Month: July 2020

We believe in Mermaids

Posted on by Dominic

This picture has pride of place in our kitchen. It was created for us by Noe and Ona who stayed with us recently.

It is our first ever thank you picture and really made our day to think that our little guests would take the time to make this lovely picture during their holiday.

As you can see Noe and Ona loved the swimming pool.

We work hard to ensure that our guests have the best holiday experience with us and it looks like Noe and Ona certainly did.

It was lovely to be able to show them the gardens, to let them pick freshly grown fruit and vegetables and for them to feed our pigs and the chickens next door. We think that for little ones this kind of experience is invaluable in learning where food comes from.

They also liked seeing Ruby and Ada, our two outdoor cats who like being close to humans and really want to be indoors cats.

Best of all was hearing the shrieks of delight and laughter as they enjoyed their time in the pool. Is it any wonder that that they drew us a mermaid?

We say that Happy Holidays Happen Here and for Noe and Ona it looks like we kept our promise.

Flying the Nest

Posted on by Dominic

A quite magical moment. Every year we have swallows nest above our front door, our visitors from North Africa. It is always a sign that summer is on the way when they arrive.

They typically they have two separate clutches each year. The noise from the nest as the parents swoop in with beaks full of insects to feed their brood gets louder and louder as the chicks grow.

The other evening the noise was unreal. I opened the door to see four chicks out of the nest and before I could take this photo two of them flew the nest, moments after this photo these two did the same never to return as chicks. From dependent to independent in the blink of an eye.

In a few weeks they will be making the long flight to North Africa and in less than 9 months time the cycle will repeat.

Hello Spaceboy

Posted on by Dominic
floating in a tin can

David Bowie’s Glastonbury 2000 performance was recently broadcast in it’s entirety for the first time on the BBC.

One of the songs included in his set was a lesser known song but one that neatly reprises one of his earliest hits, space oddity.

The song in question was “hello spaceboy” and it is an appropriate song for when stargazing here at la Ménantelière.

We are fortunate to have no light pollution and on a clear night the sky above is a wonder to behold.

Apart from the planets, stars and meteorites we see space hardware in the form of satellites traversing the night sky, tracing a steady constant path from one horizon to the other.

The real standout event when surveying the heavens is when the ISS passes overhead. It is closer to us than we are to Paris but seems to be a world away.

We will next be looking at the International Space Station 10 Jul at 5:01 AM! – Generated with the ISS Spotter App, why not download it to see when it is passing over you.