So glad it’s Friday! It has been a good but busy week with a quick trip to London & Kent, then back in France to prepare this house for our guests and finish off the floor in this one. Tonight, we are off to sleep in my dad’s old boat for our annual “back to basis” week. I love doing this at least one week a year. Usually we do this when but we are all on holidays but since we’ve been apart quite a lot as a family (Steve recently came back from a 4-weeks bike trip Bordeaux-Iran), we’ve decided that it would be good to get away. Monday to Friday, I will re-join the civilised world to work but will head back to the boat in the evening to resume our little adventures.
It’s not that easy, mostly because the boat is over 40 years old with very little comfort and when it’s 25 degrees outside, it’s about 40 degrees in the cabin. We usually get woken up at 4am either by the heat or the day light but there is no internet on the boat, no toilet, no shower or fridge…NOTHING so it’s really going back to the basics.

I love doing this for two reasons, first because the way we connect together as a family there is priceless and precious and also I love knowing that if one day we lose everything, we will be able to survive without all our belongings and the comfort we are so used to. It also makes us appreciate everything we have more.
The first thing Mila does in the morning, is run to the beach with Lucas for a swim. Then we will heat up some water on a little gaz thingy for a cup of tea and the man of the family will start hunting for some food to feed his family. Most often, a trip down to the local bakery does it. Since there is no fridge, we usually snack on things that don’t go off too quickly like fruits and raw salads and this year, I’m going to try to whisk a few green smoothies, if I can plu my Nutribullet in the harbour.
Then we go sailing for the day and have diner wherever we drop the anchor. One year, Steve dropped it before realising that my dad had taken the rope off so plouff!…the anchor went straight into the bottom of the lake and we had to race back to reach the harbour before the night. It was funny and stressful but still one of Mila’s top 5 favourites stories :-) Have a fab weekend!

Block rug | Monotype notebook Photography: François Köng, Styling: Karine Köng