I got an email from Chris Callow who has a blog on IOMToday. Here’s a bit from his most recent one. He does ski, cycling and now cooking holidays in the Alps. Brad – this sounds like your cup of tea!
Part 49: Summer loving
…we have our first summer guests, the fruit of a well-timed visit to the Tourist Office (Merci, Monique), three charmingly raffish landscape gardeners from Annecy, here for three weeks to tend the hanging gardens of MGM’s most recent and fabulously expensive development.
And best of all, they have elected to self-cater, which translates as a different animal grilled on the BBQ each night as we quaff each others’ alcohol and lament the iniquities of the French taxation system.
Monday evening saw a delightful Tynwald Day gathering, French and British alike boning up on the ceremony from Manx Experience coffee-table tomes while the BeeGees warble Ellan Vannin to a mystified neighbourhood.
But three swallows, to labour the pun, do not make a summer and so plans are afoot to swell the numbers with special appeals to cyclists (Cav is due to spin through nearby Chatillon on Le Tour in a few days), rising tennis hopefuls and, dearest to my heart, aspiring master-chefs: the the first ManxSki residential Cookery Course is to be rolled out in September with star billing for Chef-Extraordinaire Herve Willems (aka ‘the Crazy Frog’), late of a certain Scottish School of Food & Wine of whom much was related earlier in these Tales, he having had the dubious honour of initiating yours-truly in the culinary mysteries. Book early to avoid disappointment.
