I’m now in the process of playing ‘catch-up’, so the next number of posts will be from July when my daughter, Amy,  and her husband, Damien, visited from New Zealand. Having made the long flight from New Zealand and Australia to Europe several times, I know exactly what a long, long flight this is and if you add up the door-to-door time, it is about 30+ hours. I drove to Paris to meet them and then brought them home to the Deux-Sèvres the next day.  Arriving from their winter to our hot weather was rather nice for them (initially)!

An absolute ‘must’ on the local tourist trail has to be Verteuil-sur-Charente, with the impressive chateau in a perfect, fairytale setting.

Nearby is the small picturesque village of Nanteuil-en-Vallée, with it’s stone and timber houses and 8th century Benedictine abbey. We stopped for lunch in the main village square and due to it being at the late end of lunch we couldn’t choose what we wanted, but had to have the plat du jour which was totally to my liking, but a bit of a challenge for Amy and Damien in as much as it was a blue cheese salad, (neither of them like blue cheese) and roast pork (not a favourite for Amy) which had so much flavour it was like tasting a new meat for the first time…absolutely delicious. The chocolate dessert was delectable and so rich and scrummy, and we all lapped it up, leaving very clean plates!

There’s plenty more to see and do. Come back again soon.

A Bientôt!