Winter Solstice

Alberto the friendly host of Amarone  

Whilst still in Beaune last night, we walked to an Italian Restaurant called Amarone. We have been to this restaurant many times during work trips and this time we walked there because we were staying in a hotel that is quite close to it rather than a town centre hotel as is sometimes the case.

The owner Alberto has a very good memory for faces and names and always greets customers in person. He will also visit each table again during the client’s time relaxing in his restaurant. The set menu is very popular and is a good suggestion when we are taking our clients there because there is a buffet first course where they may help themselves to food they prefer and eat as much as they wish. Then there is a choice of the Plat du Jour or a pizza, any pizza. There is also dessert. The price is most fair for a restaurant of the quality of Amarone.

Apart from the set menu there are all of the standard dishes served in good standard Italian restaurants and the friendly efficient service is excellent and the décor is in cluttered keeping. Alberto also man’s the till when you pay offering a sip of Limoncello and see’s you out, mentioning that he is hoping to see you again.

This morning after breakfast we set off to our next stop but since it was only 168 miles away we did not take the motorway. We are on holiday and so took a scenic route through the countryside. France has a lot of countryside to see and thousands of pretty villages and farms in what we call hidden France. The first part of our drive took us through a forest area called Grosbois which says it all doesn’t it. Then, still close enough to Beaune that we have cycled there now and again is Seurre that always bring a smile across our faces because years ago we went in to a café there overlooking the river, in the middle of one of our many bike rides. All the locals were watching a football match between Toulouse and Toulon if I have to explain that to you, you are definitely not English or you are just not trying!

I am personally in dispute with posts on the internet today as well as my own daughter for that matter, since they both say that the Winter Solstice is the first day of winter. Where as I claim that it can only possibly be mid winter’s day. What we all agree about, is that it is the day when the sun, which has been traveling south for so long, reaches the point where it will go no further but instead will start the long journey north again to bring sunshine and warmth back to us where I love it to be. That moment today was, they say 10.44 GMT, yes, it does vary slightly and last year was December 22^nd instead.

So to my awkward insistent little mind, that is mid winter and not the start of winter. The shortest day of the year has to also be the middle of winter surely. Dear old Will Shakespeare agreed with me when he wrote A Midsummer Nights Dream, being June 21^st. Therefore the spring equinox is March 25^th please do not try to tell me that that is the start of spring because the spring flowers are finishing at that time. The Snowdrops and the Primroses and the Daffodils all start to show off their beauty way before that and even the much later Bluebells will be starting to fade.

Winter Solstice Photo by my daughter Jacqueline Rackham

Six months later comes the autumn equinox on September 21^st when the light is fading fast and the leaves are starting to change colour. All of this means a lot to me.

 I am the first to admit that I am a slightly weird little woman and as an example it this, listen up. Just after we drove over the Swiss border at lunch time today when not only did they not ask to see our passports but did not ask where we were going or where we had been but were only interested in selling us a vignette for forty Euros. We went into the first rest stop just after the border, where we both headed for the toilets first…. As you do, on a long drive. When I left the loo and headed back to Steve I pointed out a woman just in front of us. I told Steve that if he thought I was a pain in the neck or awkward or strange or difficult, that he should look at THAT woman because she was much better at that than me! In the ladies toilet on exiting the cubical, I stepped over to where there were just two sinks to use compared to twenty toilets. The woman was washing her hands at one sink and her daughter was day dreaming at the other, the woman was attacking her hands as if she were a surgeon preparing for a brain surgery operation. Wash and turn and wash and rub and wash and turn. I was standing directly behind her waiting politely, but when our eyes met in the mirror in front of her, I raised an eyebrow and held her eyes. She stopped momentarily, then pointedly pressed the nozzle for more soap and repeated the hand washing saga, as I stood laughing quietly. She did not look in the mirror again and eventually stomped out and I had to secretly admire her, a woman after my own heart.

Tonight we are in Egerkingen, which is a stop we have used before because it has a nice secure car park to a Mövenpick Hotel with an excellent restaurant. We were up graded on this occasion without a word but I am sure it is because the last time we stayed, I wrote to the head office with a complaint because it took them two attempts to give us a room with a bath rather than a shower as requested on booking. This time we have a fifth floor, very nice room with a bath, complimentary snacks in the hospitality cupboard and a coffee machine.

Wildlife count today was brilliant:
Four cockerels crossing a one track road 
A whole field full of Buzzards and Egrets 
A murder of Crows. (Whole bunch of Crows)
Five Herons
Four Grey Kites
A Sparrow Hawk
One unidentified bloomin' great bird!