Saturday

On Saturday we went looking for a walk. It didn’t take us long to decide the French are not good at map making. It’s probably a cunning plan to confuse the Germans next time they invade. So we drove to a foresty looking bit on the map near Lapugnay and fortunately managed to find a track disappearing into the countryside. The track started to climb and bend until after not very long we got to the top ..........of a mine spoil heap! However the views were not bad considering.

We then drove towards Dieval which is south west of Bruay, where we located a footpath. We parked the cars and set off to follow the waymarked path which didn’t seem to follow anything resembling the route on the map. We walked into the village of Dieval by which time we were getting a bit hot and thirsty. Le Alan managed to converse with the owner of a restaurant which was closed and with the help of Le Brian’s linguistic skills managed to convey that we would like a drink. She was very kind and led us into the garden where we sat down and she served bottles of beer and some biscuit. It turned out she was a beekeeper and she invited us to view the bees before leaving.

It was decided that we would have a picnic. First we needed to go to the supermarket to buy some food. Whilst this might sound a simple task, due to some over zealous back seat driving from Lorraine we managed to miss the entrance to the supermarket on at least two occasions.

With food and drink on board we returned to a parky area we had spotted earlier and sat down to enjoy our picnic.

Just as we were getting going, wedding parties started to turn up. We were getting worried because we had not catered for that many. It appeared that the area was the only picturesque one around and all the brides in France go there to have their picture taken. One wedding party arrived with a horse box and a white stallion which was an interesting feature of their wedding photographs. For some reason Le Jeremé and Le Alan started taking pictures of some unknown French couple’s wedding.

After the picnic we took a round about way back to Gosnay. Le Alan eventually had some success in reading the French map and managed to finally locate the Bois des Dames car park – the place we had been looking for all day. But it was too late to do any more walking so we went back to the chateau and had a drink in one of our rooms. By this time La Lorraine was exhausted with all that back seat driving and had gone to bed. (Le Andy was still dreaming of French pussies.)

We went down the the Vasco for a snack before returning to the room for a final night cap. At this point La Joanie fell asleep as usual muttering random answers to quiz questions.