Friday

This year as part of Dungroamin’s expansion into the outer universe, we again had a trip abroad. This time to France in a trip arranged by our carefully vetted agent, Jeremé D’Evans. We all made our own way down to the Channel Tunnel where we held our breathe whilst we checked whether the bits of paper Jeremé had given us would actually get us into the Channel Tunnel Terminal. But we needn’t have worried as we sailed through (not literally of course). What’s more we all manged to find the drop point at Coffee Primo where we all met up. This year apart from Les Evans, we had Les Parsons, Les Clarkes and Les Hartleys.

When our train was called we all gathered into a close knit convoy so that we would keep together on the train. A cunning plan. Five minutes later we were all stowed on board; Les Parsons and Clarkes in one coach and Les Evans and Hartleys about 100 coaches further forward. La Lorraine later explained that they had been upgraded to first class and had a five course meal with champagne on the way over. Meanwhile back in standard class we shared a bag of crisps.

However due to the modern technology of mobile phones we managed to meet up at a garage known to Le Jeremé. Les Clarkes had decided that visiting only one foreign country at a time was boring, so they immediately set off for Belgium. The rest of us decided to stop at St Omer on our way down to our destination at Gosnay near Bethune. We had some lunch and a quick look round before tackling the rest of the journey in convoy in the French rush hour. Les Evans soon disappeared into the traffic after which Les Hartleys and Les Parsons decided to drive back to Calais. Fortunately Le Alan had his compass with him and eventually concluded that we were going in entirely the wrong direction. So having turned the map the right way up, we eventually found our way to the Chateau La Chartreuse Du Val Saint-Esprit where we were to stay for three nights.

Les Clarkes having taken the direct route through Belgium, Switzerland and Italy arrived first and had already booked in when the rest of us got there. On our first evening we decided to go to La Distillerie : Brassierie traditonnelle, one of the restaurants on the site, for our evening meal. We managed to get a beautiful large round table in the middle of the restaurant where we settled down and ordered drinks etc. The staff had lit this beautiful roaring fire. Perhaps they were thinking of spit roasting something. Any how after a while steam was starting come out of Le Jeremé’s ears. La Barbara being more amenable to hot spots was managing well. However eventually Le Jeremé boiled over and we moved to a smaller unmade table before he suffered third degree burns.

However we had a very enjoyable meal before retiring to our very spacious and well decorated rooms.