This morning we headed off on our trip, with everything we needed, including rose wine, cheese, lager, water and bread, in case those things are tricky to find in France. We arrived at the Eurotunnel terminal three hours early. Yes we were a little keen. The train journey was a glimpse into a futuristic dystopia, and a bit on the hot side.
Once on the other side we stopped in the services where we proudly showed off our French, and they promptly replied to us in English. Driving on the right side (or should we say wrong side) of the road went surprisingly smoothly. It all started to go wrong when we arrived in Sacy Le Petit and eventually found the Chateau only to discover it all locked up and nobody home. There was a lot of shouting Bonjour very loudly intermixed with Allo Allo, is anybody there. We did consider scaling the walls. Eventually we rang Hugo back in London to ask him to call Hermine. (She later told us she heard the phone ringing but left it). She only accidentally stumbled across us whilst watering the plants. Not her fault really as we were a tad early.
Hermine greeted us dressed in gardening slacks. She had been mowing the not insignificant lawn for an hour. She took us into her office (where we had to strap dusters to our feet as she had just had the floors polished) and asked us to sign what seemed like an historic document but actually turned out to be a receipt for our bursary money.
She cooked us dinner in her little kitchen (No, the sauce is for ends of the asparagus!) and showed us round the garden, an overgrown wilderness full of the most amazing herbs, vegetables and flowers.
During dinner, at 7 o’clock, the church bells started ringing, and carried on ringing (200 fucking times). Apparently they do so at 7am and at midday too, every day, to call the workers in from the fields. Even though there aren’t any workers in the fields any more. It’s quite a haunting sound, and one for further investigation. However, might have a change of heart at 7am tomorrow morning.
The main topic of conversation during dinner was how much booze we needed to order for the village Petanque competition that we are organising (they weren’t going to hold it this year so we have stepped into the breach to keep the tradition alive and ingratiate ourselves with the locals). Should we order from the wine merchant who do sale or return or get from Lidl who do a rather nice rosé?? Such are the dilemmas here at Chateau de Sacy.
