I’ve had a fab time on holiday in Normandy for the past week, staying with new friends and old. A 12 hour journey (well, not quite – leave Nottingham 2am, arrive destination 2pm, but there’s a clock change, and lots of sitting on the tarmac at Dover included) took me to my first destination, a housewarming on a farmhouse in a farm located within a national forest. The minute I arrived in France, torrential rain began, making the driving a little stressful, and pitching a tent unpleasant. After the long motorway drive, I turned into the forest, past cross looking signs warning against interloping, and found a roomful of washed out campers warming up with soup around a fire.

After only four hours, however, the rain stopped, the sun came out, and the party continued. I’d perforce arrived on the third day of partying, missing the apparently wonderful weather of the days before. Sunday evening at the housewarming weekend took in plenty of food and drink, lots of sitting around chatting, some diablo training and the Entertainment: an impromptu gig played by the children of our host and their friends, on a stage built in an outbuilding and equipped with a serious array of lighting equipment that somehow managed to survive the rain. Much later that night, the evening descended into sing-song as a really expert guitarrist picked up an abandoned instrument and played whatever we sang at him, more or less in whatever key we started in.

I stayed at the farmhouse for two more days as the party crowd thinned out until eventually it was just me and my charming hosts. The Monday took in a birthday meal, Tuesday we went to the beach. I was anticipating eating vegan all weekend since my hosts were, but the party-goers had stocked their fridge with eggs, cheese and meat of various sorts so in fact I was doing a service by eating up the foodstuffs they would have had no use for. And I offered to help out around the farm too, knackering my back by washing up at a kitchen sink installed painfully low, digging a vegetable plot over and finding the local tip and working out what you had to do to use it.

On Wednesday, I finally left my hosts to enjoy the silence of the farm (except in certain wind directions, you really can hear nothing but birds, insects and the wind. At night, there’s an owl and deer barking in the forest to contend with and lizards and voles scrabbling in the hay) and drove off to Dinard to collect P, then back into Normandy to stay with old friends in the Caen vicinity.

In fact, Caen was part-way through a Voice Festival, so our evenings were taken up with a Kings Singers concert one night, and the second, a concert given by the Chorale Arioso, the choir our hosts sing with. Post-concert, we joined the choir in the beach house of one of their members for a bring-and-share meal and my second late-night drunken sing-song that week!

The evening was a great chance to practice my French again. There were plenty of moments when I got lost – in particular, I find it very hard to hear one voice speaking when there’s a crowd of voices (then again, that’s tricky in English too) – but I managed to understand and make myself understood most of the evening. Even through the very lengthy and repeated conversations about bras that my host had to explain later. “Soutien-gorge” is the French for bra, despite the fact that it really doesn’t support your neck. In technical bra-speak, cups are “bonnets” and you speak of “profondeur de bonnet” for cup size. “Rougir” is the French for “to blush”.

By Friday it was time to return to Blighty, so an early start followed by a quick trip to a French hypermarket, then the 12 hour journey back. Man, the M1 was nasty on Friday night, even when the delayed ferry meant we didn’t hit the London Orbital til gone 7pm. There were massive roadworks, and a long delay for an accident on the M25. The roadworks I had driven through days previously, but at 4am they didn’t delay me at all, apart from dropping to 40mph through the average speed checks. But on Friday night heading north in the early evening, they were a major delay. We’d had discussions about whether we should go M1 or A1, and chose the M1 because it’s a better drive, and gets us closer to Nottingham. But with hindsight, I suspect the A1 is going to be a safer bet during the day until 2008, when the roadworks are due to be completed. Delays expected until 2008, mon dieu!

Further pictures of the week are here.