Sunday, April 24, 2011

Blogging break

With that little blogging hiatus so much has been missed out and not recorded. Paddy's visit, Steve's gliding, Bouillon Castle, Waterloo, various day trips, including one to the UK, meeting new people, visitors from Canada, a couple of parties, long hikes, lunches with friends, cooking and baking... and lots more I can't think of off the top of my head.

Not that this pretends to be a complete record of what we get up to anyway- that would be impossible of course. There is so much that goes on, all the little things... Life is just full of little moments, many of them so special.

I'm vowing to get back on top of the blogging. We just received our 2010 book blog in the post and it was a timely reminder to get back up to date. So here's to more regular posts. Watch this space.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

We're off to Corsica - Day 1

Our road trip to Corsica was fast approaching but we still hadn’t managed to sit down and decide anything other than the overall destination, let alone make any reservations. The day before departure I dropped in on a friend whose last posting was to Corsica and borrowed a few maps and a French guidebook. She strongly recommended booking the ferry at least and also talked me round the island listing a few “must sees”. So on Friday night we booked a ferry from Nice leaving on Monday at 12.30pm.

Day 1

We set off at 2.30 in the afternoon on Saturday. A couple of hours later than we hoped but given that we hadn’t had a lot of time to put much thought into the trip let alone actually pack, we needed all morning just to get sorted. Steve has been working very long days recently and sometimes we’ve gone a few days without really speaking to each other, leaving for work before dawn and coming home around 9.30. The car was finally packed with the essentials plus a whole lot more. Tent, bedding, clothing, big buggy, maps, guides, snacks, beach “stuff”, camera… The plan is to camp if we feel like it, find a B&B if we feel like it, go walking if we feel like it. Basically to just fly by the seat of our pants and do whatever we feel like.

So we headed south. I checked the maps for potential places to stop the night but we pushed on all the way to St-Martin de l’Ardeche. I have wanted to go to the Ardeche since I first thought about doing a canoe camping survival course there when I was about 17.

We arrived at midnight, rattled the gates on a couple of campsites to no avail and then finally fell into a hotel room in the centre of the village.