Vive la France: Kingston Vale care home crosses channel for art

Home news

Sep 10, 2019

Sherwood Grange has taken a trip across the channel to Ardres, in northern France, to enjoy an afternoon of landscape painting.

Care UK’s Sherwood Grange care home, on Robin Hood Lane, planned the trip for residents to visit the French medieval town to taste the local cuisine and try their hand at painting the foreign scenery.

The team members and residents took the trip in the care home’s own mini bus and travelled to Folkestone, where the residents and team members caught the Eurostar over to Calais.

Having taken a drive through Wissant and Wimereux on route to experience French coastal towns, the residents settled down to their painting session and received encouraging comments from locals and tourists, before leaving their pictures to dry in order to enjoy a picnic by the lake.

Later after a full and eventful day, the group drove back to Calais to catch the Eurostar back to England, not without stopping to see the sandy beaches at Calais first.

Rick Mayne, home manager at Sherwood Grange, said: “Our ethos at Sherwood Grange is to create activities which allow residents living in the home to live active and fulfilling lives. We’re constantly thinking of new and exciting trips to go on”.

“The visit to France is up there with our favorite trips. Being able to take the residents abroad again, and some for the first time, was magical to see. We all really enjoyed taking in the new scenery and trying the different food, and the resident’s reactions made it so memorable. It’s going to be a very hard trip to beat!”

Barry Summers, resident at Sherwood Grange, said: “The time of exploration has not ended, to see France with new friends on this trip has brought so much excitement to my life.”

Mollie Wheeldon, resident at Sherwood Grange, said: “It was a wonderful day…when can we do it again?!”

Sherwood Grange is a state-of-the-art care home which provides full-time residential and dementia care, as well as short-term respite care. Designed to enable residents to live enjoyable and fulfilling lives, the care home has its very own cinema and hair salon, and there is plenty of space, both indoors and out, for relaxation and recreation.

For more information on Sherwood Grange, please call home manager, Rick Mayne, on 0333 920 1017, or email Rick.Mayne@careuk.com  

For more information please visit careuk.com/sherwood-grange