Bisley-with-Lypiatt Twinning Association
Our Annual General Meeting will be held at Bisley WI Village Hall on Wednesday 26th March 2025 at 7.30 pm.
Our visit to Plessala this year will be the last weekend of May
Our coach will be leavng Thomas Keble School at 6pm on Thursday 29th May for the trip to Portsmouth to catch the overnight ferry to Cherbourg. On the Friday morning we will take a leisurely drive down to Plessala, stopping for breakfast possibly at Sainte-Mere-Eglise, the first town liberated on D Day and depicted in the famous film 'The Longest Day', then drive on a bit and stop for a lunch probably at Dinan and then a hypermarket shop for those wanting to replenish their wines or other French produce, intending to arrive at Plessala around 5pm.
The French committee will be there to greet us and introduce us to our hosts for the weekend and give us final details of the activities they have got planned.
On the Monday morning we will leave Plessala in good time to catch the mid-morning ferry from St Malo arriving back in Portsmouth at 6.20pm, so we expect to be back at Eastcombe at around 9.20pm.
The cost to individuals will not exceed £150, and the more people who come, the lower that figure becomes.
If you would like to come with us please contact one of our joint chairmen (contact information as below). A deposit of £50 is required.
For more information about the Twinning Association and our activities please contact one of our joint Chairman:
John Hughes 07810 123 511 or
Paul Hunt 07814 621 700
Annual membership of the Twinning Association is just £3, or £5 for a family. If you are interested in joining us, then please contact our Membership Secretary Ali Swinburne () on 07710 710 227 or you can leave a message on 01453 886 858. For details of our recent exchanges, see below.
The Twinning Association was founded in response to an approach from the Association de Jumelage of the commune of Plessala in Brittany in 1992.
Plessala is a commune déléguée with 1,824 inhabitants (on 10th March 2000 according to the mayor's secretary) and an area of a little under 13,000 acres. It consists of the main village (the bourg) where most of the Plessalians live together with a number of other much smaller settlements with evocative names such as Saint-Udy, la ville-Orio (said to be the site of a Roman villa) and la Hautière. Plessala is now part of the enlarged commune of Le Mené. The pleasant rolling countryside rises to a height of 1,100 feet at Bel-Air at the north end of the commune, 6 km (about 4 miles) from the village. It is nicely placed 95 km (60 miles or so) from St. Malo and is convenient for visiting Brittany's beautiful north coast - and some of the many beauty spots inland.
Our parish and their commune have been exchanging visits once or twice a year since 1993 and two things stand out: the warmth and generosity of the hospitality of our French hosts and the unimportance of the language difference. They are really nice people. We like them and get on well with them: they seem to like us. Both sides enjoy their visits. On the coach returning from our first visit to them in 1993 everybody was saying "How on earth can we repay such hospitality?" Yet I am told that as they left Thomas Keble school later the same year they were all saying the same thing.
Over the years many friendships have developed between people and families here and over there. All the twinners have friends in Plessala; people with whom we are well acquainted even though they live in a small community in a foreign country and speak a different language.
Twinning is good fun. It is also very important because it shows that people get on together in spite of governments, prejudices and preconceptions (on both sides). Language really doesn't matter. Goodwill is the only requirement. Do join. Everyone who does enjoys it. So will you. Plessala - la vie est belle.
Bisley-with-Lypiatt Parish Council website
Click here to see a map of Plessala. Click here to see the current weather in Brittany. Click here to see Ouest France the local newspaper.