Sorry it has taken so long to get this post on the website. It seems to have been a busy few weeks. From our house/pet sit in Vendee looking after the “Poms”, we travelled to the Loire Valley. We returned to the Manor House for another house/pet sit for our friends Suzanne and Jacques. They departed for a two week break in the south of France, a day before our arrival. A friend stayed the 1st night and we arrive just after lunch to take over the reins. We were greeted with the news that in addition to the normal bunch i.e.
Charlie the Labrador,
Vidocq the Springer,
Patch the Cat
Numerous feathered friends, chickens, geese, ducks
and not forgetting Blanchforte the goat.
we had 4 new baby ducklings to look after!
All went well until 5 days into the sit when we received a call from Suzanne to say they would be returning home. Jacques had had an allergic reaction to a caterpillar bite. His arm was swollen and sore and he was on antibiotic’s. Also, poor Suzanne had slipped in the shower and had 2 suspected broken ribs. OMG! Fed up, they decided to cut their holiday short and return back early. We stayed on for a few days and helped them around the place, getting in some shopping etc. and run them to their various medical appointments.
As we now had “free” week we decided booked ourselves a last minute cycling holiday in Belgium with our good friends Bob & Liz. We managed 230 kms in 5 days, lots of laughs, lots of funny stories and lots of sore bums…..thank goodness for chaffing cream and padded knickers….could have been a lot worse!
We crossed over on the Ferry from France to UK for a 5 day (long weekend) house/pet sit in Buckinghamshire. We were looking after a mad Springer Spaniel puppy called Flint, a Border Terrier called Dogger, a beautiful black swan, chickens, ducks and an African Pygmy Hedgehog, for good measure! The house was a beautiful, a large rambling 7 bedroomed home, on the Waddesdon Estate, originally built as a home for one of the Rothschild family. Fiona and Ed, the homeowners, made us very welcome. Flint, was great fun to be around, a bundle of boundless energy, but a loving and gentle natured dog too. He loved going for walks with his favourite game of “find it”, as we hide tennis balls along the track. He is in training to be a gun dog and responded well to the commands and whistles etc. that we were taught to use. However,as a typical puppy he loved to occasionally run off and do his own thing too. An affection little character, one of his favourite pastimes involved climbing up behind you when you were seated and wrapping himself around your neck like a scarf, I think it was his form of a cuddle!
Dogger was, by many years, the old of the two dogs. Love his walks too, although preferred not to get too close to Flint. I think he found him too boisterous at times…and he would tell him too! He was a dear old cutie. Having lost most of his front teeth, the one remain protruded at a rather odd angle gave him the look of Nanny McPhee or Dogger McPhee as he was known.
As for Spikey the African Pygmy Hedgehog, who we had been so looking forward to meeting. Little did we know we would not get to see a lot of him. What a sleepyhead! His waking hours were between midnight and 4 am, when he would venture out from beneath his blankets and play on his toy wheel. He’d wee and poo all over everything in his cage. After his dinner (crispy worms), a drink and after all that exercise, it was back to bed to sleep for the next 20 hours! Boy was he grumpy when you had to wake him to clean his cage!
The time past really quickly and we really enjoy the beautiful house and all the animals.
Since leaving the house/pet sit we have spent time visiting family and friends in the UK. It was lovely to see everyone, although we spent a lot of time on the road travelling from the south to Scotland and back again. We attended a beautiful wedding and had a fun filled weekend in Somerset celebrating our dear friend Abigail’s 60th Birthday. Now are we back on the road and heading through France, with a stopover of a few days in the Italian Lakes (an area we fell in love with last year). Next stop from there is Umbria for a house/pet sit in this beautiful area…bellisimo!!!