Rain, Rain, Go Away… Or at Least Give Us Something to Do
Living in the Pyrénées-Orientales does tend to make us a little spoilt when it comes to weather.
A grey cloud appears and suddenly everyone is staring suspiciously at the sky. Two consecutive days of rain and we’re checking whether we accidentally moved back to Britain.
But occasionally, even the P-O has a proper soggy day. The mountains disappear, the washing stays firmly indoors and that lovely walk you had planned suddenly seems significantly less lovely.
So, what do you actually do when going outside requires waterproof trousers and an unreasonable amount of enthusiasm?
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Rebuild France on the kitchen table
Nothing says “I’ve accepted we’re not going out today” quite like tipping 1,000 tiny pieces of cardboard onto the table.
For full commitment to the theme, try a French jigsaw. Parisian cafés, French villages, châteaux, Provence… choose something suitably idyllic so you can spend six hours recreating beautiful blue skies while the rain lashes against your windows.
Just don’t start one if you need the table for dinner. This is how families fall apart.
Check out this beautiful Collioure puzzle here. Pretty enough to hang on your wall after!
Have a very French games afternoon
You could use the unexpected indoor time productively. Sort out that cupboard. Do some paperwork. Finally tackle the pile of things you’ve been meaning to do since approximately 2019.
Or you could absolutely not do any of that.
Instead, crack open the wine and get competitive over a French-themed game. Les Incollables is a French quiz range that’s been around for years, with different versions and difficulty levels. Admittedly, playing a trivia game in your second language does add a certain level of jeopardy.
On the plus side, shouting “I KNEW THAT!” at a small cardboard card is excellent language practice.
If you fancy improving your French and getting into game mode, you can find it here.
Eat cheese. Call it a cultural activity.
There comes a point in every rainy afternoon when entertainment becomes secondary and thoughts turn to food.
This is France. We know what to do.
A little tabletop raclette machine turns “we’re trapped indoors because it’s chucking it down” into “we are having a cosy French evening”. Melt cheese. Add potatoes. Add charcuterie. Add more cheese because apparently the first quantity was merely administrative.
Suddenly the weather doesn’t seem quite so important.
Don’t have your own raclette yet? Oh la la…. take a look a this one (you can also make crepes with it, need we say more!
Or just surrender
Of course, you don’t actually have to do anything.
Find a blanket. Make an enormous cup of tea. Open the book you’ve been carrying from bedside table to bedside table for the last six months. Watch a French film with English subtitles and tell yourself it counts as language learning.
Sometimes a rainy day is simply permission to stay home and achieve precisely nothing.
And this is the Pyrénées-Orientales.
Give it 24 hours and we’ll probably all be complaining that it’s too hot again.
