Video blog from Mark Farm in Essex





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lazy evenings, relaxed meals and Corsican beers

Image
  We've found another Corsican beer to try. Kiara seems to come in several variations, each in different coloured labels. It is a six pack and I put two each in the cool box which is still going strong after being plugged in for two weeks. Tonight's dinner will be paella with a reasonably priced, decent sized bag of fruits de mer. Naturally Cleopatra already had paella rice in her store cupboard. We've been eating a lot of pasta dishes for evening meals. We've made pasta puttanesca three times since it's our favourite. One evening I suggested macaroni cheese but Tony didn't want anything so heavy. We compromised on a recipe I found for goats cheese and mushroom pasta sauce. I suggested adding chopped walnuts for a bit of crunch and it was divine. The goats cheese did two nights of the same, broken up by a night where I decided I needed meat and we made mustard lentils with me having beef steak and Tony a grilled aubergine. Last night we thought we'd try maca
Read more

Oleron again and we mixed up our trees

Image
We've lost count of the number of times we've visited Île d'Oléron, France's second largest island, connected to the mainland by bridge just off the west coast. Having spend three and a half weeks on the largest island, Corsica, and six nights in the Loire, we were craving sunny beaches again. The weather forecast was perfect and it was just three hours drive from where we said goodbye to our campervan owning friends Jules and Pete. Literally less than a minute after Tony said he'd booked the campsite he declared: 'I've booked the wrong one'. He'd booked Huttopia Les Pins when we prefer Huttopia Chenes Verts. Tony got his pine trees mixed up with his green oaks. It wasn't the end of the world. One campsite is only a 40 minute cycle from the other. Our preferred beach is a further one hour and 20 minutes away right the other side of the island. The mix up would just make us get more exercise. We arrived at 1.40pm and I fully expected to have to wa
Read more

Arcachon against the odds

Image
As I mentioned previously, a road accident left us without our campervan, Cleopatra, three days before we were due to depart for France leaving us in a quandary. We were booked to stay at Camping Club Arcachon on the west coast near Bordeaux and had paid a significant deposit. Fortunately the site allowed us to put the money we'd paid towards renting a roulotte - a little wooden cabin and so our holiday was rescued. Cleopatra has been with us for three years, during which time we've become so used to the flexibility of going wherever and whenever we want. To suddenly be heading on a twelve hour drive in a car required extra thought that we're not used to. The initial plan was to take a midday-Saturday EuroTunnel crossing and to drive to an aire in Gizeux for the night, cutting the journey through France into two manageable chunks. We'd then have arrived in Arcachon at lunchtime on Sunday. However, even if they were permitted to park on aires, you can'
Read more