Another feast ... this time Oysters

Here, at the Oyster Farm at Larmor-Baden on the coast near Vannes, is the best example of the Breton flag (regional flat of Brittany) flying that I have been able to find. I found a bit of info about the design and meaning here, if you're interested in flags ... http://fotw.fivestarflags.com/fr-bz.html

Motorhomes are permitted to stay overnight on the big gravel parking lot at the back of the oyster farm and when we arrived - fairly early as we like to do - we were the only folk there and had our pick of parkings. I like that. I love the space to breathe. Especially in warm weather. As soon as seat belts are released I'm back there opening the sky light, windows and doors to flood the fresh air in.

I have an Irish story which indicates that this fresh air addiction may well be another South African weirdity. Some years ago, good friends of ours from Pietermaritzburg in Kwa-Zulu Natal, where I used to live, came to see us in Ireland. On their way to Connemara, they diverted to Cork for interesting ancestoral reasons. The first thing they did on entering their room at a B&B was to fling the windows wide open - as you do. The landlady rushed in, closed the windows, saying: "I know you're South African, but we like to keep the windows closed to keep the bees out". Yeah, well, habits die hard and I often think of that incident with a chuckle.

We thought we were going to be the only ones there for the night ... ha ha ha. This is how full it ended up being ... that's us squished in the middle. Not really our scene to stay in such an overcrowded space, but the pull of a fresh seafood dinner was too strong!

And there were more motorhomes on the other side of the parking lot too ... I think nine in total parked up for the night. Eeek. France is a very motorhome-friendly country and folk sure make good use of their hospitality.

During our afternoon walk-around we sussed out the restaurant built on the edge of, and a wee bit into, a walled-in oyster pool.

Being eager beavers - and hungry to boot - we arrived early so got the pic of tables. The clouds were looking a little dicey though but we took our chances and settled in for a long and delicious meal.

Just as the delicacies arrived and were arranged on our table, the rain started in earnest and there was a mad scuttle of all the diners to move food and drink to tables set out beneath an awning ... quite likely set up for just an event! It reminded me of the Johnny Cash movie where his brother and himself had a little saying in their youth, something like: "I saved my feathers for just such an occasion".

So what do you think of this as a seafood platter? We loved it! Those little blighters in the middle, in the red dish, were a blighter to extract to eat though. We finished the meal with a traditional sweet of Far cake and caramel sauce, a Breton speciality. I found this desciption, and image, online: "Far Breton is a traditional cake or dessert from the Brittany region in France. Its base is similar in composition to a clafoutis batter: a flan-style eggs-and-milk custard with flour added. Prunes or raisins are common additions."

Before the rain started, the tide was out and this was our view of the oyster pool:

Then the tide started coming in and the water began to spill over:

Heavier and heavier, until you wouldn't know there was a pool there.

The pics below are just some of the equipment used at the farm. All fairly self explanatory. Sadly there was no facility for learning what was used for what and how.

And so, next morning, we were off fairly early, heading back to St Gilda's for the last of our lovely much-needed rest days. Even Bridie got good at resting and sleeping. When she wasn't draped on one of the front seats waiting for whichever of us had left the motorhome, she was as chilled and cool-dog as we were ... even resting her head on the steering wheel.

Our next reason to start the ignition was to move in to Melody, the leisure home we have bought, on the west coast of Finistère, as our travel base.

A Journey of a Different Kind

I've been battling to find the time to write about the last couple of weeks on the road, before we began to settle in to Melody, our brand new leisure home in Pors Peron on the coast of Finistere. And we've been here just short of three months now!

In the meantime, I read a blog written by Martine Cotter, which influenced my thinking hugely - hence this blog title of A Journey of a Different Kind. I've put the link to Martine's blog at the end of this post and I would encourage you to read right through to the end.

Reading Martine's Travelling Family Blog, in all it's raw vulnerability, I realised it's not that I was battling to find the time to write, it's that I haven't been writing truthfully. In fact, I haven't been living truthfully. I've been doing what I've been doing ever since I left South Africa sixteen years ago. Hiding who I truly am and trying to fit my square self into a round hole. I can see my reflection now in how and what I have written since I landed in Ireland, and in our subsequent years in France.

I wrote quite a lot whilst in Ireland ... about one hundred-and-thirty artist profiles, over six years, for a national magazine; I published a book entitled "Tea 'n Turps" using twelve of those profiles; an artist self-help book "The eArt Directory"; and loads of articles for interior decorating and general magazines in Ireland. Even then, I was writing as I heard English being spoken, in the Irish vernacular, still hiding my own identity.

It's just a fact of history and geography that southern hemisphere folk and northern hemisphere folk are different animals in so many ways. The ingredients of these northern and southern cultural recipes - distance, weather, geography, history and a myriad of cultural influences, all play their part and flavour our blood with different herbs and spices.

Right now I need to be the straight-talking South African that I am. The one who has felt quite lonely in so many ways for the past sixteen years. I need to acknowledge who I am as an individual, because that too has influenced how I've handled the cultural differences I have willingly faced.

Maybe then I'll find both my writing and my painting mojos again.

The blue print I was born with, my early years and upbringing, my (horrid) school years, my parents and sisters, and the social skills I learned (or didn't learn!) along the way, shaped my adult self and formed the mask I have which meets the world. Just like everyone else on earth. So I'm far from perfect.

I love Ireland just as much as I love South Africa, but of course it's different. A mother loves all her children to distraction ... but it's a slightly different love for each one, not more or less, but because they are very different individuals.

Both Alan and I feel so at home in Ireland ... but we were very lonely there. As is the way in South Africa, we're used to inviting folk around for dinner, and receiving return invitations back to friends homes. There would be at least weekly return invitations to each others homes back where we lived.

However, although we got to know many people in Ireland, and invited them around, in the fourteen years we lived there we can count on one hand only, literally, the folk who invited us back to their homes for a meal or social event. Perhaps it's because the Irish have huge families and large circles of friends they went to school with, and that takes up all their social energy. Or perhaps it's because I'm rather shy, not such a great small-talker, albeit a straight-talker when I do talk, who is also a bit of a hermit - and I got worse as time went on and I lost my social confidence. However, Alan is very affable, full of life stories and "hail fellow well met" bonhomie which generally balances out my social inadequacies.

Nevertheless, lack of social life excluded, I have some very precious Irish artist friends with whom I get together, usually in a pub or cafe, each time I go back. I hope they know how precious they are to me. They are the gems I found in those Connemara years and I love them dearly.

I have battled creatively too, trying to immerse myself in a different country with a different culture, different colours, different smells, different skies, and vastly different subjects. No-one was interested in my Africa-ness; in my paintings of leopards, lions, rhinocerus and elephant all executed in the warm colours of the country of my roots. I think that's when I began to try and hide where I come from. I felt I had to try and fit in, try and be one of the crowd ... and artistically, that haunts what I do to this day.

This is what I used to do:

And this is what I've tried to change to:

I ended up painting abstract horses and floral arrangements!! (See my website https://lyndacookson.blogspot.fr/)

We moved to France three years ago and our social life picked up dramatically. We got to know many of the English folk who pop back and forth between the UK and Brittany, and have formed some good friendships with some lovely folk. But you know what? I still feel different! Ugh!

What made me realise that it may be a northern and southern hemisphere thing, is that the person I feel most relaxed with, is another crazy artist who is Australian and lives much of the time in Brittany. I don't seem to be able to analyse it deeper than that, except that I know that she will always forgive me for my little inadequacies. Even if she judges me in the moment, that judgment passes soon and I will always be welcomed back into another good aul' swaying, nothing held back, southern hug each time we meet. She too tells me that she feels different and feels folk cannot relate to who she really is. We have so much more to give with nobody who understands what it is we have to give! Not their problem really. It's our problem LOL.

Whilst all this different country and different culture stuff was going on I was also, initially, battling with a step-daughter issue, closely followed by a decade of looking after my Mum whose Altzheimers was progressively worsening. All rather emotionally draining which didn't help in the least.

It's all past now and except for a deep-seated feeling of being so very, very tired, I'm trying to give body and soul the attention it's needed for so long. "Now and Zen" sits alongside my desk, peacefully reminding me each day to work at keeping in balance. Let's hope that for once in my life, when I find that balance, I won't go and make some silly decision which upsets it all again! LOL I tend to do that.

 "Now and Zen"

Martine Cotter's Travelling Family Blog : https://travellingfamilyblog.com/

I'm off again!

Abba put it well in their chorus to the song "Here I Go Again". I shall be singing it today - with just a couple of Lynda-inserted words here and there - as I clean out Milly the Motorhome, readying her for my month-long trip to the UK, Northern Ireland and Ireland.

"Mamma mia, here I go again
My my, (Milly) how can I resist you?
Mamma mia, does it show again?
My my, (Milly) just how much I've missed you
Yes, I've been brokenhearted
Blue since the day we (parked you)
Why, why did I ever let you (park)?
Mamma mia, now I really know,
My my, I (just have to travel now)."

Here's our gorgeous girl, looking all spanky new, a few years ago when she became ours in the Wild West of Ireland. This pic was taken in Connemara at Recess.

 Milly

I do wish Alan could be coming with me, but this time he has to stay home for Mum-caring purposes. Instead, my companions will be loads of paintings bound for three Art Galleries and a Fine Art Auction House in Ireland. There will be three disappointed little grandgirls who won't be able to camp out for a night, telling made-up stories - around a midnight feast of KitKats, biscuits and chocolate milk - with granny in Milly, this trip ... just not enough room! We'll just have to find a new tradition this time.

Right. Off to pack. Now, where is all my French caramel ......

Obidos, Portugal

18 April 2014
Good Friday.

We've got it down to a well-oiled routine now ...alarm (yuk) at seven o'clock, up at 7.30 am; breakfast; shower; tidy; travel routine of check air vents closed, switch off gas, switch fridge over to battery, close windows and open shutters for best driving vision, switch off power switch and water switch, check nothing can be dangerous or breakable flying missile in case of fast braking .... water and road snacks handy, and off we go just before the clock strikes 10am. It reminds me of that TV ad where the couple show off their morning breakfast routine, like a dance, catching cooked toast, pouring juice, eating etc with not a word said but with complete harmony of coupledom :-) A Symphony of Marriage.

Yet another pleasant drive, to Obidos, just a little off the coast and north of Lisbon. Alan had read about a big, sandy parking lot, opposite the official, tarred parking lot at the edge of Obidos, which would be suitable for motorhomes. When we got there we were even more pleasantly surprised to find that they had created a separate parking lot for motorhomes with water and download services as well. Brilliant.

Again, these pics are a combination of Alan's and my own.

 

This is a view from the gate of the motorhome parking lot (which is

behind us) looking over the presently empty car parking lot next to

this stunning old aquaduct. The walled village of Obidos is straight ahead.

Just below the tarred parking lot a large outdoor market of antiques and second hand objects had been set up. It looked like it may well be a fixture, at least for the tourist season months.

This pic made it to the blog for two reasons: the lovely pink blossoms

and the old wooden horse for sale and to be seen on the extreme left.

If I lived nearby one of the wooden cart wheels, centre bottom and

against the car wheel, would be mine now.

Stunning old farm equipment - probably a grape-stamping barrel

on the right, something a bit fierce-looking all set to make holes in a circle on the left,

and the best of all, a primitive water wheel at the back. Can you see all the

metal pots hung strategically to collect and pour water as the wheel turns? Love it!

We wandered up closer to the entrance to the town, passing market stalls selling biscuits typical to the area, meringues, cork handbags, belts, purses and other accessories, and local cherry wine.

And wouldn't you know it? We bought a litre of cherry liqueur.

Well, you have to don't you?

This was one of Alan's "hip shots" capturing the seller of the

liqueur as well as that rather interesting chap second from the right.

Slowly and relaxed, we headed for the town gate, and I'll try and get the images in the correct sequence here, as we wandered through town:

Heading for the town gate and wall which would have

completely surrounded the old town.

View up to the left before the gate, to give you an idea of

how the town is situated on a hill.

Walking through the wide gateway, there is this

balcony within the gateway, beautifully tiled and painted.

The palm fronds are to celebrate the Easter Weekend.

Personally I think this lamp looks a little daft with

its palm ears, but I appreciate the Easter gesture :-)

So old, so historic and so beautiful,

no amount of photographs can do it justice!

And the archway leads you out to this scene.

A good welcome by a local.

The following images are random shots of the village, taken as I tried to keep my coffee-lover husband to hold out for a lunch-time brew. We had a look at the menus displayed at the more touristy cafes as we walked by, but as usual, looked for back streets and side streets where it was more likely the locals would congregate.

 

 

 Tourist-type cafes

Every metre of the town produced something photogenic and after a while it becomes necessary to pick and choose what you load into your camera. There were loads and loads of people everywhere - a mix of both tourists and locals - mainly on the two main pedestrian streets where the bulk of the shops were.

Geraniums are one of my favourite flowers and plants.

There are quite a few varieties and I bet a lot of you folk

don't know that if you rub the leaves between your fingers

and have a gentle sniff, you may be rewarded with lovely

aromas of lemon or rose. Not all geranium leaves produce

something beautiful ... but try it ... I think the lilac ones

smell a bit like lavender.

In the centre of the old part of town was the main church, preparing for a ceremony of (mock) crucifixion that evening ... it being Good Friday.

More lovely trappings of Easter.

The painting here must be hundreds of years old.

Close inspection of the tacks used to secure it

and the ancient paint on a brittle-looking surface

were testimony to its age.

Hopefully, to preserve it, it's only revealed at Easter

and Christmas!

These folk were sitting at a cafe on the edge of the main church square.

Loved the barrels of oranges!

Locals :-)

And then we found lunch! We spotted this place with wooden benches and umbrellas

A close-up of the cafe entrance

Himself and the starters. We forgot that they

charge extra for the olives, fish paste, butter and rolls

... only remembering when we got the bill. But it's not

at all expensive (I think about 75c each item)

and so tasty and enjoyable, that we

don't mind it as an extra each time we eat out.

The food was reasonably priced and tasty .... these pics

speak for themselves. Alan's lunch above (Halibut)

and my lunch below (veal casserole) ...

We rolled out with full tummies and headed for the first little road heading upwards. It lead us straight to this great art gallery owned by artist Sonia Borga. It's worth a look at their website www.olariaobidos.com

This is the entrance to the gallery:

And, as well as a little gift each for Meghan (my daughter) and Nina (Alan's daughter) ..... sigh ..... I bought these for moi .....

Oh so beautiful vase by an artist called Bolota

and .....

... gorgeous, gorgeous bowl (I call it the Egg Bowl) by

Sonia Borga herself.

Moral of the story:

Do not enter art galleries when you are happy and content

after a good lunch.

Looking back down the road from the gallery.

More beauty

This was a balcony of flowers (geraniums again)

on the periphery of the main church square

See what I mean by everything being so photogenic?

This shot was just meant for me. Purrrfect.

 Alan walked up to the terrace level of the castle and took these shots from up there. You can see me (in pink) sitting down below, on a step, against the yellow stripe on the wall, in front of the green Land-Rover.

I guard bags while Alan climbs things.

Lovely things for sale - and I wasn't the only one who bought something.

A tea-drinking owl on a tile caught my eye as I walked past it, thinking "Hmmmm, Alan"

so I turned around to see him looking at the same tile. He bought it.

 He's a bit of a cutey.

 

 

And finally it was time to head back to the gate to the town .....

.... and say Adeus to Obidos.

A great place. A great day.

Oh, and did I mention that Obidos is known as The Wedding Present town?

 Traditionally it was given as a wedding present to the incoming queen.