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~ A fairy-tale cottage by the Seine in Normandy

chaumierelesiris

Tag Archives: London

French Women Can Play Basketball

05 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Basketball, cycling, Flowers, France, London, Olympics, sport

This will be my last post about the Olympics, I promise. I’m sticking to my rule that I will only post if it has something to do with France. So I won’t tell you about the excellent Italian fencing final we got to see. Or what an thrill it is to be in London this week.

What I will tell you is that today we were lucky enough to score tickets to see France play Russia at women’s basketball. The French team are unbeaten so far in the tournament, and we expected a good match.

Everything about going to the Olympics is exciting.  We arrived from West Ham station and walked along an elevated pathway that gradually reveals the panorama of stadiums in the park. There were jugglers and stilt-walkers and high-fiving volunteers. A carnival atmosphere, still celebrating Team GB’s record 6 gold medals won the previous day.

Inspire a generation, Olympic Park, London

How different it looked from last time we saw it, just three months ago. One of the great surprises of the Olympic Park is just how attractive it is. Banks of wildflowers shimmered everywhere in the early morning light. Redolent of the golden colour you see sometimes in Normandy.

Wildflowers, Olympic Park, London

I’ve already written about seeing the Olympic road race and would have loved to attend a cycling event the velodrome. Second best was seeing the magnificent stadium from the outside.

Velodrome, Olympic Park, London

Olympic Park, London, 5 August 2012

Now onto the basketball.

Basketball Stadium, Olympic Park, London

Given the number of French nationals who live in London (between 300 and 400,000 according to the French embassy), French support felt muted, especially compared to the vigorous flag-waving by Poland supporters at the GB-Poland volleyball match we had attended the day before.  However as French points rose, the tricolore started to appear around the stands.

French supporter, Women's Basketball, London Olympics

The French women played a smart and controlled game. They deserved to win, and we’ll be watching as they go into the quarterfinals later this week.

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Le cyclisme arrive!

29 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cycling, France, London, Olympics, sport, Tour de France

Nothing new to say about Normandy this week as we have kept in London for the Olympics. France, of course, is a great Olympic country: not just as a competitor and five-time host, but, as I’ve noted before, because the modern Olympics exist in large part thanks to a Frenchman.

What a privilege to have world-class sport on our doorstep. A few weeks ago I lamented not being in Normandy when the Tour de France passed through. This weekend, we are lucky enough to have both the men’s and women’s road races pass minutes from our home, on their outbound and return journeys.

Cycling is one of France’s great sports, both for professional athletes and for the general population. You can barely step out of Les Iris on a sunny Sunday without a cycling club in their bright lycra speeding past along the Route des Chaumieres. Each one says hello.

“Bounjour”

“Bounjour”

“Bounjour”

“Bounjour”

“Bounjour”

Oddly, I never see groups of female road cyclists. France has three cyclists entered into the women’s road race today. And here they are, 12 minutes into today’s road race in their blue and white outfits, crossing Putney Bridge in west London. Bon chance!Women's Olympic Road Race goes over Putney Bridge, July 2012

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Town Mouse, Country Mouse

12 Saturday May 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Travel

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Art, Bow, dog, Graffiti, Lee Navigation, London, Olympic Park, Olympic Stadium, Olympics, restaurant

This is a blog about living and travelling in rural Normandy and I try to stay fairly close to the subject. I’ve gone off-piste from time to time. I was star-struck by an encounter with Blur’s Alex James, and I enthused about a friend’s chalet in Vaujany. Today I’m going to stray again. If this blog is all about rural life, I’m going to write about its opposite.

Graffiti, East London

Last weekend we spent a day wandering around East London – a helter skelter patchwork of old industry and new development, a resolutely urban space crawling with builders and testers and security guards and snapping tourists like me as it enters the last weeks before the London Olympics. (For a neat travel account of things to do in East London, see the New York Times’ 36 Hours in East London).

We walked along the Lee Navigation, a system of canals built out of from the River Lea that once served industry, and are now the heart-center of Olympic development. This provided some excellent views of the main Olympic stadium, where sound checks were underway all afternoon.

Olympic Stadium and River Lea (Lee) April 2012

Here is one of the entrances to the Olympic park. You can see old industrial buildings next to a secured gate into the Park. I love the graffiti under the canal bridge: IMAGINE WAKING TOMORROW AND ALL MUSIC HAS DISAPPEARED. Our dancing-singing-violin-playing daughters tried to imagine what that would be like.

River Lea (Lee), East London, Graffiti Imagine Waking Tomorrow and All Music Has Disappeared

It’s been decades since the canals have carried working barges, but there are houseboats all along the sides. You might think a houseboat is a romantic, bohemian way to live cost-effectively in London–that’s not always the case. Even if the houseboat is affordable, mooring prices and terms vary widely. Behind the houseboats here, you can see the kind of smart apartments that have appeared all over this once industrial area.

Houseboat, East London

Someone has set up these miniature sculptures ‘watching’ the construction of the Olympic Park from across the Lee Navigation. (Is this a good moment to mention that there is a French connection to the Olympics. It was a Frenchman, Pierre de Coubertin, who in 1894 proposed in a speech at the Sorbonne the idea of revival of the Games and establishment of the International Olympic Committee.)

River Lea (Lee) and Olympic Stadium

For lunch we made our way into Bow, where Roach Road was unexpectedly buzzing with Bugaboos and LandRovers–surely day visitors from Islington and Dulwich trying to snatch a bit of artistic urban cool just like us? Look at the Olympic Stadium looming behind.

Fish Island, Bow, East London

With children and dog in tow, we were delighted to discover that the cafe at Stour Space is energetically child and dog friendly. This is certainly not the case in much of London–I have yet to find a dog-friendly cafe in Fulham. The excellent brunch menu included pea soup and bacon sandwiches.

Stour Space, Bow

Stour Space is hosting a retrospective of works by local printmaker James Brown. This version of a William Morris quotation, which can be bought at the V&A, particular spoke to us:

Since we’re talking opposites today, I had to take note of the requisite anti-Olympics graffiti just along the street.

Olympics Graffiti, East London

There’s much beauty in the contrasts here. Of course there is: it’s the differences in life, after all, that provide richness and texture. The town mouse and the country mouse need each other, and make each other, in their contrast, more beautiful.

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Britpop Revisited, and a French Connection

12 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Food, France

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Blur, Britpop, cheese, France, Le Touquet, London, Music, Walking

Last week I wrote about taking an autumn walk in Normandy, and shortly afterwards I came across this column on walking. Writing in the Telegraph, former Blur bassist Alex James ponders the pleasures of walking–seemingly a whimsical luxury in our zippy 21st century lives. He puts it rather well:

There is no better way of seeing the world, or yourself, than walking. Nothing really ever happened then and nothing really happens now. Once we saw a stoat. Sometimes there is a dead thing. Walking is a feeling more than what happens.

I seem to have been walking a serendipitous path myself this week. No sooner had I read that article, than I found myself at a launch party in East London curated by none other than Alex James.

The evening was filled with excellent music and cheese, James having re-invented himself as a gentleman farmer and cheese-maker. One of his cheeses is marvellously named after New Order’s Blue Monday, and his book about this unusual career transition, All Cheeses Great and Small, comes out next year.

There is a French connection here and we’ll get to it in a moment.

With Alex James popping up all over the place, I pondered how little I know about Britpop. I was away from the UK at university and working in New York during the early Britpop years. Social Distortion, Liz Phair, Pavement and Nirvana were the alt rockers du jour. Had I missed one of the most important cultural moments of my youth?

A colleague, who has always struck me as more PPE than pop, surprised me with his enthusiastic recommendation of James’s account of the Britpop years, Bit of a Blur.

So I picked up Bit of a Blur, and discovered that James is quite a fan of France. He studied French at Goldsmiths (where he was a student alongside his mate, artist Damien Hirst). Years later, in an effort to sober up and find some focus, he learned to fly, and developed a fondness for  Le Touquet, which I’ve written about here. He regularly flew himself from Elstree to Le Touquet, which took about 40 minutes in his Beechcraft Bonanza. Here he explains what he likes about Le Touquet.

Coasting in at France, Le Touquet, Paris Plage, is the second town on the right. In days gone by it was the exclusive playground of the rich and famous. More recently they huddle together at the southern end of France on its grisly private beaches and within its gated communities. It’s all the same people you see in New York and London down there. Northern France, and particularly Le Touquet, are a well-kept secret. The expansive beaches are deserted and the whole place has a natural glamour…..There are chocolate shops, a casino, and silly things to rent and do. There are restaurants galore and hotels from the grand to the grounded.  After a while, I began to like the cheap hotels. They have the most character. Luxury looks the same in Le Touquet as it does in Leeds. You lose all sense of luxury if you never step outside of it. We all need a bit of rough with our smooth.

I couldn’t agree more with his assessment of the south, and of the relative charms of Northern France.

Now here’s what I’ve been wondering. What are the French pop music movements I have missed? I remember listening a lot to Air’s Moon Safari in the late ’90s. Has France had its own version of Britpop?

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Good Neighbours

12 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Food, Les Iris, Normandy

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

bread, Food, London, neighbours, Normandy, village, Walnut bread, walnuts

What makes a good neighbour? In London, where we share the walls of our terraced house on both sides, and hear more intimate details of each other’s lives than anyone is ready to admit, a good neighbour allows you space. No obvious peering over fences; no comment about what may have been seen, the curtains you haven’t managed to hang after a year of living in the house, the unpruned hedge in your front garden, your children’s early morning violin practicing. A good neighbour offers to help with maintenance of shared walls and informs you of upcoming and noisy building works, but doesn’t pop round for a chat and a cup of  tea unless invited properly.

And then Normandy. Our whole village, spread out on the hillside, has a smaller population than one half of our street in London. On the village feast day they all gather for a meal in a tent by the river, dining on ripe cheeses and homemade fruit tarts at long trestle tables. When you meet neighbours along the road you greet and chat: 5 minutes at least, but more likely 10 or 15 minutes. You will be told if your hedge is felt to need pruning. People are popping in and out all the time. It’s never, never an inconvenience.

Recently our neighbours took delivery of some new furniture while we were away. Not only did they help get the furniture into the cottage: they also assembled it and arranged the living room, a wonderful surprise when we arrived, tired and late after long days at work on an October evening.

Walnut  Bread

And the next morning, a knock on our door and gifts. A basket of walnuts collected from their garden and, wrapped in a white linen napkin,  hot and sweet from the oven, a steaming loaf of just baked walnut bread.

I could get used to this kind of neighbourliness.

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