Our Life in Burgundy

Apologies for not having contributed anything to the blog or life in general for some time. The pneumonia is almost better but my ‘get up and go’ has got up and gone….

We are late in planting up the potager but I’m not too worried as last year I was too early and the onions and potatoes suffered during a late cold spell. You find that things soon catch up. I found it a bit dispiriting to find almost all of the daffodils in the garden had been killed by the cold in February. But the wall to wall sunshine in the three weeks since I got back has started to revive many ‘dead’ shrubs. The moral of the tale is to use plants local to the area, rather than bulbs and shrubs imported from England.

The tulips are up but no daffodils

We have missed some events lately, but we have gone back to riding on a Saturday morning.

End of a ride at Laizé

Last Saturday afternoon we enjoyed a salsa afternoon in Cluny. We learned a routine and videoed it so we could remember it afterwards. There were nearly as many men there as ladies which we found astonishing. They were pretty good too!

Yvette and Pascale learn salsa

Yesterday in the foyer rural it was the games morning, held the first Sunday of the month. Scrabble is the most popular game. I’m usually allowed to peek in the dictionary but yesterday I forgot to take one. Looking at the board you would think we were playing in English as many of the short words in French are the same, but without looking them up I never know which English words I can use!

A Cortambert en camping car

In the afternoon the foyer rural at Cortambert hosted “Traversée de l’Afrique en Camping Car”, a film and discussion with Annik & Frédéric who travel around the world visiting out of the way places. In Kenya they were treated to a display of the Masai jumping dance and in the villages they were subject to much curiosity by people who rarely saw strangers. The gas stove and the running water in the van aroused a lot of interest.

Annik & Frédéric had travelled down the east side of Africa and then realised it was too dangerous to go back via the west side. So in South Africa they put their camping car aboard a boat bound for France. This cost more than the whole trip thus far.

Frédéric & Annik's route in Africa

We are now looking forward to greeting our Easter visitors. Taizé is getting ready for their visitors too. There are lines of tents and the huge dining marquee is back. Chris is getting on with building a new pump housing for the swimming pool. I can’t imagine going swimming yet but we will be ready for when it gets warmer. Not long now, I hope.