28 October

Our last chance to finish any gardening, and we made a good stab at it, but I was really lethargic - it all felt far more effort than I had within me (a marked contrast to in the summer; I felt superhuman then!). We had to leave the gîte because it had already been rented to other people before we had booked, and had booked a hotel just for one night. We knew that we had to get to Bar-sur-Aube to have showers & get changed before going to Chaource to dinner with Sergine & Patrick. If we hadn't had so many other things to think about, we'd have booked a hotel in Bar-sur-Seine! That would have cut out 2 return journeys between Bar-sur-Aube and Bar-sur-Seine, but hey-ho! Something about penguins...!

We'd worked out that we needed to leave the house by 4.30, but at about 3.15 I'd really had enough. We had bought another padlock and wanted to get spare keys cut, so we used that as our justification to pack up early! There were 2 key-cutting places: one was closed for holidays and the other had hundreds of blanks, but not for our size key! It made me feel that chocolate might be the answer (and I'm not that kind of person normally; I can't remember the last time I bought chocolate [as opposed to eating a bit that someone else had given me] - not this year certainly). When you don't eat anything regularly, it's difficult to know what to choose, but in the end we decided on milk chocolate with praline & hazelnuts. It was disgusting (so sweet and teeth gumming), whilst being just what I wanted!

We had a lovely time with Sergine and Patrick, and the food was wonderful, but I can't remember a thing that we ate (didn't write yesterday's & today's blog contemporaneously like the earlier posts). That's no comment on the food - I bet David will know; must remember to ask him. Sergine is in the (equally slow) process of renovating her house, so parts are lovely and finished, some is 'work-in-progress' and some is most definitely 'before'. It will be wonderful when it is finished; what she has achieved so far is marvellous. It was comforting to see what can be achieved.