Life in the French countryside

Our Easter weekend continues with 'our girls'. The blue sky and sunshine settles in for the whole long weekend - imagine 28 degrees every day, and the only fires we've lit are in the home made pedestal BBQ on the deck overlooking our green hills and stream in the valley below.

We cruise around a couple of little villages, Saint Germain-Les-Belles and Magnec-Bourg to hunt out some meat from La Boucherie and the inevitable baguette pour dejeuner. Then later we take the dogs out for their afternoon walk down the laneway and into the beautiful dandelion filled fields across the road. Its a familiar route and they happily show us the way. We're half way up the hill when we turn around and there, following us, is Esme the cat. Her legs are half the length of the black labs, and in places she's almost hidden in the lush green grass, but she is determined and obviously thinks she's really a dog. The river in the valley provides a welcome refreshing swim for the dogs and they love playing fetch, competitively with an old stick.

There is a lot of New Zealand in this valley, steep green hills, narrow winding roads and plenty of trees, and streams, but very few cars. I think if I were generous maybe four cars per day pass our driveway. There is also a distinct lack of livestock. We haven't seen any cattle, although the area is famous for its limousin beef, and otherwise, a handful of sheep in a house paddock just about sums it up. There's a couple of donkeys in the paddock at the bottom of our garden!

On Easter Sunday, we celebrated with a long walk uphill to a lovely lake near the village of Glanges. The dogs loved it and Roger marched silently up, without so much as a murmur. The lake proved the perfect place for swimming and fetching sticks, with Tinks taking out the long jump challenge on more than one occasion. Poppy is just a bit lazy for those sort of tricks now. We meandered home downhill and decided in honour of Easter Sunday, we should drink champagne and eat chocolate, along with a few healthy items like fromage, biscuits, fruit and Hot X Buns and croissants. By dinner time the most we could manage was a simple but delicious herb and beef saussion cooked on the hot coals of our BBQ.

Easter Monday, and its a Public Holiday in France, but our friend, Alison who owns the restaurant by the lake is open, so we toss the dogs in the car and head into the village late in the arvo. The lake pond is quite serene and a good 1km walk around the edge keeps the dogs happy and builds up our thirst for an aperol spritz and a beer - after all its still 24 degs at 5pm - and its only the beginning of Spring. We dined on the deck with another dozen or so locals, enjoying good homemade family food, a hamburger and salmon au citron. And our brilliantly behaved black labs just sat under the table, without so much as mentioning that their dinner time (5pm) was well past. They inhaled their dry food as soon as we got home.Read more