Off on holiday again?

I often wondered what drove people to buy a time-share.  They were, I thought, tying themselves down to taking a holiday in the same place and at the same time every year.  (I had not realised that time-share holidays could be swapped.)  This was during the years when the Old Bat and I were exploring the world and taking our holidays in a variety of places: Scotland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Guernsey, France, Jersey, Madeira, Malta, the Blue Ridge Mountains, New England and other places in between.  I had forgotten that for quite a few years when the children were small we had spent a week each August in the same guest house in a small Devonshire village.  Mrs Longman's one-time farm house was in Abbotsham, just a few miles from Westward Ho! on the north Devon coast were there was a large expanse of sandy beach beside a free car park.  The children loved it and Mrs Longman apparently enjoyed looking after us.  Our elder son loved her treacle tart and every year she would make sure it was on the menu, baking a special small one just for him.

Now we are older we tend to explore less and less and make more use of our French hideaway as a destination for holidays.  But that - holidays - is a word I don't associate with Les Lavandes.  People always talk of us going on holiday when we go there but I never think of it in those terms.  After all, the house requires work from both of us.  There is painting and decorating as well as gardening - and who associates DIY with going on holiday? 

All the same, those jobs seem less like chores in France than they do here in England and even though I always tell people we are not going on holiday, we are merely living in our other house for a while, a week there always seems like a holiday.

Roll on next weekend!

~~~~~

Vitré is a quaint town - at least, the central old part is - with narrow streets and half-timbered buildings.