Bonjour La Bretagne!

                                           Motorway travel, views from a jam

This year’s Urban Sketchers symposium is as I write taking place in Paraty- a Portuguese colonial seaside town in Brazil prone to flooding. But while the participants were packing flip-flops for this annual gathering, I was heading with Mr. Price for the tranquil shores of Brittany.

From the north of England, with the motorways jammed with traffic, it’s a slow journey down to the south coast and the ferries.

The boat’s jam-packed, too! We have no overnight cabin and as I lie bruising myself on the floor under a table I’m close to weeping (or homicide) at one-o-clock in the morning, as I listen to a selfish mother nearby, raucously singing ‘Row, row, row your boat” with her child. Well, thank you! Charming and touching though the scene might be in daylight hours, I don’t think it’s really on when everyone’s trying to get some rest …

                                                  The little barn, washing and roof-mending

Our house has survived since Spring, although the familiar dead-mouse-under-the-floorboards smell greets us and stays around for a few days. Over the years we’ve learned you just have to sit it out, helped along by incense and air-fresheners.

A box of clothes has been nibbled by the wee pests, too. I buy horrid mouse-traps, but Mr.Price ‘forgets’ to ever set them while we’re over.

 

                                           Nest-on-a-rope.

The garden’s run rampage as well, with little plum trees everywhere. There’s a wren’s nest built in a hank of rope on the back wall of the lean-to. The little bird has flown, but inside are empty eggshells and just one lonely infertile egg, tiny and white, translucent and almost weightless in the hand. We need the rope for cutting down a big branch, though, so I carefully remove the small dwelling to keep in a box, perhaps to draw at a later date.

Some of the family are with us, and the younger grandson is quite eager to help us, and his Mum and Dad, to clear the garden. The other, older and aware that his hairstyle and cool need preserving, is less naively enthusiastic and chooses to wander around foppishly, documenting the work of others on his camera.

They’re at the beach most days, however- and we, too, manage to escape the relentless gardening for an afternoon swim at the lovely Pen-guen beach. The seawater stings my bramble-scratched arms and that cliff-path gets steeper every year, but it’s a good pain!

The house is up for sale, so every visit might be almost the last, who knows?                                               

And in an act of blatant self-publicity (contact me, though), here’s a link:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/overseas-property/property-30091923.html

Caroline Johnson, Manchester and Rennes

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