Today we got a personal tour of the College where the kids will be going. School starts on Friday. In France, College is a middle school, in French sixieme to troisième. This equates to about year 6 to year 9. Louis will be in cinquième and Lavinia in troisième. The school is quite modern, built in 2015 and has an amazing gym with its own rock climbing wall. It is also quite focussed on sustainability with lunch clubs in aquaculture, greenhouse and some goats kept at school! We had the full tour of the canteen too which is where the kids eat a proper lunch with three courses. The options for lunch are either eat at school or leave and have lunch at home. You are not allowed to bring lunch. The school sounds pretty great and we felt welcomed. It will be a big change for Louis as it’s essentially a high school in our system with different teachers for each subject.

You might be wondering about the name. Most french schools are named after a famous person. Gustave Flaubert was a famous writer (Madame Bovary) from Rouen which is only 30 min away. Also famous for being the last home of Joan of Arc.

We walked through town after we got our shopping and visited the patisserie 😁!

Duclair is very traditional and has some lovely old half timbered houses and a lovely church. The main square of town is really quite nice. It was market day but we missed it due to our school visit.

We have to take the ferry to Duclair. Mostly this is fine but it has been out of service a lot lately. Also we wanted to take it at lunch hour but instead we had to wait until the ferryman had his lunch. Lunch is sacred.