Sardines and ping pong and trouble getting in the sea

Our adventurous eating knows no bounds! Today's lunch was sardines bought fresh from

Waiting for the tide at La Flotte 

the local market which we griddled and served up with toasted slices of our home-baked bread. I don't think the fish were caught by any of the boats pictured in La Flotte harbour though. They are all completely stranded by the lack of tide which was a pretty odd sight.

Yesterday afternoon saw the opening of our new Table Tennis set packaging and we played two games, both of which Dave won. My best score was 13 to his 21 so not a complete whitewash. Today we have played two lots of three games, one this morning and one this afternoon. Dave was still totally triumphant but my best score has crept up to 15! We also played our first games of boule with the fab set I bought at St Wilfrid's. Now this game I can win! We played 14 ends and I won 9 to 5.

We didn't go back to the beach swimming today as it wasn't so hot as yesterday. After having got myself into a bit of a tizz trying to get into the sea yesterday, perhaps this is for the best. There is a stony strip of sand at the tideline of the Plage Les Gollandieres so my footing was unsteady and a strong wave knocked me over. This wouldn't have been a major problem except that it was followed by a half dozen similar, each timed to not allow me to get up and further out in time to avoid them. Exasperating! Once past the breaking waves, it is easy and fun to bob with them, but the first few feet need careful timing. When leaving the beach car park, we saw a car with a new-to-us country letter on its numberplate: OC. Most cars here are F and there's a smattering of GB, D and NL, but we'd never seen OC before. Any ideas? We tried to think of countries all the drive home and eventually had to give up and Google it. It's not a country after all. OC is the unofficial lettering for the Occitane region of France!

St Martin is the next small town along from La Flotte. It is perhaps even more picturesque ( and it's harbour has water in it!) and has an incredible proportion of expensive clothes shops compared to any other products. We wandered around for a couple of hours this afternoon. Practically all the houses are whitewashed with their doors and window shutters in similar shades of green or blue. The overall effect is of perfect tranquillity but I wondered if homeowners only have certain proscribed colours from which they can choose? I liked one particular type of shutter latch in the shape of a behatted woman. It reminds me of the dolls that Nana used to stitch to the tops of knitted loo roll covers. Does anyone still knit, or even have, them? Dave treated us to a gorgeous ice cream each at La Martiniere, a shop claiming to be in the top five ice cream makers in France. Big claims indeed but certainly justified. Dave had a scoop of cherry and a scoop of pear flavours, and I had pistachio and coconut. The pistachio was much smoother and richer than the Sheringham one.

Got to go now. Sunday night is Deadwood night and we need to find out if William is ok ... !

Ile de Re shutter latch