Adventure in Normandie

On our last Normandie day we took a trip to a nearby Abbey. It’s almost directly across from us on the other side of river opposite the next village Bardouville. We couldn’t take our local ferry as it was closed for a ‘security inspection’ so we had to drive 10 minutes further to take another ferry. All the ferries are closed tomorrow for 1 May Labour Day, which is taken very seriously in France. Luckily we don’t need to take the ferry to drive to Paris tomorrow.

The Abbey was begun in 1113 and took 30 years to build. It was during an era when many abbeys were springing up along the river. It was built over a pagan temple and so has been an important site for a long time. It suffered during the 100 years war and the French revolution eventually saw it delisted as an Abbey. The wonderful gardens even became farmland for a while. In the 1990s a big renovation project began to rebuild the gardens and renovate the buildings.

Some carvings had been replaced but a lot were very intricate and expressive.

Whenever I come to the farmhouse there are always 101 different little jobs I could do and there is never enough time for them all. My previous research indicates the house is probably 200-300 years old. It has been mended along the way and of course had a serious modernisation starting in 2017.

This visit we did a range fiddly tasks as well as a lot of painting and also attempting some mud wall repairs.

Most of the house walls are covered in plaster so you can’t see the mud and hay mix but the shed is much less maintained and you can see a collection of different styles and old fillers like bricks and wood. The mud mixture is called torchis in french. To make the torchis, first you have to dig up some clay from the garden. Then you soak it in the wheelbarrow to form a sludge.

Once the clay forms a soup I added it to the cut flax. You can use hay but have to ensure it’s very fine pieces or they suggested using flax which was already in small pieces. Luckily we found a bale of flax at the garden shop.

There is a bit of an art to getting the right consistency of mud, water and flax. Early mixes were too wet and took a long time to dry. If the mix was too dry it didn’t stick. Eventually I found the goldilocks formula.

Another fiddly job was to cover the gaps at the end of the floor boards on the second floor. Dad spent many hours cutting exactly the right shapes and then finishing it off with a type of skirting.

Scott also spent time on a fiddly job to fill some gaps and finish off the top step.

We did a lot of painting to ensure all the wooden beams had a new coat of ‘dark oak’. We couldn’t do the back or left side as even with the tall new ladder we couldn’t reach.

Mum spent hours in a fiddly job to protect the armrests of my favourite Louis XIV chairs that were showing their age.

We have seen so many new spring baby animals, along with lots of our favourite cows. The farmers have been busy long into the night preparing fields for planting.

I couldn’t help planting a few new plants, a few flowers and 4 new rose bushes. Not everything survives the year without much care but lavender, rosemary and roses seem to do well.

A moving Anzac Day amid the graves of the fallen of the First World War. Dawn Service was at Polygon Wood where Australians took the wood in September 1917 and where sadly, many are buried who did not survive the battle.

It was lovely to meet old friends and colleagues from when I worked here and especially from when we held the centenary ceremony here in 2017. The event is organised by the local Zonnebeke community.

It was a foggy, cool morning which added to the atmospheric ambiance.

The second ceremony was at Tyne Cot cemetery, the largest Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in the world. This was also organised by a local Zonnebeke association. The cemetery is on the opposite side of Zonnebeke village from Polygon Wood and the battle there was called Broodseinde ridge in October 1917.

The third ceremony was under the Menin gate at 11am, a special ceremony for Anzac Day.

After the Menin Gate we walked to the Belgian memorial past the Cloth hall for a short wreath laying ceremony.

The last ceremony of the day was the regular Last Post ceremony at 8pm. We decided to lay a wreath for two names we know on the wall, one of which is my dear friend Skye’s relative.

I was also able to catch up with my dear friend Lea who was busy supporting the Ambassador and military representatives at the ceremonies.

It was a truly lovely experience to be back in Ieper and to commemorate Anzac Day surrounded by the fallen of the First World War. All of the speeches touched on the friendship between Australia, New Zealand and Belgium and mentioned that the work of maintaining relationships and peace is ongoing and not always easy, but is essential. The various speeches also touched on the current uncertainty in world events, drawing parallels to the First World War. They emphasised friendship and solidarity as the cornerstone to ensuring we don’t repeat errors of the past.

We ended the day with a few beers with the Last Post buglers who are truly amazing and dedicated men. Their daily act of remembrance is an inspiration to us all. They all have busy family lives and work and yet they make this enormous commitment to remembering the sacrifice of our dead.

It was a great Anzac Day. Lest we forget.

Here in Belgium there are several communities that commemorate Anzac Day. Over time they have separated out the events so they are not all on 25 April. Today on Anzac Day eve we attended a lovely ceremony at Toronto Avenue cemetery. This is located in the french speaking part of Belgium in the commune of Comines Warneton. This is just down from the town of Messines. In June 2017, Australian soldiers took part in the battle of Messines. Below the ridge is the Ploegsteert forest and in a little corner is the Toronto Avenue cemetery. Here lie 78 soldiers of the Australian 9th brigade. It is the only all Australian cemetery in Belgium. Four of these soldiers were teenagers, two have no name and one comes from Port Augusta in SA. Australia and New Zealand won the ridge but at a very high human cost.

The local association led by passionate President Francois organised the ceremony. I worked closely with him on the Ploegsteert interpretive centre which is just nearby.

In our part of Normandie, along the river, there is the route des fruits, the fruit route. There are many, many apple orchards and also other fruit. There are also crops of canola, wheat, sunflowers and more and many cows for dairy and meat. It is so green, vibrantly green. A colour we see for such a short time in South Australia in our winter. The long grass is lush and it feels so alive with birds chirping and the sun shining and a light breeze.

Another key local industry is alluvial sand and gravel mining. Today on our walk we saw some amorous donkeys and some angry cows!

We saw a farmer bringing in the cows and calves to a new paddock in a trailer. We don’t know why these two weren’t getting along but no doubt it was something to do with their children.

It’s always a lovely time to visit Paris but spring is particularly nice. We just went for a short visit to catch up with friends and collect my parents from the airport.

I always enjoy the Haussmann style buildings which are so emblematic of Paris. I was reading recently that to create these lovely avenues and buildings they knocked down lots of poorer and older sections of Paris and basically left those people homeless. Haussmann ran out of time to finish on the left bank which is why there are still lots of smaller streets around St Michel.

We stayed just near the kids old school and it was the last day of term. We were just working out the car parking and a friendly lady walked past and asked if we needed help!

We walked around some familiar places. The grass on the champ de mars was still having its ‘winter rest’ so you can’t walk on it. We noticed quite a few new coffee places more in the Australian style and a few new dog toy shops!

It’s always a great pleasure to catch up with friends and we had some lovely dinners and lunches during our short visit.

Still no drop in petrol prices and people are getting cranky. It’s about 1.95€ per litre. The news is full of the Middle East crisis.

Stopped off at a chateau on the way home.

It has lots of furniture, clothing and items from the local areas and is only a few kilometres from the village that inspired Madame Bovary. I had visited a few years ago but it was new for the others.

It was a cool and windy day with pockets of sunshine in Porto. We took the metro across the Luis I bridge and then down to the river level via the cable car.

We went for another port tasting at Ramos Pinto. Most port houses are owned by the British as there was a deal done a few hundred years back to raise some money for Portugal and they sold them off.

We went into the amazingly decorated St Francis church which is UNESCO world heritage listed. There was a lot of gold.

We went on a lovely food and wine walking tour of Porto with a knowledgeable and interesting guide. Porto, and Portugal more widely, has had a really strong mark on history. From explorers discovering the world, trade that brought products all around the world, influences on language and food the Portuguese have had a mark on the world.

Traditionally you add cinnamon to your pastel de nata which I quite liked.

The covered market was amazing and very busy on Saturday. There was fruit and veg but also lovely charcuterie, cheeses, olive oils and more. We tasted some delicious goats, cow and sheep cheese along with a wine called Green Wine which is slightly fizzy. It’s not coloured green but called that as it’s an early picked variety.

The bifana was delicious, the meat is slow cooked in a special sauce which is a little spicy. Apparently, the Portuguese actually influenced the creation of curry from their time establishing Goa in India and invented the vindaloo!

We also tasted some cod fish fried in a batter and a yummy chicken and game bird sausage, with watery rice.

Apparently JK Rowling lived in Porto and was influenced by things she saw in Porto and put them in her books. This fountain looks like the Gryfindor creatures. University students in Porto wear black capes! We even saw some. She also used the little house in the photo below.

The reason behind the tiny house between the churches was to separate them to avoid some law, the story is a little vague. We also walked past a famous bookstore that looks very Harry Potter-esque and inspired JK Rowling. The line was long though so we didn’t get in.

A little flight down to Portugal is giving us an experience of Porto. We had an easy ride in on the metro, especially after some nice young woman gave us two spare metro tickets at the airport! A warm sunny afternoon greeted us as we strolled around.

There are a few hills, so it’s very up and down walking around. It just means we can eat more pastel de nata ( or other pastries)! All the prices seem pretty reasonable.

We poked our head into a few shops to discover some mid season sales! This display was demonstrating the excellent quality of the waterproof material!

The weather continued to be lovely today. We went for a lovely walk amongst the apple orchards and did a bit more gardening. We tried to order some construction wood for the next project but were defeated by poor logistics at the hardware company.

We got a bit creative about creating a fire pit in the garden with some old pavers. Can’t wait to test it out!

After all the work we deserved a treat. 😁

It’s fun to see all the robot lawmowers around. I wouldn’t mind getting one but not sure if it would cope with all the mole hills.

Listening to the news today and it seems like France is expecting a reduction in petrol prices soon with the news of a ceasefire in the Middle East. Although people are complaining that the price went up quickly but is coming down slowly. The war is all over the the news and they are also worried about stagflation and a possible recession. Another common theme with Australia are daily stories about the rise of AI.