Fishes out of water

Autumn arrived in the Charente this weekend, it's almost like a switch has been flicked, all the leaves have decided now is the time to switch from green to golden, and there was wind and rain so a large leaf fall as well, but the temps were still around 20 degrees. We were sweeping up the leaves in our tee shirts and it was warmer outside than inside at certain points, though heavy rain on Sunday night brought the temparatures down outside.

On Saturday we had a day out in La Rochelle and the highlight of the visit ( for Fleur at least) was a visit to the aquarium, which I must say was amazing, I think the French really have worked out how to run a museum/educational venue in a way certainly we Brits have not totally grasped yet. The only slight disappointment, if you could call it that was that the sharks were so small, however I would probably be the first to complain if there were large sharks swimming around in something too small for them. There was a huge variety of fish and they did their best to create a habitat for them that was as close to the wild as possible. Overall a very enjoyable visit, usually we just give the gift shop a cursary look around before leaving, as it only has the same old tat with a different location name on it, but there were a few different things on sale at the aquarium including for the first time that we have seen, a gift with our daughter's name on it, so we had to buy it.

The perfect Victoria Sponge Cake at last

Another weekend flies by, its strange but since I have stopped working flat out on the house the weekends seem to go by even faster.

I appear to be starting a new career reviewing cars, I have been hiring cars from Bordeaux airport to get home each weekend as it is almost as cheap as taking my own car to the airport and leaving it there all week. Sadly my reviews seem to be limited to the range of 1.5/1.6 diesels on offer from Avis, though it is suprising how different they all are. My favourite so far is the Peugeot 308 HDI, closely followed by the Renault Clio, then the car I had this weekend which was the new Seat Ibiza, a nice little car, very economical but lacking the power of the Peugeot.

We did not do a great deal this weekend, I tried and failed to fix 2 radiators on the central heating system which refused to get warm. I have a feeling that the delivery and return pipes have been crossed at some point, so the plumber has to come back and take a look.

I spent some time playing with Fleur, and for the first time in my life (I think) I won a game of Monopoly, it rained all day Saturday! The clocks went back on Sunday evening and of course everyone was up bright and early Sunday morning, human body clocks take longer to adjust than their mechanical/electronic counterparts.

Sunday morning was spend with Fleur in the Kitchen, making a cake, which we appear to have finally mastered, and we produced the perfect Victoria sponge cake, even though we say so ourselves, given another 6 months and I think Fleur will be able to make it on her own. We did manage to break our very old hand mixer in the process of making the cake, it has done us proud and probably originates from the late 70's so no complaints there apart from having to buy another one.

There was no blog last week as I was flying Ryanair back the UK, so what with queueing and lack of space on the aircraft there was no chance to blog.

I've got back into reading books in a big way and having just finished Freud On Course, Keith was the chap that got me excited about cooking, and I'm glad he stuck at it whilst I gave up, still trying to make up for lost time now.

To fly Ryanair or not to fly Ryanair

A while back I promised a Ryanair blog, and whilst this is not a rant, it is hardly in praise of the little yellow & blue airline either, after it cancelled the last remaining Monday morning flight from SW France back to the UK. The reason I am flying British Airways at the moment is because of what appears to be Ryanair's not caring about the customer policy.

Ryanair had a sale recently, well I know they are having one every week at the moment, in which they were selling tickets to the only destination to SW France that they have not cut this winter, and so I was relieved to be able to book flights from Stansted on a Friday morning to Limoges, and back to Stansted on a Monday morning, for a reasonable price. I then discovered a pile of emails in my inbox informing me my Monday flight had basically been cancelled, or as the put it, my flight departure time had been changed, and they had re booked me on the Sunday morning (10:55) flight, with the option to accept or refund, so I took the option to refund, going back to the UK on a Sunday morning was not an option.

This left me with the option of either Easyjet or British Airways, with Luton being a nightmare to get to and timings which were not ot my liking, I was left with only one viable option, British Airways, and I have to say the price of the flights is not that much higher than the little yellow & blue airline.

I do not want to knock Ryanair unduly because they have done alot for the tourist industry in France, however they have taken a lot as well in the form of incentives etc.. In the world of low cost airlines their customer service has to be amongst the worst, they are still on my list of airlines to fly, but they are at the bottom of the list, in the same way that I, as a customer, appear to be at the bottom of their list.

Travelling via BA is such a different experience to Ryanair, and I think you have to do a couple of years of travelling on the little yellow & blue airline to appreciate the difference, just the fact that you have a booked seat on the plane makes a big difference, for me it saves 45 minutes in time, as I do not have to rush to the airport to ensure I am somewhere close to the front of the plane for a quick exit to the train or hire car desk.

A tip if you are travelling with Ryanair and have hired a car from Hertz, remember so have half your fellow passengers, Hertz is Ryanair's car rental partner, so make sure you get to the rental desk tout suite or you will be there for over an hour in the queue especially in summer. If you have hold luggage, send the driver(s) to get the car while the rest of you wait for the luggage.

I could go on for hours, but let me refer you to a book that sums it up Ruinair by Paul Kilduff, he also has another book out called Ruinairski which I have not read yet, Ruinair is a good read for Ryanair regulars.

They are the airline you love to hate but sometimes they make it so easy to hate them.

Well time to board my British Airways flight back to Gatwick...

Sleep over success

I'm not feeling quite so full of the joys of spring today as I am not coming back to France for two weeks because of work, so everyone was a bit unhappy at home this morning when it was time for me to leave.

We did have another good weekend, the forecast was for lots of rain however when it came to it, not much fell and on Saturday afternoon I watched the thermometer climb to 28 degrees before it clouded over and started forcing the temps back down again.

Fleur went for a sleep over with friends on Saturday night and she managed to stay the night this time, last sleep over she wanted to come home at around 9:00pm, so we are pleased she did it, although we heard there was the odd tear when it came to bed time.

With Fleur away for the night Franca & I had a chance to spend some time together which was great, cooking together, chatting and of course the odd glass of wine or two? We decided that if Fleur wanted come home we would have to walk round to pick her up, but by the time 11:00pm arrived we figured out that she was going to stay the night and we could go to bed.

It was a bit of a lazy weekend, at least by my standards, I finished chopping down the Laurel tree, so wehave thousands of bay leaves slowly drying in the garden, wonder how much they would be worth, probably not enough to pick them off the branches, so they will nearly all go on the bonefire when the burning season starts again in November.

We made a slow start to Sunday, picked up Fleur at around 10:00am, popped back home and then we went to Chateau Rochefoucald, an impressive chateau to the east of Angouleme. The Chateau was indeed impressive from the outside a very large and imposing building, though less so on the inside. Fleur enjoyed the dressing up feature where you were allowed to try on medieval clothing, so you could be photographed in costume. I was impressed by the extent of the natural underground caves upon which the chateau was built. The Chateau lacks the extensive gardens of many Chateaux in France which is probably why many visitors feel a bit disappointed.

However its rooms are impressive especially the chapel and the views are grand too. The chateau is still lived in so not all of it is open to the public, and being in France it certainly was not overcrowded.
















A quick post script to this message, I've had my weeks work changed around, and I have been able to get a flight back home, so everyone is happy again...

Sun Sun & more Sun

It is always strange driving through the vineyards at harvest time before the sun has risen, dotted all over the countryside you see the white lights of the harvesting machines as they try to get an early start, the lights almost looking like diamond glinting in the light of the moon, and making it very difficult to work out if there is on coming traffic on the road ahead or harvesting machines in the vineyard next to the road.

We had another great weekend with teriffic weather, we keep saying this must be the last 30 degree weekend of the summer and then another one comes along.

We took Fleur to the zoo on Sunday and she thoroughly enjoyed herself, although even she was tired of looking at monkeys, there were so many different kinds. We went to Palmyre Zoo which is to the north of Royan, and very close to the sea. The zoo is one of the best I have seen, though I am still not sure it is the best place for all types of animals, even if you are trying to conserve them, having said this, they have made a big effort to make the animals comfortable, and easy for the visitor as well. We could get up really close to the giraffes which was fun, but they do have a strange addiction to popcorn! and playing with the goats was good fun too. Most of the animals appeared to be enjoying the last of the summer sun they were just lazing about in the sunniest parts of their enclosures. After the zoo we did our own lazing about on the beach for an hour or so before heading home.

Saturday was a work day, Fleur and I took 2 car loads of rubbish to the decheterie (the tip) and then we cleaned both cars on the inside, which was well over due, we'll get round to the outsides next weekend. I then made a start on cutting down our huge laurel (bay leaf) tree which is in the way of our garage/summer kitchen/swimming pool plans. The tree smells really wonderful and I must remember to keep some leaves for cooking. The tree will be replaced, but not sure if it will be another laurel or something else, I quite fancy a peach tree and a pear tree.

At the end of the day we went to another celebration of the vendange, if we had got there early enough we could have helped with the harvesting, however we contented ourselves with watching the harvesters and taking photos.

We were on organic vineyards and there was also a small organic farmers market, so we bought everything for our evening meal from the market, and may be the meat for our Christmas meal, if we can keep it that long.

And so it is back to Bordeaux airport for another week of work, but it was a great weekend!

Finally a blog update....

Finally I have found half an hour to start blogging again after a really busy summer both in the UK and at the B&B in France. The B&B has had a non stop stream of visitors since July and this weekend was the first time in a long while that we had the house to ourselves, so layins and being at bit lazy were the order of the day.

This also co-incides with the completion of all five en-suite B&B rooms after 2 years of work. For me this means that I am released from compulsorily doing DIY every weekend. There is still loads to do but the pressure is off for a while. The final rooms were not completed until August and so we have not had a full season with 5 rooms available, that will be next year's fun, however we have twice already been full with our new compliment of 5 rooms.



Transport wise, I have been using either the car, or the train over the summer as they were cheaper or the same price as flying, however now that autumn is here I am back in the air again flying from Bordeaux at least for the rest of 2009. I'll put the Ryanair saga into another blog a bit later.

It is great not to have the pressure of working the whole weekend and we have already started to take advantage and go out exploring in the local area, after all we need to advise guests about the local attractions, so we will be out and about quite alot whilst attractions are still open. We are also planning some bigger trips to La Rochelle, Bordeaux and Poitiers, more of which in later blogs when they happen.

So after having done three or four hours on Saturday working a new mezzanine floor in the garage ready to take the contents of the cottage, who's roof is getting less and less water tight by the day and probably will not survive the winter at least as a dry storage area, Sunday was relaxation and a trip out.

We are checking out attractions in the imeadiate area of sigogne and so we went to the Paleosite near Saintes, which as its name suggests is an attraction covering the prehistoric period. For a local attraction it is pretty good, there are lots of films explaining the prehistoric period, and the origin of the attraction, which is based around a large number of prehistoric acheological finds, the greatest of which was the skeleton of a young woman.

The site itself is modern, with 4 different cinematic presentations which are great, though our six and a half year old did not like them so I had to bailout after 2 films. There are lots of other interacive exhibits for children and adults and for €10 is it worth a visit, and will probable take 3 to 4 hours of your time.


Until next time which will hopefully be in week or so.

Parents' pride

Fleur came home with the results of her 3rd evaluation this year and we are very happy to say that all has been very very good and in September she will be going to CE1 (Cours Elémentaire 1 - this name is used for the third year of primary education).
For the non-French readers the teacher wrote that Fleur's results are very satisfying. She reached good results with mathematics and a big progress in reading and writing. Bravo. A pleasant pupil and she will go to the next level up.

Let the harvest begin

The sun is shining at Au Bellefleur and it would be wrong not to mention that it has also rained a lot but that does mean it is warm and everywhere is looking green, and things are growing like crazy.

The harvesting has begun and we are in the middle of a bumper crop of cherries, we’ve got 4 trees and after 2 weeks we are still harvesting No1, Strawberries are a bit slow this year, but tomatoes carrots and onions are going great guns, fuelled by high temps and a reasonable amount of natural watering, ok rain….

We also have a lot of guests staying with us at the moment, so things are getting very busy but that’s the way we like it. We still have some availability in each of the summer months, so if you are thinking of coming down to the sunny Charente there is still time to get your booking in. Don’t leave it too long though as we are starting to fill up.

Temperatures in the Charente are typically sitting between 20 and 30 degrees at the moment, tempting me outside but we have to get the last two guest rooms finished by July as they are let in August, so the pressure is on, watch this space for progress up dates.

Press Release

Live Blogging

On Saturday Jan and Simonne with their 3 dogs (1 mum and 2 puppies...6 months old now....., can you 'spot' the difference) came around to have a drink and a bite to eat. Jan and Simonne are from Belgium and Franca knows them from 'blogging' http://blog.seniorennet.be/Bas_en_belle/ for more than 2 years now. It's not the first time we've met each other and hopefully not the last time either. The weather was more than gorgious as was the rosé, the Chablis was fresh light, and the white asparagus (here they actually call them violet), was going down a treat; so we couldn't ask for anything more. It has once again been a very very good night out....literally, in the garden, the dogs were on their best behaviour, and the humans weren't bad either.

Thanks for the pressies Jan & Simonne and a great evening...

Fleur wins Bronze...

Now which country will she represent in the 2016 Olympics, well maybe I am being a bit over ambitious, but it was school sports day yesterday and out of the blue our six and a half year old daughter won a bronze medal following a quintathalon , well she did well enough in 5 different events to come overall third, making mum and dad very proud, especially as it was unexpected. Fleur is always running around and dancing and jumping, so she is certainly fit enough, so all that exercise paid off for her WELL DONE!! from a proud mum & dad.

It was a tough day as the emergency services were required not once but twice to attend to injuries, luckily the injuries were not very serious. So you see there was none of this politically correct, everyone must get something, it's the taking part not the winning that seems to abound in the UK, this was a competition with winners. From the podium you will see that it was girls 2 boys 1! The medals were presented by a representative of the Mayor of Sigogne.

how not to get to you flight on time

Our last trip to Limerick on business typifies what often happens to us, not on every trip but quite a few.

The 3 of us leave the office in time to get the correct train from London Liverpool St to Stansted.

We arrive at Liverpool St, 2 of us have got our train tickets Doug hasn't, and he has not got his reference number to collect his pre booked ticket, so he buys another one, and we get on the train to Stansted, to arrive in time to get the flight... Just.

We walk into the airport and Doug says have you guys checked in yet, yes we say, waving our boarding passes at him, oh bugger he says I haven't. Then Doug asks us if we have luggage to check in, of course we haven't, showing him our carefully measured and weighed cabin baggage. We looked over at the very long queue for the bag drop and laughed, you'll never get your bag dropped off and your self through Stansted security in time to catch the plane.

Doug was busy firing up his laptop to get his booking reference number off it, but he has so many things loading on the desk top it took a full 5 mins before it started up. At which point we left him trying to sort himself out, whilst we raced off to catch the flight. For once we chose the right queue in security and got through in time for a quick wizz round duty free, we are just walking out of duty free when we spot Doug walking towards the gate. Our flabber was well and truly ghasted. How did you manage to do that we asked in amazement, Doug said he put on his lost little boy look when a female check in person asked him if he needed help?. We think he parted with hard cash to get through!

So we are standing in the priority queue waiting to board and Doug suddenly disappears, the flight is called and Doug is still missing, just as we get on the plane he reappears at the back of the priority queue, saying, I just went for a quick drink at the bar... WHAT?

So began another team trip to Limerick with my esteemed colleagues, and a great bunch they are too most of the time....

Cognac region suffers a devastating blow

In the Charente a Little before 6 p.m.on the 11th of May , the area was literally struck by hail storms with hail stones the size of 'large pigeon eggs', testifies Christophe Veral, a local wine grower.

In the area around Rouillac, clusters of almost 50 centimetres of ice were formed. The local function rooms and many houses were flooded. But more importantly damage was noted everywhere around, in the vineyards. The hail ruined any hope of harvest for 2009 and probably 2010. The bad weather also touched the areas of Rouillac, Merignac, Fleurac and Jarnac. The soil of the wine growing areas of Barbezieux has also seriously damaged.

This was a report in the local paper following storms last night all around Sigogne however it appears vines around Au Bellefleur appear to have been spared major damage, however for the local wine growers and the associated Cognac/Pineau industry it is a serious blow.

A bit of a strange (but profitable) weekend...

Starting on Thursday when we, or should I say Franca, had a football team staying, so that meant that Fleur and Franca had to camp in our living room as we rented out all our rooms for the first time. I made it home on Friday afternoon and headed home after picking up 2 doors from the DIY store which almost fitted into the boot, so I drove home with the doors sticking out of the boot. Not really what you would associate with driving a Jaguar, but it handled it well.

On Friday and Saturday we had a lovely lady from Hawaii staying for 2 nights, whilst she was going house hunting with our favourite estate agent... Saturday night we had 2 Parisiens stopping over on their way to their holiday in St Jean de Luz, very nice, but they started their holiday with us and finally left around 12:30 so no time for me to do any work on Sunday. I managed to install the two doors I brought but no further work was possible.

Fleur does not like it when I leave on a Sunday so she will be pleased that I have booked a Monday flight back next weekend, Franca likes it too when I stay longer and so do I, its my boss in the UK who is not so keen :-)

Mission accomplished

Its ready just in time, we have a working downstairs toilet, pity it is in the middle of a building site, but I guess beggars can't be choosers as they say...