Hello everyone I hope you are all well? It seems like ages since we last met up. Writing once a month about what is going on in our life in the Tarn feels very odd. I have missed regaling you with tales of our misadventures each week. November has been no exception! Time I started writing about some more things that might interest you – promises, promises I know. Where has the year gone? Here we are in December, the last month of 2021. Like everyone, what a year and now a new Covid variant to worry about. In France face masks have remained in place for many places and…

Bonjour to you all The beginning of November here in the Tarn has seen a dramatic end to the balmy warm days we have experienced through October. The sunny days with the thermometer hovering above 20°C have been replaced with an almost 10° drop overnight and regular downpours of rain. We can’t complain having had several lovely warm weeks, with enough sunshine to ripen the second batch of figs, but weirdly and perhaps worryingly it also encouraged my strawberries to flower for a third time! We have frost threatened towards the end of the week so I hope the plants will be OK. I have managed to plant quite a…

Joyeux Anniversaire/Happy Birthday! Coffee and Chocolatines is one year old today! I can’t quite believe it is a year since I dipped a tentative toe in the blog water! Thank you so much to everyone who has followed our journey over the last 12 months and even more so to those who have promoted it, commented on posts and interacted with Coffee and Chocolatines on social media. It makes it all worthwhile for me knowing that someone out there is reading this. I have really enjoyed sharing our escapades with you, although as you will know I have gone a bit off schedule over the last couple of months for…

Hello Everyone Well I am back in la belle France, greeted by gorgeous sunny days, quite warm (18-20C) but goodness the nights are cold, between 2°C and 5°C at the moment. Why so cold so early on? The journey back was long, the weather kind and I did have a welcome break and delicious supper at a friend’s house near Tours, completing the drive across two days. Max had ordered a couple of CDs which were delivered to my Mother’s so there was lots of singing en route! It is lovely to be home, back in the countryside (I never thought I would be such a fan of the peace…

As I sit on the ferry watching the south coast of England gradually disappear through a rather grimy window, I can’t quite believe that my trip is over already. While I was there, someone asked me if I still felt at home in the UK and I have to say home for me now is France. What a week it has been, seemingly non-stop with a trip to see my son in Manchester, time with my mother and a very brief hour with a couple of friends. I spent a lot of my time working, as the charity I work with had two grant applications to submit during my stay.…

Hello everyone Very late this week – sorry this is becoming bad habit! I have been travelling – more on that shortly. The last week has sped by in a complete rush as I decided to return to the UK to see family. My eldest son was due to return to university in the UK but has postponed his return until November. Early one misty morning, in spite of some trepidation (I have got used to low Covid numbers in France, living in the countryside and am possibly becoming some kind of recluse) in a moment of decisiveness I booked my ferry crossing! I requested a list from my younger…

Hello everyone Another fun filled week here at le petit château, as usual not quite doing what we had set out to do as yet another unexpected occurrence pushed our agenda aside! You have to laugh as this seems to happen virtually every week.  Still worse things happen at sea as they say, which was actually what a couple of our rooms almost turned into, but more on that shortly. A highlight this week was a fabulous meal, a wedding present that we hadn’t been able to enjoy due to lockdowns. As time was running out for the gift voucher we decided to book. On Tuesday evening we had the…

Bonjour everyone How are you?   The garden is beginning to look quite autumnal, leaves are falling and the mornings are cooler. The sedum is in full flower now, adding beautiful pink swathes to the garden. It brings such a great splash of colour in the autumn and is a great source of food for bees, butterflies and countless insects as other flowers fade. The weather here has been quite lovely so we have had the chance to have a swim or two. The plan is to keep the pool open through October – we’ll see how that works if it gets too cold. Cold water swimming is supposed to…

This week to coincide with our first wedding anniversary, I thought I would recount a love story between Max and I and a run-down old house in the French countryside. Like all good love affairs there are highs and lows, good times and challenging times, times when you feel like this will not work out, other times when you know it will. This house, or rather the village’s petit château, is testing us but also allowing us to tend to her. I am sure I have told you that we put this house on our viewing list for fun really, a wild card, a quirky different addition to a list…

Hello Everyone We are all finally out of quarantine post-Covid, Max is regaining some of his ability to taste but not his sense of smell, apart from petrol when he is strimming! I thought the spicy courgette chutney might be something he could taste so we opened a jar before it had matured. Strong flavours work for him at the moment, although he draws the line at Roquefort as he is not a blue cheese fan. Evenings are chillier and the mornings have an autumnal feel, there is mist rising over the lake at sunrise and each night brings quite a heavy dew. Often the day warms up beautifully, enough…