Notre Sejour en France

So, yes, sorry, I've been away.

It was lovely. 

For so many years, we've either split our holiday into 2, week long slots, at least some of it on scout camps, and at the end of our time away I've always had a compelling urge to stay away, to turn around and head off elsewhere. I think that the sign of a truly great holiday must be that you feel ready to come home - in a good way: relaxed, replete, and not even 12 hours on the French autoroutes (including the traffic jams around Paris) ruins it.

A campsite nestled in the foothills of the French Pyrenees - close enough to the coast for a day at the beach, but strangely (or perhaps not so strangely as we now have easy access to the sea in our day to day lives) we spent most of our time in the mountains, following rivers either up or down stream, marvelling at waterfalls, swimming in icy cold natural swimming pools of melt water, leaping off rocks into rivers, squeezing through gorges...

We ate, as you'd expect, some great French food. Significant numbers of croissants, pains au chocolat, baguettes, rillettes, fromage, crepes... luscious peaches and apricots from roadside stalls, absolutely ripe, and with not a hint of refrigerated transport about them ...

Thanks to my French friends who live in the area, we also had a couple of delicious, utterly authentic meals. 

On our second night, a family BBQ with Sonia, Laurent, their son, Sonia's parents, sisters, sisters' husbands and kids... It featured a delicious courgette soup (am hoping to get the recipe, all of you who are struggling in the annual "what shall we do with all these courgettes" conundrum) merguez and saucisse, salads, and of course a couple of delicious tartes of the type you only find in France. There are no pics of this gorgeous evening: we were too busy eating, drinking delicious wine from the local vineyards - wine that will never make it to these shores because the locals keep it for themselves! and sharing news in a wierd mixture of Fr-english and We-nch as the non-French (the Husband, Blue & Pink), non-English (my French friend's father, one of her brothers in law etc) and non-Welsh speakers (everyone apart from Blue & Pink) in the company  all tried to make themselves understood...

We also had a wonderful meal with them at a restaurant in Tautavel (home of the oldest European man), 'le Petit Gris', a Catalan restaurant with a menu full of the fish and meat of the region. If you're in the area, I'd really recommend looking it out. Squid, rabbit, mussels, snails all featured heavily, as did goats cheese. It was all utterly delicious, eating on a covered terrace as the sun went down. Again, not many pics of the food, although I did sneak a couple of snaps of my dessert - fresh goats cheese topped with roasted almonds and local honey. Just divine...

And so now we're back home, the scent of Autumn replacing those of wild fennel and the baking Roussillon terre. One of the best holidays we've had.

Hope you've had a good summer too.