France/ Twinning: a large English delegation expected in Blain in July

It's been a busy year for the Blain (Loire-Atlantique) twinning committee. And it's continuing this summer with the arrival of almost fifty English people at the end of July.

In the first half of 2024, the Blain twinning committee was particularly active with the four countries with which it has maintained strong ties of friendship, some for thirty years.

First of all, the surprise arrival in January of a German delegation of firefighters fromOldenburg, on the occasion of the Sainte-Barbe festivities. Then, in March, a delegation from Blois headed for Alcoutim, Portugal. In April, the Lycée Camille-Claudel welcomed Romanian students from Rebrisoara, as part of its Erasmus program. In early June, young apprentice firefighters from Oldenburg visited their counterparts in the Trois-Rivières region.

And we're going to keep up this pace in the second half of the year," says Marc Lesouef, who has chaired the committee for the past five years. From July 26 to 30, we are actively preparing to welcome a forty-four-strong delegation from Royal Wootton Bassett across the Channel.

Preparations already underway for the 2025 season

It's been almost thirty years since Blain established relations with this small town of 13,000 inhabitants to the west of London, in the county of Witshire.

And as this kind of exchange cannot be improvised at the last minute, the leaders of the twinning committee have turned their attention to the 2025 program. Among our many exchange projects, we'll be welcoming a Portuguese delegation from Alcoutim around July 14, to seal our twenty-year relationship," says President Lesouef. We'll probably also pay a visit to our Romanian friends from Rebrisoara.

With some 70 members, the twinning committee is nonetheless looking for people to join them. We're all volunteers. So we have to share the work. Reinforcements would be very welcome", confides Marc Lesouef.

Source: www.ouest-france.fr/