Warm wedding Sarthois

Summer definitively arrived last week. The sun shone and the thermometer inexorably climbed from a maximum of 17C on Monday to 27 on Friday. Weekend weather to order for le bien-costaud's second mariage à la française. La bienheureuse ended a busy week (3 days of running training courses and meetings in Germany) with a rare morning in the office, and shortly after lunch we set off for the six hour drive to La Sarthe. Our arrival at the hotel coincided with that of the Cambridge plumber and his fair lady, we checked in before dashing out again in search of dinner in La Ferté Bernard. A not-so-swift bit of unorthodox parking later, in the process of finding a restaurant we bumped into the Irish man from Antarctica and his consort, driving aimlessly round the town in search of the hotel. A table for four thus became a table for six, and a fine dinner it was too.

Déjà-vu on Saturday morning. Pre-wedding drinks in the same bar as 12 years previously, more catching up with a decade of news as the great Fen-bah and Madame Mac arrive, and then back to the hotel to dust down and don suits and party frocks. Back in La Ferté Bernard, a classic car rally gathered and provided pre-ceremony interest before le bien-costaud and his bride the lovely Mademoiselle Boop suitably arrived in an MG V8, said "Oui", and we all adjourned to a nearby village hall. Several glasses of bubbly later temperatures rose, the dinner courses kept arriving, speeches were made, dances were done, and French inquisitions were suffered and avoided. Finally, replete and exhausted we slipped away from the party in search of a long short-cut home through the rabbits, and a welcome bed.

A thick head in the morning for me (I claim heat exhaustion and dehydration), check out of the hotel just before midday, then off to the village hall again for the post-wedding lunch. Just as 15 years before, le petit-paumé had been adopted by the maire-adjoint and his wife, so too temporarily were la bienheureuse and the plumber in turn. Which led us back to the our convivial hosts' marvellous 16th century house to watch the final collapse of England's World Cup campaign.

Thence it was back to the village hall to say our goodbyes, and hit the road once more. We finally fell into bed just after midnight at the end of an enjoyably entertaining weekend.