My best friend, Fi from ‘Frisco, and her new beau came for New Year and stayed for a week, and as our New Year booker failed to appear we got to spend some extra time at the Beach House.  The girls favourite spot apart from the beach of course is the climbing tree, which is a handy venue for photos too.

Originally the National Studs were set up pretty much all over France to supply horses for the French army under Napoleon. A lot of them still exist, and Saint-Lô is one of the more impressive ones. It is also next to the Regional Sports Horse Complex, where some of the events in the World Equestrian Games will be taking place in 2014. This also where they hold the CSI 1 & 2, International Showjumping Competitions the second week of August each year. Competitions are held all year round in the all weather arenas and there are regular evening Horseball events (roughly like a cross between circus skill and basket ball on horses). We are lucky that we are just 15 minutes away.

The National Association of Sports Horses Sales will be held there on 14th and 15th October 2011.

Bayeux Cathedral is my all time favourite building, and if ever I had to go to church again every Sunday, this would be the building to choose because there is so much to look at.

The American Cemetery is enormous, but has comparatively few people buried in it, in comparison to the German cemetery, which had two per grave.

The American Cemetery is well worth the visit, for me the bits I liked the best were the views from the cliffs, the beautiful Jewish headstones, which were mixed in with the others, and the huge invasion maps. One of these is upside down and I had a hard time working out were we live on it!

This great event was enormously exciting because my sister Sarah came over from England with two of her horses to compete. One of the downsides to doing holiday lets is that we now no longer get the opportunity to travel very much, because the school holidays are our peak season. In the summer the girls spend one month with me and one month with their Dad, so our time together is in short supply. They broke up at the beginning of July, but my holidays only start mid-July, then Granny Horse came over for a week and we spent a week at the beach house. Then after a few days at home it was time for the girls to go off to their Dads.

Very kindly though he let me have them home for a day and a night so we could all go and watch my sister compete. There were lots of famous show jumpers there form all over the world: Germany, Holland, Portugal, GB, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Sweden, Spain, Austria, Italy, Israel, UAE, Mexico, Brazil, USA, Thailand.

Apparently a lot of the teams from far away are based in Holland and then do the season in Europe.

Team GB included Steven & Joe Whitaker, Geoff & James Billington, Keith Shore, Mathew Sampson, Sophie Fawcett and Chloe Aston. Now it has been 25 years since I have done any show jumping but it was very exciting and there were so many attractive men! These are in such short supply where I live sadly. It is not clear why, but it is a fact.

There is a house on our street that resembles something out of a fairy tale. They just kept building up and up and up. There was a houseful of people from Paris our first weekend and they built a sand chateau of serious proportions. Is using a garden shovel cheating?

Ellie investigates the Chateau

The Foundations are laid

Seaward Side

Nearly Finished

Seen from above

We went for a picnic at Les Salines, which are the salt marshes a few kms from the house. I am not used to riding a bike – basically because I am very bad at it, but I really don’t remember it hurting quite so much when I was younger.

Picnic at Les Salines

Picnic at Les Salines

Picnic at Les Salines

We spent part of an afternoon at the races, just three houses away from Maison Mielles, there are only half a dozen race days a year, three or four of which are in July and August, so a special occassion.

Cross Country Race - St Martin de Bréhal

Trotters - Race Day, St Martin de Bréhal

Trotters - Race Day, St Martin de Bréhal

Trotters - Race Day, St Martin de Bréhal

And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight.