Next up on the 7th July was a good night out with Customs and Exiles, once again at the Frog and Wicket at Eversley. But our next event came at the end of July with a short trip to Bricquebec in Normandy, along with Windsor Morris, and based at the very large house there belonging to Cherry and Peter from Windsor. For this, BB managed to field 9 dancers plus our 2 musicians, helped though by some of the family ties between the 2 sides. Our dancing took place on the Saturday and Sunday at a number of different places, all of which had been very ably organised by Peter. The teams started with a good reception on the Saturday morning at the Bar du Port in Carteret, helped by some decent sunshine and dodgy translation of dance names into French (many thanks, Google translator). In the afternoon there was more dancing at a wooded garden in Brix before another fabulous dinner chez Cherry courtesy again of Peter and Ralph. This was followed later by a completely incomprehensible game of Uno with a lot of people, far too many cards and several rules very few understood e.g. exactly when it was possible to do the “snappity wap-wap” play popularised by Will M. Next day we set off for a working windmill at Fierville-les-Mines, dancing to an initially sparse audience, but including a tour and explanation of the windmill’s inner workings – very interesting though the work was a bit of a grind. Most people then headed for the kite festival on the beach at Barneville (very impressive) before afternoon performances outside a local biscuit factory – it didn’t sound that promising but turned out to be a major local attraction. We seemed to go down well, to the extent we were plied with cups of tea and free boxes of biscuits – very Windsor-y sorts of gifts but very welcome nonetheless. Overall a very successful trip, with the team’s favourite dance names for the weekend being ‘La Vieille jeté jusqu’à’, ‘Sucer Le Singe’, ‘Roue de la Fortune’, and probably favourite of all ‘L’autoroute du diable!’. Nous sommes impatients à l’autre visite!
