Book review Saving Sophia by Caro Feely

Saving Sophia by Caro Feely

Saving Sophia by Caro Feely

Wow, what a read! This is a beautifully written memoir about an incredibly difficult time for Caro and husband Sean, that will stay with me for a while. This international, career-focussed couple decided in their thirties that parenthood was something they wanted, despite it not having been the focus of their five-year plan. Their life was in Dublin, their families in South Africa and Canada, but with a network of good friends with young children, Caro had support during her pregnancy. 

 

Following her journey from no bump to maternity leave, and then their arrival at the hospital, brought back so many vivid memories of my pregnancy, Ed’s birth and those early days of breastfeeding and motherhood. We had our dramas and tears, but nothing to compare to the devastating news Caro and Sean received that saw their baby daughter being whisked off to the special care baby unit with her future uncertain. 

 

Caro bravely shares this emotional and heart stopping time openly and honestly. The wait between diagnosis and operation, the long road towards recovery, even when reading it, time seemed to slow down, but I couldn’t put this book down. With so much to take in it must have terrifying – was there anything that could be done, would it be successful, what would her outcome be? So many questions, so much at stake and so much trust that had to be given to the incredible medical team they found themselves surrounded by. Everything compounded by pregnancy hormones. I was heartbroken for them, at the trauma and pain they had to go through at what should have been such a happy time for the family.

Saving Sophia by Caro Feely

 

Having ‘met’ the Feely family through reading Caro’s previous memoirs about their life on an organic vineyard in France, it is no surprise that a lot of this book is dedicated to their learning curve in this area. Caro questions her old lifestyle decisions, diet, and anything else she can think of to understand what could have caused baby Sophia’s problems. She shares her reasons for ditching the ready meals and going organic, backed up by her now vast knowledge in this field. She also shares her struggles with breastfeeding, giving a real account of how testing and painful something so natural can be.

It was certainly more complicated for her when Sophia was in intensive care, but the benefits to both mother and baby soon become obvious, even in these difficult and unusual circumstances.

 

Any parent will feel the tug of emotions as they read this book. I also came away with a stronger appreciation for the miracle that is life and a greater understanding of how precious it is and how every day must be treasured and lived to the full. 

Thank you, Caro for sharing yours and Sophia’s incredible story.

 

You can read my reviews of Caro’s previous memoirs here:

Grape Expectations

Saving Our Skins

Vineyard Confessions (previously known as Glass Half Full)

Cultivating Change 

My France et Moi interview

Amazon purchase links for Caro’s memoirs can be found here:

Grape Expectations

Saving Our Skins

Vineyard Confessions 

Cultivating Change

Saving Sophia 

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.

Waving farewell to a wild January

Coffee and croissants in Chef-Boutonne

Au revoir January

We have reached the last Sunday in January and I’m ready to bid it au revoir. Looking back in my diary I can’t quite believe what we have managed to fit in, although I guess being busy has helped the time pass quickly.

 

The January weather has treated us a bit of everything. We guessed the ferry crossing to Dieppe was going to be rough when we found a plentiful pile of sick bags in our cabin. It was a cacophony of booms, groans and creaks, rattles, crashes and lurches, but surprisingly calm cocooned in the dark of the cabin. The closer we got to France, the calmer the water and my mind. Back home, we’ve had torrential rain that left fields and ditches flooded and overflowing, hurricane Gérard who blew in with gale force winds of 100km/hour, and a week later, snow heavy enough to settle, although it didn’t hang around for too long. The only thing we have been missing are the cold and crisp days with blue skies and sunshine – our favourite winter days.

Brompton touring in Bristol

 

This year we are planning some sparkling adventures to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary, but can we succeed in getting away at least once a month for a cycling mini break? The maps are out, our Bromptons are fully loaded, and we plan to use them - with at least one cycle tour every month, whatever the weather, that must include at least one night away and at least one hundred kilometres of pedalling. Having spent three weeks in the UK over Christmas and New Year, we wasted no time in ticking off January’s challenge with a three night, one hundred-and nine-kilometre getaway in Bath and Bristol at the beginning of the month. We were blinded by bright sunlight on our way into Bath, soaked to the skin the following morning, tossed around by a stiff coastal wind in Portishead and cycled up lanes flowing like a river, but I can’t think of a better way to have started the year. It certainly beat what was waiting for us on our return to France.

 

The French health service is big on screening and now I’m in my (early) fifties, I’m on their lists. Last January it was the mammogram and ultra-sound, followed by a recall, as nothing is ever normal with me. Thankfully in March, after a bit more squishing and poking, I was given the all-clear. Before Dad was diagnosed with liver cancer, he’d had some polyps removed from his colon. Our doctor was adamant that this meant there would be no bowel cancer self-test to post off for me, so I was sent directly to a gastroenterologist and a colonoscopy was booked. Life got a bit hectic towards the latter part of last year, so I rearranged my October appointment, for January. What kind of idiot puts their bowel under scrutiny following three weeks of festive indulging with family? That would be me.

 

Within a week of returning home, I was following the dullest diet imaginable, avoiding all the foods I was craving, fruits, nuts, chickpeas, lentils, vegetables. It was almost more of a struggle to stomach than the cocktail of laxatives that was dinner the night before the proceedure, almost. I’m delighted to report my colon is in tip-top condition, scoring 9/9 on the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale, and there were no pesky polyps to deal with. I’m now the proud owner of a fab set of colour colon photos too, but I won’t share them here.

 

Ed performing at Chansons d'un Soir, Poitiers

 

It was a relief to get it over and done with, especially as we’d not met up with Ed and Pearl, or any of our local friends, to reduce the risk of catching covid. Ed came home to cook for us the day of the colonoscopy (isn’t he lovely), and this week we spent an evening with them in Poitiers, watching him perform at a music school event ‘Chansons d’un Soir’. You have no idea how proud I was, watching him playing the guitar and singing, switching effortlessly from French to English and back again.

Sunday dinner at Le Canton, Longré

 

Last weekend we belatedly celebrated Christmas with our friends, dining out at a local restaurant and following that with an afternoon of fun and games. Research suggests that in order to keep our brains active and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s, socialising with friends, playing games, reading and writing are just as important as lifestyle choices of regular exercise, a healthy diet, not smoking and drinking alcohol in moderation. Seeing as we cycled to the lunch, which was delicious and sensibly portioned, I think we ticked all the boxes there.

 

We have also slipped back into the comforting routine of cycling to Chef-Boutonne for the Saturday morning market. It’s not the vibrant, bustling event of the summer, but the fresh air, rosy cheeks and meeting friends for coffee and croissants makes it the perfect way to start the weekend. 

The sun is shining today, so my fingers are crossed that February will be welcomed in with crisp, clear sunny days to put a smile on my face.

Advent Day Fifteen, Little Donkey

My new friend

Advent Day Fifteen, Little Donkey

“Little donkey, little donkey,

On the dusty road

Got to keep on plodding onwards

With your precious load”

 

Little Donkey was one of my favourite Christmas carols when I was growing up, and I had riding lessons, many moons ago, on Shetland ponies – yes, I was the short, chubby kid on the short, chubby pony. Sadly, after falling off one too many times, I lost my confidence and that is where my love for horses ended.

8-year-old me, with a Shetland pony in 1979

 

My bicycle is my pony, taking me off on wild adventures to pastures new, and since falling in love with cycling, I have never felt the need to swap it for a horse. I watch way too many Ambulance, A&E and Helicopter Medics programmes to feel happy around horses. I know you can fall off your bike and suffer injuries, but it is rarely the bike’s fault, unlike horses, who seem to enjoy throwing off their riders and then kicking or stamping on them for good measure. I’d go so far as to admit to having thought them a little bit evil, until I was introduced to equitherapie or equitherapy - the broad term for a range of equine-assisted activities for people who have physical, emotional, cognitive, or social difficulties.

 

The local Mellois branch of the France Alzheimer association, run by two French ladies, reached out a few weeks ago, in desperate need for some bilingual volunteers. Set up in 2017, with one volunteer supporting four families, it has now grown to two volunteers helping sixteen families, two of whom are British. Each month they run a number of different sessions for both patients and carers, including games therapy afternoons, walks, talking therapy sessions and an equitherapy afternoon at the local riding stables.

The Alzheimer's support group equitherapie session

 

Today was my first volunteer session where I met T and his wife and helped with the translation as he got to grips with grooming his horse Narciss, checking her hooves and walking her around the paddock. Despite this being the first time in many years he had been near a horse, he bravely agreed to mount and enjoyed walking around the arena with the others, although I think he was more taken with the grooming than the riding. There were certainly lots of smiles from everyone as they bonded with the (thankfully) docile beasts.

 

Afterwards, there was time for chatting, coffee drinking and cake eating before we wished each other a bonnes fêtes. I will definitely be back to help out again next year. 

Winter warmers

Wrapped up warm on a winter bike ride

I’m with Ovo

If I mention UK news headlines this week and the phrases ‘embarrassing’, ‘poorly judged and unhelpful’, you might think I’d be referring to Boris’s ‘bring your own booze’ garden party, but you’d be wrong. The less said about that clown the better.

 

Ovo Energy, a UK based energy supplier, have also been in the news for a ‘keeping warm without upping your heating’ blog post, that they have now withdrawn. Their novel ideas included, putting on another jumper, eating porridge, doing the housework, hugging a pet or hula hooping with your kids. Well, no shit sherlock, this isn’t news - my wise old Dad said pretty much the same thing forty years ago, whenever I complained my bedroom was too cold. It was either “put another jumper on”, or “get outside and rake up some leaves, that will warm you up”.

 

Obviously, as a teenager I wasn’t interested in listening and I certainly wasn’t interested in moving my body to create heat. Back then I was much more into reading and complaining than exercising. Moving to a large, draughty house with a cantankerous old boiler, combined with the reality that France did get cold in the winter, meant I soon remembered Dad’s words and learned how to keep warm. If we heated our house to a constant 20º, not only would it cost many more thousands of euros than we have, but with only two of us floating around, mainly using one or two rooms at a time, it would be ever so wasteful. I don’t do wasteful. Most of what Ovo wrote in their blog, I’ve been practicing and writing about for many winters.

Hug a pet - Mini turns 14

 

Layer like an onion 

I am never to be found without a vest from October to May, and for most of the really cold months, I’ll wear a vest under a thermal long-sleeved vest and any number of additional layers on top, all carefully tucked in. Exciting editions to our wardrobe this season include fleecy lined walking trousers, from sports chain Decathlon, ideal for those extreme randonées with a wind chill well into the -ºc’s. Obviously, with Mini having celebrated her fourteenth birthday this week (that’s about 103 in equivalent years), if it’s that cold outside, we won’t be out walking, but these new buys have ensured we’ve kept warm indoors. Combined with the thermal socks (from Decathlon again) tucked into my fur-lined boot/slippers, my toes are toasty and I’ve no need for any E.On Energy socks – another UK news oops this weekend (it must be the week for it).

Winter vegetable soup

 

Porridge and soup 

I have been writing a regular five-hundred-word article for The Deux-Sèvres Monthly, a local English language magazine, for ten years now and looking back in my archives to January 2013, I was singing the praises of what I called ‘porridge and soup’ season.

 

“Winter has arrived, the days are short, the trees are bare and the temperatures have plummeted, but am I down? Well sometimes, I have to admit, yes, I am. It is at this time of year that my thoughts turn to comfort food. Gone are the vibrant coloured salads of summer that cheered up my plates with home grown delights but have no fear for we have arrived at what I call ‘porridge and soup’ season.”

 

Winter food should be different from summer food, that is the beauty of eating seasonally. The vegetables available now are perfect for thick soups made with homemade pork broth and warming curry spices, that put a fire in my belly all afternoon. Porridge oats are another favourite for us and I’m sure anyone who grew up in 1980’s Britain must remember the Ready Brek (finely milled porridge oat cereal) advert? Who didn’t want a warm orange glow around them as they walked to school on a cold and frosty morning?

Trying out my Hula Hoop for the first time in 2020

 

Hula hooping

In March 2020, just before you-know-what hit us, my Deux-Sèvres Monthly article was all about ‘hoop and soup’.

“Always happy to find a healthy distraction from the mundane monotony of life, I’ve got a new exercise obsession. Thanks to a couple of nutty friends, I am now the proud owner of a hefty hula hoop, and when I say hefty, I mean 1.2kg of weighty hoop that massages you (think thumps) as it rolls around. Once you have mastered the moves and get past the awkward stage where you look like you’ve stuck your fingers in a plug socket, it’s a really fun way to exercise.” 

Ovo are right, it's also a great way of keeping warm and I often use it as a pre-yoga warm up over winter. Our other top tip for keeping warm is to get out on the bikes. Even if I get home with cold, red cheeks and nose, the rest of me is nice and warm whatever the temperature outside, and the colours on crisp winter sunset bike rides are a tonic for the mind as well as the body.

 

If there is one thing I could have told my younger self, it would be ‘to be more active’, so I’m with Ovo and agree with what they were saying, even if they maybe could have phrased things better. Another positive of these ideas is Susie Kelly’s Best Foot Forward, one of the first books I read and reviewed on the blog and her story of a long-distance walk from La Rochelle to Geneva, inspired by the need to move to keep warm during cold French winters. To think this book wouldn’t have existed if she’d just turned up her heating, is quite sad.

A chilly morning view from the orchard

 

Temperatures have been below 0ºc these last few days, with crisp clear nights, heavy frosts and sunny days, but I’d much rather this than warmer, wetter weather.  

One week in, counting my hats and blessings, among other things

Silly hats for story time 

One week in, counting my hats and blessings, among other things

 

If you told me it was the 29^th January today, I’d have believed you, as it’s been so busy, I can’t believe the new year is only just over a week old.

 

I do love a hat (as these silly photos from the library last year show) and I seem to have worn many different ones this week, the first one being my accountant hat. This is not one I feel overly comfortable wearing these days, but one I have to dust off each quarter end to prepare the company figures for our French accountant. I’m pleased to say it’s almost ready to go back into its hat box once again. 

My bear hunt story time hat

On Tuesday I got to put my full-time Mum hat back on as Ed came home to spend the week with us. This hat is one of my old favourites, slightly weathered and worn in places but always a pleasure to wear. I have to admit though, it slipped slightly yesterday, as when Ed left to go back to Poitiers, I packed him off with lots of fresh vegetables and some sensible tins, but totally forgot the galette des rois that I’d bought for him and Pearl. This frangipane filled, puff pastry delight, eaten in France for the Epiphany is always a family favourite here.

 

On Wednesday and Thursday, it put a big smile on my face to wear my village volunteer hat once again, as it hasn’t had much use since Covid-19 hit. It was my turn to open the library on Wednesday, where I also trialled a French vocab session with an English friend, and on Thursday our little team folded, stapled and delivered the first village magazine of the year.

 

My Queen's story time hat

On Friday it was the turn of my supportive wife (and translator) hat as Adrian had his first outpatient cardiologist appointment, following his week in hospital last year. With the current Covid-19 situation being seriously scary here in France, we weren’t sure I would be allowed to accompany him in, but aside from scanning our vaccinations certificates at the main door, there were no restrictions. This was just as well as I also have a Niort hospital tour guide hat, so knew exactly where we needed to be, which was more than he did. I had all the paperwork ready and did most of the talking, right up to delivering him safely to the nurse and cardiologist who would supervise his bike stress test. I then sat outside and lost myself in an adventure book (cycling in the Pyrenees) while he pedalled away as if his life depended on it. 

 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, cycling doesn’t stress Adrian out, it relaxes him, so it was no surprise to be called back in and told to take him home and not to bring him back. They had never seen anyone produce such high numbers, or be in such good physical shape, and the cardiologist has cancelled his follow-up appointment that was scheduled for later this month and doesn’t want to see him again. This was brilliant news to start the new year with. I’m used to hospital visits as a translator, but it’s been quite a different experience with it being for Adrian, so I’m happy to leave that hat to one side for now.

 

My clowning around story time hat

I’ve also been fitted for a brand new hat this week, my census agent hat. In France, all communes of under ten thousand habitants carry out a census every five years and employ an agent to ensure all the households get the information required to complete the questionnaire. I’ve attended my first training session and started making my way, by bike, around all the roads in the village, checking off house numbers and letterboxes on my list. The great thing about the census this year is that for the majority of households, all that will be required of me is to drop their unique access code in their letterbox later on this month. The only direct contact will be with those who don’t respond in the allowed time, or those who can’t use the online system. This will be the first time a census has been carried out since Covid-19, so minimising the amount of contact, will reduce the risk to us all. This new hat seems to fit quite nicely and is turning out to be an interesting one to wear.

 

My cycling helmet (with warm hat underneath)

Then there is my trusty cycling helmet that has accompanied me to the Mairie, to the library and around the village whilst counting houses. I never go out on the bike without it, even if it is only a few kilometres around the village, which is about all I’ve managed each day as there has been so much going on.

 

With a new mini-job to keep me out of trouble, an unexpected week with Ed and a healthy husband, it’s been a good start to the year. 

 

Do you have a favourite hat you like to wear? 

Celebrating the winter solstice

The sun on the winter solstice 2021

Winter solstice bike ride

We took ourselves out for an afternoon bike ride today, to enjoy the sunshine and celebrate the winter solstice. Sadly, we hadn’t gone far, when we hit a strong and freezing headwind that brought with it a thick mist, that obscured the sun once more. This is most definitely not our favourite time of year, but at least from today the nights will slowly begin to shorten and our daylight hours will increase.

 

The last of the blue sky before the mist rolled in

This year seems to have been even more disruptive than last year, to what we’ve always considered normal. While some disruptions, like working at the library and Ed and Pearl moving in to a flat together, have been happy ones, some have not. The beginning of December saw Adrian spend a week in the cardiology intensive care unit of our local hospital. 

 

Adrian's bed in intensive care

A normal Monday morning, with nothing of interest on the calendar, soon became quite a drama when his heart rate soared to 210bpm, and two three-person medical teams arrived at the door on blue lights. While one of the SAMU doctors hooked up an ECG, inserted a drip and monitored him closely, the other one looked through the last cardiology report I’d got out and was on the phone to the hospital. Our GP has always had him checked out regularly due to family heart history, but nothing has ever shown up as a problem.

 

His heart rate stabilised, but they took him in, and it wasn’t long before he messaged to say he’d be staying overnight. By nine o’clock the following morning his cardiologist was at his bedside doing an ultrasound and reviewing the ECG. While most tests were coming back ok, they still had no idea what had caused the initial problem and the overnight ECG had picked something up, so a transfer to the main hospital was arranged, as was an angiogram to check out his arteries. It was only after he arrived that he was informed it was the intensive care unit and he wasn’t permitted to leave his bed. Scary, but not quite as scary as when he was asked about his resuscitation wishes.

 

Visits hadn’t been allowed at the first clinic, but I was allowed to visit the intensive care unit each day, and I did. Until you are in a situation like this, you have no idea how important being there is, for both the patient and the family. The angiogram showed no problem with his arteries and an MRI two days later was also clear of any issues. The weather on the Friday was wild and wet, but I was one happy bunny driving home with him sat beside me. January will bring with it more cardiology appointments, but in the meantime, we’ve been told to continue as before and keep up the cycling.

 

I’m not sure where the rest of December has gone; one minute I was catching my breath and relieved to have Adrian back home, the next, the kitchen was full of bags and guitars as Ed is back for part of the Christmas holidays. We are hoping this mist will have lifted by Saturday so we can continue our Christmas Day bike ride and picnic tradition that we began in 2019.

 

Wishing you a healthy Christmas from Jacqui and Adrian

I hope this update finds you all in good health and I wish you as happy a Christmas as Covid-19 will allow. Let’s hope 2022 brings good health, happiness, and new opportunities for us all. Stay safe. 

Fit into 50

Cycling the Cognac vineyards

It’s the little things

I know many of you have only ‘met’ me through my words here, but it is fair to say that at 155cm (5ft 2) and 47 kgs (seven and a half stone), ‘little’ sums me up quite nicely, so as I celebrate my fiftieth birthday, I thought a list of 50 little things I am thankful for would be a good idea, and something I can look back on in the years to come.

 

I started making the list and after the first ten, my ideas slowed down, until I stumbled on the word courage. I don’t generally think of myself as a brave person. I can’t sleep during a thunderstorm (unlike Adrian) and if it’s forecast to bring strong gale force winds with it, I’m a wreck. However, it soon became apparent that most of the little things I’m thankful for have occurred because I’ve had the courage to step out of my comfort zone and choose a different, and often difficult path. 

 

Long before we moved to France as a family, I’d had the courage to realise the relationship I’d been in for seven years wasn’t one that was going make either of us happy in the long run. The easy option would have been to stay and see what happened, the brave one was what I chose, to go my separate way and risk everything on a feeling that my friend Adrian could offer me happiness. A year later we were married.

 

It was another brave move to leave the UK and our family behind, when Ed was only three years old, and start again in France, where we knew no one and only had a basic grasp of the language. With Adrian working away a lot of the time, I had to be brave and take myself out of the house, creating a life for me outside of being wife and mother. Stepping out of my comfort zone and saying yes to new things opened so many doors and took courage I didn’t realise I had. In our first few years in France, as well as helping out at Ed’s school, I’d become involved in the village monthly magazine, even though the meetings with rapid fire French were incomprehensible to begin with. Then I agreed to help out at the village library, which ultimately, many years later, led to me getting paid to work at the Chef-Boutonne library on two maternity replacement contracts. Becoming known in the village also led to me being asked to stand for election onto the local council, and get elected in 2014, for a six-year term, that if Brexit hadn’t have happened, might well have been extended for another six years.

 

Starting a blog about our life here in France and putting everything out there for anyone in the world to read, took courage (or madness), but again it is something positive that has given me so much. Not only has it led to new experiences that have boosted my confidence, like writing for a monthly magazine, but it’s also helped me to connect with some lovely people, from every continent. 

 

Before and after cycling became my thing

Having the courage to get on my first ever drop handle-bar road bike, aged thirty-nine (and three quarters), was terrifying, but ultimately led to a love of cycling and cycle touring, so that I now can’t imagine not owning a bike. I might never have natural grace or balance on a bike, but that doesn’t stop me turning the pedals and following on behind Adrian, whether we are cycling into town, touring around France or climbing mountains in the Pyrenees. The fact that I’ve also managed to encourage others to use their bikes is something I’m really proud of.

 

The French word for ‘courage’ is courage, but the French for ‘good luck’ is bon courage, which I think is actually pretty accurate. I’ve been so lucky in so many ways; to marry a good man, for our family to live a fantastic life in France and to have the health and fitness to cycle over 100km in a day, or climb mountains on my bike, but it’s taken many courageous steps to get to where I am today. As I pour a glass of champagne to celebrate my birthday, I see now that I’m braver than I thought.

 

We all need a reminder every so often of how brave we’ve been and how strong we really are. It is all too easy for our heads to get lost in the myriad of stuff we’ve messed up, or that we’ve not managed to achieve or that is on a wish list for the future. Not every success needs to be a huge one, or one that reaps financial reward; it’s the little things that make us (and those around us) smile that need to be celebrated.

 

My twenties were when I met and married Adrian, and Ed arrived in our lives.

 

My thirties were when we moved to France and I began to shed those excess kilos that had always been with me.

 

My forties were when I really discovered cycling and fitness.

 

As I ‘Fit into 50’ bien dans ma peau (to be comfortable in my skin), I’m ready to embrace whatever adventures my fifties have to offer.

 

My Pashley Princess Sovereign bicycle

My Pashley Princess Sovereign

Bowled over by a basket, does that make me a total basket case?

 

Many people have a bucket list of things to do, or experience, before they hit fifty and although I tried to make a list of possibilities, with less than a month to go, it seems I have failed miserably. One of the things I’ve wanted for longer than I can remember is a bike with a wicker basket on the front. Over the years, I’d even gone so far as to look longingly at baskets that I could possibly attach to some of the various bikes I’ve owned, but Adrian’s sensible head has always won me over; they wouldn’t look right on that sort of bike, that would make cycling any distance so much harder etc, etc, etc. This summer, two things happened, and the stars were aligned in my cycling universe.

 

Back in the Frame by Jools Walker

The first was that I bought cycling memoir Back in the Frame by VeloCityGirl blogger Jools Walker, who has been writing about her cycling life almost as long as I have been writing about our French life. Jools goes into great detail about getting back into cycling in 2010, and that the only bike she was interested in was a Pashley Princess Sovereign. Adrian picked up her book on our kindle and got stuck into reading it before I did, which was unusual as we don’t often read the same things. Every evening, he had something to read out to me from her book and I couldn’t wait to read it myself. Thanks to Jools, we both ended up checking out Pashley bikes on the internet and I could see why she was so determined to own one. Made in Stratford-upon-Avon, to the same design since the 1920’s, the Princess Sovereign is Pashley’s top of the range bicycle, that comes with a Brooks leather saddle, a rear-wheel fitted bike lock, a huge ding-dong bell and an impressive wicker basket, as standard, for around £900 brand new. Jools bought hers via the UK’s Cycle to Work Scheme, I just had another pang of bicycle and basket envy.

 

And then…a listing on the local free-ads site popped up on Adrian’s laptop, for a Pashley Princess Sovereign, twenty minutes from home, in good condition, with her basket, all for 85€. It was difficult not to get too excited, especially as the ad had gone on the previous day, and I was convinced she would already have been snapped up. Adrian calmly sent a message, enquiring if she was still available, and mentioning that his wife was almost fifty and had long dreamed of owning a bicycle with a basket. Miraculously, no one else had shown any interest and we arranged to visit the following day.

 

I was awake before five o’clock that morning, thinking about the bike, and kept busy hoovering, dusting and toilet cleaning, anything in fact, to fill the time before we needed to leave. Dressed in my bicycle print dress, adorned with step-through bikes, with baskets and bunches of flowers (just like the Pashley), excited like a five-year-old on Christmas Eve, doesn’t even come close. Despite the excitement, I was anxious not to get too carried away. I am short, very short, and the Princess comes in three frame sizes, so there was a great probability that she would be way too big for me. Also, even if we were a good fit, with all her comfort accessories, she’s a heavy bike. Would she prove too heavy for me to cycle, especially loaded with a picnic in the basket?

 

My Pashley Princess Sovereign, the day she arrived

The first thing I noticed as we arrived at the gate, was that I was eye to eye with the lady selling her and it was such a relief not to be looking up to a long-legged giant. She noticed my special bike dress and was as delighted with me becoming the new owner of a bike she’d loved for years, as I was to be taking the Princess home.

 

Having spent at least two years in a garage, she needed a bit of Adrian’s tlc, but she is now in tip-top condition, with new, brighter lights. At nine kilograms heavier than my Brompton, the Princess can be a challenge, especially cycling uphill where I can feel every tiny rise in the road, in my legs and in my lungs. It reminds me of what cycling used to feel like when I was nine kilograms heavier, and less fit; the extra effort required to move is astonishing. This revelation alone is enough to keep me focussed on staying fit.

 

Pashley Princess Sovereign out and about in rural France

After a few gentle rides for me to get used to the upright cycling position, (it is fair to say I feel a bit like a meerkat on a double-decker bus in comparison to riding the Brompton), we have bonded and become great friends. From picnic aperos at a chateau by a lake, to cycling past sunflower fields, or using her to commute to the library, every time we go out, she puts a smile on my face as I ride along. She has been with us for six weeks now, although this is the first week where time and weather have allowed me to ride all three. The only problem I have now is which of my three beauties to take out to play.

 

I might not have come up with “Fifty things to do before I turn Fifty”, but fulfilling the childhood dream to have my own bike with a basket, just before I turn fifty, and for it to be the Queen of bicycles with a basket, is absolutely priceless.