Christmas Markets

Every "nest" has a bird!

It is that time of year again when every weekend is chock-a-block with Christmas markets. So far this season we have had Les Oiseux Rares in Cormatin and Les Mères de Noël in St-Gengoux-le-le National. Both were absolutely fantastic. Cluny starts this weekend, but we haven’t been yet, it is also one of the best ones round here and “must visit” leading up to Christmas.

The theme for Les Oiseux Rares this year was “time”. We were all encouraged to participate by providing photos, drawings, poems or prose which signified time. Cees came up with a Dutch poem by Hans Dorrestijn and two photos and I managed a piece from Macbeth. I wasn’t at all convinced they would motivate the good people of Cormatin into coming up with anything, but how wrong I was, there were over 300 entries and that meant every tree, doorway and gate in the village was covered with our offerings. It would have taken hours to read and admire them all. We cheated and just looked for our own and that took us long enough.

Our collection is getting bigger

It was freezing cold so we went to warm ourselves up with a delicious lentil and split pea soup courtesy of Pascale Hautefort eaten out of the collectors’ item soup bowls made by Pierre Arnoud, Cormatin’s very own potter.

We enjoyed visiting the different venues, including some lovely photography of water drops. A great start to the market season.

Macbeth on a rusty gate

The next week and on to Les Mères de Noël who didn’t disappoint either. It was a completely different collection of artisans who were exhibiting in the gymnasium in St-Gengoux and luckily we managed to visit during a lull in the crowd, giving us easy access to all the stalls.

The exhibitors include someone making felted hats and a chap doing Arabic calligraphy. There really was some really beautiful stuff was available to sort out all your Christmas present needs.

I’m really looking forward to the next couple of weekends – I still have one or two items to buy, what will they be?....