Having survived floods, soakings and what seems like 40 days we’ve decided to have a bit of a holiday within a holiday. We can see a patch of lovely weather for the next week and we’re going to make the most of it by doing very little!
Yesterday we went to visit the wife of my mum’s cousin (my first cousin once removed) who lives near Brantome. She and my cousin taught at the European School in Brussels and being multilingual decided to retire to this lovely area of France. They bought a tumbledown farm house and while they were still working slowly renovated it into a lovely country house complete with a large amount of land and swimming pool. My cousin passed away nearly two years ago and Kathleen now lives there on her own.
To make our relationship with Kathleen even more complicated Team Basil’s member Sarah’s mother (Eileen) was evacuated from London when their house was demolished by a V1 doodlebug during there Second World War. Sarah’s grandfather (are you following?) was, at that time, an instructor at the British Army’s Commando Training School at Speen Bridge Achnacarry in the Highlands of Scotland. He arranged for his wife, Eileen and her brother (Geoff) to be housed with a local family, in a tiny cottage in Achnacarry.
Eileen and Geoff both attended the single class village school for the rest of the war and their teacher, with whom Eileen kept in contact, was a Miss Kennedy. Many years ago, at a family gathering, at which Kathleen was present, when the subject of Achnacarry came up we discovered that Kathleen was Miss Kennedy’s sole niece! It’s a small world.
We spent a pleasant few hours with Kathleen, chewing the fat, looking at old photographs and newspaper cuttings referring to my Great Grandfather. Sarah took some copies of photographs of Miss Kennedy for her uncle Geoff, along with a class photograph which featured some children Geoff might have been at school with.
After we left Kathleen, we drove to Angoulême’s Camping Bel Air (45.6925, 0.1440 €19 ACSI) Arriving after reception had closed, we were told to find a pitch and come back in the morning. The site was pretty empty, so we were able to obtain a huge, secluded pitch. At the moment the campsite is very pretty because the grass hasn’t been cut recently and so every pitch is covered in daisies and other wild flowers.
Today we intended to relax in the sunshine, however Sarah decided to take advantage of the sun and do our weekly wash, and I decided it was worth a 5 mile walk to get some traditional French bread to go with to night’s Ratatouille.
Tomorrow we hope to travel to near Tours where we intend to relax. We may visit a Chateau or two or we may not. Blog posts may be sporadic!