A Wet Summer

I am just looking out on the garden after delivering Marion to choir, one question I am not having to answer is whether to water the flowers after the weekend’s planting. It is pouring with rain, not only that the central heating is on as it is around 11 degrees outside. Despite all of this the grass continues to grow and grow.

I think this time of year particularly in the North of England is one of false expectation. After a few sunny days we think that summer is here. The reality is that it takes some time to ramp-up, and often at this time of the year the long evenings are also comparatively cold.

No matter today I have had the guidebooks out and been preparing for our holiday. Really there is so much pleasure in the anticipation. I am hoping Wi-Fi permitting to be able to blog every day about our progress hopefully including many pictures and reports of our culinary adventures.

We start in Zeeland, which is the part of the Netherlands that is reclaimed from the delta of the Rhine. There we are meeting our friends Hans and Mirjam for the weekend. Our friendship goes back over 25 years, so it will be good to go over past times and get a Euro perspective on life, as well as exploring a part of the world that we do not know.

From there we will drive through Belgium and Eastern France to the medieval town of Langres. Still planning which way to go but I hanker after visiting Verdun en-route. Langres is a transit point on the way to the Vosges Mountains near to Colmar. There is some fantastic scenery, delightful villages and even better great Alsatian wine. We will then drive across the middle of Switzerland to Courmeyer in Italy but in the shadow of Mont Blanc. The objective there is to take the cable car 9000 feet up the Mont Blanc Massif. This part is totally reliant on experiencing good weather.

The final part of the first part of the holiday is to drive to the cottage that we are hiring in the small Provencal village of Villedieu. The best thing is that the temperatures during the next week there are in the high twenties. It will be great to see some sunshine. I will describe the second part of our itinerary in a later blog.

As I look outside it is still raining.