June 2011 – Enjoying the Sun

Cooling off

Following all the hard work done on our pool over last autumn and winter we felt it only right to sample it before we leave for our summer holiday. As neither Kathie nor I are great swimmers we prefer it when the pool is not crowded and as luck would have it this is most days apart from in high summer.

We usually go down in the afternoon after the hottest part of the day has passed and are usually able to enjoy an hour or two splashing about without all the noise and activity normally associated with a holiday pool.

Makes us sound like a right pair of grumps but having a large pool to yourselves is quite luxurious – which would you rather have?

One bad thing however. Looking at our picture it’s definitely time to get out the Weight Watchers book and cut back on the vino.

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Further to last month’s post regarding the summer retreat in England, we set off towards the end of June for our holiday.

The general opinion of our friends is that we must be mad to be making the northward journey when most people would just love to be going the other way. I agree that it seems strange but we have that bonus up our sleeves that we can go back to the sun in September (which is the time we always used to take our French Riviera holidays) and know that we will have fantastic weather without the excessive heat and crowds.

We had a lovely journey north through Zaragosa to the Pyrenees and into southern France. We had only one bad incident when a truck decided to pull out on us as we were overtaking it, with another car on our outside. Lots of heavy braking and cursing but we survived.

Travelling through the Pyrenees

As ever the wild flowers were beautiful and the French made good use of both the wild and cultivated varieties in their displays.

Flower displays on the Boulogne outskirts

We planned quite long days for this trip and got to Boulogne at the end of the third day but then had to stay there for 24 hours after our dogs have been inoculated. It was the hottest day of the year and the temperatures were around 35 degrees, the thing we thought we had travelled north to avoid.

Keeping cool

Next time we will find a vet en route and be able to drive straight to the Channel Tunnel without delay.

We finally arrived at our new summer home and were greeted immediately by one of our neighbours who welcomed us to the site and wished us a happy stay. This bodes well for the summer.

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