Volunteering In France | Interning in France

First post for the blog following it’s long lay off is to inform you about the Super Concours de Belote at Brossac salle de fete for the Foot on Samedi 10th November

Yan who has come all way from Hong Kong and spent 6 weeks at La Giraudiere. During her stay she has prepared some great cuisine for the group, used her talents on the hedges at La Giraudiere but painted a map of Brossac take a look;;;,Wow this has been worth waiting for what a great piece of work

This morning, Paul and James have been busy working on the downstairs of gîte 4, getting the wall ready to be chaux-ed tomorrow, while Mark has been on gîte 4 balcony filling in the joints there. Yan has almost completed her map and it looks so great, and Emily’s been in the old house sorting out Paul’s office.

This evening we had a new arrival from the States, Darrell, who will be staying at La Giraudière for four weeks, welcome Darrell! It was Emily’s turn to cook tonight and she made another traditional English dish – cottage pie! Niko came to dine with us too before we all headed down Brossac lake to watch the free gig Lyre le Temps, which is a swing électro band. They really got the crowd going as they were full of energy – a great end to the Brossac lake concerts for this year!

So as mentioned in yesterday’s post, today was out three-weekly trip! Some of you might have been able to figure out the seaside mountain that Paul took us to as it has always been very popular with the volunteers…yes it was Dune du Pilat (or Dune du Pyla as it is now more commonly known), the tallest sand dune in Europe!

So we set off at a very early 7:30 to ensure we got there with enough time before it got too busy, and after lots of discussions about words and countries with aeiou in, we arrived at our destination. We decided to be brave and climb the dune on the sand rather than the stairs which was tough work but totally worth it! The view from the top are just spectacular!

After taking in the view, we headed down to Arcachon, the town nearby, but not before stopping off for a yummy crêpe first! It was a good job we had left La Giraudière when we had because the queue to get into the carpark for the dune was ridiculous!

We parked outside of Arcachon so that we could walk along the coast into the town, and a lovely walk it was. The water from the sea was actually quite warm and it was nice to walk in it. We found a nice restaurant and enjoyed the plat du jour lunch which was chicken with salad, chips and veg and then headed back to the car to go to our next destination; one that none of us, not even the well-travelled Paul, has ever visited before.

Lacanau is another town by the sea and it is also home to a massive lake where we sat and ate an ice cream by. We drove down to Lacanau Océan which is very popular amongst surfers, and on arrival we could see why. What looked like a little town with not much going on on the map turned out to be bustling and the beach was swimming with people! Paul had a little sieste while the rest of us explored the beach and watched the surfers enjoying the waves, then we decided it was time for some dinner so headed back to the car.

To save Paul from driving through Bordeaux and avoid getting stuck in traffic, we took the ferry across the river and made our way to one of the more traditional Truckers. As usual, there were many people eating there and we enjoyed a nice meal before heading back to LG where a very happy Sydney was waiting for us (he couldn’t come due to the heat so neighbour Jeff looked after him). Then we all called it a night, exhausted from such a grand day out!