I’m writing this in the hope that tomorrow I can get the internet to work at the house in Romenay.  We arrived and as I feared despite hours of fruitless futsing I could not get my computer to connect to the wi fi.  I managed to call the phone company and find out that tomorrow after 9am I can speak to someone in English who can talk me through the connection.  I don’t really think my French is up to Technical support for the internet – but you never know, still I don’t want to take my chances if I can do it in English.

Despite the technical hitches which after all are not really the reason one comes to this part of France – it’s wonderful to be here.  We’ve really just transplanted ourselves from one idyllic English Village to an idyllic French one.  Hard to separate them for perfection really – this one has croissants but the English one had our lovely, lovely friends who I hadn’t seen for 22 years – and we all just clicked back together like it was barely a week since we’d seen each other – except we all had these quite grown up kids so that was a reminder that we’d been around the block a few times.

We had to get up at 4.30 this morning to catch our flight to Lyon so once again I’m feeling totally wiped out.  The plan for the next few days is to chill out and try and replenish a bit of energy.  It’s quite cool here and really feels like autumn.  It was lovely and sunny when we landed in Lyon but the weather deteriorated as the day went on.  I’m hoping we may get some nice sunny days while we’re here because by the time we left England it was frankly rather wintry and cold.

So the plan is – boulangerie, shopi, Pont de Veaux market on Wednesday, red wine, white wine, champagne, perhaps a trip to the shopping capital of the universe Macon, and there’s a marche de puce (flea market) in Tournous on Sunday.  If we have the energy we might visit a Chateau and a wine village for a bit of fun too.  Jealous?  You should be, it’s bliss here.

….PS: obviously the internet got going – one button to push – thank you Orange France for the advice in English.  Mist over the paddocks this morning.  Happiness.  Sorry no pics today - too tired - will post some later.