Weekends in the Big Smoke

11 Mar 2018 1 Comment

by Carole Gardiner in 50 Fabulous things Tags: , , , , , , ,

 

The year 2017 didn’t just bring a landmark birthday for me, Selena was also fabulous at 50 and Deb was sensational at 60. So with our collective age of 160 years we decided to challenge ourselves by climbing over the O2 in Greenwich.

Trussed up in our harnesses and wearing our special boots we hooked ourselves up to the central rail and began the very steep climb to the summit on what resembled a ridged blue groundsheet. Luckily our boots had a sole that seemed to cling to the walkway. But oh boy wasn’t it worth it ……The views were amazing and we had 20 minutes to enjoy them, take photos and mainly to recover from the effort needed to get up there. Getting back down was a challenge as it was so steep there was a special knack of walking either backwards or sideways. If we were in any doubt of our advancing age it was confirmed when I referred to the O2 as the Millennium Dome, I was faced by a blank stare from a young lady selling tickets who was clearly not even born when it was last called that.

 

The following day we had a lovely time looking around Kensington Palace, Diana’s dresses and memorial gardens. We had the most fabulous time all weekend celebrating our special birthdays.

kesington palace

 

 

My other London weekend jolly was with my lovely friend Bev. We took advantage of some free audience tickets from Applause Store to watch Jimmy Carr’s Your face or Mine.

We travelled up the day before the show so we could have a mooch around,but not before we had a bottomless prosecco lunch at the London Grind on London Bridge. We got an hour and a half to drink as much prosecco as we liked to wash down some lovely food. Our dinner was not quite so classy as we left it too late to find a place still serving food, so we ended up sat in our pyjamas eating Burger King and drinking some more bubbles out of our hotel tooth mugs!

Fortified by breakfast we made our way to the London ITV Studios for the filming, it was so funny. A fabulous way to spend cherished time with a very good friend.

 

There and back again

18 Feb 2018 1 Comment

by Carole Gardiner in 50 Fabulous things Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

In my fabulous at 50 year I had two trips to Europe. The first was as a result of a “use it or lose it” annual leave week and a Ryanair sale. The second was due to a very generous birthday present from my fabulous friend Annette.

My mum and I set off for Venice in January with our cheap as chips flights and stayed in a lovely hotel (another bargain). We also paid a visit to Verona by train and had a fabulous time. I’m not to going to write about the sights we saw and the famous places we visited as there are many other blogs online that do them better justice. I just want to offer a little advice to anyone heading to this wonderful city. Any map that you get with a guide book will not prepare you for finding your way around, there are many tiny side streets, lanes and dead ends to get lost in. Round every corner there is a piazza and bridge that you aren’t expecting. I would suggest either chalk or string to guide your way back to your hotel!

Also if you visit Verona from Venice remember that there are roads with cars to get across, it’s easy to forget after spending time on water boats and trotting around the streets and bridges of Venice.

 

In September, with my friends Bev and Deb, I jetted off to France to spend the week at Rural Gites Chadenne halfway between Bergerac and Bordeaux. This amazing holiday home is owned by my very lovely friend and ex colleague Annette and I couldn’t believe it when she offered me the week as a birthday present.

Our biggest challenge was finding our way from the airport to the gite, we circled and went through Bergerac a couple times before managing to find the road we needed to be on. It just got worse once we found the forest that was hiding our final destination.

Getting lost became a theme of the whole holiday. We didn’t seem to have trouble finding places, it was coming back and locating the gite that seemed to be impossible for us to do! But anyone who knows me knows that I get lost in my own city!

Despite our apparent lack of sense of direction we did manage to get out and about quite a bit and visited Saint Emilion and Aubeterre Sur Dronne all by ourselves. But our most successful trips were with our lovely host to Issigeac and Sainte Foy La Grande for the markets and lunch. We made it there and back again in record time with no detours and unplanned excursions.

I can’t recommend Rural Gites enough, it’s in the most wonderful location in Saint Barthelemy de Bellegarde. Annette is most attentive, kind and generous host.

We had a fabulous time and I won’t forget it for a long time.

aubeterrebathroom chadennechadenne 2chadenne 4chadenneout with annettesan emilion

L’experience

17 Aug 2015 2 Comments

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,

I procrastinated so much about whether to do the Workaway holiday. As with many new experiences I didn’t know what to expect and even right up to when I boarded the plane I wondered if I was doing the right thing. But as soon as I landed in Limoges I knew I made the right decision and couldn’t wait to start my adventure.

I had the most amazing host in Susie, she is funny, witty and very kind. She had many funny stories to tell about her adventures in Morocco and in France and kept us laughing well into the night.

I met lots of new friends including my fellow Workawayers Karet and Karla, a lovely family from Australia and a couple who ran a cattery in the middle of nowhere. Also met lots of lovely customers in the tea shop and guest house.

Compared with my usual nursing career the work can hardly be described as taxing, there was plenty of opportunity to sit and relax in the sun and explore the local area.

I will definitely do it again, it’s a fantastic way to meet new people, have a cheap holiday and experience something new.

team pongo

De nager ou de ne pas nager

17 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

Or……. to swim or not to swim for the non French speakers.

While I was on my Workaway adventure the weather was glorious and very very hot, which was lovely but I was at least 2 hours from the coast. My only option for cooling off was lake swimming.

I’ve always been nervous about swimming in lakes since I watched a programme as a child when someone got caught up in a load of reeds and drowned. Also nasties such as eels and leeches lurk in lakes ready to feast on unsuspecting bathers.

So I wasn’t that enthusiastic when Susie, my host, suggested a dip in a lake in La Souterraine, the next nearest town, but I was so hot and bothered I was prepared to be brave and give it a go.

I needn’t have worried, the lake at La Plage Suisse was man-made with sand on the bottom and not a bit of vegetation or creepy swimming things. The experience was so enjoyable that we went back quite a few times and even branched out further afield.

In nearby Gueret there is another artificial lake called Courtille Lake, which is considerably bigger than the lake at La Souterraine. There was a lot more going on such as sailing, giant water floats, canoeing and other water based fun! The grounds around the lake are perfect for walking, cycling and running. This, however, was much more than I was prepared to do in the sweltering heat and I spent the afternoon dozing under a tree!

swimming

La Chambre d’Hote

14 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

Susie decided to turn the main house into a bed and breakfast after she bought the smaller property next to the tea shop. She named the house La Bourge which in French means a lady who has to dress with everything matching; shoes, hat, bag and hat!

It’s a beautiful, traditional french house with 3 very tastefully decorated guest rooms and an attic converted into a studio that sleeps 4 people. While I was there only the guest rooms were being used and we had a steady stream of guests. They were mainly French couples and families travelling from the north to the south for their holidays and breaking their journeys in the village. Although we did have a lovely couple from South Africa who were touring Europe.

The main job in the guest house was serving breakfast and then cleaning, changing the beds and getting ready for the next visitors. At one point I considered changing my name to Widow Twanky as I washed and dried so much bedding!

Anyone visiting La Bourge is guaranteed a very warm welcome and great hospitality in a gorgeous house by a fabulous host.

Have a look at the website: http://www.chezlabourge.com, and if you are lucky enough to stay there check out the beautiful tiling on the ground floors.

sitting room the blue room the cream room the grey room

Le Salon de The

14 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The little tea shop in Le Grand Bourg I worked in is called Time for Tea, it is sandwiched between the guest house and Susie’s house. It is decked out in 1950’s vintage splendor from the cabinets to the Formica tables.

It’s open from Wednesday to Sunday between the hours of 12 and 5. The delicious lunches on offer are soup with homemade bread followed by the tart of the day with 2 salads. The tarts come in many variations such as Spanish tortilla, vegetable terrine and spicy pizza, I made quite a nice spinach tortilla which seemed to go well. My savoury muffins, however, weren’t such a great success and could have been used as a weapon when they went extremely hard after a couple of days! But I redeemed myself a few days later with a tomato and mozzarella bread straight out of the pages of Paul Hollywood’s baking bible.

For afternoon tea the customers can choose from the good old fruit scone and a variety of yummy cakes. I’m not really much of a baker but I did manage to knock up a decent coffee and walnut cake. Of course all these goodies are washed down with copious amounts of tea.

Most of the customers in the tea shop are British people who have houses in the area, although we did have a few French customers on my first weekend as there was an open garden event going on. I think only the Brits truly appreciate a lovely cuppa in the sweltering heat, although I did manage to convert my fellow Workawayer, Karet from Estonia, to my way of thinking that it’s never too hot to drink tea!

cake display formica heaven le salon de the my walnut cake the bread vintage cabinets

l’emplacement

10 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , ,

The tea shop and bed and breakfast were situated in a village called Le Grand Bourg, but it should have been called Le Petit Bourg because it wasn’t the biggest of places. Apart from a few restaurants, a hairdressers, pharmacy and a bakery there wasn’t a lot going on. But there was something peculiar about the place that I never seen anywhere else on my travels. Around the village were very freaky looking manikins dressed up in various outfits and in different poses.

bag lady boules man confused corpse bride family gathering french boyfriend get knitted grizzly adams just freaky just wierd paper man poker face pot stealer tour de france

I’m not sure what they were supposed to represent but they were definitely nightmare inducing up close.

Le voyage commence

23 Jul 2015 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

After a very early start and a ride to the airport with a very nosy taxi driver, I was soon jetting off to Limoges. An hour and half flight time later I landed in one of the smallest airports I’ve ever been to. Another taxi ride, this time with a very quiet driver took me to Limoges train station to continue my journey to La Souterraine. My internet search told me there might be a bus from the station that would take me to Le Grand Bourg, but as it only ran four times a week it would have been too optimistic to hope that Friday would be my lucky bus day. My host, Susie, very kindly picked me up.

Susie is a Brit and she owns the Tea shop, the bed and breakfast and the house next door. The other members of the family are; Pongo the dog she adopted while living in Morocco, Tripod the three legged cat, while she was a kitten a dog, (not Pongo), mistook her for a toy and bit off her leg, then there’s Colin the tabby cat with an identity disorder, he and Pongo think they are Yorkshire Terriers as they only eat dry food made especially for that breed.

There was another Workawayer here, Karet a French language student from Estonia. She had already been working for two weeks and had another two weeks to go.

My room was small and perfectly formed and I knew instantly I would be happy.

pongo tripod 20150709_214238

En Vacance

20 Jul 2015 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

When a person finds themselves single again there is always the dilemma of what to do for a summer holiday. A lot of my friends are married with younger children or in relationships. My sons are adults now and certainly do not want to spend a couple of weeks in a foreign land with their old mum. I’m not really a lying in the sun kind of person and definitely wouldn’t want to do that on my own.

So having scoured the internet for ideas for holidays for billy no mates I found a site called Workaway. In return for 5 hours of work a day, 5 days a week, (on average), a host will provide accommodation and food. There are hosts in a variety of settings offering all kinds of work worldwide. As this was my first adventure I decided to stay close-ish to home and look for a placement in France.

Imagine my delight as I found a vintage tea shop in the Limousin region in a small town called Le Grand Bourg. My joy continued when I discovered that I could fly directly there from Bristol.

According to the site, the work included baking cakes and bread, serving customers and helping out in the bed and breakfast attached to the tea shop. As none of this sounded too taxing I booked myself in.

The next few posts will tell the story of my grand adventure en Francais.

workaway

Where were you when……(No 2)

11 Sep 2012 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

On this day in 2001 the Twin Towers in Manhattan were struck by airplanes hijacked by terrorists.

When it happened I was in the middle of a run of night shifts. I would normally have still been in the land of nod at the time that the first airplane ploughed into the North Tower, but for some reason I can’t explain, I got up early from my slumber and turned on the TV just as the second airplane crashed into the South Tower.

My first thought was I was watching an afternoon ‘made for TV’ movie, it wasn’t until the monitor switched to a news reader did I realise that the images were real.

At that time I had already booked a holiday to visit New York for myself, my sons and my mum for March the following year. My oldest son, Scott, was very apprehensive about flying there after what had happened on 9/11 and he needed a lot of support and persuasion to go ahead with the holiday.

We had a fantastic time in the Big Apple and saw all the sights. But what struck me about Ground Zero was how dusty it still was after 7 months, it was like a blanket over buildings and streets. The site was still devastated with buildings half standing and rubble everywhere.

A year later when I returned with some friends, Ground Zero looked completely different. The dust was gone, the rubble cleared and some of the buildings were rebuilt. There was an exhibition showing the plans for the new tower and a huge wall covered with memorials and messages that were so moving.

Conspiracy theories aside, I will never understand how humans can plot and carry out this kind of terrorism and murder thousands of innocent people. Let’s hope and pray that we don’t have to witness the like of it ever again.

Previous Older Entries Next Newer Entries