July 2024 Newsletter: I miss Bordeaux already. Visits and Vines.

Bristol Bordeaux Partnership Newsletter.

Welcome to the latest newsletter from the Bristol Bordeaux Partnership (BBP) for July  2024. Today we reflect on a month of visits to Bordeaux by BBP members and by University Students.

Mini Assistants - Bristol University students in Bordeaux

The first two weeks of June saw this year's group of 6 Bristol University French department students spending two weeks in schools in Bordeaux.

BBP, as before, worked with Bristol University and our sister organisation in Bordeaux, the Association Bordeaux - Bristol, to arrange schools and hosts for the 6 students. They spent 2 weeks teaching French school children and at the same time improving their own French.

Feedback from the students included "it was such a fulfilling and enriching experience - I miss Bordeaux already", "don't be afraid to make mistakes - languages are a learning process" and "thanks for this amazing opportunity".

We will now be working on a guide for future student visitors based on the feedback from the students.

BBP members Group visit to Bordeaux 

The end of June saw 25 members of BBP visiting Bordeaux.

People arrived by various routes - including via Malta  - and various forms of transport, including one group taking up a large number of seats on an Easyjet flight.

A lot of eating, drinking and site-seeing followed as well as many opportunities to meet our Bordelaise contacts. 

BBP members Group visit to Bordeaux - part 2

Our sister organisation in Bordeaux, the Association Bordeaux - Bristol (ABB) were very hospitable and arranged a fabulous wine and home made food event to welcome us to Bordeaux.

Valerie Bonnett for ABB and Mike Healey for BBP made short speeches welcoming each other's organisations' members. 

The ABB also arranged tickets for the Musee Aquitaine which was enjoyed by many.

BBP members Group visit to Bordeaux - part 3

We were very fortunate that our visit coincided with the annual Fete le Vin Bordeaux wine festival. The ABB kindly arranged for cut price tasting tickets to the festival and members were able to taste and try a big selection of different wines from the wider Bordeaux region - which was nice.

The Fete le Vin also included a fabulous wine themed drone show over the Garonne river.

We would certainly recommend that you consider going to Bordeaux in 2025 for next year's Fete Le Vin. It's a great event.

BBP members Group visit to Bordeaux - part 4

The visiting members also took the opportunity to visit surrounding towns either individually or as group visits. 

Visits included to the medieval town of Blaye, the dunes at Arcachon and the famous wine growing town of St Emilion. 

The whole region is very attractive and highly recommended if you haven't yet been.

Return visit to Bristol from Association Bordeaux Bristol team

We were very happy to host members of the Association Bordeaux Bristol on their return visit to Bristol as part of their work accompanying students visiting through the Bristol Bordeaux Exchange. 

A meal and drinks on the Grain Barge was arranged by Nell Dand and Gill Hood and enjoyed by all.

And their return to Bordeaux was quite a feat - they returned by bike as part of the Bristol to Bordeaux 2024 - Props Bristol Cycle Ride

We hope that these updates on the recent activities of BBP are of interest and may even prompt you to want to become more involved and to help us with some of these initiatives. If you want to know more, please reply to this email. We'd love to be able to spread the message re twinning in general and Bristol's links with Bordeaux in particular.

A bientôt!

Mike Healey (Chair of BBP)  and Mark Atherton (Secretary)  for Bristol Bordeaux Partnership

www.bristolbordeaux.org