After a rather epic but not quite Iliad-esque journey, we arrived at our home in Normandie. It was a great feeling to slip into bed after rediscovering the house after three years!

We had to explore every corner of the house and garden. The house is looking good. The foray into AirBnB doesn’t seem to have left too much of a mark. Louis is funny, he said, “I didn’t know our house was so fancy”. He doesn’t seem to remember everything or all the renovations we had done! He was only 8 when we left.

A family of owls decided to move into the last room we have not yet renovated and have left quite a mess. Add that to the list of jobs

The garden is very dry. All the news about the biggest drought in Europe in 500years is true. The fields and gardens are looking almost Australian summer brown. One thing I always liked was how green Normandie is in summer. On our last trip we had prepared a lovely garden in front of the house but it’s all gone now.

The lovely old apple tree is looking very unhappy. It looks dead, no leaves but there are some apples. Is it disease or lack of water? Louis did remember climbing up the tree when we lived here.

We went to the shops to get new SIM cards and groceries. Rediscovering our French favorites was fun! Lavinia got right into speaking French so we didn’t stand out!

We came home to do some gardening and enjoy the warm weather. Louis was very happy to have some saucisson with his aperitif!