Yet another delayed blog. I don’t really have an excuse, other than a requirement to repair the ‘utility room’ roof so we can store our supply of firewood in there. The wood arrived a few weeks ago and took over a day to stack. I’ve also got a new pair of specs, which are very smart. The lenses tint when I’m outside or in a brightly lit shop, which makes me seem like some sort of furtive shop lifter….

But on to the new places….Our usual Saturday lunch haunt was booked for a wedding reception a few weeks ago, so I searched for a different venue. Though Cesson-Sevigne is more than an hour away (and a suburb of Rennes) I thought we should try Zest. Next to the river, it really doesn’t seem like you’re close to a large city. The restaurant is light and airy with a warm ambiance and friendly, attentive staff. The cuisine was very good without having a ‘wow’ factor and we’d go again.

Our friends Iwona and Jarek were helpxing on the Brittany coast a couple of weeks later and we arranged to meet them in Dinan, a pretty Medieval town that we hadn’t visited before. It’s set by a wide stretch of the Rance, where it changes from river to estuary. We fell in love with it. It hasn’t quite the charm that Vitre has, it’s a little larger and more touristy but is full of half timbered charming buildings. At this point I should add that some of the photos in this blog are Iwonas.

We ate at La Fleur De Sel, a charming restaurant which was very flexible to acommodate our two friend’s vegetarian requirements. We wandered round after lunch and discovered there was too much to see in one visit, so naturally we’ll return and fit in lunch somewhere. We did find a gallery which had tapestry rats and quilted pigs for sale. At €3,000 per pig, they might as well have been airborne…

Iwona and Jarek came to stay for a couple of nights after they completed their helpx and are now back home in Poland. We are waiting for work to begin on the downstairs bathroom which rather depends on not only the builder but deliveries of tiles and expensive and select bathroom white goods from Switzerland. It’s not too long before we are off to Seville and Cordoba. Take this as an advance warning of yet more photos of food…