Poitou-Charentes myths, legends and history - les dragons, Niort

Poitou-Charentes myths, legends and history

Les dragons, Niort, summer 2024

 

Les Dragons, Niort

 

Keeping on the theme of dragons, in a similar legend to La Grand’Goule in Poitiers, our local town of Niort also has dragon tale to tell, although the slaying of this beast was rather more gruesome than the crucifix waving of Saint Radegonde in Poitiers. 

 

Once upon a time, roughly at the end of the 17^th century, the marshlands of the Marais Poitevin and the Sèvres Niortais river were home to a gigantic, winged amphibious serpent who terrorised and carried off the Niortais people. Along came a young soldier, who had been condemned to death for desertion, but promised to kill the monster in return for a pardon. Safely protected by his suit of armour, that included a glass visor, and armed with a long spear and dagger, with a quick and agile movement, he fatally stabbed the beast in the throat. The soldier removed his visor in triumph, when the dragon, in its dying breath, spat venom and mortally poisoned him.

A smaller dragon, Niort

 

Since 1992, four bronze dragon sculptures by Jacques Hondelatte have marked the gateway to the town centre, reminding everyone who visits Niort of the beast that once lived here. They are iconic and we have countless photos of us taken over the last twenty years, posed alongside their fanged heads that rise magnificently from the pavement. 

Same cyclist, same Brompton, same dragon, different year (2019)

Poitou-Charentes myths, legends and history - Le puits d'enfer

Le puits d'enfer, Exireuil, Deux-Sèvres

Poitou-Charentes myths, legends and history

 

Le puits d’enfer

We might have lived in the same small village in France for twenty years, but there are so many hidden gems locally, we are still discovering surprising places that are on our doorstep, or at least only about an hour’s drive away. One such place we visited this autumn was in Exireuil, just outside of Saint-Maixent-l’Ecole that has the fabulous name of le puits d’enfer or the wells of hell, and a tale to tell that goes back a thousand years too.

 

The legend of le puits d'enfer

One Sunday morning a farmer was preparing to go to church when he noticed two things, the first being that the hay field he had cut the day before was perfectly dry and at the optimal point to bring in to ensure a plentiful supply for his cattle, as well some left over to sell. The second was an ominous dark cloud on the horizon that warned of an approaching storm. 

Crossing the stream 

 

Should he continue to church, and risk losing the crop or miss mass so that his hard work would not be in vain. He chose to work, saddling his oxen to help bring the hay in under cover. In order to reach his pastures, he had to cross a stream in a deep, rocky valley named le puits d’enfer and although he made it there safely, on his return the sun had gone in, the rain had begun to fall and one of his beasts lost its footing on the slippery rocks. The farmer, his loaded cart and his oxen were never seen again. This tale is a reminder not just of the dangers of the wells of hell but that work, and profit, should never come before religious obligations.

 

The steps leading down the rocky gorge

Having read the legend, it was with some trepidation and excitement that one Sunday afternoon we parked in a carpark by a picnic area in Exireuil and set off into the unknown, wearing sturdy walking boots (and silently muttering a prayer). We could see nothing of the rocky valley that is around fifty metres deep, until we began descending the rough-cut steps that seemed to go down, forever. When we eventually arrived in the deep gorge of the small stream that is a tributary of the Sèvre Niortais river, it felt like we’d entered another world. The water tumbled over giant boulders, the trees were covered in hairy moss and lichen, and the dappled sunshine danced on the ferns covering the ground. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see fairies or other woodland folk going about their business in the shadows.

 

A family day out to le puits d'enfer

What followed was an afternoon of clambering around rocks, crossing narrow bridges, scampering up and down the sides of the gorge, where at some points hands and feet were needed to keep our balance, and generally having a great family day out. I am not sure what I expected to find at the wells of hell, but it exceeded my expectations and was worth heading off the beaten track to explore this hidden gem. We will return.

Le puits d'enfer, Exireuil

  

Poitou-Charentes myths, legends and history - La Jungle

La Jungle

Poitou-Charentes myths, legends and history

 

La Jungle, and what our animals have taught me 

 

At the edge of the small, rural, farming village of Loubillé in the south of the Deux-Sèvres, is a pretty villa, of a style more commonly found on the Atlantic coast. It is curiously named La Jungle and as well as having an interesting story behind this name, it was home to some unusual inhabitants during the war too.

 

Just before the Second World War, Georges Vignolles (who preferred to go by the name Georgio) and his partner Marie-Thérèse Rouffin, also intriguingly known as Marffa la Corse, purchased a smallholding in Loubillé with a simple wooden dwelling. Marie-Thérèse had run away from home at the age of sixteen and the couple met in 1924 at a travelling circus, and in 1925, Marffa began to learn the art of dressage and wild animal taming, despite never learning how to read and write. 

Marffa la Corse, La Jungle

 

In 1926, aged just eighteen years old, this Deux-Sèvrienne gained the stage name Marffa la Corse following a particularly risky performance at an international competition held on the Mediterranean island of Corsica. Starting out with a lion, two snakes and three monkeys, their circus show, called La Jungle, grew, along with their family, with the arrival of their daughters, Georgette in 1926 and Paulette in 1928. Marffa soon became an internationally celebrated animal tamer, and the Jungle family successfully toured France during the inter-war years. As the 1930’s drew to a close, their daughters were singing as well as performing with animals, including wolves and boa constrictors, and Marffa had a pride of fifteen lions.

Georgio, Marffa, Georgette et Paulette

 

The Occupation put an end to their touring and the family moved to their smallholding in Loubillé, where Marffa’s brother built the villa she named, La Jungle. Whilst it has been a little bit difficult for me to determine exactly how many wild animals moved in with them, and how long the animals remained in Loubillé, there are news reports that talk of lions, tigers, wolves, two magnificent pelicans and a pair of Great Danes to guard the gates, certainly more exotic than the goat farms the village is used to. Those who were at the village school remember after-school visits and the roaring of the beasts that could be heard up to ten kilometres away, depending on the wind.

 

Feeding your family was difficult enough during the Occupation, so ensuring enough meat for lions and tigers can’t have been easy, but Georgio, who seemed to be able to turn his hand to anything, came up with a plan. Their daughter Paulette recounts how her father took over the running of a knacker’s yard business in Javarzay, the owner having been sent to the compulsory work camps in Germany. She would help her father to collect animal carcasses from local farms, hoisting them onto a truck and bringing them back to La Jungle. It was then her job to remove the skins as carefully as possible before the meat was fed to their wild beasts. My neighbour Pierrette has similar recollections in the 1950’s when her father was the local molecatcher, called in to remove moles from vegetable gardens. As young women have smaller and more dainty fingers, they were better able to skin animals without tearing the pelt, which would have been a valuable commodity sold to the textile manufacturers locally.

 

Marffa at work

At the end of the war, while Marffa couldn’t wait to build up her menagerie and begin touring once more, Georgio, was content to enjoy raising ducks, chickens and rabbits on his farm in Loubillé, much like we did after our first few years of living here. There is nothing quite as entertaining as watching the antics of your animals, and since adopting two kittens in 1998, as a newly married couple, we have always shared our home and garden with something furry or feathery, until now. 

 

Mini, January 2008-November 2024

A few weeks ago, we said our goodbyes to Mini, our black Labrador cross who was almost seventeen years old and the last in a long list of much-loved family pets. 

Ed and Willow

The cats, Poppy and Willow, had our undivided focus until Ed was born and although pampered indoor babies when we lived in the UK, soon became quite accustomed to prowling in the orchard and hunting in the barns when they joined us on our French adventure. With barns and animal pens that needed filling, the first additions to our furry family were rabbits and guineapigs. Did you know the squeaking of guineapigs deters rats? They proved to be a useful and cuddly addition to our menagerie, but we really should have stopped at the two female rabbits, Hay and Daisy, as when Henrietta joined them, she turned out to be a Henri meaning we soon had more bunnies than we anticipated.

 

Ducks in our orchard

In the winter of 2005, a male duck flew into our orchard and decided to stay, persuaded I have no doubt by the fact we rushed to the local market and bought him a posse of female ducks as company. With ducks installed, chickens followed, and fresh daily eggs is still something I miss, especially the rich golden yolks of free ranging birds who would feast on the windfall fruits, or in the case of the chickens, pick the ripe cherries from the lower branches.

 

Mini in 2008

Mini joined us in early 2008, a tiny jet-black puppy who was small (and clever) enough to use the cat flap. She never bonded with the cats, who were already ten years old, but as Hay neared the end of her days, Mini would lie with her on the grass, guarding her gently. The most bizarre addition was Brucie the goose who appeared one Sunday morning in early May 2009. We arrived home to find a gosling looking lost and bewildered in the duck pen, young enough to still have some of her fluffy yellow feathers. Our neighbour told us a bearded man had opened the locked back gate, walked down the garden, put Brucie in the barn and left. She had no idea who he was and to this day, he and his reasons for abandoning a goose in our garden remain a mystery. She was a delight, who was with us for over ten years, laid delicious eggs and was happy to chat back every time I went into the barn or orchard.

 

Brucie the goose

Over the years, we witnessed them all tear around as kittens, puppies, bunnies and ducklings, before calming and slowing down, then eventually growing frail, losing weight and suffering from health issues. Eyesight and hearing failed, teeth fell out, they were not as nimble as they once were, and then came the inevitable incontinence. Willow would curl up, fall asleep on my lap and pee herself, Mini had no idea what her bowels were up to this last year, and Poppy would think she was in her litter tray, but hadn’t quite lined herself up. In short, we have a much better idea of old age than I think we would have if we hadn’t shared our lives with these animals. They have also taught us so much about love and tolerance, especially Yum Yum, the duck, who died of a broken heart after losing his lady companion. 

 

Café stops on bike adventures

We miss them, and the house feels empty and quiet without Mini, but for now, our lives will remain animal free as we make the most of our time to travel and explore our beloved France, by bicycle, before old age creeps up on us and makes adventures impossible. 

Thanks have to go to two local historians Pascal Baudouin and Patrick Ricard, authors of Loubillé Cité des artistes, Dans le temps, for unravelling the story of Marffa la Corse and sharing the photographs.

Loubillé Cité des artistes
Pascal Baudouin et Patrick Ricard

Poitou-Charentes myths, legends and history - La Dame de Chambrille

La Dame de Chambrille

Poitou-Charentes myths, legends and history

 

La Dame de Chambrille

One of my favourite discoveries this year was a mysterious granite rock formation (a geological oddity in an area where limestone prevails), located along a footpath, in the woods, not far outside of La Mothe-Saint-Héray, Deux-Sèvres. Its towering presence is enhanced by the legend surrounding it, and the fact ‘she’ has been named, La Dame de Chambrille (the lady of Chambrille). 

The towering presence of La Dame de Chambrille

 

Once upon a time, many years ago, Berthe, the beautiful daughter of a local squire fell in love with her neighbour, Guy de Tremont. Unfortunately, the elderly Baron de Chambrille asked for Berthe’s hand in marriage, to which her father agreed, despite poor Berthe’s despair. Some time passed after her wedding, when, by chance Berthe and Guy crossed paths once again, and soon began meeting in secret every night, only parting at the first light of dawn. 

 

The Baron became suspicious and followed his wife, watching the lovers before stabbing them one morning in a fit of jealousy. Berthe was petrified and became the rock with a profile of a lady’s face that bears her name, the Dame de Chambrille. Guy dragged himself, despite bleeding heavily, towards his home, where he died, his blood becoming the little red pebbles still visible in the stream that runs through the valley, his tomb, a flat rock found at the water’s edge. 

 

The red pebbles of Guy de Tremont

Like many similar tales, it might be a sad one and a little grisly, but I do love the magic of a good fairytale, and you have to agree, that rock does have an uncanny likeness to a damsel in distress, staring down at the stream where her lover’s body lay.

 

La Fouace

La Mothe-Saint-Héray is also home to a local delicacy that we have sadly yet to taste, though it’s not through want of trying. The fouace is a round brioche bun, but it’s not just a boulangerie speciality, it too has an interesting story behind it. The name comes from the Roman word ‘foacius’ meaning to be cooked under the ashes, or in the hearth, and it is from this same word you get fougasse from Provence and the foisee from Burgundy, among just a few to be found all over France. The Mothais fouace is said to be the real fouace, as not only was it mentioned in one of the Gargantua books by François Rabalais in 1534 but even in the Middle Ages, pilgrims on the Compostela route to Santiago would detour to stock up on these local delicacies, thanks to the reputation and quality of the local flour. I am always rather excited by a story that links the Chemins de Saint Jacques with food (see here). 

 

Until the war there were twelve fouaciers in La Mothe-Saint-Héray, but more recently the patisserie Favreau was the only holder of the secret recipe, that tradition dictates is only passed down to those who take over the business. Sadly, the Favreau patisserie closed in 2021, and when no buyer could be found, the recipe and manufacture moved to a local Mothais farm. It is now sold in the local COOP, but only from Wednesdays to Sundays.

 

In the spring of 2022 when we set off on our loaded Bromptons to follow the Sèvre Niortais river from its source to the Atlantic, La Mothe-Saint-Héray was our morning coffee stop on day one. We arrived on a sunny, Monday morning during the April school holidays, to find all the boulangeries were closed, despite our need for fuel with our coffees (thankfully the bar was open). Let’s just say by the time we arrived in Saint-Maixent-l’Ecole at lunchtime, I was running on empty. Returning one summer afternoon this year, to explore a bit more, we were able to buy our favourite flans at one of the boulangeries, that we ate in La Dame de Chambrille’s woods, but the fouace once again eluded us. 

 

The Orangery at La Mothe Saint Héray

The Orangery in La Mothe-Saint-Héray is also worth a visit, and as it’s always good to have a reason to return, maybe next time we will be lucky enough to enjoy a stroll around the beautiful gardens and a taste of a fouace. 

Poitou-Charentes myths, legends and history - Jean-François Cail

Moulins railway bridge Jean-François Cail 1858

Poitou-Charentes myths, legends and history - Jean-François Cail

Today is Saint Clement’s day, patron saint of metalworkers and blacksmiths, so the perfect day to share the story of local industrialist, Jean-François Cail who was a legend of a different kind. 

Jean-François Cail, Chef-Boutonne

 

Who was Jean-François Cail?

 

If you have ever visited our local town of Chef-Boutonne in the south of the Deux-Sèvres department, you may have noticed the name Cail pop up here and there. The main square where the Saturday market is held is Place Cail, the lycée (secondary school) is named Jean-François Cail and busts of the very same man can be found on a roundabout, set high up on the wall of the Hôtel de Ville and outside the cultural centre housing the cinema and library. So, who was Jean-François Cail?

 

Born in a tiny house on an alleyway in Chef-Boutonne in 1804, Jean-François was the third of eight children in a family too poor for him to continue his education beyond the age of twelve. Even at this young age, he had vision and ambition, making a simple potato grater that he sold at the weekly market. In this rural community where many relied on farming to survive, bread was a staple food, that would have been in short supply if the wheat crop failed. Potatoes were typically dried and ground to make a flour substitute, so the ability to grate potatoes made this process much easier for the 19^th century housewives. Shunning the life of a farm labourer, Jean-François became an apprentice boiler maker, working with copper and iron to make and repair cauldrons, pots and stills. And so began a journey that took him from Chef-Boutonne to Nantes and eventually Paris, in 1824.

 

Model of the Crampton, Château de Javarzay

Working alongside chemist Charles Derosne in Paris, Jean-François Cail went on to achieve great things. Their knowledge complimented each other’s, and they revolutionised the sugar refining and distillation industries, with Cail taking over the company when Derosne retired. Always looking ahead for the next project, he purchased two rural domains growing sugar beet and farming cattle, where he developed agricultural methods to make farming less labour intensive, including using steam engines for threshing. Jean-François also became the first French manufacturer of the British designed Crampton steam locomotive and as well as constructing metal infrastructure for the railway network, his company designed and built the main building at the centre of the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1867. In a nod to his early years, during the siege of Paris in the early 1870’s he turned some of his factories into mills to produce flour to help feed the starving population.

Hôtel de Ville, Chef-Boutonne

Having left Chef-Boutonne with six francs in his pocket, he died with an estimated wealth of twenty-eight million gold francs, but never forgot his humble beginnings. He was one of the pioneers of social benefits, offering his Parisian workers housing and health care and he bought what is now the Hôtel de Ville in Chef-Boutonne, refurbishing it to use as an old people’s hospice and hospital for the war wounded.

 

Eiffel Tower - CAIL

He now lies in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, and Gustave Eiffel honoured him by including him as one of the seventy-two scientists, engineers and mathematicians who have their names engraved above the arched feet of the Eiffel Tower. 

 

Most visitors to the museum at the Château de Javarzay, where there is an entire floor dedicated to Monsieur Cail, leave with a sense of disbelief that someone who had such an impact on the French industrial revolution, isn’t as well-known (even in France) as his compatriots like Eiffel or Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

 

Jean-François Cail museum, Château de Javarzay 

Poitou-Charentes legends - the cries through the fog

A misty evening in the Deux-Sèvres

Looking back over the last twenty years, autumn days that began with a foggy start, nearly always became hot, sunny afternoons, so much so, opening the shutters to the morning mist, made me smile. This year once more, the weather has thrown a new pattern at us and there have been many days where the sun tried, but failed, to break through the foggy start. 

 

In our department of the Deux-Sèvres in western France, Meteo France reported that on average, September this year was 80% wetter than normal and October 45%, with some hillier areas (around Parthenay) recording levels of rain 150% higher than they are used to. It is no surprise that soil humidity levels have also reached record highs for this time of year, feeding the hungry fog monster that seems reluctant to share with the sunshine. All this just one year on from water restrictions that were brought in mid-October, alongside news articles reporting record low levels in the water table.

 

Foggy fields in the Deux-Sèvres

The low cloud and grey skies this year have at times made me feel quite claustrophobic, and that was before this misty phase began, so I am really hoping this won’t become a new norm thanks to climate instability. Despite my woes, we have fared better than those who live just a bit further north from us, around the Loire valley, where a local news report stated a weather station in Angers hasn’t registered one minute of sunshine in the last ten days. This week, as we celebrated a sunny start with a cycle ride into Chef-Boutonne for morning coffee with friends, we could see the dark, purple bruise of fog looming low on the horizon to our north. 

 

Ile de Ré, Charente-Maritime

Now the 2024 season at the Château de Javarzay is over, I have had more time on my hands to dive into some reading about the legends of the Poitou-Charentes and in particular, places we have visited. When I found one that talked of foggy nights, and an historical battle on Ile de Ré that took place on 8^th November, nearly four hundred years ago, I knew it needed more investigation.

 

Our area has a fascinating link to the rise of the Protestant religion, thanks mainly to the trade routes between Poitiers and the port at La Rochelle. Poitiers university is one of the oldest in France, dating from 1431 and whereas the Sorbonne in Paris had no sympathy for the new religious ideas of the Protestants, they found the academics at Poitiers to be more accommodating. The Protestants felt that the Catholic Church had become too powerful, too corrupt and was making too much money. They wanted a religion that was accessible to everyone, not just those who read Latin, and where simple prayer was more important than the worshipping of relics and paying the church for forgiveness. Their ideas began to spread, mainly with the merchants who were moving towards La Rochelle with wheat, as the limestone rich soil here produced a drier grain that was less likely to rot when loaded onto the sea-going vessels. The inevitable clashes between the supporters of the two religions led to a turbulent time.

 

Sablanceaux beach, Ile de Ré

In 1627, La Rochelle was under siege as Cardinal Richelieu and the troops of Louis XIII closed in around the Protestant stronghold. In June, the Duke of Buckingham had arrived on the Atlantic coast island of the Ile de Ré with eighty boats and around four thousand men, to support the Protestants in La Rochelle. The English landed on the beach in Sablanceaux and gained control of the island from the governor, the Count of Toiras, holding it for three months, until Richelieu sent four thousand troops over from the mainland. 

La Couarde-sur-mer with Loix in the distance, Ile de Ré

The retreating English had one objective, to head west to rejoin their boats moored near Loix. On the 8^th November, at the wooden bridge in Feneau, between La Couarde-sur-mer and Loix, a bloody battle ensued that saw the losses of over two thousand English soldiers and two hundred of their horses. It is said that if you are out on foggy nights on the marshlands around Feneau, the cries and eery moaning of the English soldiers can still be heard, along with a dull voice repeating “tue (kill), tue, tue…” – the echo of the soul of the French troops harangued by their superiors to finish off the English.

 

A typical souvenir shop on Ile de Ré

I’m happy to report that the Ile de Ré is a much more peaceful place to visit these days and somewhere we enjoy cycling, although only outside of the main tourist season. It might no longer be a battleground, but it is still witness to an invasion of thousands of holidaymakers every summer. I wonder how many of them know about the bloody history of the island, or have heard the cries in the fog as they leave the main tourist paths and venture into the marshlands?

 

 

  

Whooping cough, headdresses and heartthrobs

Coiffes or headdresses, Château de Javarzay

Whooping cough, headdresses and heartthrobs – read on to discover the link between these words, and my work at the Château de Javarzay.

 

I love learning new things or discovering new words and often find myself falling down Google research rabbit holes. What really puts a smile on my face is when I discover an unexpected link between things that interest me. You might remember my blog post about the lousy summer weather we have endured this year, where I attributed the link between the 1815 volcanic eruption in Indonesia and the subsequent career path taken by twelve-year-old Jean-François Cail, born (in 1804) in rural Chef-Boutonne, who went on to become one of France’s major industrialists. Well, it’s happened again. 

With Julia Chapman, Librairie des Halles, Niort

We recently had the opportunity to meet one of my favourite authors, Julia Chapman (or Stagg, depending on which series of her books you are reading) at a book signing in Niort. Julia and I have been online friends since 2011, when her Fogas Chronicles series was just making its way into the world. I reviewed her books, interviewed her for the blog and eagerly awaited each new book in the five-book series set in the French Pyrenees. Her writing perfectly captured the nuances of life in a rural French village, from the characters to the politics, as she brought the mountain community to life with a great eye for detail and lots of humorous moments. I was, and still am a huge fan and even had the pleasure of lunching with her, in York, in the spring of 2014. 

 

While the Fogas Chronicles took a while to find a home in the French book shops, her second series, The Dales Detectives, set in a market town in the Yorkshire dales, is a huge hit here in France. So much so, the new books have been released in French, around six months before they are released in English and the first two books have been televised – I think they love the Britishness of it. With the tenth (and final – sniff, sniff) book released this month in France, Julia and her husband Mark, set off on a publicity tour of French bookshops, that unbelievably included one in Niort, about an hour away from us. 

Julia Chapman, Librairie des Halles, Niort

In the twenty years we have lived here, we have only visited Niort in the evening a handful of times, but the chance to enjoy an evening listening to Julia was too good an opportunity to miss. We had a great time and came away with a copy of book ten, in French. My level of French is now good enough that I do read in French, slowly, but it tends to be non-fiction and on a subject that I know well. Having now read the first four chapters of Date With Destiny, or Rendez-vous Avec le Destin, I am delighted with two things. The first is how much I am able to understand and the second, how well the humour and Yorkshireness of the English versions comes across in the translation. I have had to look up a few new words, however, but this is a good thing as it increases my French vocabulary.

 

One of the words I had to look up was “coqueluche”. When simply translated it means whooping cough, but this made no sense or had any relevance to the paragraph I was reading. I dug a bit deeper to find that in French you can “avoir la coqueluche”, to have whooping cough, or you can “être la coqueluche”, to be a whooping cough – meaning to be a heartthrob or media darling. This made more sense, as the passage was describing a particularly colourful character who was a reality TV star.

Coiffes or headdresses, Château de Javarzay

However, my inquisitive mind needed to know why the word for heartthrob and whooping cough are the same in French. This is how I found myself on the Académie Française website, reading all about coiffes or headdresses, something I thought I knew pretty well thanks to the last three years working at the Château de Javarzay. Part of our museum includes the bonnets and coiffes worn by Poitou women in the late nineteenth century, as well as the social culture around why they wore them. 

Coiffe from La Rochelle (shell-shaped)

Before it was attributed to the disease, a coqueluche was the name of a headdress, the word being a mix of the words for shell (coquille) and hood (capuche). Head coverings, that kept the chill from your head, were considered an essential protection against illnesses, including whooping cough, hence the shared name. Whooping cough (the illness) is extremely contagious, spreading quickly from person to person, much like the adoration in the public eyes of the latest media darling or heartthrob. So, there you have the link between whooping cough, headdresses, heartthrobs and the Château de Javarzay – don’t you just love the nuances of the French language, I know I do.

Amazon link to The Dales Detective Series 

Amazon link to The Fogas Chronicles 

French Village Diaries is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk at no extra cost to you.