It is not advisable to do those two things back-to-back as a general rule but that occupied our time today. It was another beautiful day here in France (weather wise) with the temperature around 27 degrees C and virtually no wind.  After having the (now) usual continental breakfast we headed out late morning for a nearby vineyard and winery. It was only a 10 minute drive from Chateau de Sanse and was recommended to us by them as they get their house wine from them. It was called Chateau Font-Vidal (http://www.font-vidal.com/).  It is a family owned and operated winery that is 10 ha and produces 70000 bottles per year.  That is pretty small by Bordeaux standards where farms are around 100 ha.

The daughter (adult daughter) gave us a tour and her English had an English accent to it and we later discovered her significant other was English. She also later spoke English with a French accent for us and asked whether we found that ‘sexier’!  She was very entertaining and also interesting. She started the tour actually in the vineyards and told us how they plant, prune, trim & harvest the vineyards and grapes.  They basically do everything themselves and that means her father, brother & herself.  She also gave us a tour of their cellar but unfortunately I had to step out for about 30 minutes while I had a business telephone conference. From the laughter I could hear she clearly continued to entertain.

We then did some wine-tasting of their wines – a rose and two Bordeaux blends (in fact that is tautologous as all Bordeaux wines are blends). She then got the benefit of the fact that she had 18 people all wanting to take some souvenir from the winery home with them. I think it was well worth her late morning doing the tour for us.

We got back to the Chateau just in time to have some lunch before heading out canoeing. Unfortunately everyone had the same thought at the same time and so the kitchen was somewhat swamped and we only got our food at about 2:15pm and we needed to leave by 2:30pm to go canoeing. We had organised to go canoeing again but this time on the Dordogne River (http://www.canoe-fjep.org/crbst_11.html).  In typical French fashion they told us to pre-book and so we did and we arrived early for our 3pm booking but they were not organised and didn’t even have the canoes loaded up yet. We eventually left at about 3:35pm and they took us 8 kms upstream and we then paddled back to their base. There were 21 of us canoeing and so we split up into 10 doubles and Daniel (my one nephew) went by himself.

We did do some swapping of partners about a quarter of the way in to ensure everyone enjoyed the trip a little more and made it back the whole way. The river flows quite quickly and you can drift from time to time in quicker flowing water when you need a small break. The young guns pulled out ahead of everyone and then later started messing around (including have a few swims in the river) and they eventually brought up the rear at the end. The slower ones (who started out at the back) ended up finishing first by some distance. It was our modern version of the Hare and the Tortoise. Chloe and I pulled in first followed some distance behind us by Megan & Meryl (my cousin and my oldest sister) and then Helen & Megan (my wife and my niece). With the Temples everything is a contest and we put those young guns to shame (again).
(Update from Stephen: I would like to say that after every time we stopped to have a swim we always managed to catch up and pass the old people. The only reason we didn’t do that the last time we stopped was because we found a rope swing by the side of the river and decided that it was time for them to wait for us for a change, while we had some fun. Besides, my dad or one of my uncles would probably have broken the rope anyway.)

The paddle took longer than expected (around 2 hours) and so by the time we got back to the Chateau it was almost dinner time.  A quick change out of the wet clothes (some splashing happened on route) and we were back down for dinner. The usual 3 courses (main course was a choice of pork fillets or sea bream tonight). Tonight the canoe’ers felt that they deserved to eat whatever was brought because we had worked it off in advance of the dinner. After dinner it was some further reminiscing by my aunt & uncle (the oldest members of our group) followed by Melissa (my one niece). They were all good in their own unique way. My aunt had brought some photos of my Dad as a baby and child along with her.  It is amazing how my Dad looked exactly the same as a baby as he does today – no hair!

The evening was closed off by some card games and my Mom (granny) had to play Uno with all the female grandchildren.  She is a bit of a shark at Uno so I have no doubt she would have won. My sister had also organised to make playing cards with a picture of my parents on their wedding day on the back. Only problem is that I don’t think I could bring myself to play strip poker with Helen with those cards ….

Until tomorrow (when it is going to apparently be 35 degrees)

P, C (because she joined my on the winners podium of the canoeing), H (because she came in 3rd), S & M

We are still at Chateau de Sanse (http://www.chateaudesanse.com/en/index.html) and will be here for the next 4 days still. We have the whole Chateau to ourselves except that the restaurant is open for lunch during the day. Given we plan to generally be out for the day that is not really a big issue for us.  Breakfast was again a traditional continental breakfast. The coffee was so strong, I even thought it was strong – I think you could have stood a spoon upright in it.

We decided to go to Saint-Emilion today. It was about 20 miles from the Chateau (to the west). It is an amazing town and known for it’s wines (there are vineyards right in the town) and it’s architecture.  It is actually now a World Heritage Site (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/932) mainly because of the ruins which are interspersed throughout the town, some of which date back over 1000 years. The first vineyard was planted here in the 2nd century (no that was not a typo). It is clearly a very popular town to visit as there were a lot of people and very few open parking spaces.

You basically park on the outside of the town and then walk through the cobbled streets. I ended up with 8 ladies who were planning on shopping. The rest of the men went off by themselves to explore. Not sure why I chose to stay with the ladies (maybe it was guarding the credit card) but I did.  The funny thing was that there are lots of shops in Saint-Emilion but very few the ladies were interested in.  That is because I counted 32 wine shops – no not kidding – 32. And it is a really small town you can walk through in about 10 minutes if you walked non-stop. And those 32 wine shops pretty much don’t overlap in what they sell. They all sell wines from local vineyards and will ship to almost anywhere in the world (but they weren’t keen to ship to SA for some reason). Besides the 32 wine shops there was one chocolate shop, one clothing shop, one soap shop and that was about it. While the ladies were all in one of those 3 shops, I was browsing a wine shop. The owner came out and saw me with 8 ladies and said “Lucky man … one man with 8 ladies, a Frenchman’s dream”!

We never thought our whole group would agree on a lunch venue so when we split up we said do your own thing for lunch. The 9 of us decided though to go to the Creperie that we saw on the way in and fortunately they had free tables. As we entered we found my brother and the rest of his clan already there too. The French know how to make pancakes. Most of our table had sweet ones (apple with salted caramel sauce) but I had a savory one (ham, mozzarella & tomato). They were really excellent and not even that expensive.  After lunch we headed back to the Chateau to chill for the balance of the afternoon (and fortunately found that they had fixed the WiFi and I could post yesterday’s blog – even though it is VERY slow especially when 30 people are uploading photos onto Facebook).

Dinner tonight was at the Chateau restaurant and again the food was fantastic and the service was superb. After dinner we convened in the conference room for some reminiscing which tonight was done by Dawn (the chief bridesmaid at the wedding 50 years ago) and Megan (my cousin on my Mom’s side and their flower girl). That was followed by a game of family bingo – the bingo board being phrases my parent’s use, meaningful family names (like Petandalyn – which is a combination of my and my siblings names), places and other things that mark out the family. Everyone played and it was great fun to just relax and not have to do anything cerebral at all besides shout out Bingo when your board was filled.

Now (11:30pm) the majority of the cousins are down at the git playing games. Last night some of them (read boys) were up at 2am and 3am playing games and had it not been for me waking them up at 9:45am they would have missed breakfast this morning. Hopefully they will remember that tonight ….

P, H, S, M & C

My Dad had decided that 2 nights at Chateau de la Cote was all we needed.  It would enough to experience the charm of an old Chateau and that we could move to a slightly different area of Bordeaux – it was a good decision.  We were leaving behind the beauty of a large rambling garden and the vast sunflower fields which we could see from the Chateau.  The picture is from our window of our room and the house that you can see in the distance is the actually at the gate and is where the boys slept for the 2 nights (it is called the git in France).

We had to leave the Chateau by 11am and by around 10:45am everyone seemed ready to go. There was a lot of car trading taking place as cousins switched around. We ended up with my nephew and my two sons. We were moving to Chateau de Sanse which was only about 1 hour 15 minutes away. Check in time was only 3pm and so we had to kill some time on route. Everyone headed to do their own thing and we chose the non-motorway, non-toll route.  We headed to Bergerac and then followed the famous Dordogne River.

We decided to stop and buy some things for lunch and then have lunch somewhere along the river. At one town on route we found a Casino open. No, not the type you gamble at. This is a type of small supermarket. We went in and it was so poorly stocked and the bread looked like that it had been baked last year that we did a u-turn and headed out to find a better supermarket rather. Schoolboy error! What we forgot was that in France everything is closed on Sunday. Not for religious reasons, just because the French don’t want to work on Sundays (in fact I don’t think they want to work Monday-Saturday either if they could avoid it). So after trying another 10 or so villages we realised the error of our ways. We found a spot on the side of the Dordogne river and ate some fruit, crisps and drank a beer.  That was pretty much what we had available.

By this stage we reckoned we could try and check in and so headed for the Chateau.  It is called Chateau de Sanse and overlooks the vineyards in the valley below. The view is beautiful. We were the first car to arrive. Shortly after we had arrived the other people started trickling in. When my brother-in-law arrived they told us that they had almost run out of fuel. What they had not realised is that everything closes down on a Sunday (including the petrol stations). While they do have a facility to self-refuel using a credit card, they only take French issued credit cards. After desperately trying numerous stations and credit cards, my brother-in-law flagged down a passing cyclist. Fortunately he speaks French so using all the French he knows he explained the problem. She said she would cycle in front on them (by this stage there were 3 of our cars driving together) to the petrol station. She did that and then she used her French credit card and they repaid her in cash.  They have a video of them driving after her taken with their iPhone which I hope to link to the blog when WiFi connection is restored.  It is very funny. They were relieved.

Two of my uncles managed to get lost on route as well and one arrived at about 4:15 and the other at 5:15. I was having thoughts of them also running out of fuel! Fortunately they made it. As it was Sunday, we held a Sunday worship service in their conference centre. My parents had asked me to preach and so we made it a family affair – Stephen prayer, Michael & Chloe did the readings (Psalm 127 & 128) and Helen read the passages that I needed mid-sermon. I preached on the blessing of God and particularly related it to our family.  Just the fact that we are all in France to celebrate my parent’s 50th anniversary illustrates how blessed we are.

After the service we had dinner. The food was really excellent and the service was even better. They are very concerned that we enjoy ourselves and have a great experience. The owner/manager wants every detail just right for us and so he was concerned when one plate of food had gone back virtually untouched. He came to check whether we had not liked their food and was there anything they could do to improve. The reality was we have a few fussy eaters (and one very fussy one and that’s not me in case you’re wondering!) and the very fussy one had left it. In fact I had not planned to eat a starter (duck terrine) but when it came I tasted in and it was so good I ended up eating it all. I also had the best cheese we have had so far at the end of the meal. You really can’t go wrong with French cheese but these really were the cream of the cheese. After dinner we went for a walk down the road. It was a lovely still evening and it was a great day to finish off the day.

The service and overall experience here so far has been excellent. The only problem right now is that the WiFi is down and has not yet been restored (hence why the blog was not posted timeously). You will only get this post when the WiFi is restored ….

P, H, S, M & C

Last night (after I posted the blog) a massive storm moved past the Chateau.  Either that or it was a congregation of ghosts. As it was so hot the windows were all open (no aircon at the Chateau – it was built in 1640 and aircon had not been invented then yet). The wind however came up and howled around the building and through the room. It was so bad I had to actually close one set of windows because everything was been blown around. The young ladies (including Chloe) are all sleeping in the same room. They (this morning) recounted how scared the bunch of them were because of the slamming windows, creaking floor boards and carpets flapping. Add in the mix the lightening and you can see how they might have felt. All I was thinking about was that it was 1am and I wanted to sleep!

I was up at 6:15am this morning because a mosquito had decided to feed on me and the itching had become unbearable. Helen started stirring at about 8:15am and we went for breakfast at 9am. The staff were on insistent on getting our room number.  Not sure why given we are the only people staying here.  Force of habit probably.  Over breakfast we agreed on going canoeing in Brantome.

Brantome is the nearest village and is about 10 kms away. It is a typical picturesque French village and is surround by a river which does a circle around the centre of the village. There were 26 of us going the canoeing and after Piers (my brother-in-law) used his French to good effect to organise the 13 2-man canoes we got our life jackets on and started paddling. Helen and I went together.  It was amazing how easily every one paired up. We had the canoes for an hour and it only took about 15 minutes to paddle around the town so we then headed down the river and when we did get back we still had about 15 minutes left so we paddled around the town a second time (or at least Helen and I did and 1 other canoe – the others ditched early). It was quite hard work and I was really sweating by the time we finished.

We then walked into the town and found the only open Patisserie and bought all 10 of their remaining Ham sandwiches. We went back to the side of the river and split the sandwiches between the group (which had reduced somewhat by that stage thankfully otherwise it might have been like feeding the 5000 with 5 loaves).  Then finally we went back into the town centre for some ice creams for desert.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the Chateau. I managed to sneak in an hour of sleep and then watched the Bulls throw away their Super 15 semi final in the dying moments. This is one example of when I finished technology didn’t allow me to watch the game – I think I am scarred for life after watching them throw away that game!

As today is my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary (they were married on 27 July 1963), there was a formal banquet tonight to celebrate.  It was again held in the cellar of the hotel but this time was 4 courses interspersed with various items.  We presented my parents with a book containing wishes from many of their friends from around the globe and this was followed by my uncle singing the same hymn he sung at their wedding 50 years ago – Take time to be holy.  He was accompanied by my one niece (Kirsten on the flute). My other niece (the film maker from LA who recently got married) had cut my Dad’s 8mm films of their wedding and honeymoon and created two 5 minute movies. They were very well down and are a great documented history of more than just the wedding & honeymoon. I hope my children appreciated them as much as I did.  My parents actually said no gifts but their 4 children were all raised to have a mind of their own and so we simply ignored that.  We bought them a Dale Elliot painting (which I had carried over from SA with us).  We had especially commissioned it with Dale Elliot. It was a painting of the view from our family holiday home at Brenton-on-sea.

My uncle also did a speech and toast (it was billed as a toast only but he did an excellent speech too)! He was the bestman at the wedding 50 years ago and did the speech then too. He is really gifted at speaking and did a fantastic job – very humorous as well as sentimental and reminiscing.  And of course there was lots of good food and wine (this is France of course!). Duck was on the menu again but so was guinea fowl.  We finished up the evening at about 11:30pm only after having started dinner at 7:30pm. It really was again a most enjoyable evening catching up with the wider family.

Now it is off to bed and hopefully a better night sleep (though it is still quite warm and no wind at all it seems tonight).

P, H, S, M & C

Last night there was a big thunderstorm in Bordeaux but it did nothing to cool things down. It was both hot and humid when we out at 8:30am to pick up the rental car. It was an absolute breeze picking up the car from Hertz (I am a loyal Hertz customer and they generally give very good service worldwide).  Back to the hotel for breakfast with the family. Novotel hotels pride themselves on keeping staffing to minimal and so the breakfast is pretty much self-service. You could have eggs if you wanted but you had to cook them for yourself. Not kidding – a frying pan and hot plate supplied. We stuck to the continental option which (being in France) included some very good cheese.  In France I think it is impossible to eat too much cheese and it is certainly impossible to find bad cheese.

After breakfast we navigated to the nearest shopping centre to get some essential items (like beers, cooldrink, etc) and more importantly to buy some French pre-paid SIM cards. We found an Orange (French cellphone provider) shop at the centre but it became very clear very quickly that it was going to be a long process to get 5 SIM cards activated. I left Helen to do that it of the arranging while I headed with the kids into Carrefour.  It is a supermarket chain in France. It was a massive superstore (similar to Walmart) but the big difference is that it is totally disorganised.  It seems that they randomly scattered aisles throughout the store. There was an aisles of bikes in between the food aisles even.  By the time we had finished doing the shop, Helen was still going on making payments for the SIM cards.  They insisted that each card must be paid for separately so that involved 5 separate payments.

We then headed out on the road to Brantome where the Chateau (http://chateaudelacote.com/) is located that we are spending the next 2 nights.  It was pretty straightforward with the GPS giving sensible directions for 95% of the route except for one section where it took my down a very small country road to cut off a corner of the main road. We stopped at Perigueux at the Inter Marche (another supermarket) to buy some lunch. It was Friday lunchtime and we were the only people in the supermarket. Not kidding – not one other customer was to be seen. Clearly not the time to shop in Perigueux.  And in case you’re wondering it was a decent sized supermarket. Only 1 till point open but then why would you need more with only one customer?!

We stopped on the side of the road to eat our purchased lunch of a baguette, brie, smoked salmon and parma ham. You simply can’t beat a lunch of that nature in France.  It brought back memories from our trip to France last year. Only difference was that it wasn’t 30 degrees when we were here last here (it was pouring with rain). There was even a toilet at the picnic spot we chose randomly.  Only problem is toilets on the continent are not always what you expect (see pic).  We were only 30 minutes away from the Chateau after eating lunch and we arrived at about 2:45pm. We have the whole Chateau booked for the next 2 days.  My sister (who has done a lot of the organising – well done Lynne) was already at the Chateau but we were the next to arrive. Shortly after us everyone started to arrive and by about 3:30pm everyone except 4 people had arrived.

It was so hot that I was drenched with sweat from carrying luggage up the stairs. Sitting outside is slightly better than inside because you at least get the effect of the breeze. Helen and I still managed to drink a litre bottle of water in about 10 minutes. I have never tasted such good water! There was a welcome tea at 4pm (of cake and juice – no one would want tea at 30 degrees).  Everybody just sat around catching up.  Some people headed for the swimming pool. There are about 33 people staying over night but at the dinner tonight there were 43 people as some of the wider family are also here to join in the celebrations but they are staying in the nearby town (Brantome).

The dinner tonight was in the cellar which is definitely the coolest place in the Chateau at the moment. We all had to chose our meals about a week ago so that the kitchen staff could cope with us eating at the same time. Basically the choices (for both starter and main) were duck & salmon. This is a major duck farming area and so we have duck on the menu for almost every meal. Fortunately I like duck and so do the family. And washed down with a good Bergerac wine from the region and you can’t really go wrong. Add in good family company, some reminiscing and comparing notes on children raising (or more especially the art of raising teenagers and how they manage to consume internet bandwidth) and you have a very enjoyable evening.  And we have another six of them to come!

More tomorrow ….

P, H, S, M & C

We are back at the traveling thing again but this time for my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary celebrations.  They chose to invite the whole family (and original wedding party) to France (Bordeaux region) to join them in the celebration.  So last night we left Cape Town on the KLM flight for Amsterdam. It really isn’t the most convenient flight to take as it leaves at 11:20pm. After you take off they still try to serve you dinner and all you want to do is go to sleep.  The family was split this trip with 3 of us traveling upfront and the other 2 at the back. It was pretty full in the back except Michael had the seat next to him free (probably the only free seat in economy).  Michael did suggest that the way to get a few more empty seats next to him was to start scratching and say loudly “Wow but this eczema is really itchy tonight”.  I suggested he could also stand up and say loudly “Did you hear those voices or were they just in my head?”.  Those two in combination might clear a few seats around him.

If you regularly read this blog when we travel you will know that I travel a lot overseas and so I have a fair base for comparing airlines.  On the ‘Peter measure’ for airlines KLM is at the bottom.  The seats were terrible. They were the type of seats that other airlines had in the 70s and 80s.  Whoever designed them should be sent to do dyke watching – on second thoughts the whole of the Netherlands might be flooded shortly after that if he/she’s chair design is anything to go by). While admittedly I did not eat dinner (as I was trying to sleep), the breakfast was appalling.  It said ‘Poached egg with bearnaise sauce on bacon on an English muffin’. Something must have been lost in translation because it was really ‘A hard yellow round thing on top of some ham on an English muffin’.  No sauce could be seen anywhere. And if that was a poached egg I would hate to see the chicken that produced that egg.  I got some sleep but it was very uncomfortable and I now think I need physical therapy to recover from all the pains that seat gave me during the night.

We landed just before 11am.  I think we actually landed in Belgium and taxied to Amsterdam – it took us about 15 minutes.  Then they couldn’t get the airbridge positioned against the door and that took another 15 minutes (thought that sort of thing only happened in Africa).  Once we were finally off we discovered our connecting flight was leaving from B2 and we had arrived at F6.  Those two points are about the farthest apart you can get at Amsterdam airport. Fortunately we had lots of time because the connecting flight was only at 14:25.  Schiphol is a sophisticated airport including free WiFi.  We found a spot for drinks and then lunch. I had a baby chicken (yes Janet – a whole one and I thought of you and wanted to take a photo to send to you) with fries. It was the best airport food I have ever had (seriously). Helen had barbecue sausages and potato bake (and you wouldn’t believe the size of the portion she got).

The flight from Amsterdam to Bordeaux was uneventful and exactly on time. We saw them load our bags onto the plane so we at least knew they had made it too. We landed at around 4pm.  Bordeaux airport looks like it was stuck in the 1960s. They clearly haven’t considered doing any work on it since then.  Once we had our luggage we found the hotel board and called them to send the shuttle to collect us.  We are staying at an airport hotel – Novotel (http://www.novotel.com/gb/hotel-0402-novotel-bordeaux-aeroport/index.shtml) – nothing fancy but perfectly adequate for the one night. We were all quite tired from 19 hours of travel and so decided to chill in the hotel (read: get connected to free hotel WiFi and catch up on Facebook, Whatsapp, email etc). We had dinner at the hotel – sitting in the garden – sun out, about 30 degrees, no wind.

At about 10pm the noisy group arrived from London. There was a large group of them on the flight including my parents, my brother and his family (they make a party by themselves), my uncle & aunt, one cousin and one longstanding family friend.  Some of our family had never met some of these family members or had last seen them 17 years ago.  So it was quite a rowdy reconnection and introductions in the foyer of the hotel. They dumped their luggage down and then were back for drinks at the hotel bar and a general catch up until sleepiness finally caught up. There are 18 people staying here tonight at the hotel. That is about half the entire group.  We all meet up (assuming everyone’s flights work out ok) tomorrow.

Until then …

P, H, S, M, C