Chateaux Anne in Les Essards

We spent a bit of time in the little village of Les Essards, a tiny town of maybe 200 people. The village lies near Aubterre, a slightly larger town where we also spent some time. In the end, we actually zipped around in our Peugot, Penelope, to quite a few small towns in the area--crashing weddings, eating salad nicoises and scaling walls of actual chateaux (what's the plural of chateaux?) along the way.

Before all of that though, our co-worker, Anne, handed us over a set of keys and her summer kingdom became ours. Our homestead for the week was everything you'd look for in a french house in the middle of nowhere. It came with:
**nooks, crannies and a library including a desk that overlooked a rolling field
**shiatsu massage room
**books, books and books
**that musty french smell that musty romantic french houses have
**a beautiful fireplace





It also came with an assorted cast of characters of bees, bugs and hauntsville noises. But we managed to survive six days in the middle of nowhere with nothing more than a couple of hangovers and a slight sunburn. What a way to end an marathon filled, Ofsted damned half term.