Drinking – not paddling – down the Loire

Our small gang have been walking the Camino de Santiago (click here or here), and more recently canoeing the Loire (click here or here). When lockdown put paid to our 2020 trip from Blois to Saumur we met up on Zoom instead, and inspired by Stanley Tucci (click here and here), drank cocktails. Here they are; some with a poem.

Hemingway’s daiquiri (click here).

Philip Larkin’s gin & tonic (click here).

A “No”groni (click here).

A conventional Negroni under adverse conditions (click here).

James Bond’s Vesper martini (click here).

The Gilles Villeneuve martini (click here).

A Radish Walked into a Bar (click here)

The Kingsley Amis martini (click here).

Forgive the rough edges. Filmed on different phones, and once made you’ve gotta drink it, so a second take wouldn’t help.

We also drank appropriate wine from the brothers Yapp, but no videos of that. First day sweet Vouvray (click here), 2nd a dry one (click here), 3rd Bourgueil (click here), 4th Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil (click here) and 5th Saumur (click here). Forgotten the others, but to end with, we popped open a fizz (click here). All more expensive than our usual riverbank plonk, but I guess we’d saved on the ferry crossing. 

Lockdown 2

First zoom cocktail for lockdown 2, the Brexitini (click here).

The Euro martini (click here).

The Roman Moselle citrus sangria a la Kingsley Amis (click here).

Susie’s negroni (click here).

A Moselle martini with a nod to Michael Portillo (click here).

A French sidecar (click here).

A real martini (click here).

Whisky sour with a fairy egg (click here).

Third wave staycation

Dark & Stormy (click here).

Pornstar – hard and softcore (click here).

Tequila sunrise (click here). Ignore my claim to be making a Mojito!

This one really is a Mojito – plenty of mint! (click here).

Jim Thornton