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I’ve had my fair share of Ryanair flights this year and have managed to make it work for me – but early morning starts, car parking and needing a printer for the boarding pass can make life pretty hellish. I’m forever grateful to one of the ladies at a French airport who took the practical [...]

North of La Rochelle is a “beauty spot” marked on the map at Point St-Clément, West of Esnandes. What awaits travellers at low-tide is a desolate expanse of mudflats inhabited only by wader birds and cockle pickers. This area marks the super-flat lowlands which once made up a giant marshland known as the marais. Residents [...]

The Marais is an area of former marshes which were drained through irrigation channels to create a “green Venice” of lush waterways and bridges, popular with tourists. For around fifteen Euros, a party of four or five can hire a rowing boat for a couple of hours and negotiate the picnic spots and narrow channels [...]

This music festival in Bressuire took place on Monday 21st June 2010. Akin to a community karaoke session, the whole town showed up to try their hand at entertaining the locals and tourists with a few tunes and ditties. Ranging from nervous eleven year-olds, idolised by their friends, to strong, experienced vocals belting out tried [...]

Argenton-les-Vallees is a medium sized town in between Poitiers, Nantes, Angers and Niort in Deux Sevres, France. Boasting a chateau, lake, supermarket, post office and bakery, the town is a regional hub for rural shoppers and tourists. The lake is a shallow dam which offers canoe and kayak hire as well as a nearby camping [...]

I have heard of cherry pickers, but always imagined hydraulic lifting platforms, not people up ladders harvesting fruit. Somehow, taking fruit direct from source seems an incredibly old fashioned thing to do. But cherry pick I did, courtesy of the retired mayor of St Clementin, Monsieur Renault and his wife. Both are in their eighties [...]

This blog is being brought to you from Deux-Sevres in in the Poitou-Charentes Department of France. To the North lies the Loire Valley which houses the greatest collection of aristocratic chateaux in the whole of Europe. Towards the South of Deux-Sevres lies a marsh, irrigated by canals known as the “Venice Vert” (Green Venice) or [...]

He’s a bit like a beaver and a bit like an otter, but Monsieur Ragondin is actually a Coypu. If you’re travelling through France on a mission to avoid volcanic ash this week, take some time to spot this large riverbank dweller. Although he’s a pest, he also likes to hang out with the kids [...]

So you’re training a dog or a horse. What do you reward them with? A biscuit or perhaps a carrot. So what do we do for humans learning new tricks? A measly gold star or a pat on the back. Worse still, self-motivated learning such as “I would love to be able to speak Spanish” [...]

Château D’Oiron is just off the D759 between Loudon & Thouars. Built in the 16th Century in the style of the School of Fontainbleu, this impressive creamy white mansion on the flat landscape of Deux-Sèvres now serves as a house for contemporary art. The theme is “cabinets de curiosité” – the renaissance tradition of keeping [...]