all saints

In France, "All Saints" translates not as a TV soap, but a public holiday. It's a christian thing but, when it comes to holidays, it's not how, it's how many, so I happily accepted Franck & Valentine's suggestion to come on down to La Rochelle for a few days at Valentine's folks' house.

We spent most of the weekend on our bikes, covering 32k on Saturday cruising around La Rochelle, 46k on Sunday over to Ile de Ré, and particularly St Martin, and then a lazy 10k just rolling around on Monday morning. As with everywhere else I've visited people in France, the food and drink was excellent throughout, including good octopus, paté, and cognac. On the way home, we stopped in at Valentine's grandmother's place, 5 minutes in which we were offered everything from leftover halloween sweets to packets of rice and pasta, in the grand international tradition of extremely generous grandparents.