Rocket and I made the 3.30am departure this morning to commence our French adventure.

We rocked up in the Limousin Region, famous for all kinds of culinary delights such as Ceps, Truffles, outstanding steaks and many many more.

This is a tiny auberge, with clean, well equipped and comfy, really reasonably priced rooms ( what can you say to 55 eu per night for a double room???) and it’s called Auberge D’Etang in Magnac-Bourg. They even make welcome our little pooch…..

http://www.aubergedeletang.com/EN/index.php

We love it and the main reason is, they have a fab restaurant.

So, once we’d had showered off the 8 hour drive, we go going with….

An aperitif of Vouvray bubbly with an apple liqueur for Rocket and a chestnut liqueur for me.

There were some amuse bouche consisting of a really nice tapenade and a delicious little cheese choux pastries.

Next I had the local melon ( beautiful orange fleshed Quercy melons) with heritage tomatoes. It came with what turned out to be local ham and basil sorbet, neither of which were shown on the menu, and which I wasn’t  fan of.

Rocket had the Foie Gras, which he enjoyed.

One of the great things about France is that restaurants still offer half bottles of wine, in a range of varieties at a reasonable price. This means you can vary things according to what you are eating and something I think is really missing from the UK wine scene.  Rocket went for a red from Bergerac with his mains..

Our mains were outstanding, with Rocket on the veal sweet breads in a cep gravy and I had a duck leg ‘Forestiere’ with buttered tagliatelle.

All finished off with Ile Flotante – what’s not to like.

Back on the road again now, on our way to The Shack in the gorgeous Pyrenees, to enjoy a few weeks R&R and the company of friends and family – can’t wait!