Our first Christmas in France and we wanted it to be a good one – nice weather, good riding and good food. Planning started about a week ago when I ordered a joint of fresh free range pork from the “pork lady”. The french don’t eat pork with the skin or “couenne” as it’s called, so I had to ask her to do this specially. When I went to pick up the meat, she said it was the first time she had ever done it for anyone, but she had done a great job and it looked perfect. Stage 2 was apple sauce. The good old bramley apple doesn’t exist here but a good alternative is the “St Germaine” and I manged get a few for the apple sauce. Last but not least was the parsnips. No roast dinner would be complete without them. In France you very rarely find them in supermarkets, but the local market came up trumps again and I manged to buy 2 lovely good sized parsnips.
Sunday 23rd was the “2eme Rencontre de Noel” VTT Randonnee at Serellhac. Up early we arrived to a very frosty foggy event. After a very grey start, the sun shone and when we were all finished about 2 hours later. It turned out to be a beautiful afternoon. We decided to stop and watch the Departmental Championship Cyclo Cross race before heading home about 4pm. It had been a long and eventful day and we were both asleep by 9pm!
Monday – Christmas Eve. Another frosty day but Steve had to go out on a lone bike ride as my legs were far too tired. Later that afternoon, we dug out the box of christmas
decorations and decorated the blue spruce outside the window. We kept it very simple with a few beads and some glass angels. Unfortunately we didn’t have any outside lights but the sunshine catches on the little glass angels so they twinkle.
In France, a lot of the towns and villages have christmas trees put up outside their house, either by the front door or by the entrance gates. These are then decorated with ribbons and tinsle and make the village look very festive. What a great idea we thought, so we decorated the tree outside and very effective it was too.
About 6pm in the afternoon, we went over to next door for an “aperitif” with our french neighbours, Lucien and Monique. We thought this would involve a bit of a drink and a few nibbles for about an hour or two. When we arrived, there was bottles of everything on the table and then a platter of food was brought out to tuck into. So at 10pm(!) we staggered home – well when I say we I mean Steve after drinking about 3 triple whiskeys! It was a spectacular moonlit night so it’s going to be a frost one.
Christmas Day – I unrolled the blind and what’s this? Santa claus had been and left a lovely moulinex food processor under the tree. Mine had broken about 1 month ago. How did he know?
What a stunner of a morning, a complete “white out” with frost everywhere. We needed to get out early to enjoy the frozen trails.
After downing some hot porridge we got kitted up with everything and off we set on our Christmas morning bike ride.
It was absolutely FREEZING as we followed the road down through the first valley to
L’age the small village where we buy all our fresh eggs, milk and cheese.
As we came through we spotted the christmas donkey! There he was in the freezing cold looking very cute next to his mum. They were just tucking into breakfast that the farmer and put out for them.
We stopped briefly to take the picture then carried on along our usual route. The ground was frozen solid so it was extremely dry but very cold.
We reached the main road and turned into a trail just on the outside of the Rochechouart Forest.
Following our usual route towards the moto cross circuit there was quite a lot of water which had thawed the day before and had run down the trail. It was frozen solid but mainly down the middle of the trail 
so we easily picked our way down the left hand side. Onward we went and eventually made it to the Plan d’eau at Rochechouart.
It was completely frozen solid. We stopped to take a few pictures. The noises it was making were quite strange, it almost sounded like a ship sinking.
Steve picked up a piece of ice that had broken off and it was a good 3 inches thick!
At this point it had turned out to be a really gloriously sunny day so we continued on to do the rest of our ride.
After near on 3 hours in the saddle we finally arrived back. I was a bit pooped but felt better after tucking into bacon and eggs for our late breakfast. It had been a fabulous morning and a great ride so all that was left to do was to relax, open a bottle of bubbly and cook dinner. We opened some presents that Steve had brought back from his trip to England. Later that evening, we sat down to the roast dinner that we had been looking forward to for so long. The pork was sumptuous and the crackling had really crackled. We were too stuffed after that for any desert so it was a fine finish to the perfect Christmas.
Steve by the frozen lake
Ice was about 3 inches thick!
It’s a complete cast iron box with a small glass viewing window. It uses a process called “double combustion” which means it reaches temperatures at which most of the substances in the smoke are burnt making it clean to use. Now winter has well and truly arrived, we have been using it in earnest every day. When the fire is going, the wood burner itself and chimney get very hot and radiate a huge amount of heat. So much so, it warms the whole house. Not only that, it’s so efficient, we are only burning about 3 logs in an evening. I have discovered that lighting a fire is a bit of an art and it helps to understand the process of how wood burns to get your wood burner working most efficiently.
Steve ready to go …
Giant pumpkin and I’ve got two!
