An absolutely gorgeous day here – over 30C, sunny with blue, blue skies. There was only one thing to do: stake our claim to a pair of pool loungers and peg out!

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We started with breakfast on our little garden patio. I had coffee (of course!) and no fat no sugar no dairy yoghurt, with a little fresh apricot. On the subject of the aforementioned yoghurt…… it was lovely but what the heck is it made of then??? I was afraid to look…. The little apricots are lovely at the moment. Bob had coffee and bread with rhubarb compote! Looked lovely.

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We got to the pool about 10am. It is always quiet in the morning. The pool attendant tried to swipe us in using our Tous Anti Covid French app but it wasn’t liking the qr code for our NHS vaccs today….. no way. In the end she let us in without a problem because she could see we were vaccinated from looking at the app.

It didn’t work for any Brits today apparently – something gone wrong with the French app. We know it’s still being worked on so obviously a glitch has occurred. You’ll remember that on Saturday it wouldn’t read Lucy’s Dubai vaccination certs? Well, the stated procedure for non EU, US or UK certificates before you arrive is that you send them to a French govt. department who will upload it for you. Lucy had done this but she’d got an email back saying it had been added to the pile but that they were totally overwhelmed at the moment and it would be weeks before they would be able to add it. Note to Macron: don’t announce a policy change in August when everyone in France goes on holiday and expect it to be implemented ANY TIME SOON!!!!

Anyway, there was that fallback that pharmacies could upload it, except on Sunday they couldn’t……. Remember all that? Well, yesterday she got an email from the government department again to say that the acceptance of foreign vaccinations has now been automated and that she should apply again, sending the certs again. She did that and they were uploaded immediately and are now in the French app working perfectly. Possibly at the same time, the NHS certs that were accepted and valid were somehow invalidated……. sigh…… anyway, we will carry out papers with us as well if we go out and hopefully we will be ok….. No doubt it will soon be working again, however it is heartening to know that other countries covid systems are by no means perfect. We beat ourselves up at home all the time, but actually, we aren’t so bad…..

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Had a lovely day by the pool. It was quiet till about 3. I mean really quiet. I think most people go into the park or off sightseeing somewhere, then they get back and come to the pool as it seems to pick up late afternoon. Had lots of swims. It was a bit chilly in the water – don’t think it’s heated – but it was great to cool off. We popped back to the house for a quick lunch, but otherwise stayed out there till after 4. Tans jumped right back into action.

We may do this again tomorrow in which case I will probably not blog. On Thursday, we are embarking on a 2 day road trip down towards the Loire Valley to spend a night in the Hotel de France, La Chartres de Loir. https://lhoteldefrance.fr/en/ We are going to visit various places on the way there and the way back and it will be a lovely trip. We stayed here about 4 years ago and absolutely loved the hotel. It is near Le Mans and has a rich history of classic motor racing, and in itself is just a total slice of a past life. Set in a little traditional square, 100% 1930s in tone, there would be no surprise if you were welcomed by the cast of Allo Allo, or if a carfull of Gestapo pulled up for dinner….. We really can’t wait to go back. Read along about that trip…. Thursday and Friday.