We had been invited by our dear friends Catherine and Jacques to spend the day with them at their new home, so, as it was a 2 hour journey, we got up early to see to the chickens and dogs before we left. The "girls" had supplied us with 3 warm eggs, and we put these with the others we had been collecting for the past few days to give as a gift to Catou. Tracy cut some carnations from the garden and I obtained a bottle of the Elderflower champagne from the cave, that Hannah and Will had left for us to drink. These items were loaded carefully into the car, and we set off around 10am.
We were expecting rain for our journey, it had poured down the previous day, with heavy thunder storms, and we were due more of the same, but, luckily it was dry and the sun came out as we continued on our way. We practiced our French en route, especially our numbers. The previous night we rang Catou and left a message, letting her know our phone number. As we recited the number we had a mental block on '80' so the message was a lot longer than it should have been whilst we "ummed" our way along until it finally came to us. So as we passed any road number, or poster with numbers on, we said them out loud. Great practise!
We were about 30 minutes into our journey when we heard a slight hissing noise coming from the back, Tracy wondered if it was a snake, as we had seen a few over the past few days. We pulled over and discovered it was the champagne about to explode! We managed to remove it from the car and release the top before it exploded all over the car. The liquid shot out and we were left with half a bottle of champagne to offer our hosts!
We got to Villeneuve a little behind schedule, and we explained the cause of our delay, but of course they didn't believe us!
We were able to see Catou and Jacques' new house, well they have been in it a year now, but we had already left for Australia when they moved in. It is quite large, and backs onto the River Lot. A very peaceful spot, with no-one overlooking them. Elise, Catou's niece and Max, Catou's son, joined us for lunch. The conversation was lively and varied, swinging between the recent Air France crash, Susan Boyle and a Brazilian (the wax kind not the footballer!).
They showed us some photos of Geneva, where they had visited recently, then we showed them some of ours from New Zealand. We have so many it was just a selection.
We all drove to Agen to visit Mme Begue who was recovering from a lung operation in hospital. She was well on her way to a full recovery and due to be discharged on Monday, it would have been sooner had they not left a piece of equipment still inside her when they performed the operation. She had to have a 2nd operation under another full anaesthetic.
When we left the hospital we made our way home. The drive was very pleasant, especially with the unexpected sunshine. We drove passed vineyards, following the River Lot most of the way, along windy roads through the gorges.
We tried to sum up how we feel about France, what makes it so dear to us, and we could not sum it up in one word. We love the charm of the country, the architecture and the french ways. We love it's quirkiness.
We concluded that for us, it definitely has the 'X' factor.
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