Tails From Provence

Thank Friday it’s Lunchtime – Cobra. Somewhere off the Côte D’Azur

There’s a bit of a lead-up to this week’s TFIL….

So on Wednesday evening, the LSH and I went off to play with the horses. We did a short loop through the woods beside the farm, with me riding Flurry bitless on a trek for the first time and the LSH leading Aero, who was on his second day of “No Riding” after the Osteopath’s visit.

(Damn. I forgot to mention the Osteopath’s visit. Grrr. Ok, the Osteopath checked Aero out on Monday, he was back to feeling stiff and uncomfortable on the left rein but pretty good on the right, so I was sure there was something afoot. Sure enough, his left hip was dropped, causing a corresponding sore spot on the right hand side of his neck; his lumbar vertebrae were a bit scrunched up; he was a bit touchy around the poll and his withers were sore – probably caused by using Flurry’s GP on him. I feel bad about this. Sorry, Aero-Bubbles. The good news, though, was that the Ostéo gave the Gaston Mercier saddle a cautious thumbs up. I have to use Flurry’s riser pad and a thin numnah and “see how it goes” – if it makes him sore I will have to rethink. Fingers crossed!)

Back to Wednesday evening… we had a lovely ride/walk. We saw a really cool green lizard and had a pair of eagles circling overhead for a while, mewing as they hung in the air. They sounded like a cross between seagulls and sparrows, and after doing some research afterwards, I came to the conclusion that they were Golden Eagles… awesome!!

Flurry felt great bitless – not much different to normal. I had set the Micklem bridle on the “middle” bitless setting, where the reins pass under the chin like a curb strap, but I think he would have been just the same with it in the sidepull setting.

He did try a bit of meandering towards the end, bit it was easy to straighten him up just using my legs, and I was really happy with the whole experiment. Flurry was also barefoot for the ride, as was Aero. They’re both still a bit tender on stony ground, so I’ll stick to the boots for another while.

Anyway, we were heading to B&J’s house for a sundowner when I looked at my phone to check the time and realised it was still on “Airport Mode” since I had been using it to play music the previous day. Oops, I said, and switched it to normal…Bing!Bing! replied my phone – “You have a message in your Orange.fr mailbox.” I dialled the number to listen to the message and said “OOOOOOOH!!!” (OOOOOOOH actually has several syllables. I think you should know what I mean.)

My trekking buddy MC was wondering if we’d like to spend the next day on her boat. OOOOOOOH indeed…

First there were the ankle-biters to consider. MC said if we were really stuck, we could bring them, but obviously this was a less than ideal scenario. Dog-sitters Extraordinaire B& J stepped up to the mark and offered to look after them, so the following morning, Cinny & Cookie were dropped off at 8am and off we trundled to the town of La Londe de Maures.

After only one unintentional detour, we found the right place, met up with MC, loaded our picnic onto the boat, filled the boat up with diesel (holy c**p, those things take a LOT of diesel, the boat ahead of us at the pumps took €650 worth of fuel) and headed off, hugging the coastline so we could see stuff.

The port at La Londe de Maures. MC’s boat is third from the right.

MC’s boat “Cobra.” This week’s venue for Thank Friday it’s Lunchtime.

And there was plenty of Stuff to be seen from this exclusive lunchtime venue…

stunt biker…

…a buoy. Exciting stuff for a landlubber…

…water skier…

…a distant regatta…

…a windsurfer struggling to stay upright…

…jet skis, with the town of Hyères in the background…

…a less distant regatta…

…finally, a sheltered spot suitable for lunching.

There was even the occasional idiot having a swim. Brrr. It’s not warm enough for me just yet.

Lunch started of promisingly with an aperitif of cold drinks.

…but went downhill steadily from there. Presentation was poor, this is how the egg sandwich was served,

What? I have to make it myself??

but service was reasonably quick (i.e. I was sitting beside our cool-box) and overall, the food was edible if a little rustic, consisting of boiled eggs, ham, goats cheese, butter, mayonnaise and baguettes (thankfully, we were able to find an open boulangerie that morning) all washed down with a lightly chilled Rosé (the cool-box worked well), with a dessert of fresh fruit (apples or bananas) or little lemon tartlets.

And the all-important ratings?

Star Rating (out of 5) :

Service : ✮✮✮✮✮ (ok, I have to give myself 5 stars. I took stuff out of that cool-box REALLY quickly. And we’re all Lovely People)
Food : ✮✮✮ (I’ll be harsh and take two stars off myself. Must. Try. Harder.)
Value : ✮✮✮ (hmm, tough one, this. Food was cheap, but there was a lot of diesel consumed… I have to go with 3 stars, I’m afraid)
Ambiance : ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮ (Yeah. That’s out of 5)

Thanks for a lovely day, MC!

Dressage. Provençe Style.

I learned a couple of weeks ago that there was a dressage competition coming up, in the nearby Écuries de Mane – the people who first put me in touch with Alexandrine, ten months ago. Would the LSH be allowed to go along and take photos, we enquired – it’s a long, long time since he covered an equestrian event and he was keen to do it, while I was keen to see how the Provençals to dressage. Yes, we were welcome to come along, and Madame Barthélemy even asked if we would like to do on-site printing (no, we wouldn’t, way too complicated!).

So Sunday morning saw us up at sparrow-fart o’ clock, with me sorting out the dogs and brekkie and the LSH busily sorting out the lap-top, cameras, lenses and rain-hoods. Rain-hoods? Yeah. Rain-hoods. It was raining. It’s very important to keep expensive cameras dry when it rains.

I was wondering what the standard would be like. Would there be loads of beautifully turned out people on beautifully turned out warm-bloods, half-passing effortlessly across the practise arena? Gaggles of polished little kids on polished little ponies motoring around in Medium trot, à la many of the Byrds (British Young Riders Dressage Squad) competitions we’ve seen, while their instructors communicated with them via head-set? Or middle-aged women on well-presented, earnest little cobs, doing their very best to strut their chunky stuff? Hordes of kids on hairy ponies racing around out of control?

I wasn’t expecting this, although my friend Helen did warn me :

I thought she meant they were allowed to warm up in a De Gogue, but no, you can use one when you’re competing. Eh?

Nor was I expecting double bridles at what looked like the lowest level… Hello? A double bridle? Seriously?

It turned out that the morning’s classes were for the local riding clubs, but, even so, the standard was much, much lower than we’d expect to see at home. The tests are a bit strange, too, with 10M trot circles, leg-yielding and canter loops thrown in at what seemed to be the lowest level. In my opinion, they should take the fancy stuff out of their low-level tests so that the riders will concentrate on the basics – like being able to ride a straight line, for example, or being able to turn their horses, or being able to stop without hauling the horse’s teeth out. Perhaps they need to be reminded of the Scales of Training :

From http://www.horsechannel.com

There were exceptions, of course, like this lady who rode her PSG test with a nice light curb rein…

and several people who rode softly and sympathetically in snaffle bridles, with one lady doing Advanced Medium very nicely in a snaffle.

Fair play to them, when all around were decked in De Gogues and curb chains…

In the early afternoon, there was a non-competitive Freestyle class. This was a good idea, as well as giving riders with young horses an easy introduction to competition, it gives more seasoned campaigners a chance to try out a higher level test, or to try out a Freestyle routine that they were working on. Alexandrine rode her baby horse Valentine in this. Aren’t her plaits great?

(Guess who plaited her!!)

The atmosphere lightened later in the afternoon as the riders took part in various displays. This was A LOT of fun, you could see both horses and riders enjoyed it a lot more. And my goodness, the French do Fancy Dress well – I was thinking this at the Clermont-Munster match, but the outfits on display on Sunday afternoon confirmed it for me! They had lots of great ideas, too – we had a couple of circus-type displays, The Blues Brothers, a pair of down-hill skiers, a troop of soldiers and even a Gangnam Style tribute!

Blues Brothers

Downhill Skier

Alexandrine teaches these kids. Yes, they’re always bitless. Yes, that’s Mini Flurry ❤

One of the Circus Groups doing “Gangnam Style”

And Alexandrine had her “Old Boy” Max in the demo section, too, starting off with a saddle and bridle and ending up tackless. I hope some of the “Heavy Metallers” present took note…

Alexandrine and Max

For more photos of the day’s proceedings, visit the LSH’s site at SportingIreland.com

Thank Friday it’s Lunchtime – Le Station, Forcalquier

Last October, I found myself in Forcalquier on market day with Granny, who was visiting at the time. When we’d had enough of wandering around the market, we sat down for a cup of coffee in front of this of a brasserie/bar called Le Station.

It was approaching one o’ clock – lunchtime, and as we all know by now, lunchtime is sacred in France (sorry if you’re new and you didn’t know, but at least you know now). We observed with interest as hordes and hordes of people from all walks of life trooped through the door and disappeared somewhere in the interior. The food there must be good if so many people eat there, we agreed, and it’s been on my list of places to visit ever since. Finally, on Monday, nearly six months later, the LSH and I (and our friend JP) managed to be in Forcalquier at lunchtime again, so in we went to check it out for TFIL.

Ok so we stumbled badly at the first hurdle. We have RULES for TFIL – here they are :

Hmm, the plat du jour was tripe à la Provençale. It sounded just offal to me (!), and the LSH wasn’t tempted either so we ducked out on rule no.1 and just ate off the menu.

We all ordered Charcuterie (cold meat platter) for our entrée. Yeah, it was fine. Yeah, I’ve had better.

Then for our main course, JP and I ordered Chicken Escalopes and the LSH ordered Lasagne.

chicken escalope

Lasagne

Yeah, they were fine too. Frozen chips, gloopy sauce on the chicken escalope, fairly ordinary lasagne. Perfectly edible, but not nearly special enough to explain the vast hordes of lunch-eaters the Granny and I witnessed. Mind you, there weren’t that many there this week…. just saying, y’know…

Value wise, it was ok. For three of us, it came to €50, including wine for all of us and two coffees. Not phenomenal value, but ok.

Would I recommend Le Station? Well, no, to be honest, I wouldn’t. It’s not a bad restaurant by any means, but you’ll find much better in the area if you try. That said, maybe we just hit it on a bad day…

Service : ✮✮✮✮✮
Food : ✮✮✮
Value : ✮✮✮
Ambiance : ✮✮✮