. So I went up into the field to the north of the farmhouse where the view was clear. The comet was visible to the naked eye as a long streak, even before it was completely dark.

I hadn’t take my camera and tripod as I’d only gone speculatively and  hadn’t expected to see anything. But I did have my mobile phone and took a couple of photos.

Cropped image

 I wasn’t sure I’d captured anything until I returned to the house to get my camera. But by then the comet would have disappeared behind the clouds so I didn’t return.

The forecast isn’t good for the rest of the week, so I very lucky.

An update

Full Pixel 7 image – comet just left of centre

The sky was hazy on 17 Oct so I decided to have another go at photographing the comet. I couldn’t see it, but my phone did capture it.

This time I’d taken my camera and tripod. My telephoto lens doesn’t have a wide aperture so I needed 4s/6.3 at ISO:6400 exposures and then stacked five images to get a longer effective exposure time. This is taken looking through the haze, so still not a very clear comet tail. The blurred stars due to the planet movement during the 4s exposure.

But you’re never here!: summer in Entre-deux-Eaux and holidays away, June – September 2024

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These are two comprehensive sets of photographs
Naples, Herculaneum and Ravenna – Italy June 2024  and A visit to Pyrénées-Orientales southwest France
Lists of the individual photograph sets are at the bottom of the newsletter
The printable PDF version is E2E2024no2.pdf (seven A4 pages)

“But you’re never here!” exclaimed our neighbour Daniele who, together with her husband, keeps an eye on our house when we are away. I had just mentioned that we would be leaving on one of our three trips this summer. However, she would be the first to concede that the weather here has not been inspiring this summer.

Take the first day of June. When we felt like a walk between heavy rain showers it was a question of selecting the least muddy and slippery track, but we still got soaked. The next day was so wet that we did not even venture out to see if any stall-holders had bothered to set up on the former football pitch for the Entre-deux-Eaux flea market. At least it was fine the following weekend for the Anould flea market, where we could have bought a paint-splashed ceramic bulldog for the garden. We didn’t. We have enough wild life in the garden.

Encouraged by the rain, quantities of enormous snails sped along the terrace when not lurking under plants, while an even greater number of insolently gross slugs feasted on rhubarb leaves, courgette stems, sodden strawberries and anything else in the garden that had not been washed away. One night some boars started scuffing up the turf outside, but must have got interrupted before they did much damage. When Daniele’s husband discovered that the headlight wires of her car had been chewed through, probably by stone martens, John looked under Bluto’s bonnet and found that some of the wadding had also been consumed, so hastily ordered alarms for both cars to scare the martens. Meanwhile a toad was impeding Snowy from getting in and out of the garage, having taken up residence dangerously close to the wheels. But sadly, although the female kestrel was still sitting half-heartedly and part-time on her eleven eggs at the end of June when we returned from our Italian holiday (below), it was well after the time that any could have hatched, so John decided to remove them. We lamented the lack of kestrel chicks. But apart from them, − we had quite enough wild life.

So, given the poor weather and poor crops, we had no great incentives to spend all our summer in Entre-deux-Eaux. Among the TV programmes we had enjoyed on wet evenings were those on the recent excavations at Pompeii. John had long wanted to visit more of Italy, so we chose Naples as our first destination. We booked a flight from Basel to Naples on 13th June together with rooms in an apartment between the historic centre and the railway station on the busy Corso Umberto I. Our host was very welcoming, gave us local information over coffee and immediately insisted on taking John for a short walk round the neighbourhood, pointing out churches, restaurants and hospitals while Helen put her feet up, recovering from the unaccustomed heat.

underground ruins of Roman Naples

Naples street

During our week in Naples we felt no urge to rush around in the heat. So we’d have a leisurely coffee and pasticcini outside a cafe, then wander round the narrow streets and into the cool of churches looking at mosaics and frescoes. There was so much to see on the surface that it took a while to realize how much could still be seen below the surface of Naples from Roman times. One day we followed an enthusiastic historian along the Roman market streets below St Lorenzo Maggiore church, seeing the slabs on which fish were sold and the walls of a tavern, laundry, bakery and dyer’s before violent floods left them covered in solidified mud at the end of the fifth century.

We spent most of one day in the Archaeological Museum seeing the early finds from Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Herculaneum

So it was with regret, as the temperature went above 30°C that we decided that spending a day trekking round Pompeii with no shade would be foolish. But we did catch a train out to Herculaneum which is smaller and has some shade from its two-storey buildings, and found it fascinating.

 

As you can imagine, Naples being on the coast, we ate a lot of fish and seafood in various local trattoria in the evenings, though didn’t join the long queues just round a corner from our apartment for the best (allegedly) take away pizzas.

Sant’ Apollinare in Classe mosaic

From Naples, we caught trains north to Ravenna. Helen had been presented with a large illustrated book on the Ravenna mosaics when she left school, but those 1960s illustrations did not do justice to the stunning mosaics we saw all these years later. It was great to have the Unesco World Heritage churches/baptistries Arian Baptistery, Basilica San Vitale, Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Battistero Neoniano, Capella di San Andreas, Domus del Tappeti di Petra, and Mausoleo di Galla Placidia within easy walking distance of our hotel apart from Sant’ Apollinare in Classe, a bus trip away. We missed the exuberance of Naples, but enjoyed the refined splendours and clean, quiet streets of Ravenna. We also missed our energetic Naples host, in our impersonal hotel. But there was a lively covered food market and we found the restaurant Osteria del Tempo Perso, just round the corner from our hotel, which we liked so much that we ate there most evenings.

We had originally thought we might go on to Padua and Verona, but, after John pulled a back muscle in Ravenna, we decided to content ourselves with what we’d already seen. We also wanted to travel home on the scenic train line through the old Gotthard tunnel (which was currently in operation on week days because of blockages on the faster new lower route). So we caught trains from Ravenna to Bologna and Milan and then to Zurich. What scenery between Milan and Zurich – lakes, one of which our railway line crossed, churches, bell towers, tunnels, waterfalls, more tunnels, snaking rails, funiculars, vines, snowy peaks, wooden chalets, steep terraces, and after the descent, marinas and sailboards. After those views, the Zurich to Basel train and our drive over the col to Entre-deux-Eaux seemed tame.

While we were away, our postal votes for the UK elections had arrived, so, due to changes for overseas residents, we were able to vote in the UK elections though still not in the French ones which Macron had called in a fit of pique and must have been regretting ever since. Our Grand Est region predictably voted out a good representative in favour of a Rassemblement National (formerly Front National) candidate.

Over in the UK other changes were afoot. Toby and Rachel had found a large old house they liked in a village outside Melton Mowbray. Moving there from Letchworth would mean they could see much more of Jacob who lives in Melton Mowbray with Stella, and moving in early August would be less disruptive for Farrah between her GCSEs and college. So, after three and a half weeks back in Entre-deux-Eaux, our second trip was to Letchworth, with our neighbour’s “but you’re never here!” ringing in our ears.

Our intentions of helping Toby and Rachel before the move were foiled when, one after the other, they and Farrah went down with Covid. But they were no longer infectious on 1st August, the day of the move, so we drove Rachel up to the new house which was in need of cleaning whilst Toby supervised the loading of the removal vans. As we drove into their new village we were aware of a small camera crew a few doors from their new house; one of these move-to-the-country television programmes was showing their clients the converted chapel and offered to interview Rachel, about her move to the village. Sadly she declined the moment of fame and got on with cleaning. The house has an imposing Georgian frontage, but parts look much older. With its various additions over the ages, it is on different levels, and includes partly converted farm outbuildings at the rear. This century, after being a loved family home, the next owner neglected it, so there is work to be done on the damp walls and the roof, but Toby and Rachel were looking forward to renovating it. When we returned three days later, it was a hive of activity. Toby was uprooting bushes, tall weeds and grass at the front to uncover the water meter and remove soil and plants against the damp kitchen wall, Rachel was sorting out the utility room, fridge-freezer and pantry, and Jacob and Farrah were screwing together new IKEA furniture in their bedrooms. Together with Leila we gave a hand and enjoyed a buffet lunch together in their huge kitchen. While we were in Letchworth we also caught up with friends, usually over meals, and we celebrated Ann and Derek’s birthdays. Ann’s was special as it was her 70th but she insisted it should also be a celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary which had somehow crept up on us.

The date of our return to Entre-deux-Eaux in mid-August was dictated by the rheumatologist in Luneville. We have unfortunately reached to stage where holidays have to be arranged between increasingly hard-to-get medical appointments, though we are keen to continue to travel for as long as we can. Our summer surge of trips was more enjoyable because John was pain free due to the corticosteroids our locum had prescribed for his painful joints. However the rheumatologist has been unable to provide a diagnosis while the corticosteroids mask the problem, so John has been reducing them at a programmed rate and is due to return to her in January. It used to be easy to book a cardiology appointment, but, as the number of doctors declines, Helen’s next one is in March 2025!

There are delays in supplying new cars as well as getting medical appointments. Just before we had left for Letchworth, we had a problem with one of Bluto’s brake callipers, which had left John driving very slowly and cautiously back home from the supermarket. Mme Laine’s grandsons had repaired it at their small garage down our road, but after twenty years, it felt time to think about a replacement car, this time a hybrid, most likely Toyota’s new Yaris Cross. So, after our return from Letchworth, we went over to the Toyota dealership in Epinal and had an initially useful discussion and test drive (reassuring for Helen who had never driven an automatic). However a new Yaris Cross would not be available for delivery for three months or more. Annoyingly Toyota (like many other brands) only deliver cars with summer tyres to showrooms. But the French Loi Montagne stipulates we would need non-summer tyres from 1st November to 31st March. To change to all-season tyres in order to drive home from the showroom legally would add over 900 euros to the car’s price (if the dealer changed them, or a bit less elsewhere) and we would be left with a useless set of summer tyres for which there seems to be no significant market. This is a problem in Germany and elsewhere too. Stalemate.

One morning towards the end of August, when John was in Saint-Dié and Helen was outside cutting back brambles, the commune van stopped outside. Reading the water meters once a year is one of the many responsibilities of Mickael, the commune employee (who is currently single handed as no young people have coped for long with the job of assistant, with all its outdoor tasks like verge cutting, ditching, logging of communal wood, gritting in icy weather, snow ploughing). He had come early to us knowing we are often away in September. And it was lucky he did, as, when he descended the steep cellar steps in the farmhouse, he found a leak where the water meter connected to our house plumbing. He obligingly went off to get his tools and repaired it immediately (the council had replaced the meter a few years ago). Our water bill will be considerably more this year. No sooner had Mickael departed than there was another ring at the doorbell: two muscular young men delivering our new, larger television. We were glad of their muscles, as after carrying it upstairs to our sitting room they also took away the oldest TV set, a very bulky 24” cathode ray tube one, which was up the steep stairs in the farmhouse. We just had time to shower and have lunch before it was time for a more sedate afternoon of English conversation practice with Ghislaine.

Meanwhile, with a gap in medical appointments in mid-September, we had started firming up on plans to finally visit our friend Val in the Pyrenees-Orientales. We had forgotten how long ago she had bought her second home in a small village south-west of Perpignan but she later told us that it was thirty two years ago while she was working with the British Council in Egypt. And in all those years we had never visited her part of France, but had met up with her in England. Two old Michelin Guides that we had picked up at the Amnesty Book Sale in Saint-Dié in February (previous newsletter) aided our planning (after all, the interesting monuments do not change, even if visiting hours do). John was keen to see the Millau Viaduct and Helen to see Carcassonne en route.

Saint Blaise and Notre Dame des Malades church

We set out driving on this third summer jaunt on a horrid wet day and spent the first night in Vichy. Next morning, after a quick walk round Vichy’s imposing art nouveau and art deco buildings including Saint Blaise and Notre Dame des Malades church (whose unusual art deco interior Helen found grey and oppressive), we drove on motorways towards Clermont Ferrand, past puys and through dramatic gorges, pausing to gaze from a distance at Gustave Eiffel’s Garabit railway viaduct, before reaching the more recent Millau Viaduct.

Eiffel’s Garabit railway viaduct

We got good views of it and information on its construction from the visitors’ centre, before we drove slowly across it. We turned off at the next junction and circled back till we were right underneath its soaring piles. We appreciated its height, span, grandeur and engineering achievement even more from below. We then followed small D roads along ridges to Albi where we had booked a hotel room for two nights so we could have a full day exploring the picturesque sounding mediaeval town.

Opulence restaurant

We ate that evening at Opulence in the old town. After washing our hands like school children in the stone sinks by the front door, we were ushered upstairs. We ordered the surprise menu and an amazing array of all one’s favourite entrées was squeezed onto our table, with sizzling snails, garlic and parsley, and a platter of pork pie, terrine, a herby yogurt dip, humus, bread, and hard boiled eggs with a green topping. We needed our local beers to wash that lot down. The main course was varied too, with casseroles of pork, duck, octopus, vegetables and a potato, cheese and garlic aligot. The three desserts seemed tame in comparison.

Albi cathedral

Next morning we were amazed by the soaring brick walls of Albi cathedral (1282-1380) − the largest brick built cathedral in the world. After the plainness and simplicity of the brickwork outside we were unprepared for the assault of colour and detail inside, with every inch of the walls and vaulting painted in blues and golds, and a grim Last Judgement on the west walls. The adjacent brick Palace of the Bishops was a stark statement of power as if the authoritarian bishops had enclosed themselves in a fortified castle against the local consuls and inhabitants with whom they were unpopular.

Toulouse Lautrec Museum

As it now contains the Toulouse Lautrec Museum, we were able to walk round its palatial rooms in the afternoon, amused at one point by the exuberant Le Goulou can-can poster hung between two impassive bishops.

We had booked a pleasant spacious apartment below the walls of the fortified citadel in Carcassone for the next three nights. Perhaps it was a mistake to walk round the fifth most visited site in France on a weekend.

Carcassonne

It was also disappointing to get little sense of the violent conflicts there between Cathars and Crusaders (especially after re-reading Kate Mosse) or indeed any of the citadel’s history before its extensive nineteenth century restoration by Viollet-le-Duc. It was near enough to our apartment for us to climb up and wander round several times during our stay, but looked at its most impressive when viewed from our kitchen window at night when the walls were illuminated.

From Carcassonne we drove down to Val’s village of Maureillas-las-Illas, stopping on the way to look round the former Cistercian Abbey of Fontfroide. Val’s house in the heart of the village is small, despite its four floors, but brimming with character, some created by Val and some by the artists who had left their painted furniture. Our Airbnb apartment just down the road from Val’s by contrast was a spacious, recent conversion. We took full advantage of its facilities, taking Val’s crockery down to our dishwasher after she’d cooked tasty meals, and she used our Wi-Fi connection as she was having problems with e-mailing.

Santa Maria del Vilar priory

Unlike Carcassone, the many small Romanesque churches and abbeys in the area had retained their sense of history through wars of religion, attacks, neglect after the French Revolution and even sale of their columns and capitals. We enjoyed seeing frescoes which had been uncovered (when paint layers were scraped off or the organ removed for repair) and the inventive sculpted capitals of reinstated columns.

Santa Maria del Vilar priory fresco

We added two saints to our list of never-heard-of-’em saints: Saint Abdon and Saint Sennen at the Abbaye Sainte Marie in Arles-sur-Tech. The sarcophagus containing their relics filled miraculously each year with healing water distributed to pilgrims. The small priory of Santa Maria del Vilar, which used to shelter pilgrims on their way to Compostella, was now a Romanian Orthodox Monastery whose icons and red and gold embroidered fabrics added richness to the overhead frescoes of peacocks eating and drinking from lilies. Equally fascinating were the churches at Saint-Genis des Fontaines, Saint Andre, Elne and Sainte Eulalie Cathedral, Montesquieu des Alberes and Saint Saturnin Church.

Yellow train crossing a viaduct

For us, no holiday is complete without a train journey. So one morning we drove up the Têt valley to Villefranche-de Conflent. After walking round the small walled town (though not slogging up to the Vauban fort above it) and looking round the nearby small church in Corneilla de Conflent, we caught le Train Jaune (the yellow train) further up the valley. And yes, the train is yellow, and most passengers crammed into the open waggon, adding layers of clothing as temperatures dropped.

Highest SNCF station

Cameras were kept busy, recording the steep-sided valley, the curving single-track line, the tiny stations and the viaducts. Later heavy rain started to fall and there was a dash to covered carriages at the next halt. Most passengers got off at St Louis, but we were pleased that we’d booked to travel on to the ski resort of Font Romeu, as the scenery turned from lush valley to arid grassland with birds of prey swooping overhead, and we passed through the highest SNCF station in France. The return train was delayed when the train in front of us broke down (failed brakes, its shivering passengers said when we eventually picked the up at a passing-point station). It was late and dark as we drove back to Maureillas.

rabbit and snails

Val was keen to take us to the Taverne de Riunoguès in the hills above Maureillas for Sunday lunch. The road was narrow and winding, and the only other buildings we saw were the tiny church and graveyard and a gîte which might once have been a school. We climbed up the narrow stone steps into a dim room where the hors d’oeuvres were laid out in a cabinet near the door, and were led through into a lighter room to our table by the window. After ordering our main course from a chalked blackboard menu and some wine, we loaded our plates with hors d’oeuvres. The main courses were equally filling – John’s an unusual combination of rabbit and snails − the cheese course generous, and the lemon meringue tart chunky (and that was without the Chantilly cream extra). A man and guitar circled the tables droning Georges Brassens and other songs of yesteryear.

A few days later we drove back through heavy rain to Entre-deux-Eaux at the end of a very enjoyable two-week holiday. The house felt cold, and John turned on the heating. As temperatures dropped down to two degrees, Helen brought the pots of geraniums and fuchsias into the barn. A few days later Helen joined the oldies of Entre-deux-Eaux on a fascinating visit to a sawmill in a nearby glacial valley, enduring the cold and crouching on logs or benches − this was after all the setting used in a famous Franco-Italian film Les Grandes Gueules.

The Alps were this year’s invited “country” at Saint-Dié’s Festival International de Geographie (FIG) at the beginning of October. We felt the town had not wasted much money this year on an Alpine décor as we strolled round town registering the hay bales with animal ears. We had not been attracted by any of this year’s lectures. By far the busiest area was the book marquee, closely followed by the food stalls in the market place. It felt a subdued event compared with earlier years. Perhaps Saint-Dié no longer sees itself as the capitale mondiale de la Géographie. That Saturday morning we had noticed cars parked on fields and a man in a pink high-vis jacket crouching behind a hay bale in the field below our bedroom window. The hunting season had opened. The hay bales have since been gathered up and on windy days, the first leaves are swirling and skidding along the ground.

Summer is over and autumn has arrived.

Links to the individual sets of  photographs:
Naples – Street and Everyday Scenes
Naples – Duomo and Duomo baptistry
Naples – Roman and Greek underground
Naples – Santa Clara
Naples – three churches
Naples – Street art
Herculaneum
Ravenna – Arian Baptistery
Ravenna – Basilica San Vitale
Ravenna – Basilica di Sant’Apollinare in Classe
Ravenna – Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo
Ravenna – Battistero Neoniano (Baptistero degli Ortodossi)
Ravenna – Capella di San Andreas and museo Arcivescoville
Ravenna – Domus del Tappeti di Petra
Ravenna – Mausoleo di Galla Placidia
Ravenna – around and about
Naples and Ravenna – Restaurant meals
From Ravenna to Basel

Vichy and Garabit viaduct
Millau Viaduct
Albi
Carcassonne
Le Train Jaune
Fontfroide Abbey
Collioure
Saint-Genis des Fontaines
Villefranche de Conflent and Corneilla de Conflent
Ceret
Abbaye Sainte Marie – Arles-sur-Tech
Saint Andre
Elne and Sainte Eulalie Cathedral
Montesquieu des Alberes – Saint Saturnin Church
Santa Maria del Vilar Priory

Asparagus, cheese and cold eggs: everyday life in Entre-deux-Eaux, January – May 2024

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To download a printable PDF version (no photographs)
click on this link E2E2024no1.pdf (six A4 pages)

There are links to photographs in the text and
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There are no asparagus fields around Entre-deux-Eaux. Our local fields are mainly used by cows, as pasture or for winter fodder, with occasional maize or winter wheat crops. But at this time of year, in April and May, villagers’ thoughts turn east to Alsace and its asparagus. Nearly every local restaurant, small or large, will offer asparagus as a starter and often also as part other courses as well, In the nearby small town of Provenchères-sur-Fave, the Mother’s Day (26 May here) special Sunday menu in a restaurant had asparagus as its starter. People also drive over the Vosges to buy asparagus directly from the growers. Earlier in May, a party of villagers from Entre-deux-Eaux oldies club went over the hills for an asparagus lunch and dance for 350 people, though one complained that she was still hungry when she got home.
 

Le 29 restaurant

During the long wet winter months, we have enjoyed going out for a restaurant lunch roughly once a week. It is always good to try new restaurants as well as old favourites, and if they are nearby in Saint Dié so much the better. At the end of April, when it was still miserable weather, we tried the recently opened Le 29 on the main street (no. 29) of Saint Dié. It was good to get off the cold, windy street into a small but busy little restaurant of eight tables, which looked larger with its murals of sunlit woods. There was a warm welcome from the bustling young madame, Marilyn, and through glass doors into the bright kitchen at the rear we could see chef Cedric and his assistant busy cooking and decorating dishes. Not surprisingly, one of their starters that week was listed as Les asperges blanches d’Alsace (ferme Clarisse, Sigolsheim), emulsion savoyarde et croustillant pancetta which also featured an egg cooked at a low temperature. Helen decided to sample the frogs’ legs, which she didn’t remember having tasted before, but John chose the asparagus and said the savoyarde emulsion, a cheesy sauce, added a good flavour to the asparagus.
 
In the past we had bought asparagus at Sigolsheim from Clarisse’s small hut-like shop up a narrow side street. Now there is a larger, up-market shop attached to a restaurant on the main road through Sigolsheim. Ghislaine (who visits us to practice her English) and her husband went for a meal there this year, but they were really disappointed, finding it very expensive for the asparagus soup and asparagus-and-ham main course. They were also annoyed that Clarisse’s strawberries were on the dessert menu but not available to eat, although there were plenty in the attached shop, but the restaurant staff refused to prepare them.

chutney de potiron, chèvre fumé, chèvre boursin, tomme fruitée

When we were at L’Imprimerie in the book village in April, they served their asparagus with a hollandaise sauce. The cheese course is, alas, rarely part of set menus in French restaurants these days. But with the Imprimerie’s curtailed menu (see below) we missed the previous leisurely succession of filling dishes, so when Damien wheeled up the optional cheese trolley, we decided to indulge. The smoked goats’ cheese was our favourite, with a good pumpkin chutney.
 
In January we had discovered their main chef, Morgan, had been head-hunted and had moved on to a larger, more prestigious restaurant in a spa hotel in the woods above lac de Longemer and taking two of the younger restaurant chefs as well. His co-owner chef, together with a new assistant chef and the grumpy waiter are carrying on at the Imprimerie, but have reduced the number of opening days and have been serving a less ambitious weekday set lunch to fewer tables.
 
Like true groupies we decided the following week to follow Morgan to his new restaurant, Les Jardins de Sophie, for lunch. It was delicious, and he’d obviously carried over his own style as two of the dishes were similar to those we’d eaten at his old restaurant! But the cheese selection was less interesting – and there was no pumpkin chutney to add flavour. At the end Morgan showed us his big new kitchen with great pride, as he now has fifteen staff working under him including a pastry chef.
 

wine cellar

Another restaurant which we tried for the first time, Le Bistro d’ Azerailles, was distinctly down market from Les Jardins de Sophie and served neither asparagus or cheese, but a varied hot and cold buffet. Arriving at 12.20, we walked into an unpromising, dingy fifties style bar in an old station hotel in the small town of Azerailles; there was only one diner or drinker, and no sign of staff. Eventually the chef came to the bar, smiled, and led us round the end of the bar, through a narrow room and into a busy, large restaurant, where he handed us over to Madame. We should probably have noticed and come in through the other door that opened directly into the restaurant! Before we were let loose on the buffet, we were asked if we’d like aperitifs – no thanks. Wine with the meal? Yes please! So chef led us proudly to their latest project – a well-lit wine cellar with tables and chairs and expensive bottles in racks on the walls. Realising our mistake, we said it was a really splendid display, but we only wanted a glass each, so were led back up to order from the bar. The starters were really good, so we went back for more. We realised we should have got there a bit earlier, to get the full selection of the mains, and we were lucky to get the last of the desserts. Other diners had left and the staff had disappeared when, after coffee, we were ready to pay. It’s somewhere we’d go back to, – but promptly at mid-day.
 
The Bistro d’ Azerailles’ vegetables of the day were peas and potatoes. John had been rather surprised when we were at the Amnesty Book Sale in Saint Dié in February and he picked up a book of the best recipes from season 4 of the French Masterchef TV series, to find it contained a technical tip for cooking vegetables a l’anglaise with photos of the four stages: boiling a lot of salted water, tipping in the vegetables, pricking them with the point of a knife to see if they are well cooked, lifting them out into ice-cold water. Is that considered by French Masterchef to be the height of English gastronomy? An indication that we have some interests above and beyond our stomachs and restaurants (though it might not otherwise be obvious from this newsletter), is that we also bought an Italian design book, some Michelin green guides to parts of France we haven’t yet visited, and Helen found a well illustrated 1932 children’s science fiction book.
 
The previous February weekend, Helen went with the Sainte Marguerite club on the annual theatre trip to the Alsace village which gives an amateur theatre production preceded by lunch. The lunch is always well organised, but this year there were negative comments that they’d cut down on wine and there was no cheese course. But the new play, La Candidate, a farce about a presidential election was as amusing as ever.
 
Later that week it was Helen’s turn to lead the Friday Remue Meninges, or brain exercise, group. This time she’d found a couple of good French sites to plunder. So the group started with arranging a seating plan for a family dinner party for 10, taking into account all the antipathies and requirements of participants, so a logic problem with only one solution possible. There’s always someone in the group who says they don’t know what to do, without having read the information and worked out the logic! Next there were three exercises of anagrams, the last being Tintin titles (given how big cartoon strip/graphic novels are here, it was surprising that not everyone had read Tintin to their children or grandchildren). Pandering to the popularity of the British Royal Family here, the next exercise involved applying the information given about the strict rules of succession, to find out who would have succeeded at particular dates had the queen died then (“I don’t know what I’ve got to do”, wailed the same person without reading the info). With a word-search for capital cities (French spelling) which absorbed everyone, the room went quiet for the first time as they really concentrated. Finally a crossword. After which someone boiled the kettle for hot drinks as the room is inadequately heated and Helen produced the cinnamon buns that John had made that morning, and everyone relaxed and gossiped.
 
In March and early April we enjoyed seeing family and friends around Easter time in Letchworth. So lots of cooking for John, egg hunts for children, and gardening and trips on the rare days when the weather was fine.
 
On our return to Entre-deux-Eaux, we faced the same problem of finding a time for gardening when it was not raining. Fortunately the day Dusty chose for rotavating our vegetable patch was sunny after a heavy overnight frost (and snow on the hills the previous day). Helen has been busy on other fine days slowly raking over the beds and sowing the usual carrots, parsnips, beetroot, lettuce and leeks outside. The broad beans, peas, courgettes, pumpkins and squash which were sown inside are now being planted out. Will they all be washed away by all the subsequent rain? In May Saint Dié had a Jardin dans ma ville event with plant stalls up both sides of the main street (which was closed to traffic). We walked round the stalls and selected a few herbs to replace those that do not seem to have survived the winter.
 
As for the cold eggs, many of you will have been following John’s videos of the kestrels nesting on our attic windowsill on the website 2024 – Kestrels in Entre-deux-Eaux, wincing at two females fighting (rather disturbing) in March and rejoicing at the laying of six eggs in April. You will have no doubt grieved when the male disappeared on 25 April, leaving the female without any food on her seventh day of brooding on the eggs. We assume the eggs would have got too cold to be viable after she was forced to leave them for long periods to hunt for food (and possibly her mate).

The younger male kestrel gives the female a mouse

However a younger male then started visiting the windowsill and bringing voles, mice and lizards for the female, and on 7 May the female laid the first of a second batch of eggs. By 15 May eleven eggs could be seen, with old and new all together. Unfortunately the sill overlooks the vegetable garden, and the female deserts the eleven eggs whenever one of us goes into the garden, as well as when cyclists and dog walkers pass. As the honeyberries in the fruit cage are now ripe and the strawberries soon will be, there will be additional disruptions for her from our gardening stints. But if all is well, perhaps some of the five new eggs should hatch around 9 June. In discussions with two in France and Czechia who have had kestrel nests for many years, this many eggs is unknown and difficult for the female to cover. After the additional seventh egg was laid in the second clutch, the opinion was there would only be another two at most. Perhaps this might become an entry in a record book? So watch the website!
 

L’ilot utopique de Raon l’Etape in 2010

At the beginning of May we went to an exhibition at the museum in Saint Dié on the striking architecture of L’ilot utopique de Raon l’Etape. A hotelier in Raon l’Etape had enterprisingly commissioned the building in 1966-7 of an annexe to his hotel on a little island in the river Meurthe, comprising motel rooms designed by Pascal Häusermann et Claude Häusermann-Costy. The nine concrete spheres could accommodate 24 guests in total. Apparently the large printing firm that Ghislaine’s husband worked for would accommodate business visitors there, as it was a bit different with its esprit soixante-huitard. It was called Motel l’Eau Vive, then later l’Utopie. It had various owners and was classed as a historic monument in 2014. We had been very taken with the unusual balloon shapes when we visited and had drinks there after a couple of young Swiss enthusiasts had taken it on. But it has been closed for some years. It is being renovated and is due to reopen as a hotel later this year. The exhibition had more information about other projects of the architects, including a video of the time-consuming construction and growth of a private home (no possibility of hanging paintings of constructing bookshelves on those curved igloo-like concrete walls!)
 
The local villages hold an annual art event in May, with exhibitions in different village halls. The first year we went, our American friend Nicola won a prize for her paintings, and we were proud to still see her name at the top of the list of winners (if mis-spelt). But alas the quality of paintings has deteriorated in recent years. However, the photographs exhibited at the former seminary in Saulcy were more interesting, and we were pleased to be invited to the vernissage, or drinks reception the evening before, as Paul, the recently arrived resident of E2E, was showing more of his photographs.
 
May is a month of public holidays here, a month of holes like cheeses, as Ghislaine observed during our linguistic exchanges. The month opens with Workers Day, the following week there is Victory Day and Ascension Day, and two weeks later Pentecost. So it was hardly surprising that none of Helen’s birthday cards were delivered until two days after the event (pathetic sniff). Nevertheless her birthday was a festive as well as obligingly sunny day as we drove over to Riquewihr, a small mediaeval walled town in Alsace which had not been destroyed in WWII as the road to it didn’t go any further. We had lunch just outside the walls at the foot of the vineyards, on the terrace of a restaurant with the unwieldy name of AOR La Table, le gout et nous. The amuse-bouche was, of course an asparagus soup, though this one was accompanied by lavash (a crisp, spicy Armenian bread). The fish course of bream was also accompanied by asparagus, but the star was the veal, sweetbread, risotto, with zucchini and apple wrapped in a green bean. What drew the attention of neighbouring tables, was our Moni-k-Bill dessert of a smoking chocolate cigar and mango cream, as we were the only table presented with it. In fact, it was less of a surprise to us as, on our previous visit, we had also had chef’s signature dish, which harks back to the Lewinsky/Clinton affair.
 

Riquewihr upper gate

Riquewihr courtyard

We had decided to stay overnight Sunday at the hotel next door to it, so we did no have to worry about our wine consumption, and it was pleasant strolling round the old streets of Riquewihr in the cool of the evening when the crowds of tourists had left. We had first visited Riquewihr in the ‘eighties on a winter evening with a spectacular sunset over the vineyards, and equally quiet streets, and we had fallen in love with it, so it was good to see it again restored to tranquillity at the end of the day. Next morning we went out to get coffee and croissants from a bakery. We sat on the rim of an old well eating them and watching a tanker emptying a street drain, deliveries to cellars and walkers setting out with haversacks and maps.

vineyard/roadside poppies

On the way home we stopped in the next village at a small wine producer to buy some bottles of the Gewurtztraminer wine that Helen had really liked at lunchtime. We were lucky in our timing, as the husband and wife were just pulling out on their gateway with a trailer of garden prunings for the tip, but stopped immediately they saw us and opened up. There can’t be much call for wine on a Monday morning. It feels a long time since we bought from a grower, and we reminisced about buying our first Gewurtz from another small producer on that first visit nearly forty years ago.
 

Enfin – Croisière Alsacienne – Rhine carp in a potato crust, with sorrel and wild garlic sauce

Two days later we rounded off Helen’s birthday with a splendid lunch at Enfin restaurant, again amid the vineyards of Alsace, but a bit further north in Barr. Their Hommage au Printemps sequence of small dishes featured plenty of herbs from the beds outside their windows and also fish from the river Rhine. After a succession of tasty herby mises en bouche, we had the inevitable but beautifully presented asparagus, both white and green with lovage, cream and asparagus ice-cream cornets. Perhaps the most memorable dish was the Rhine carp in a potato crust, with sorrel and wild garlic sauce. The dessert trolley at the end was heavily laden, and being Alsace there were lashings of cream on everything. But asparagus ice cream as a dessert must be an acquired taste.

We drove back along a steep, winding forest road rather than through the vineyards, enjoying the scenery.
 
But no, that was not in fact the last celebration, so hold on for a bit more food description! This week the monthly E2E club for the oldies (more properly called La vie du bon côté) toasted all the May birthdays in either crémant or cider. The onus of cake-making has been taken on by Stephane, the enterprising village caterer who makes very good cakes, so Helen joined other May birthdays villagers in blowing out candles on his creamy Paris-Brest (whose wheel shape is said to be a tribute to the Paris-Brest cycle race), luscious rhubarb tart or generous cream-and-raspberry sponge cake, as the card and game players sang Joyeux anniversaire.
 
On the walk home, Helen admired the colourful azaleas and peonies in the sheltered garden of the oldest village house, queried the presence of two gendarmes outside the unfinished, deserted house of our former builder, stopped to check if our neighbour still wants some felled tree branches from the bottom of our orchard, and finally caused the female kestrel to temporarily fly in alarm from her eggs. After the cakes, candles and champagne, everyday life in Entre-deux-Eaux resumed.