Barry and Steph kindly invited us over for a few days break to see their recently decorated and furnished home in St Mard near Surgeres.

The bungalow is set in beautiful grounds surrounded by a 6ft wall. The garden has many bushes, trees and shrubs with hollyhocks and several varieties of daffodil. The windows have the usual French wooden shutters painted in a pastel blue/grey.

Having seen the original photographs of the property when they first took ownership, every room has now been totally transformed. Most notable is the kitchen which has been fitted out 'American style' with a fantastic '5' burner cooker and all mod cons and the bathroom with its new sink unit and waterfall type tap.

We found the double bed in the guest room 'our room' to be really comfortable and slept rather well during our stay with no rocking sensations felt at all!

St Mard village has a really old church with two bells that ring out on the hour daily. Interestingly at 8am instead of the normal '8' rings the bells continue to a count of 62! God only knows why this occurs, but I can only assume that its required in order to get you out of bed given that there is no traffic noise and with the wooden window shutters closed you really can't tell when it's morning.

Barry is the original 'gadget man' as he's got a tool for almost everything. You name it, and he's got it somewhere either on their boat or in the garage. Finding out that they had a heavy duty sewing machine and some spare PVC window material, they suggested that whilst staying with them we could replace the window material in our sprayhood which had gone opaque and brittle. It was a lovely spring day, so we did our sewing outside whilst listening to the birds. Steph provided a constant supply of liquid refreshments and culinary delights whilst Barry, Bruce and I replaced the old window with new. Several hours later our sprayhood looks like new with windows that we can actually see out of. Wonderful and excellent team work. Even 'Larry' the lizard kept an eye on what we were doing whilst soaking up the sunshine on the wall.




One window done!

We also visited their local town of Surgeres and walked around the perimeter of 'Notre Dame' church which was being restored back to its original glory. Some of the intricate detail on the church was incredible - you just wonder how long it took to build in the first place.



We had a thoroughly enjoyable few days eating, drinking and chatting and returned back to the boat certainly carrying a few more pounds around the midriff! Thank you so much both for your generosity and hospitality.