Text Box: Planning Your Trip Admin Find out whether your club would prefer a full week or a three night stay (a weekend?). Check dates with members and bear in mind school holidays if you are taking kids. Remember, high summer is not necessarily the best time to go – could be too hot? The weather is good for outdoor training as early as April and into October. Rain may be an issue but training in bad weather can be a character-building challenge. Anyway, there are lots of other things to do but it is useful to have a back-up plan just in case. Work out your best travel route. You still need passports to enter France.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Text Box: Travel If using ferries, always try to book early. Prices are usually discounted the earlier you can make firm reservations. Always check out the websites for special offers or call the company and ask about the cheapest way to travel. You may be able to negotiate a discount for multiple vehicles. Sometimes it is much cheaper to buy two “day trips” rather than a weekly return. If the call centre says this can’t be done, it may be possible to book through the website – get one day-trip starting in the UK and one later starting in France. Three-day (“long weekends”) are usually very good value – and it doesn’t have to be over a weekend. If you have a people-carrier or an SUV, you will often get the same price for a car plus eight/nine passengers as you would for a standard car plus five passengers. If using Eurostar, instead of going to the official website, try a specialist low-cost travel agency like Discount London (http://www.discountlondon.co.uk/eurostar/). You can get a return Eurostar trip to Paris, including a night in a Paris hotel, all for about £85. Even if you don’t use the hotel it makes for a really economical journey. You will normally have to buy the travel package including one night’s accommodation, but can ask for the return rail ticket to be a few days later – after your time in Herqueville.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Text Box: Food Shopping You may want to take some things with you from home, but the cost of living in France is quite low and there are excellent cheese, meat, fish and vegetables, wine and beer available. Beware of Sunday afternoons – usually nothing is open (apart from a few restaurants). Also, Monday is a rest day for normal shops, but the supermarkets are open. There are big supermarkets near all the ferry ports (like Auchan in Dieppe), and not far from Herqueville (Intermarche, Leclerc in Louviers, ATAC in Val-de-Reuil). In St Pierre du Vauvray, about 3km from Herqueville, are a number of small shops (bakery, butcher etc) and a small supermarket called “Le Mutant”. You can get almost everything there. There is also a small shop next to the bar in Ande, which is only 2km away.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Text Box: Meals With two kitchens it is no problem preparing meals for, say, two groups of fifteen people. Once you get to forty/forty five people meals need a bit more planning. There is seating for sixteen in the kitchen of the “Friends’ Accommodation”, sixteen in the Manor dining room, and another nine/ten in the Manor kitchen. If you want a big group to eat together it may be an idea to re-arrange the furniture slightly and have a buffet rather than a sit-down meal. The bread in France is good and cheap – use bread instead of potatoes or pasta to save time and effort. If the French bread gets a bit hard the following day you can still toast them, or sprinkle a little water on them and microwave them for a few seconds. They will come up fine. Use cereals and have some sliced bread available for toast in the mornings –quick and easy. If you need to keep drinks cool and you run out of fridge space, store them in the cellar. It is cool there and the spiders don’t like alcohol.