Mermaids, Oranges - Oh, and Christmas Lunch

 Yesterday’s theme turned out to be mermaids. We started the day with Graham finding a mermaid’s purse down on the beach and, despite moving inland, we ended up finding two mermaids on a pole - in an 11th century church at Plahecq. 

Mermaids …

And…

Their purse

We were spoiled last night with free electricity and water and this morning our neighbours, a Dutch couple who live in Portugal, gave us some free oranges from their garden. Hugo wasn’t so impressed with their dog, Jenny. They’d saved her from the rough streets of Portugal only to be growled and snapped at by our very grouchy, and very jealous, chorkie. Despite the grumpy advances of Hugo she had a lovely temperament and performed some very impressive tricks including spins, rolls and weaving through legs.

Hugo now being standoffish

Oranges R Us

We’ve now moved on to spend Christmas Day by The Lake of the Moon in Clérac, not far from Bordeaux. Our festive repast consisted of a prawn ring (my fave), stale (ish) bread and some paté, all washed down with a couple of cups of tea - we know how to live. Goose cassoulet for dinner though.

Not a bad spot

Lunch

Graham’s Bit 

(NB: I had to cut and paste and can’t make the text smaller - not loving Blogger)

Yesterday’s drive was interesting. 
We deliberately planned the route to avoid the impressive, but very high, suspension bridge at St Nazaire as Kerriann hates (is terrified of) crossing these structures.

Unfortunately our route did take in a lesser, but nonetheless equally frightening to Kerriann, flyover. 

She grabbed the side of her seat and her knuckles turned white. An atmosphere of terror filled the van. On this occasion I sang ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ to help lower the tension - it didn’t work.  Maybe I was off key?

It was at least half an hour before the atmosphere in the van returned to its usual calm state.