Gallery: Visitors

We’re on the long road back to the UK now. The car is packed and we intend to drive most of the way tomorrow. Meanwhile, here’s a gallery of all of our visitors. Many people promised to come and visit us before we came to Manosque. We didn’t really think that anyone would.

As always, you can click the thumbnails to enlarge the pictures below. (Clicking the subsequent picture again shows it slightly larger.)

December 2006

 

 

 

January 2007

  

February 2007

March 2007

  

  

 

 

Looking forward, looking back

We’re going to miss:

French bread, cheap wine, winter picnics, good food and a great food culture, fresh veg four times a week, great red peppers and the big market. Oh, and the plastic clothes drier(!)

We’re looking forward to:

Friends and family, Sam the dog, English beer, carpets for Luca to crawl and walk on, our garden, nice parks with swings, having an income.

We enjoyed:

Walks in the sun, walking round the little streets, speaking French and the kids speaking French, the time to be together, quality time with visitors, no pressure to go out in the evenings.

We will enjoy:

Going out in the evenings, speaking English, the ease of getting to know people nearby, having a niche, pubs and having things to do in bad weather.

It will be sad to leave:

The light, the Mont d’Or, the Med and the Alps.

It will be great to have:

A cot for Luca, a washing machine in the kitchen and a modern heating system with a timer.

For the last time

So many things we do now are ‘for the last time’. Yesterday we waved goodbye to our visitors for the last time. We should go up the Mont d’Or today or tomorrow to look at the view for the last time. The cupboards are practically bare so perhaps we’ll have one more supermarket visit before we leave next week. They’re digging up our bit of the road outside, so it looks like we won’t be negotiating the narrow streets again.

Mat went out to the boulangerie on Monday and was amused to find our car stranded between two ‘road closed’ signs.