Margaret and Jack own a Retreat place, Manoir Mouret, in South West France that can accommodate up to 24 people. They got in touch with The Compassionate Friends and offered the accommodation to members free of charge. This year, being the first, they offered a week then following years it will be 3 weeks. The stone-built house and the three barn apartments surround an enclosed courtyard and sit in five acres of grounds which include a swimming pool and tennis court. There is also an on-site gym/studio.

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When I first read about it I didn’t say anything to Lynda because after Darren had died whilst on holiday in France we had said that we didn’t wish to visit France and also Darren’s Angelversary fell in the middle of the week on offer. Then a couple who we had met through TCF messaged me saying that she and her husband were going and how about joining them. So I talked it over with Lynda and we decided that this was an opportunity to break the “we’re not going to France” thoughts and be with people who understand the emotions we were going to go through. So we applied and eventually we got accepted.

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Our destination is just north of Toulouse. We checked the various means of transport and we decided to check the possibility of flying,  until, because of airport restrictions, there was only two BA flights from Heathrow on the Saturday, one too early to get there by public transport and the other not arriving until late evening.

 

So in the end we decided to go by car. The reasons being, number one we would use the Channel Tunnel which we had never been through before (and Lynda doesn’t travel well on boats) and number two on the way back, according to how we were feeling, we could see the place where Darren had been staying at and also, hopefully, find the Unicorn statute that Darren was feeding a chocolate bar to in the last photograph taken of Darren. With that in mind, we decided to travel via Tours on the west side of France (also avoiding the motorways around Paris). So I booked to travel on the Friday, stay the night in Tours and on the return stay in Tours on the Saturday, returning home on the Sunday.

 

Our departure time from Folkestone on the Friday was 8.36am and we had to be there at least an hour before then. So it was an early departure from home, 4.30am. We got to Folkestone with time to spare and we had a pit stop before we joined the boarding queue. At this time we could of got an earlier shuttle than scheduled. We got on to the ramp leading down to the train only to be held up. Eventually we were told that the train had broken down and we would have to go to another train. So we followed the lead car and boarded the train from the wrong direction (instead of driving straight on to the train we had to do a U-turn. We eventually left Folkestone about 9.20am, nearly an hour later than scheduled.

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This was the first time I had driven in France since 1988 and because of the distance involved we decided to use motorways where we were able to. We had a good journey to Tours, there were plenty of places to pull off the motorways for toilet breaks/coffee breaks, etc. We had driven 437.8 miles, a total travelling time of just over 11 hours.

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The “hotel” we had booked into was a budget hotel, the room was virtually a pod, with room for a bed, a small desk with 1 chair and a compact toilet/shower/hand basin room, there was also a few shelves. No tea-making facilities, no cups and a few power points (but not one right next to the bed). The main thing, though, it was clean and it was only for one night. The breakfast was sufficient for our needs.

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We left as early as we could Saturday and again went via motorways. It was a very good journey down, we travelled 313.2 miles and we arrived about 4pm. Total travelling time today of 7 hours 10 minutes. We were greeted by Margaret who showed us to our accommodation.

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The converted barns are known as Gîtes and our Gîte was called Duras. It has its own separate entrance & private outside terrace with a table and chairs. Large open kitchen, dining and seating area. Half floor up are bedrooms 1 & 2 on the same level, each with en-suite. One bedroom has a king bed and the other bedroom can be configured with either a super-king bed or twin single beds. The Gîte had everything you could think of for a self-catering holiday, all nicely laid out and clean. There were even books and games provided. Jack & Margaret also provided us with a chilli dinner we could heat up as well as some basic food items, including bread, butter, milk, tea, coffee and even fruit.

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In the welcoming letter Margaret and Jack included: “Cats Outdoors — There are two black and white cats who live happily in the grounds chasing mice. We feed them ever day. They are outdoor cats and should not come into the house or become socialised so please don’t encourage them in any way. Thank you. By the way, White Faced Cat is unaware that he is not socialised.” That was so true, we never saw the other cat but invariably if we sat out on our patio White Faced Cat used to appear and it is very hard to ignore a cat that is rubbing himself against your legs. As the week went on we had to keep the door to the Gîte closed if the cat was about, he certainly was forgetting he is not socialised.

 

We were joined by another couple, who had the use of another Gîte, and six ladies (all bereaved parents), who stayed in the main house. We mainly catered for ourselves but we did join with the others on several occasions, the first was the Sunday night when Jack and Margaret provided with us with a very good dinner.

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We had a very enjoyable, peaceful, and at times emotional, week. Lynda made good use of the swimming pool, going in every day. We shared a lot with the others but also had our own space. The others in the group made good use of the tennis court and Lynda and I actually had a go at table tennis and everything was provided for both sports, there was other games equipment available as well.

 

Lynda and I visited a town called Albi one day and apart from a trip to the local supermarket and a walk to the local village, Andillac, didn’t go far at all. Andillac didn’t have any shops as such. It had a (trying to be polite here) junk shop, which on Google Maps is called a Home Furniture Shop, and another work place which restores furniture but also had a lot of other second-hand items in 2 workshops. There was one other feature of Andillac and that was a “living wall”. This was an oblong water feature with a trellis rising above it and this was covered in plants. There is a photograph of this in the slideshow.

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We were all offered the opportunity to go grape-picking and visiting the distillery, but as Lynda and I have back problems and grape-picking involves bending we declined the offer but all the others went and enjoyed it.

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Of course, we talked about our children (thank you all for sharing). We said about our thoughts on visiting the place where Darren had stayed and finding the unicorn and our friends gave us a lot of support and encouragement to go for it. Also on the 31st was Darren’s angelversary, so the ladies invited us to join them for the evening meal, also Jack and Margaret and the other couple. They raised a glass to Darren and then we raised a glass to all of our children and siblings. During the evening they brought out a tray with lit tea-lights in a shape of a heart for us. A very emotional but enjoyable evening.

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Finally, it was time for us to leave this beautiful, peaceful setting. We had by now decided that we would visit the places that we had talked about on the Sunday and I had been putting various things in the SatNav to work out times, etc, and I thought I had the SatNav settings set on what they were on a journey there. We started out and after a while realised that we weren’t being directed onto motorways so I checked the settings and I had reset to use motorways, so just thought that the SatNav was playing silly devils and carried on. I checked later that evening and realised I hadn’t unchecked “avoid tolls” so that is why it was avoiding most motorways (it had taken us on a few). As we weren’t using motorways the places to stop for coffee and toilet breaks were harder to find. We went through a small village and it had a restaurant, managed to find somewhere to park, but, even though it was about 1.30pm, they were closing. Managed to find out that there was somewhere a bit further down the road where we might be able to get a coffee. Found a signpost which looked promising, turned off the road onto a single track road and followed the signs which took us along a dirt track through a wood and then we came across the restaurant called La Guinguette du Vieux Chêne and it was still open. So we had a snack and coffee. It was about a mile off the main road but it was a beautiful spot, right next to the River Dordogne where there were people enjoying themselves on the bank and in the river.

 

The drive back to Tours was 321.1 miles so there wasn’t much difference mileage-wise but it took longer. 9 and a half hours travelling today.

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On the Sunday we set off for the farmhouse where Darren had been staying, La Pasquerie, in La Chapelle-au-Riboul. We found it without any problems but as it was a privately-owned property, we couldn’t go down the driveway without a lot of explaining, so we just saw it from the roadside.

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I had been searching on the internet and I found a unicorn that matched the picture that we had in Saint-Lô, Manche, northern France and it was about 78 miles from the farmhouse. So I set the address in the SatNav and off we went. We got to Saint-Lô and the street we wanted was a one-way in the other direction from where we had been taken to. I got out of the car and looked down the street and there it was so we parked up and walked to the unicorn.

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When we looked at it we decided it was the same one, unfortunately it was showing signs of age, it no longer stood in water, there were plants around instead, some trellis behind it which had been painted green was no longer showing any signs of paint. In France, most places shut on Sundays and Saint-Lô was no exception, everything shut and very few people about. As we thought that the last photograph of Darren was taken on a Sunday we were left with the question: why did three teenagers drive about 1 and a half hours to a place that nothing was happening?

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Anyway, after taking photographs, we made our way to Calais and home. We had a 9.06pm booking for the Tunnel and we made it in plenty of time, in fact got an earlier crossing and we finally arrived home at 10.45pm. A long and emotional day but we were pleased that we had done all that we had done. We drove a total of 564.8 miles and 16 hours travelling that day. A total of 1,695.7 miles since we left on August 26th.

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The slideshow consists of photographs taken, not just by me, but the others who were there. Thank you for sharing.