Les Vignobles de Bordeaux!!

A busy schedule for the day, so we left town early and headed east into the vineyards of Bordeaux. Our first rendez-vous was lunch with Elisabeth, a friend of Françoise, but as we were early, we made a detour to sneak a peek at the Château Grand Puch and its vineyards (extra photo 1).

After a delicious four course lunch, we left Elisabeth’s house, laden with baskets of fresh figs and apples from the garden, and 6 kilos of homemade jam! Our hostess has a garden full of every fruit you could possibly think of!!

Next stop was to visit the family friend that I’d stayed with in May, just to say a quick hello. As it was Journées du Patrimoine (Heritage Weekend) in France, he gave us a tour of the eleventh century Abbey of Faise (extra photo 2), at the end of the village’s one and only street.

Heading into Pomerol country, we drove along some of those wonderful tree-lined roads that are so typical of France (extra photo 3), before arriving at our final destination of Coutras (extra photo 4).

We were in Coutras for an evening performance by Françoise’s theatre group, as part of the Journées du Patrimoine. It was an outdoor performance where the audience followed the actors around town to various historic locations. Unfortunately the performance clashed with the first of France’s matches in the Rugby World Cup, so instead of the expected audience of 100+, there were only 10! Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable evening, but a very late return to Bordeaux around 1am…