France

It was mid May before we managed to get to our house in France for a few weeks. We still hadn’t managed to organise our building expansion programme thanks to the planning problems, however, we decided that we couldn’t go through another hot summer without a swimming pool so decided on a quick and simple solution. I designed a pool away from the new buildings and ordered it for installation in July before the family descended on us.

The Loire, Giverny & Normandy

We had decided to drive Jill’s old Cabriolet back to the UK as Danielle had arranged a “painting” weekend in Normandy with Lauren’s family. This turned out to be a very pleasant break since we stayed with Dave and Ange, on the Loire on the way up. Apart from his singing talents (noted a few years ago), Dave is a superb artist. He had an exhibition at the time of our visit so we couldn't resist buying a few of his paintings. To complete "the painting weekend" after the Loire, we stopped at Monet’s home at Giverny. This gave Jill some ideas for our new garden in France. Our “petite lac” is now going to be modelled on Monet’s garden!

Above - Jill, Les, Dave & Ange at dinner in a local Auberge

Left - Dave toasts his winning nude (A neighbour apparently!)

Right - A couple of his other neighbours - we purchased this for our house in France although it now hangs in the dining room in England

Left - Le lac at Giverny

Right - Jill, Dani & Jean Claude (Lauren's parents) with Lauren's Aunt & Uncle (front) in Honfleurs

Below Left - Jill painting outside our pension

Below Centre - Lunch in the garden

Below Right - The completed paintings

Lauren tackles the local seafood

Danielle's two dogs Patton (after General Patton) & Elli

sleep after visiting the Normandy battle fields

Lauren and Danielle at Pegasus Bridge

We returned to England in early June to catch up on work. Also I was attending the 40^th anniversary re-union of 89 Entry Royal Air Force College Cranwell. This took place mid June (Go to www.89entry.co.uk for detailed report). This was a superb weekend. This year I didn't fly down since I am still grounded because of my hand so we drove down with Dick chauffering Dave Donnelly and myself – I slept all the way back!

Left - Just like old times - a Queens Colour parade at the RAF College Cranwell

Right - Les with Geoffrey Wellum DFC, the last surviving Battle of Britain pilot and famous author of "First Light" . This is an account of his wartime experiences from 1939 when he was an RAF pilot at just 18 to his flying the much needed Spitfires into war ravaged Malta in 1941.

I was particularly honoured to be photographed with Geoffrey as his book was the first Father's Day present I ever received from my son!

Springtime in Raskelf

Our village in the UK, Raskelf, boasts one of only two churches in the country that have a wooden steeple. On one of my walks with Rastus, our old dog, I decided to photograph it for my records

. These are two of the photographs.

A few days after the Cranwell re-union we returned to France. I stayed a week during which time work commenced on our new swimming pool and the pool arrived. I left Jill to supervise the works as she was staying for the rest of the summer. The deadline for the pool was mid-July when the family were all scheduled to arrive for the summer festivities!

Freddy the Belgium starts digging

A small hole at first

The pool arrives in sections on an enormous truck

There's always some social gathering in our village in France...

Far Left - Renatta preparing a BBQ

Left - Partying in Renattas kitchen

Right - John & Les sampling the beer in the local Nudist camp (NOTE - we kept our kit on!)

Les had only been back a day when he was invited by Shireen & Dick to join them at the annual RAF Linton Prom on the Green - This is an event featuring the RAF Central band and fly past by an historic aircraft - in this event a Tucarno! - performing the lowest flypast over a formally assembled crowd that we have ever witnessed. (We've seen lots of informal ones!!)

Left - Pre-party drinks at Dick & Shireen's

Right - More drinks and more food in front of the Mess

A sad farewell to a faithful friend

Whilst at home I had to say good bye to our black Labrador “Rastus”. He had been a good friend for 14 years but he was in a bad way so I had to make the tough decision. It was a very sad event but best done whilst Jill was away.

We stopped overnight at Éguzon-Chantome a delightful little town near a lake

Les returned to France at the beginning of July with Chris. We met up in London and then took the Dover/Calais ferry and drove down in the Cabriolet. All the way with roof down as it was so hot. We stopped overnight in Éguzon north of Limoge and enjoyed a mornings sight seeing before heading down to Monleon and Jill.


Only in France could the police ignore a major motorway fire and wave you past to save holding up the traffic - it was frighteningly hot as Chris and I sped past (with the roof off)

Danielle, Lauren, 2 dogs and a cat arrived from Luxembourg the next day. The day after that we were joined by Jim and Annie Roach, who had come from Bournmouth to stay for a few days. Needless to say the holiday mood broke out! Everyone had arrived for the annual Monléon Magnoac Samba weekend when Monléon becomes the centre of local culture. The next week or so proved to be extremely lively with lots of parties and BBQ’s. Luckily the pool was usable if not completed.

However, disaster struck not once but twice in the shape of the worst thunderstorms for several years. The first struck on the first night of the Samba trapping everyone in the refreshment tents. Eventually we decide to make a dash for it only to be caught in the next downpour – We all ended up looking like drowned rats – we couldn’t have been more wet had we been in the pool for several hours. The storm wrecked our temporary gazebo.

Annie & Jim Roach with Lauren before "le deluge"

Before the first storm

Before the 2nd storm

Jill, Annie & Dani washing up

The main street on a normal quiet day

The main street on a Samba weekend

Luckily the weather cleared for the main 2 days of the Samba festival only to return the day after with a vengeance. We had repaired the gazebo’s bent poles and re-erected it. However, as the family was about to dine outside another storm, twice as bad as the previous one, hit us in seconds. The wind tore down the gazebo and upended everything on to Les's lap just as Danielle was serving the food. The rain came down in stair rods and in seconds we ended up like a drowned rats yet again. The storm was so bad it uprooted hundreds of trees in the local area including several of ours and tore the roofs off several buildings. Thankfully after that the weather improved and we were able to enjoy the normal hot sunny weather associated with the South of France!

Left - The family at the Samba

Samba Eating & Drinking

Sambaring

Samba parading

We managed to make use of the pool although we couldn't finish the tiling and walls as we had to let the ground settle

Taking shape

Water in

Cleaning up

Ready for swimming

Post Samba

Slowly the family returned home except Jill, who stayed in France until mid September whilst I returned to the UK for a few weeks to catch up on work. During this time Jill commenced golf lessons since she had had to give up tennis because of her knee.

Chris takes up caddying

Mark, Les, Lauren, Jill, Susie, Fedelma at dinner in a nearby restaurant

Centre - Jill trying to master "le swing"

UK in August

Whilst Jill was enjoying herself in France I had to return yet again to the UK to work. Luckily this was broken up by Chris and Catherine coming home to Yorkshire for a long weekend. It was Catherine's first visit to Yorkshire so Chris was determined to show her everything! Including his cooking!!!

Right - Bootham Bar Far Right - York Minster's main doors

Below right - Ampleforth (Chris's old school), Centre - North York Moors Right - Whitby

I returned briefly to France to collect Jill after her long summer . We completed our French summer in the traditional way - tasting the newly pressed wine at a local vineyard - in fact the only vineyard in about 50 miles - it's our next door neighbour - Mikhel, a German with a Japanese wife. They planted their vineyard just 4 years ago and with a lot of hard work have created their own winery. We're looking forward to next year since he is currently making "Champagne". Mikhel looks more French than the French!

Mikhel in his vineyard

The bottling plant & cellar

Sampling the wine

Home again in September

We were home for just 2 days when Barb' arrived from South Africa with her daughter Nicki to stay for a few days. Unbeknown to her, Jill had organised a surprise dinner party with two other old school friends, Annie Roach (Speese), from Bournmouth and Lynda Fawcett (Force) from Liverpool. Barb certainly was surprised. We were joined by Geoff and Chris Fitchett and had a superb dinner prepared and served by our local French chef Stephan with Geoff officiating as wine waiter! The girls did some local touring before Barb had to return to South Africa. (Just a week later, through Google, Jill managed to locate "Prude" the 5th member of the group who she hadn't seen for about 35 years!!)

Right - The girls in 1963 - Jill, "Force", "Speese", "Prude" & Barb

Below right - The girls in 2006 - Barb, Lynda (Force), Jill, Annie (Speese)

Below left - The surprise dinner - Annie, Jill, Nicki, Lynda, Barb, Chris (Wine waiter - Geoff)

From San Francisco

Three days later we had two other house guests, Jerry and Winnie from San Francisco. Again we enjoyed a few more days eating and drinking. Jerry is a Bridge Master, so we invited two Bridge enthusiasts to join us for dinner one evening - Jill's brother, Karl, & sister in law Barbara. Jerry and Winnie were on a tour of the UK and headed south before continuing on to Spain and France. We ourselves left the next day for France.

Right - Winnie, Karl, Jill, Jerry & Barbara (It was the wine waiters night off!)

We decided to drive down and stay with Dave & Ange again on the Loire. As mentioned earlier Dave is a superb artist. He specialises in pastels. Every time we go there we end up buying a few paintings from him. This time was no exception.

Whilst in Monleon, Jerry and Winnie came to stay – they arrived late one evening having been directed down all the back lanes by their GPS. (We think Jerry entered “shortest” instead of “fastest” route – beware GPS users!!) Anyway they eventually found us much to Winnie’s obvious relief. We then spent a few days touring the area with them. This included visiting caves containing the worlds oldest cave paintings (35,000 years old!) – just 30 minutes from us yet we had never visited them!

Having the most expensive cake in the world -we were robbed!

Winnie & Jerry outside the church above the Grotto at Lourdes

We returned home in early October. It was to be our last visit to France this year, although Chris (and mates) have at least one ski trip planned in December.

We managed to fit in a few interesting weekends before our next trip. The first was a weekend in St Austell to visit the Eden Project – a seven hour train journey each way – but interesting despite the fact that we had just left the Mediterranean and were about to go to tropical rain forests - which were “Eden’s” main feature! We did, however, meet two new friends in our hotel, Stuart and Diana who kindly drove us around and joined us for my birthday dinner.

A bloody big fly

A very clever wooded horse

Les, Diana & Stuart

RAFA York Annual Dinner

The second UK event in October was the annual RAFA dinner at RAF Linton where we were joined by Dave and Anna Donnelly plus Dick & Shireen. We stayed in the Mess which meant that I drank too much!!

Top Right - Dave & Jill

Bottom Right - Two young GD(P) Officers - GD(P) stands for General Duties (Pilot) - with the RAF's aircraft and manpower shortage we weren't sure whether they were learning to fly on a broom or were on bog fatigues!

Far Right - Les always said that the Navy were not good enough to clean an RAF Erk's boots - well he was wrong - they are!