Advent Day Twenty-two, silver sparkles

Silver sparkles

Advent Day Twenty-two

Blog post planning

It would be fair to say that my blog postings have been a little haphazard to say the least this year, so one of my New Year resolutions is to be more organised. I’m already thinking of ideas for 2023 as well as planning some challenges to keep up my kilometres on the bike. 

 

Next year is a special year for us as we will celebrate our silver wedding anniversary in April. Twenty-five years of marriage is certainly worth celebrating and I’m thinking of adding lots of glittery, silvery bling to my life, our bike rides, and the blog.

 

The French for silver is argent and it just so happens there is an ancient royal silver mine museum, Les Mines d’Argent des Rois Francs, in our local town of Melle. It has been too many years since I was last there, so I’m planning to combine a bike ride with a visit once the tourist season opens again. Then I thought, why stop there? France has many places with argent (or similar) in their names, so it seems appropriate to try to visit as many as possible (twenty-five would be nice), with our bikes this year. Within a thirty-kilometre radius from home, as well as the silver mines, we have the village of Couture d’Argenson and the river Argentor that flows through the pretty village of Nanteuil-en-Vallée, before joining the river Charente near to Verteuil-sur-Charente. The possibilities are endless, and I’ve even found the Hotel d’Argenson, on Rue d’Argenson - in Paris no less.

 

Méli, the mascot of the Pays Mellois tourist office

The market town of Melle is also the home to the local tourist office where I recently spent an afternoon brainstorming ideas for their 2023 blog posts. This was equally terrifying and exciting. I was delighted to have been invited and it was great fun, but also rather daunting being the only Anglophone in a group of nine, five of whom worked for the tourist office. We began with introductions about our backgrounds and then set off on an adventure where fantasy mixed with legends, and no idea was deemed too weird or off-topic. I even found myself crossing an imaginary crocodile pit by rolling across it on a cushion. 

How to plan a blog post - photo courtesy of Office de Tourisme du Pays Mellois

 

Generally, the ideas for my blog just seem to plop randomly into my head, often while out on the bike. Now that I’ve experienced a real-life brainstorming session, I’ve no idea what new ideas might have been unlocked in my head, but I’m already looking forward to ‘pushing my envelope’ or ‘picking some low-hanging fruit’ and sharing something with you.

 

If you’d like to check out some of the previous blogs from the Pays Mellois tourist office, you’ll find them here.