TouteFrance

I’m going to be writing posts about places to visit based on my own experiences, and thought I’d start off with the Palais Bénédictine (Bénédictine Distillery) in Fécamp, Normandy.

It’s actually a few years since I visited the distillery but the visit has always stuck in my mind, as we really enjoyed the tour and our stay in Fécamp. The distillery is in a beautiful building in the town centre. The museum itself is really interesting with displays of copper vats, all the herbs used in the liqueur and history of it. There’s actually quite a lot to see there, not only about the liqueur and how it’s distilled, but also other artefacts including sculpture, 15th & 16th century works of art, plus more contemporary art exhibitions & old Bénédictine posters / advertising.

The finale of the tour was the best bit though as the ticket included a Bénédictine cocktail, which of course went down very well, and another followed after that!

You can read more about Bénédictine on Wikipedia and that the world’s single biggest consumer of the liqueur is the Burnley Miners Club in Burnley, Lancashire!

Fécamp itself is on the Normandy coast between Dieppe and Le Havre. It’s a very pretty coastline with high cliffs and beautiful views of the sea, Etretat having some of the most dramatic scenery and famous for its paintings by Monet. There are also many very pretty villages perched close to the cliff tops. The area is well worth a visit, not only for the distillery at Fécamp, but Dieppe has a fantastic street market, plus you have the beautiful scenery. Avoid Le Havre though, a bit of a concrete jungle, but don’t miss the views if you cross the Pont de Normandie.

You can find out more about Fécamp on the tourist office website and the Bénédictine Distillery also has its own website.

I’ve been reading Jon Doust’s interesting blog post on the Telegraph website about eating out in France, which has also attracted quite a few comments.  I’d like to share a bit about my experiences of eating out in France too, which has been varied but on the whole pretty good.

I guess some of my most memorable eating out experiences are from more recent holidays in France and one place I always look forward to eating out in is Barneville-Carteret, Manche. It’s a small seaside/fishing town on the west side of the Cotentin peninsula and is more or less opposite Jersey. The fishing boats come in opposite the restaurants at Carteret, so the ‘Plateaux de Fruits de Mer’ are extremely good. It’s literally about 100 yards from boat to kitchen! You do get quite a lot of whelks thrown in, but if you like your crab and oyster, you’d love the seafood and it’s at about half what you would pay for an equivalent meal here in the UK - I can never work out why seafood is so expensive here, particularly as we’re an island!

On the downside, we’ve had a particularly awful meal in La Rochelle, mussels which must have been cooked for hours, were tiny and shrivelled and when we complained we got an equally bad replacement. We had to leave the restaurant at that point!

Comparing these two meals, the La Rochelle meal was in a touristy part of the town and I think as soon as you hit places like this, the quality often goes downhill. I’m sure there are some good restaurants in La Rochelle and in many other touristy places, but you have to seek them out. Barneville-Carteret is not as touristy, and many tourists who visit the town are French (many Brits by pass it on their way down south from Cherbourg).

I love the value for money you get in French restaurants, a set menu at a reasonable price (often starter, main course and dessert), more often than not very tasty and ‘home cooked’ (or they’re good at disguising it as home cooked!). Many French restaurants do very well at lunchtimes for hungry office workers and at the prices they offer the food, it’s not surprising that workers still like to have a main meal at lunchtime. This also reminds me of when I worked in France as an ‘assistante’ near Toulouse, one school provided a 4 course meal at lunchtime for staff and students!

You do need to shop around though and not all meals will be good, no doubt corners will be cut with the rising food prices. As with anything you get what you pay for, so don’t expect a gastronomic experience for ‘menu express’ prices!

The new super-sized Airbus 380 flew over at Goodwood this weekend. It was one of the first public displays of the aircraft in the UK and did a flyover at the Festival of Speed. This Airbus is the world’s largest passenger airliner and is a joint venture including the French & British (amongst others), with the most part being built in Toulouse by Aerospatiale, and wings being built here in the UK by BAE Systems.

The Airbus A380, can seat up to 853 passengers (depending on seat configuration), with a range of 15,200 kilometres and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85, equating to around 560 mph. The A380 is truly immense, being 73m in length, with a wing span of 79.8m.

At such a phenomenal size, I’m not entirely sure if I fancy a trip on it, you wonder how such a large aircraft ever gets off the ground! The photo was taken at Goodwood by my husband as the plane flew over very slowly.

The plane’s first commercial flight was in October 2007, a Singapore Airlines flight between Singapore & Sydney. The credentials are that the aircraft is much more eco-friendly than most other aircraft - you can read more about that on Airbus’ website. It looks like they’re testing hydrogen fuel cells for future aircraft, so perhaps one day we’ll see aeroplanes running on water instead!

Saturday sees the start of the 95th Tour de France, which starts in Brest,   Brittany this year. There are 21 stages in total and the cyclists will cover a gruelling 3500 kilometres in just over 3 weeks. I admire anyone who can take on such a challenge, I couldn’t even begin to contemplate doing an endurance race such as this one!

From looking at the list of riders, it looks like there are only 2 Brits participating this year, Mark Cavendish with Team Columbia and David Millar with Garmin Chipotle. Best of luck to both of them! I’m not sure if any Brit has ever won the Tour de France, so if you know of any, I’d be interested to know, particularly as we’ve some great cyclists in this country (such as Chris Boardman, one of the best known cyclists) and often do well in other international events such as the Olympics.

I doubt if I’ll follow the event closely, but usually manage to watch a few stages here and there and read snippets of news as I get them.