Oh France, how do I love thee - part 2

Part of what I love about France is the feeling of somehow going home - I've been going there for so long that I understand the language, the culture, driving on the wrong side of the road, even some of the daft French rules! And, as one of the best things about being at home is meeting up with friends, so one of the joys of this holiday was meeting up with new friends - blogger friends!

Rob of 'Our French Garden in the beautiful Dordogne' lives about 2 hours drive away from where we were, so we went to meet him and his wife, Karen. I was suprisingly nervous ........Rob and I have been following and commenting on each others blogs for quite some time and you get to feel like you know someone when you do that, but meeting him face to face - scarey! What if he didn't like me, what if we didn't get on, what if we had nothing to talk about .........??!!

Rob, Karen and me on the terrace - don't you just love the colour of those shutters?!

I had nothing to worry about! Rob and Karen were wonderful, warm, friendly people - just as I'd imagined really! They welcomed us Gnomes with open arms, showed us round their gorgeous gardens and gave us a proper French 3 hour lunch in the dappled shade of the vine covered terrace as we all put the world to rights! It was a joy!

It was also a bit like having been doing a jigsaw without the picture and then being given the box lid with the picture on it ....... all the different parts of the garden that I'd seen on his posts suddenly all fitted together and made sense.

The picture below is the back of the barn and, if you click on the photo to enlarge it, in the doorway niche you can just see the Roman head that Rob featured a while ago.

This is the front of the barn/games room, which is opposite the main house and terrace.

Karen showing Himself and the Gnomelets the stream at the bottom of the garden - and explaining about the slightly hairy bridge that Rob negotiates with his wheelbarrow to go get mole hole loam from the field across the way!

Walking away from the house and stream we crossed the meadow and inspected Rob's pegola en route ...... remember that early post? Rob wasn't very satisfied with how quickly his plants were growing, but I thought they were looking good, strong and vigourous - so by next year he'll be moaning about having to cut them back!!! That's us, never satisfied - stuff either grows too slowly or too quickly!

The building in the background is the back of the barn. The niche with the Roman head in it is in the top right hand corner where the ground slopes up.

I loved these Cannas that Rob had grown in a circular stone planter on the terrace. I thought the combination of colours was fantastic - especially in bright sunlight. They were perhaps a little too close in colour to the shutters, but hey!

Rob and Karen's winter job this year is to repaint all the shutters in a gorgeous shade of green .......... I have volunteered my services to go and help!

So, all in all, we had a great time with them - and Rob (bless his heart) had even remembered that I'd like the Corydalis he'd featured in a post a while ago and had saved some seeds for me - and I've planted them already! The man is a star!

Rob and Karen also suggested that we check out a few of the local sights while we were in the area, so we went via St. Cyprien (and THE most beautiful house in the world - it was being re-roofed but still managed to look fantastic. We would have all moved there tomorrow!!) and into the Dordogne valley. It was a bit of a shock after the Dronne valley as it was wall to wall tourists and I could probably have walked across the river on top of all the canoes without getting my feet wet, but it was stunningly beautiful, with chateaux perched on hilltops in every direction we looked. We went to the Chateau de Milandes which, at one point, had been owned by Josephine Baker the famous vaudeville and Follies Bergeres star. It was everything a 'proper' French chateau should be - stunningly beautiful in an awesome location, a bit blousey and over the top, with fantastic architecture and beautiful formal gardens but it still had a happy feel to it. It also had a great falconry demonstration and a jolly nice little cafe with painted metal tables in the shade of huge lime trees!

One of the birds in the falconry display - an Eagle Owl I think?!

Same bird coming into land - with the magnifient landscape behind it. I don't think the bird was that bothered about the scenery though!!

This was a little doorway I found tucked away, looking just a little bit 'Sleeping Beauty' I thought!

If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can have a look at the gargoyles either side of the door. They're great!

A view from the turret window - not bad eh?

And so we passed a glorious day in oh so many ways and, as the Gnomelets put it, "good choice of blog friends mum"!