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| Advent postcard, Javarzay, Deux-Sèvres |
Advent day eighteen
It wasn’t just the under tens in our village who got an early Christmas gift from Père Noël yesterday, we had our own reason to celebrate as Adrian’s mum was visiting for a long weekend. This is her first trip to France since 2019 and as we won’t be travelling to the UK this Christmas, we made the most of being able to have an early family celebration.
It was a busy weekend, taking in the Christmas market and lights in Poitiers on Saturday and taking her on a guided visit of Chef-Boutonne and Javarzay on Sunday afternoon. The Château de Javarzay may not be open, but we peered in the windows and had a good wander of the grounds, the lavoirs (wash houses), churches and the Boutonne river – which I’ve never seen so flooded. The sluice gates were all open and the power and speed of the water cascading through was mesmerising, and so very different from the gentle stream I’m used to seeing at work all summer. There is a mark on the wall of one lavoir showing the height of the flooding in 1982 and the water levels are currently only a few centimetres lower, with most of the features of the lavoir under water.
Wanting to remember the heat of the summer, I’ve picked some sunny photos for my advent postcard today, with blue skies, pretty flowers and the golden hew of the stonework.
We returned home with fresh faces for hot chocolate and homemade mincepies and later tucked into our version of a Christmas Day dinner. There was turkey, braised red cabbage, sprouts and other seasonal vegetables, but served as a risotto with side dishes. I’m not one to do things by the rules and as you can see, all plates were empty, so it went down well and was so much less hassle than a roast dinner.
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| An early family Christmas meal - the posed selfie |
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| An early family Christmas meal - the empty plates |
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