How time flies. It only seems like yesterday that we were unpacking our loaded car having arrived from France. Now we are planning loading all the stuff we are taking back and catching the ferry to UK and on to France until June.

When we come from France we bring wine (wouldn’t you know it), tins of things like cassoulet, confit, snails (yes- honest!) and lot of other interesting goodies that you can’t easily get in UK. When we go back to France from The Isle of Man, we take stuff you can’t get in France like party poppers, custard, haggis and jelly beans! Yeah – I know – we’re real adventurous rascals, aren’t we!

While we’ve been here this time, we’ve had two or three interesting meals at home with friends and relatives including Cubes of Veal with Spicebread Sauce, snails (which we brought over with us and packed into the shells ourselves, along with garlic butter and parsley and, tonight, since my niece, Sally and her husband, Danny, are over for a few days, we’ll be having one of my regular favourites, Filet Mignon (Tenderloin of Pork) with Sage and Rosemary.

Marie-Danielle and I also managed to fit in a visit to The Abbey Restaurant at Rushen Abbey where I enjoyed some amazing Grilled Manx king scallops in hazelnut butter as a starter, then both of us had Chicken Ballontine with dauphinois potatoes, oyster mushroom cream and cranberry sauce. All this, washed down with a bottle of their amazing 2004 Chateaux Lyonnat Saint Emilion. I don’t know how much longer their stocks will last, but, boy, is that a great wine or is that a great wine!

The other things we discovered on this visit were two great local restaurants. One was a Chinese – The Jade Harbour Restaurant overlooking the marina where the food was excellent, the service was spot-on and the prices were right. The other was an Indian – The Royal India – in the little market place just down the road from where we live. Small (only about 30 covers) but clean, friendly, well-priced and with excellent Indain cuisine, this little gem is one we have revisited twice already!

So now, we are looking forward to being back in France so we can visit The Happy Sushi and La Petite Rôtisserie – our two “canteens” that we make plenty of use of! Wish us “Bon Voyage!”