Frances Barnes, Journalist & PR Specialist, was Promotions Director of Good Housekeeping, the UK’s top-selling quality women’s magazine and runs an award-winning PR Consultancy where she has represented Europe-wide salad maker, Florette, for over 12 years.
A columnist for the Johannesburg Star, and Contributor to newspapers in the UK & US, her PR successes have included launching the highly acclaimed Hotel du Vin Group, where she is Literary Agent to Co-Founder-Director Gerard Basset, MW.
A fluent French speaker, she divides her time between homes in Sussex and Normandy.
After a luxurious Britanny Ferries' overnight crossing in our cabin from Portsmouth to Caen, we stayed with friends en route before arriving early at Joigny, a charming medieval town with half-timbered houses 100 miles south of Paris in northern Burgundy.
Jean Garnier, nutrition and aesthetics expert, meets Nick Hordern and Frances Barnes to talk about his interest in small red berries – raspberries, cassis, strawberries, and redcurrants – which abound in the region of Burgundy, France.
Confidently, arms outstretched, I thrust myself away from the poolside into the water, expecting the rest of me to follow. Seconds later legs and feet were flailing in the air at ear level and I was bobbing about near certain to collide with fellow bathers. Yes, you guessed it. I was in a thalasso pool - and no ordinary one at that.
"Sarkozy orders holidays at home!" ran the Le Figaro headline, reporting the French President's current veto of vacations abroad for his political troops. "What hardship!" we thought.
"Take it from me," asserted the novelist and Francophile, Nancy Mitford, "PURE HAPPINESS begins the moment you cross the Channel." A recent invitation to Picardy, northern France, offered a chance to put this theory to the test. Picardy is a true "Next County" territory - easy to reach via Euro-tunnel, utterly French and ticking all the right boxes for great architecture, sport, scenery and good food.
Before he'd even drawn his first breath, Tristan Morell had already qualified as a clairvoyant. Half-French, he was born on water (sign of a psychic) as his mother travelled to France by ferry. Here he tells Frances Barnes why psychic skills and Astrology can lead to Wellbeing.
'Can't wait for my Thalasso,' trilled Marie-Christine's email, detailing her hectic summer in Paris, Provence and Dieppe - the latter, it seemed, to recover at her Spa of choice.
Could Thalasso - hot seawater health and beauty treatments - be the secret weapon, not just of my friend Marie-Christine but of her glamorous Gallic compatriots? When I next crossed the Channel, I made time to visit Les Bains, Dieppe's magnificent modern Thalassotherapy and Aquatic Centre which reopened last year after a £20m refit.
