Chatillon en fete

Well, it's finally here - L'Europe en Berry-Touraine, which is the 3 day event in Chatillon over 14-16 July. We had a tiring but worthwhile day yesterday as we held the Jeux sans Frontiers with teams from various parts of Europe. The children (and adults) had a whale of a time competing in the silly games. Bulgaria were the eventual winners (by 5 points) with England coming second. We've posted a few photos below:

Belgian team assembling their escargot jigsaw

The English with the Rocket game

There was paint and glue everywhere for the mask-making game!

The clowns from the Belgian circus school proved very useful!

The evening passed with a repas champetre which was provided by the local commercants of Chatillon, and was very popular with the queue seeming to be never ending. We watched some traditional Berry dancing followed by some lively Slovenian dancers. At 11pm we had the traditional fireworks to celebrate French National Day and they were certainly spectacular - lots of 'oohs' and 'aahhs' from a very large crowd. The evening finished off with the Pirates disco - unusual in that it's a guy dressed as a pirate, playing an accordian doing karaoke! Quite a combination but one that seems to work! Lots of people got up to dance.

We have a group of artists here from Clare in Suffolk, and they spent today painting and sketching in and around the town, accompanied by some of the Chatillon art group. It was very interesting to go round having a look at their work.

Tonight we have the second of the Vendredi Gourmand evenings (see a previous blog), and tonight Joel is providing Moules frites. It seems the French eat moules when there isn't an 'R' in the month. So, just time for a quick shower before we head off - oh and we have to feed Poppy! 

I'll post some info about the evening in our next blog!