We were last up at 10am. There was a lovely breakfast to eat with several sorts of bread and croissants and nice coffee, peach, apricot and almond jam and a useful bread board with a removable grid on top. Gary the Cat (now called the chat magique) had mysteriously been in the house in the morning even though everyone's windows and all the doors had been shut against the wind. I helped Claire and Mairead to wash and clean up and tried to have a French conversation about schools in France and England and America. My French could be worse for sure but is quite depressingly slow and inaccurate especially the verbs and I can't think of the words and don't understand what people are saying either. I should get my act together and have some more lessons I think.
We all popped to the nearby beach and the boys and Paul jumped some waves but it wasn't very sunny and I wasn't enticed in. Next time.
P and I did some washing in a little top loader in Mairead's room, and bravely hung it up in the garden where Claire's dog Twix desperately and almost aggressively wanted to play with us. While we were hanging it up afterwards we had a chat with Manette about her art work, she is designing the 3 stained glass windows for a chapel in a local manor house. They are all Normandy greys and yellows, there is a diamond pattern all over with a disc near the top with a different image on each one of the holy family, also in yellows and greys. Very lovely. The windows in our room are also her stained glass, of pink and blue roses.
We all had lunch together courtesy of Manette, chicken or lamb with couscous and veggies. Followed by an amazing cheese platter such as would only appear in a very nice restaurant back home, and a pichette(?) which is white cheese with demerara sugar on it, similar to what we had in the ibis hotel.
We headed out to a beach on the opposite side of the spit of land. P rode the motorbike and Yves wore my gear and went on the back. He was a bit nervous about not having a box behind him to lean on but got there safely. The sea was really far out and we went for a long walk while Claire read her book and the boys payed footy. I found some nice shells, we got rained on a little bit and we watched some cockle pickers and even had a go ourselves. You have to rake the top of the sand and when you feel something scrape on the prongs you take a look and hopefully find a cockle. If it's too small you leave it for another time. It's the kind of place with very flat sand where you can easily get caught out by the very fast incoming tide, and they have a helicopter overhead to check nobody gets stuck on a sand bar.
In the late afternoon we came back, Ronan riding on the back of the motorbike this time, and all got back safely. We had a nice cup of proper tea with Claire and Mairead, and P and I went to a nearby hotel to check in as it's too stressful for Manette having so many people in the house. It's lovely staying in the house actually but I feel a bit awkward about it, like we have invited ourselves and don't really belong. I'm not sure whether to make myself scarce or make myself very obvious and try to be more proactive.
Then it was time to hit the nearby beach again and jump some waves. I got ready abs psyched up to join in and we also met Manuelle, Francois' cousin and her family (P and I have been to their house in London before so know them already) and some of their friends. We all got in to play in the waves but they turned out to be really fierce and kept pushing us over, scrapping bits of us on the pebbly, shelly same and were so close together it was almost impossible to even stand up and wipe your eyes before getting knocked over again. P got some go pro footage but a lot of it under the water or of people vanishing beneath the waves, plus a shot of Mairead having a swimming costume malfunction. We had to get out before too long because it was too dangerous.
By the time we for home it was already pretty late for French dinnertime so the kids showered and P, Mairead and I had a rosé in the lean to on the side of the house which is nice and warm, then the kids ate and we showered, covering the entire bathroom in sand and pebbles which were everywhere inside or swimsuits, the we went out to a tapas bar nearby. It was so busy we had to wait an hour for a table by which time it was 10.30 but we still polished off 2 bottles of wine, a massive plate of charcuterie and a burger each. It was a nice chatty, friendly evening.
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