We are back at home in France now after spending 3 weeks in England over Christmas that didn't exactly go as planned! Both Lucy and Jess went down with Covid 19 (almost certainly Omicron) the day after we arrived on 12th December. Before long Dave, Daniel and I all had it as well. I got away with it fairly lightly with a sore throat and headache but the others felt pretty rough for a week of more with very heavy cold symptoms. As a result we all self-isolated between their 2 houses and waited to see whether we would test negative in time for Christmas, and also whether Andy would succumb.
In the end Andy luckily escaped it and the rest of us were negative testing after the obligatory 7 days.
We were pleased to be able to spend Christmas together and Dad was able to join us on Boxing Day for a couple of days. We extended our stay into the New Year so that we could do some of the things that we had planned to do in the week before Christmas, and also to be sure that the lab tests that were required before returning to France were negative. Luckily they were and we returned home on Sunday, on a very empty Eurotunnel train taking just 10 cars!
We now have to strictly quarantine at home until we can show (another !) negative test 2 days after arriving. We have had 3 visits by the gendarmes to ensure that we are complying and are now waiting for them to confirm that we can go out....as usual the French legal jingo is so contradictory and confusing that not even the gendarmes know what we are supposed to be doing!!
So we are relieved to have survived this bout of Covid, even if it wasn't very pleasant and has scuppered lots of plans. We were glad to have had some protection from the vaccines even if it is somewhat reduced against Omicron. We certainly wouldn't have wanted to get a worse dose of the virus, thats for sure!
After a warm spell of weather while we were in England it has turned very cold here, but we are looking forward to getting out and about and finding some fresh snow to walk in.
Here are just a few photos from December - more next month.
We wish everyone a Happy New Year - hoping for good things in 2022!
