Weekend in France

We went over to France for the weekend.
A few years back I bought Hubby 5 years "rent a row of vines" from 3D Wines for his birthday. You can buy one year, or get 5 for the price of 4 so it was rude not to go for the 5 really, wasn't it? Anyway you choose the sort of wine, and if you take out the 5 year option you can change "your" vineyard every year if you want to. I chose champagne for the first year, then he was able to choose for the others - so we had a couple of years of some good Burgundy then went back to the chanpagne for this final year.
It's been a fun thing to do. The first year we went to visit the champagne vineyard and picked up the champagne while we were there. Other years we had our order shipped to collection points not far from Calais and just picked it up from there. You can also have it shipped to the UK - but where's the fun (or the excuse for a few days away) in that?
So that was the main reason for our quickie trip. Obviously it's winter, so there's no way I was going on a ferry - just as well considering the windy weather we've been having - the Channel Tunnel is a much less stressful option, so come 7am Saturday morning we were on our way. The roads behaved nicely and we were put on an earlier train and in France well before lunchtime.

We'd already decided to stay in Boulogne this time and not to drive too far - it's always tempting to go somewhere new but then you end up spending most of the time in the car, so this time we went for the more relaxing option. We like Boulogne, it's got a great mix of old and new, and a great big beach where you can often watch kite surfers etc getting energetic (and wet).
The weather was pretty good. Lots of blue skies but boy, was it freezing cold and blowing a hooly most of the weekend! On Saturday afternoon we drove just a bit further along the coast to Hardelot, our new fave place to visit. We've only been there in the winter and it's fab; interesting buildings, huge beach, cute little beach huts and a nice long prom to get blown along.... but I bet it's a different, busier and less appealing place in the summer.
Anyway, I thought I'd put a few photos from the trip on here, you can click for a bigger version if you want a closer look.

Cap Blanc Nez

Looking back over to England

Hardelot

As you can see, the strong (thanks Lythan for pointing out my typo ;-) ) winds made the weather a bit changeable! Hubby gave the kite an airing - but at that point it was sooooo cold and windy that I stayed in the car, only nipping out to take a photo as quickly as possible! OK so I'm a wuss.

Boulogne

Hubby had a few "homesickness pangs" (for the IOM TT Races) when we went into Boulogne on Sunday morning to find several hundred motorbikes parading through the streets - he seems to find the noise and stink exhillerating.......... Not sure what it was all about, but there were certainly a lot of them.

This is our "cellar" - it's not really a cellar but a sort of understairs cupboard. The racks are pretty empty really, except for the champagne left over from other years, the 3D burgundy which apparently isn't ready to drink yet, the cases at the back are full of the new champagne from this trip. The other photo is the weekend's supernarket haul all waiting to be put away.
Should keep us going for a while.....








Back later with some new crafty stuff
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