Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Its nearly Christmas.....
Its nearly Christmas so that means Christmas shopping, and preparing the car for the trip down to Sigogne from London. I went to Hamleys to do the stocking shopping for Fleur and although it was heaving with people there no queues at the tills which was very surprising, and meant I got everything I wanted and was out in less than half an hour.
I just have to go to the DIY shop for paint for room 3 which should be in a position to have some paint thrown at it over the Christmas period, and a visit to the supermarket for a top up of popadums for Fleur, nan bread, and a few Christmas things such as crackers and a Crimbo pudding…
Despite telling our web designer we cannot pay her until the end of January and then her telling us she cannot start designing the site until February (so in the end everything works out just fine), she has already started working on logos and giving us ideas for the site. Along with our speedy builders things seem to be moving forward a bit quicker than we expected on all fronts at the moment. The building work is still on target for a mid January finish, so things are looking very positive as 2007 comes to a close…
As of Friday (21st) it will be good bye London Bridge for 2 weeks and bonjour Sigogne, wonderful.. the only down side is that both Franca and I have picked up heavy colds, but hopefully after a coulple of days we will be right as rain.
So a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our readers, and maybe we will see you at Au Bellefleur in 2008…..
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Speedy Builders
The building work on the third room is progressing well, walls for the bathroom are up, the first fix of plumbing is also in, and this week we will get the second fix, once the builder has got tiles in place behind the shower unit. Floor tiles and wall tiles were bought at the weekend, and we are starting to get a bit more savy about buying materials, so the all the main components of room 3 have been purchased at sale prices, so we are doing our best to keep control of the costs on this room, the only thing we have paid full price for so far is the water heater.
The main challenge we are facing in this phase is the eternal cash flow problem, because these guys are moving relatively quickly we need more money at the front end of the project than I expected however that will be solved this week and room 3 will be able to be finished on time, but it is certainly touch & go, who says we would not have made good TV, the only thing we do not do is shout at each other.
I will have to make sure we have the money in place for the next phase as this is the big one, as they say, so we may have a couple of months of inactivity at least from the builders point of view, whilst we build up enough money to pay for the next part of the project. Stay tuned folks it is going to get very interesting over the first half of 2008.
Luton airport is not for me
I’m back into the routine for a couple of weeks, so having fought my way through the morning rush hour traffic on the Bordeaux peripherique I am now sitting in the departure lounge of Bordeaux airport waiting for the 10:15 flight back to Gatwick, and the good news is the plane is already here to take us back to the UK, so we should be on time.
We have just had a very wet weekend in Sigogne, so a perfect time for putting up Christmas decorations and pottering around the house. Having said that, we spent Saturday morning playing catch up, because we left it too late to start, around the DIY stores of Cognac & Jarnac, hunting for tiles for the bathroom in room 3. We bought all the tiles for 300€, less the decorative frieze which will cost 200€ and is on a week’s delivery, but all in all the bargain hunting went well. Then it was off to Jarnac to buy a Christmas tree, the one we wanted, a Norwegian Pine was 60€ which was a bit expensive but it was 6ft (2m) tall, so we settled for an ordinary tree at 22€ but still 6ft tall and we will do some extra sweeping over the festive period if we forget to water it. Fleur then spent the afternoon decorating the tree, Fleur style.
I had planned for us to go out to eat at Hotel Karina on Saturday evening, but we went to franca’s friend Fabiola for dinner on Friday night and we did not get home until midnight, so I figured out that Fleur will not be such good company eating out again on Saturday night, so even though Franca did not appreciate it, we ate at home, but we will go there this coming Saturday. Dinner at Fabiola’s was very nice, they have 2 houses and I think 3 barns on their land, they have almost finished the smallest house which is where they are living whilst they work on the other buildings, and the reason for the dinner was to show us their new 90% complete kitchen which looked very nice, and was custom built by Patrick, Fabiola’s better half. Fabiola is not a typical French name, and that is because she is from
I am having to travel to Bordeaux from Luton for a couple of weeks in December as BA do not appear to be laying on an afternoon flight from Gatwick to Bordeaux, or its completely sold out which is unusual, there is always space in club class at a price.
Well time to get on the plane…
Monday, December 03, 2007
What else is November famous for
November also sees the start of the BBC's Children in Need, well, to be more precise Strictly Come Dancing, which apart from Ceebies is Fleur's favourite program. She insists on getting dressed up as soon as the program comes on, she has two special princess dresses which look like ball gowns, and she dances along with who ever she can get to dance with her, oh well girls will be girls.
What happened to November
So what have I been up to in November, well the project I am employed to work on in London is reaching a very busy stage, so I have been over to Ireland to checkout how the developers have been getting on with building the new system that I am supposed to implement. I have now switched to using Bordeaux airport for the winter period so I am getting used to fighting my way through the Bordeaux morning rush hour to catch my flight. It is still worth doing as I gets me to the office 2 hours earlier than using any other airport. The recent train strike in France just goes to show the grass is not always greener on the other side, as I lost a Sunday driving to Paris Charles de Gaulle to get a flight to Ireland, then the following Friday I had to take the Eurostar back to France to collect my car from Paris and then drive back down to Sigogne. It cost me a fortune which I am trying to get back via insurance, wish me luck!
So in summary I have been earning corn during November, and since we had basically run out of money that was not bad thing. We now have enough cash to pay for room 3, then we will have to save up for the next huge step, which will include completing the roof refurbishment started last year and replacing floor joists over three rooms including the kitchen. We really need to get this completed by around May 2008 if we are to get much of the 2008 summer trade, it is going to begin early in 2008 as Easter is so early. We will also have to take a bit of a flyer as they say, in starting to put out advertising for 2008, otherwise we will definitely miss the boat. This will include getting our new website off the ground in January, so it is going to be another cash intensive start to the new year. That means of course that I will continue to work in London to earn the cash to pay for all of this, and the reality is dawning on me that I will be working right through 2008 to pay for the rest of the building work, and maybe into 2009 to be able to pay for the swimming pool complex which is right on the back burner at the moment.
Well enough waffling from me for the moment, hopefully I will be back with another instalment before the end of the year, time to jump on the plane….
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Bedroom 2
In the end it cost an arm and a leg and a lot of frustration for Franca, as she tried to get the room completed. We paid what we thought was a lot of money to get the job finished in around 3 weeks, to get our building plan back on schedule, but in the end it took 7 seven rather frustrating weeks of chasing the builders to get it finished. But finally, we have another bedroom finished. It's called 'Nature' and here we have a picture of the new bedroom with its en-suite bathroom. Its called nature as we have left all the wood used to create the room untreated in any way (except the bed which came lacquered as we have had it for sometime). So we are going to continue with colours from nature as far as we can when decorating the room.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
All hail to our Renault Scenic
All this and we have to keep a close eye on the cash flow as well as we appear to be on the wrong end of tax bills from both the Dutch and English authorities at the moment. These tax bills could have a serious effect on our ability to be ready for the start of the 2008 holiday season, however we will soldier on. No one said it was going to be easy but some things come out of the blue in an attempt to knock you off course, and this double whammy tax bill is one of those things, but we will remain strong and come through it.
The good news is that by Monday Fleur was better and actually asked to go to school when we were prepared to keep her at home.
On a totally different subject I must pay a little tribute to our humble Renault Megane Scenic, which we bought primarily for my wife when we first arrived in France, it was in fact, our first major purchase. Franca chose it because it gave her a very good seating position i.e. you sit higher than in a normal saloon car which made watching the road that much easier. However it has turned out to be a pretty good purchase, we are using every facet of its MPV features. It is a great family car with a very responsive diesel engine (1.9 DCI), one of the fastest and most responsive 1.9 diesels I’ve ever driven (I keep getting told off for driving too fast). Its load carrying capacity is fantastic for a medium sized car, having almost the capacity of a Ford Escort van when you remove the rear seats. On Monday I went to the local DIY store and bought a complete shower unit and two toilets, which all went in with loads of room to spare for the odd kitchen sink or two. I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone that is thinking of Buying an MPV, the only change I would make… the next one will be a Grand Scenic.
A bit of a disjointed up date from a chilly South West France this week, but that probably sums up our situation/mood just at the moment... c'est la vie
Sunday, October 14, 2007
One's flabber has been ghasted England in the final again!
I was handicapped in the second half as my daughter fell asleep on my lap preventing me from shouting any encouragement towards the TV, so when Jonny's drop kick went over after some typically perfect setup play from England, I could only give it the Jasper Carrot yup (as in the football supporter in the wrong part of the ground when the away team score sketch), when everything inside of me was going crazy with this uncontrollable desire to run around the room shouting and screaming.
I feel very sorry for the French who obviously gave everything, to get to the final and in many ways deserved to be there, but hey I am English and, despite living in France, I'm proud of it, at least most of the time.
Now I have to get back to the building work, we have a French farmhouse that still needs a lot of work.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
French rugby clears restaurant
We found a really nice restaurant in Rouillac on Saturday evening, it was a bar restaurant and the people that run it were really friendly, the food was great value for money the only problem was it was full of English people, it could have been a case of bad timing because France were playing New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup at the time we arrived. Strangely the restaurant emptied when France began their come back, and when we went to pay the bill we discovered everyone glued to the portable TV in the corner of the bar. I wonder what is going to happen now that England have to play France in the semi finals, will the entente cordial survive the experience?
The most important event of the weekend was Sunday lunch, where Janet and Martyn who rented us a gite whilst we were property hunting a couple of years ago near Saintes, came to see what we had finally bought after 2 years of searching. We were also able to test our cooking skills again and I am pleased to report that everything went according to plan this time, we served what we planned to serve with no major disasters, everyone liked the food, and it was a nice relaxing afternoon, the sun even came out so we could eat outside, great food, great wine and great company, who could ask for more.
Our big fridge tried to influence proceedings by deciding to break down again, I’m sure it knows when someone is coming to lunch or dinner, and just shuts down, but its had its chips now as a replacement has been delivered. Franca ordered it on Saturday and it arrived on Monday, amazing speed for a French business.
I managed to get a Working At Home day from my Boss for Monday of this week as Ryanair were not running their Monday morning flight, so I had to take the evening flight instead. I gave a lift to one of my fellow commuters to La Rochelle airport as she was going to the UK for 3 weeks and that is more than 100 Euros in parking charges, you can buy an aweful lot of wine for that sort of money, and it was nice to have some company in the car for a change, instead of Mike Oldfield, I really must remember to change the CD.
Our commuting club, the 10 or twelve of us who do the trip regularly from London to La Rochelle are in a bit of a quandary at the moment because the summer timetables are coming to an end, this means less flights to our area as the low cost airlines switch destinations for the winter to provide cheap flights to the snow. Poitiers flights are summer only and they have finished now, La Rochelle will be closing on Mondays from the end of October and all the flight times appear to be changing. The folks that fly Friday and go back on Sunday evening are fine for the moment, but those of us that fly back on Mondays are having to seek alternatives. Some are going to Nantes, which is a two and a half hour drive for me, so I am going to try British Airways from Bordeaux again, prices should be back down at a reasonable level from the end of October. October seems to be the month of rumours around La Rochelle airport, so far I have heard that in 2 years time La Rochelle airport may close because they can’t expand it, and the Angouleme rumour has surfaced again, with talk of both BA and Ryanair flying there from the spring, wonderful if it is true, I'm not going to get too exited, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Sweeties
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
A heavy right winger...
We flew out on a little Embraer jet instead of the turbo prop we had last week which means the journey was about 20 minutes shorter than last week. I had pre-booked my seat on the Flybe web site but when I got to the gate I was collared by the ground staff to have my seat changed ‘for the trim of the aircraft’, am I really that heavy. When I got on board I discovered the real reason, I was booked in seat 7D however there were only three seats across in this plane, so you could say it was for the trim of the aircraft, I don’t think they wanted passengers sitting on the wing!
I made it back to Sigogne in record time, there is a lot less traffic on the road now that the main tourist season is over so it only took me an hour and ten minutes to drive from La Rochelle. Franca and Fleur waited for me before they went off to a birthday party for one of the children at Fleur’s school. Whilst they went partying I was laying more bricks. Three hours on Saturday afternoon and three hours on Sunday morning and I finally finished my little bit of wall. It had taken me 12 hours to cut and lay 26 load bearing breeze blocks to hold up a wall which I did not think was particularly safe without the extra support. I don’t think I would do very well on a building site being paid by piece work. That was about the extent of the work for this weekend, having lost most of Saturday to travel and Sunday afternoon to networking at a brocante at a local chateau. The brocante was nothing to write home and we left after only about 45 minutes, I never used to visit car boot sales in the UK and now I know why, although in this brave green world we now live in the more that gets re-used the better.
Building work is progressing well on room 2 and it should be more or less finished on time, apart from some debate over sourcing the bi-fold door for the bathroom, which is apparently not really known in France, except on wardrobes. If the building work is complete, then next weekend will be taken up with painting room two.
The plane has just arrived, and it looks like we have got one of Flybe’s new Large Embraer jets, so we will be back in Southampton quite quickly, that’s three different flights and three different types of aircraft, let hope there is a seat 7D on this flight because my seat has not been changed this time.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
A challenge to the rain god...
Is there a rain god out there, as my loyal reader must know this summer it nearly always rains when I head for the airport at the end of the weekend. Just to test the theory I changed my travel pattern last weekend, because I had a project milestone closing on Friday afternoon that went down to the wire. So I flew to
With this new flight arrangement no work got done on Saturday, by the time I arrived home it was
Then it was off to an open day at a local riding stable which had opened at the beginning of the year. We thought Fleur might like another ride on a pony, however when she saw some of her friends from school she was more interested in playing with them than riding ponies. The stables themselves are very impressive, especially as this was begun from a standing start, they already have a lot of horses and ponies, so after Franca has been back later to talk to them and find out what they offer for tourists, we may add them to our web site and arrange some riding packages for guests in 2008, watch this space, I can feel some horse power weekends coming on.
Back at
Well I think that is enough for this article..... so until the next time ( if I can get a flight out to La Rochelle this weekend, it not looking promising at the moment, but that's another story)
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Hocus Pocus.....
Horsey Horsey don't you stop...
Encore.....La fête
La fête in Sigogne
Catching up three weekends
Well true to form it's raining, so it must be Monday and it must be La Rochelle airport after a busy working weekend.
This is the start of my third week back at the London coal face, so there are three weekends to cover in this installment. The second weekend was the weekend of the Sigogne festival and the weekend that has just past was a proper working weekend. It is easy to cover the first weekend, as it consisted of me driving back to the UK and getting ready for work. The drive was not a problem as my Jaguar was built for trips like that. I managed to squeeze in a couple of beers with the lads in Old Leigh, Essex on the Sunday afternoon, and then it was up at 5:00am on Monday to start work.
The Sigogne festival was a great success, starting with the demonstration of treading the grapes and producing grape juice for the assembled masses, then of course there was the fair, which was a big one for village standards and of course Fleur had to have a go on the fishing the duck game and several rides on the merry go round. I don’t think there are many prizes left on the fishing the ducks game that we do not have. In the evening there was a fire work display, starting with a procession lead by children carrying lanterns and a marching band, from the town square to the football field where the display was to be held. The display started with the ’Sigogne Drummers’ miming to a piece of music I know but cannot place at the moment, then the fire works started and they were good, it went on for about half an hour which was a very impressive display for a small village.
Sunday was the big Sigogne brocante which literally took over the centre of the village, so as usual it appears that when Sigogne does something they do it really well. The only person to buy anything at the brocante was of course Fleur who got another doll house to play with, not bad for 5 Euros. Fleur also got her face painted by a lady from Yorkshire (who now lives in the area), again she was very good, she might get booked for Fleur’s birthday party.
On the Sunday afternoon we went to the races at the Jarnac race course, I tried to find the list of runners and riders on the French Jockey club web site, but to no avail. We discovered the reason for this when we arrived, the races were all trotting races, a horse with a very light weight trap behind it. Needless to say we did not win any money, but the racing was fascinating, however in the heat some of the horses were definitely struggling.
It was a great weekend, and it was the end of Franca’s mother’s stay with us, apart from the first day when she arrived, the sun has shone continuously during visit.
Then it was back to Stansted and back to work, the immigration crowds were massive, it took almost as long to go through the airport as the flight took.
So to this weekend, which was a working weekend. The first job was to finish removing the plaster from the stone wall in room 3. Once we have decided what to do with the old wall lights and sockets I can start repairing and re-pointing the wall, at least the half closest to the window, I’ll have to wait until the new door way has been made before finishing the other side. After that I moved to garage to carry on installing a doorway between what will be our scullery and the garage. The doors are in and the walls are going up, I got as far as I could before requiring more materials. Luckily the builders are back in this week working on Room two (above the doorway I am making) so I have added my order to theirs so I should be able to get things finished, or closer to finished, next weekend. Once again we have hit a couple of snags around room 2, the floor joists are OK but the beams that support them which are made of metal are too weak, i.e. the steel is not thick enough, so as part of my construction for the new garage doorway I put a strengthening beam in but they have two more to install which are much more tricky. One good side effect is they are going to demolish the wall between the two parts of the scullery, that saves me a job, so that they can install one of the other strengthening beams, and they have to do something really clever with the last one, because there are central heating, gas and water pipes in the way.
Enough for this time, hopefully as if by magic a couple of photos might also appear to make this article look a little less daunting. You might not understand it but Franca also writes a blog in Dutch, her blog has more pictures than mine, you can reach it via http://portersonthemove.blogspot.com/
Sunday, September 02, 2007
La Rentrée - and time to go back to London
My three weeks are up and I have actually already made the long trek back to the UK, giving myself a day to adjust to the idea of being back in the UK and going to work. Setting off at 5:30 I managed to reach Calais at 11:45. The roads were empty so without pushing it I made good time with one stop for re-fuelling. It was surprisingly busy on the roads around Sigogne at 5:30 in the morning, I thought I would be the only car on the road, it being a Saturday, but no, it was quite busy. Luckily the motorways were very quiet, mainly full of British cars heading back for the start of the new school year in the UK. I did notice there were still a lot of British and Dutch cars heading south, as one friend said, its time for the wrinklies to come out. September can often have the best weather of the summer, the days are still long but the seering heat has now retreated south over the Mediterranean sea, leaving us with pleasant warmth to get out and about in, its a good month to visit France, he says giving tourist industry a plug, and of course coming to stay at Au Bellefleur.
Looking back at the three weeks we have not achieved everything we wanted to do, and we have done some things we did not expect to do so I am pretty pleased with progress so far. We are ready for the next phase of building to begin on the 10th of September and I should have the wall stripped by the time they come to start on room 3 sometime in October. Our Dutch builder Peter is back in the saddle though still not 100% yet but he will be working with Christian and Jean-Luc on room 2 whilst he builds his strength back up, then hopefully he will be ready to take on the double bathroom build in October when we reach room 3.
The pain of me leaving for the UK has been lessened by the arrival of Fleur's Oma (Franca's mother) from Rotterdam for a couple of weeks. Her arrival has coincided with the 4 day Frairie festival in Sigogne which starts on Thursday 6th September, what is going to take place we are not really sure as this is our first year, but there is going to be a brocante, live music and dancing, food, wine pressing demonstrations (the old fashioned way with your feet) and many other things, so when we have recovered we will let you know what it was all about. Sunday also sees horse racing in Jarnac so being a bit of a fan of the turf we will take a break from the festivities in Sigogne to go and see how many euros we can win... or loose.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
10 into 2 can go just...
Part of the rubble was from room 3 where my labour of love has begun as can be seen from this photo. My estimate of 5 days was a little over the top as this is the result of 5 hours work so far. Based on progress s far I have another 15 hours work to go which is not as bad as I originally thought. So after another cup of tea it was upstairs with the hammer and chisel to carry on stripping.
It is was also Fleur's first day back at school today and she was very reluctant to go, she has got used to being around us all the time in the long summer holidays the French schools have, but in the end she went back again without too much problem. She is now in the bigger class, le Grand Section, so she now has to be there all day from 8:45 to 11:45 then 1:15 to 4:15, not bad for a four and a half year old.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Crazy Golf in Cognac
Friday, August 24, 2007
Rain rain rain, but the sun is coming
The weather is looking great for the weekend with temps building up to 30 degrees by Monday, so that should make everyone feel better, even though the Brit bank holiday weekend signals the start of mass exodus of British folk back home again. I still have another week to go, so I've still got a chance to be able to go back to the UK with a suntan.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Time to start getting room 3 ready - a labour of love
This room looks ready to go, but its not, it is the next room after room 2 to be converted. This is the first room we used as a bed room hence it looks like it is almost ready, but it needs to be stripped, and a new doorway installed for an en-suite bathroom to be installed. I am going to attempted to expose the one stone wall in this room otherwise it is just going to look like a boring box. Having made a small test yesterday I discovered the stones under a thick layer of plaster and under that a layer of cement, so this is going to be a labour of love, taking about 5 days to strip, and is going to do my tennis elbow the world of good!
This is the next room to receive the Au Bellefleur treatment
A couple of shots of the next room to be converted into an en-suite bedroom, we had planned this room to be our summer bedroom but the way things are going it is turning into a good letting room, we will just have to see what the finished article looks like. It is just waiting for the builders to start work in September, and all things being equal it should be ready for occupation at the end of September. It should cost us a lot less than room one as we have so much stuff left over from the build of room one it will almost complete room two with just a 'few' extra bits. Sadly this room will not have any exposed stonework, due to the set up of the room, one stone wall has to be covered and water proofed for the bathroom and the other has all the electrical distribution boards on it, so this will have to be made safe from prying little fingers with a lockable cupboard.
A hidden floor and buckled boards
So it was back to more work and in doing some research for the next stage of the conversion we discovered a hidden floor in one of the proposed bathrooms which, when the first floor is removed will give us, an extra foot of head room give or take and inch or two, that 30cm in new money. You can see I have uncovered the frame work for the false floor. The bad news is that we will have to replace the floor joists before we can install the bathroom because the existing ones are not strong enough. This room was part of the farm buildings and it was probably used to store hay or something similar and so the joists did not need to be that strong. I also had to remove all the insulated plasterboard that the previous owners had installed as it had all buckled and bowed so no chance of sticking tiles on it. below the first picture is the stripped out room waiting to have the final floor boards removed so we can install new joists, we won't remove this until we have cleared out the room below. I 've done this work slightly out of order as this is not the next room to be tackled, or even the one after, but since the weather was so poor I needed to do some work inside.
Sand rain and a wild goose chase
It Monday morning, one week into my 3 week sojourn in Sigogne and guess what, i's raining. It feels more like November than the middle of August. The weather for the first week was not too bad, though it has nor been hot, and cloud and rain have been winning over the sunshine. The prospects for this week are not looking good having checked the forecast out to Thursday it looks like there will be rain every day.
We picked the best day of the week to go to the beach last week, and we were rained off the beach around lunch time, then the following day turned out to be the best day of week when I decided to do some work on the house. The one up side of this weather is that there is more work being done than sitting around in the sun, but not so good if you are my four and a half year old daughter who wants to play all the time.
I spent the first couple of days tidying out the garage, and putting down (humane) mice traps, so that my wife will go into the garage again and I have room to work.
Tuesday was beach day as you have already read, but the beach itself was a nice small bay with a long shallow shelf so ideal for children to play in the sea when the tide is in (it also appeared to have full time life guards on duty). There was also a kids club, with adult leaders and lots of activities, including a swimming pool. There were 2 restaurants one which purported to be open 7 days a week but when we looked was closed, so we went to the other one where the food was good and the service fast so we would recommend this as a good family beach, what is it called well it is by a place called Meschers sur Gironde and the beach was Plage des Nonnes, about an hour and 15 minutes drive from our house. As you may have guessed I had to run off and look up the names....
Wednesday was spent finishing off the painting to the front of the house that Gerard had done, I just had to do the bottom couple of inches all the way round where the roller did not reach. Then in the afternoon we went on a wild goose chase around the
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
look out the guests are coming....
I flew over to France a day early to help prepare for the arrival of our first fee paying real live B&B guests. We did not get off to a great start when on Wednesday our fridge stopped working, so all the food in the fridge had to go in the bin and Franca went out on Thursday to buy a new fridge, luckily we had not done the shopping for the weekend. We are doing that at the last minute so everything is as fresh as possible.
On Friday morning I prepared a boeuf bourguignon and put it in the oven to slow cook, then set about making crème brulee and meringues for desserts for the weekend. I cook meringues by turn the oven up as hot as possible putting the meringues in and turning the oven off to let them cook/dry out. We have two ovens, so guess what I did, I turned up the wrong oven and destroyed the boeuf bourguignon, so the guests got chicken breasts in a white wine and mustard sauce, always a good emergency standby.
Franca had especially ordered fresh croissants, pain chocolate and fresh bread, so she could pick them up at 8:00 on Saturday morning, when our supermarket opened, but the baker did not arrive until 9:30, not good if you are serving breakfast from 8:00. Sunday however was a disaster free day and we managed to serve what we planned when we planned it, and it was good fun too. Did we make any money this weekend, I doubt it, but in this case it does not matter, we covered our costs, and learned a great deal.
So thanks to Eric and Caroline (and Maxsu too) for being understanding guests to two newbie hoteliers (you may as well count me as a newbie, its over 25 years since I worked in a professional kitchen), and also a big big thank you to Gerard who proved to be a patient, willing, enthusiastic and overall fantastic assistant over the weekend, we could not have done it without you, I hope Gerard’s friend and family will recognise this description of him, he has done everything we asked of him and more. I hope you enjoyed your holiday Gerard, and thank you for the music, he can play a mean guitar as well (if the women will just let him play!). Some may say this man is too good to be true, hopefully after this write up he will recognise himself, as you have no doubt worked out we were pleased to have him around.
In between all this being hoteliers I/we (Gerard and I) managed to make a start on room 2 which is supposed to be our summer bedroom, but may turn out to be a good letting room. Having had the new roof installed over this room and new velux windows installed it is looking quite large and spacious. I have cleared all the rubbish from the room including in some places 3 layers of carpet!! It is now ready to start building.
Oh and by the way the weather was amazing this weekend, it is the first weekend since April that Saturday and Sunday were both fantastic with temperatures above 35 degrees on both days, Friday was not bad either, with temps around 28 degrees.
Well time to get on the plane, luckily it has stopped raining so we won’t get soaked on the way to the steps. I’m back on Ryan air again so it’s a later arrival in London, which means a long day whilst I get my 5 hours work in today….
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Superman
Family Pietersen
New window
Monday, July 30, 2007
Le Tour and a marathon
It is Monday morning so it must be
This was the weekend that the Tour de France passed through Sigogne, so needless to say we had to be there at the roadside to cheer on the cyclists. The village put on a good show with the usual beer tents and barbecue in full swing for the whole day and the atmosphere was friendly. I must admit Le Tour is not the greatest spectator sport in the world, you see each cyclist whiz by your chosen vantage point in the blink of an eye, then you have to wait one and a half minutes to see the next one whiz by, and this went on all day as the 141 cyclists left in Le Tour all took their turn over the 55km time trial from Cognac to Angouleme. It was a showery day so some cyclists that caught a shower whilst on the course were at an obvious disadvantage, especially through Sigogne as there were two large drain covers right on the apex of a sharp corner which they had to slow down for. But all in all it was a good day. There were a surprising number of Dutch and German and even Australian people around and one Dutch family from Nieuwerkerk on holiday near Barbezieux Alfonse, Caroline and their three children came back to our house for an aperitif and toilet stop. As everyone arrived back, the sun came out, and so did the drinks, so they stayed a little longer, and we had a lovely end to the day, swapping stories and chatting, since everyone was enjoying themselves we got some bouillabaisse soup on the go because no one had really eaten all day, so that kept everyone going.
So you are all dying to know how it went with ‘ma petite voiture’, well it could not have gone better, more by luck than judgement I seem to have picked a very good little car, it is also a very fast car so it kept up with everything on the road, and passed quite a lot as well. I left South East London at 12:00 having visited Sainsburys to stock up on food, and finally arrived in Sigogne at 10:00pm local time (9:00am UK time), in all I was on the road for 10 hours, and I could not have done it much faster in my Jaguar.
Where does my sun burnt neck fit into all this, well Sunday was a work day, though most people in our household slept until around 11:00. One of the things I brought over in the car was 20 pieces of glass to replace all the old glass in the window in room 1. Little did I know what I had let us in for, we think that the old putty (if it was putty) had been there for so long it had almost turn into a rock, it was certainly rock hard and took hours to get off the 20 little frames in the two windows. The sun was not really shining indeed it was raining from time to time, with just the odd glimpse of the sun, but some how we got sun burnt, or wind burnt maybe. Having started work at
So who was the ‘we’ in the glazing marathon, Gerard who is a Dutch friend of a friend recently mailed us and asked if we needed any help on the house in exchange for some food and lodgings, this was too good an opportunity for us to let go, so Gerard arrived shortly before me on Friday evening for two weeks, so after a leisure day on Saturday to recover from the drive from Holland, ands to watch Le Tour we got stuck into the windows on Sunday, and it was just well Gerard was helping otherwise only one window would have been finished by 8:30, as we just managed one window each and we were not slacking.
Whilst I am sitting at the airport Gerard is getting ready to start the mammoth task of painting the outside of the house, which was to be my task for the three weeks of my August ‘holiday’. I shall still be doing some painting, after all Gerard is on holiday so I can't expect him to work everyday. Hopefully the roof will be finished so I will be tidying up the back of the house which to be honest looks awful at the moment, so we will be doing our bit to make the village look a little bit nicer.
It is now only 2 weeks to go until my August ‘holiday’, and next weekend we will get our first official Bed and Breakfast guests who are driving down from
A little foot note for Stellios at Easyjet, last weeks flight took off late but the chaps on the flight deck made up most of the time on the way back to Gatwick, only to loose it all again because we could not get off the plane for 10 mins because of tunnel congestion, (you can’t mix inbound and out bound passengers), in the end we had to be bus’d to the immigration hall. So nice try Easyjet, we almost had an on time journey. To be fair it looks like most of the problems stem from the fact that Gatwick airport appears to be struggling to cope with the throughput of flights it is currently handling.
This will be my last Easyjet flight for a while, I am on Ryanair next week because I booked the flights months ago when I did not know about the Easyjet service. After that I will be using the services of a cross channel provider as I will be driving down for my three week sojourn in Sigogne, but I have not booked anything yet so its going to be expensive. I don’t know if I will be flying Easyjet again this summer, because I don’t know when their trial summer service finishes.
Well I just saw the plane circling round so its on time or even early so that’s enough waffling from me for now, time to get in the Speedy Booking queue to get my front seat on the plane...
Friday, July 27, 2007
High Society- a new roof for our B&B
As you can see the guys are getting stuck in to the roof repairs, and because of the wierd weather we are having this year they are doing it in sections. This is the first section, with two Velux windows being installed on this section, for what we are calling the emergency bedroom, and what will probably be our summer bedroom when the B&B is in full swing. This is almost the end of week one so I think the 2 weeks to complete the job estimate is looking a tad on the optimistic side. So fr the weather has been on our side, but it will be interesting to see what happens when we reach the traditionally wet Monday (traditional for this summer).
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The B&B is sort of open for business….
This weekend we had more visitors, friends Jos and Marian, with Bart and Marco from The Netherlands, they were stopping off on their way to a holiday in the Pyrenees. They arrived on Friday evening about an hour before me, due to the fact that my flight was delayed for 2 hours, because I was supposed to be there before them.
Jean-Luc has installed a new door for room 1 which means we could be sort of be open for business but only on an adhoc basis because of the amount of building work still going on. We might be able to take a bit of overflow from our friendly neighbour who is already operating a B&B, but it is encouraging that we could now offer accommodation to someone if they asked.
Back to the weekend though, I had not planned too much work for this weekend, because its not very friendly with visitors staying to then spend the whole weekend working, but in the end it worked out very well because Jos helped me out by finishing off all the painting in the toilet and the bathroom whilst I did all sorts of little jobs in the bedroom, so in the end we got a lot done and the only major thing left to finish now is the windows, I have 20 pieces of glass to replace, which I shall bring from England because I have not seen a glass merchant in the area yet, I don’t even know what the French equivalent of a glass merchant is…
Fleur had a great time playing with Bart and Marco as they are all around the same age, Bart and Marco just enjoyed the space to run around in, and the adults were able to sit around and relax, chat and enjoy the weather, the food and the wine. It was a good test for us as well as it was the first time that we have had 2 guest rooms occupied, so we could make sure that we had enough of everything to cope, the only thing we were a bit short of was bathrooms, but that is going to take a while to sort out. Also we are starting to get used to having people walking around the house, this does take a bit of getting used to. We are tuned in to listen for Fleur’s footsteps at night when she needs to go to the toilet or get a drink, or just needs comforting, but of course with another family of 4 in the house there were a lot more footsteps during the night.
But, it was a pleasure to have them, and gives us an idea of the good side of running a B&B as everything went smoothly, as indeed it should for most of the time. Not everything went entirely smoothly, Fleur wanted a fire on Saturday night so Jos and I were busy chopping wood when my thumb collided rather dramatically with a hammer, and although my thumb is only bruised my body decided to go into a little bit of shock for half an hour or so, so I had to go and lay down for an hour before I felt normal again, but apart from a rather painful bruise no harm done and we still had our fire in the brazier (Austin, I finally remembered what it is called).
Sunday after Jos, Marion and family headed for the hills so to speak, I had a go at sculpting a small feature to tidy up the old doorway to room 1, which after 3 hours work did not look too bad, for a first attempt. Then Fleur pleaded to go to Hotel Karina, and to be honest she did not have to plead too much, so after phoning to check they were serving food to non guests we headed over to Nikki and Austin for what turned out to be a nice roast dinner.
So here I am back at the airport in the pouring rain and I am waiting for the Easyjet flight back to London Gatwick. Last week being the first day of the service there were only 30 passengers on the flight, however I can see that this week there are quite a few more, so there will be a bigger scramble for seats this week. Easyjet have not had a good track record so far, 2 flights and 2 delays, however since the weather is the main cause I shall persevere with them and see how it goes.
On Friday I shall be bringing the little Mazda down to Sigogne, so I shall be flying though the channel tunnel for a change, I hope the little car will make the trip without too much incident. If all goes well I’ll be arriving sometime between 9:00 and 10:00pm on Friday night, having left the office at 11:00 am, have no fear you will hear all about it in next weeks episode.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Ma petite voiture
I hit another target this week, finally I have bought a car to drive to and from the airports in France. It’s a British registered left hand drive Mazda MX-3, its 15 years old but hopefully it will do the job for a year or so, and by March 2008 it will have paid for itself. It is currently in the garage undergoing a full service before I attempt the long drive to Sigogne, without air conditioning, but what do you expect for just over a £1000.00. The important thing is, it has a big engine so I should be able to overtake a few things en-route, so with no apologies to Hertz and Avis, next week is the last time I shall be hiring a car for a while, unless I have to do some strange airport combinations in the Autumn as the airlines change their timetables for the winter. This car was first registered in Alberta, Canada, so you could say it speaks french with a north American accent, although Alberta is not a French speaking area all the documentation is in French and English. So this little car has been around a bit, built in Asia, imported into Canada, then imported into the UK and now heading off for a spell in France.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Prunes
Horsepower 2
La Fete de la Sigogne et 14 Julliet
There was a special open air mass to bless the harvest from the land, in our case that was wheat, sunflowers, animals, some vegetables and of course grapes. Then in the afternoon there was a demonstration of farming the old fashioned way with horses pulling early mechanised harvesting equipment, old tractors pulling even older wooden carts laden with wheat. The carts would have been pulled by horses or bulls originally, but it was 35 degrees so the tractors did it. The wheat was then loaded by hand, or should I say pitch fork, into a threshing machine powered by a steam engine which delivered the power to the thresher via massive leather belts. The thresher separated the grains from the chaff, and bailed the left over hay and bagged the grain for the mill. We also had a baker on site baking bread in a very old portable steel plate oven, so the only thing missing from the whole process from field to table was the mill to grind the grain into flour. It was very interesting, especially for a machine geek like me, and it was more or less all done by the village folk of Sigogne and the surrounding area.
We told Fleur there will be ponies at the fete as well and after initially deciding she wanted to ride one on the way to the fete she announced that she had changed her mind and didn’t want to ride one after all. Well when we saw the ponies, which were from the local stables, amazingly enough Fleur changed her mind again and wanted to ride one. This is a first because up to now she has been afraid of horses, ponies and donkeys. So, another breakthrough for a little girl of four and a half… she liked it so much that she wanted another go, but sadly because of the heat the ponies had gone back to their stables, but we know their address so perhaps Fleur can go with Franca for some riding lessons, if she wants…
Saturday night was the celebration of the 14th of July and thanks to my travelling partners Sue and Chad on the Friday evening Ryanair commuter flight we were in Jarnac at 11:00pm to watch the firework display along with thousands and thousands of others, I had no idea so many people lived in the local area. The firework display was good though not on a par with the 5th of November Blackheath displays we have seen before, but then Jarnac’s budget was no doubt not on the same scale. That said it was a very good 15 minute display and Fleur is no longer afraid of fireworks, so she enjoyed herself and she was fast asleep in the car on the way back home. It was amusing to see the procession of cars heading back to Sigogne after the display, I don’t think I have seen so many cars on the road to Sigogne at the same time before.
The weather the whole weekend was fantastic both days were over 30 degrees the whole time, though true to form I am sitting at a wet La Rochelle airport this morning, no time to visit a store today as I am trying out the Easyjet flight to London Gatwick, which goes earlier than the Ryanair flight. It has got off to an inauspicious start as I could not use the web checkin facilites which meant getting to the airport extra early, hence no store visit, I can hear the disappointment, to check in the old fashioned way. I hope it works for the flight on Friday or I have a problem because I do not have time to get to Gatwick 2 hours before the flight, well Stellios lets see what happens…
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Lightning nevers strikes twice - I beg to differ....
Monday, July 09, 2007
We are temporarily without internet in Sigogne due to a heavy storm (orage) on Saturday night, which tripped all out all the electrical supplies to the house. I still do not know if we were hit directly by the lightening or the electrical supply pylon outside got hit. The flash of light lit up the whole area as if it was day, and crack of thunder was the loudest I have ever heard, then there was a little fizz that came just after which was apparently the result of a strike. At the time I did not realise that we had lost all the power and we went back to bed oblivious to the problem. I discovered it later in the morning when I went to make a cup of tea. Luckily Christian, our electrician, had just installed a new breaker to protect the incoming power to the house and that had tripped, however not before the computers, internet modem and the washing machine had all had their fuses blown. So I sat with my tea on Sunday morning replacing fuses in plugs and then trying to get things to work again. Most things are sorted out now but it looks like we have lost our newest monitor which refuses to come back to life, the Orange modem is looking decidedly unhappy and our printer is refusing to print, but we are all OK so that’s the main thing. We have never been hit by lightening before to be honest I don’t think we will ever know if it was the house or the pylon that got hit, but apparently its not that uncommon here, so I will be rushing out to buy some power filters for the computer equipment before anything else gets zapped!
Work wise I finished off installing the shower this weekend which took a lot longer than I thought, and I have learned a thing or two (as this is the first time I have installed a shower) along the way, which is just as well as there are 5 more to install!
I’m sure you have all been waiting to hear about this week’s store report, well it was only a flying visit to Castorama with nothing special to report except they appear to be cheaper than Leroy Merlin. I then had to wiz off to the airport to stand in the check in queue, no internet, no online check in. I also discovered that the flight time had been changed from 11:25 to 11:10, though that did not make any difference to the arrival time in the UK. I think the change of time caught quiet a few people out, but in the end it did not matter as the plane arrived late from the UK, so we took off at the normal time.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Tour de inspection
I think I'll stick to the plane or the train for getting from London to Sigogne, well there is good news regarding our builder Peter, he is out of hospital, though still going back for very regular checks. Peter is coming round to take a look at our handi work, sort of quality control, to see what we have been doing since he has been away, there is quite a difference from when he left so I hope he likes what he sees, you never know I might get a job on his team, but I'm not sure he will be paying London rates, and of course I can't take the credit for all the lovely woodwork, that's down to Jean-Luc.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
The grand reveal...
Arriving on Friday evening I had the great reveal of the new wooden flooring and the new bed that arrived for Room 1 (we must come up with some decent room names), which both look fab-a-roony (as a certain Tweeny would say), well when you have small children strange words start cropping up in your vocabulary. Finally the first en-suite starts to look more like a bedroom and less like a building site. Jean -Luc our carpenter who laid the floor also had a second bite of the cherry, when he remade our built in cupboard doors and they now look fab-a..... and he put architrave around the doors and windows and in doing so knocked a few jobs off the snagging list for me. Merci Jean-Luc
On Saturday we went to Reinold and Karin for lunch and the weather was great, as was the food and the company. Fleur took her swimming things because Karin and Reinold have a pool but she only wanted to sit on the edge and splash with her feet, even though Reinold dived in to tempt her into the pool, but it did not work, I think she just wanted to play with the water. Karin made a really nice duck fillet with a great sauce, the trouble is she cannot re create it because it was one of those sauces where you put in a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
The news on Peter is that he is starting to walk again after his now 'confirmed' stroke, and he will be allowed home on Monday (today) to carry on recovering. I think Franca is going to pop along on Thursday to see how he is doing, and Fleur has made Peter a card, it was two days in the making so I hope he likes it.
I finished off all the undercoating of the wood work and started to install the shower, however I couldn’t find the waste fittings, and then I destroyed my tile drill trying to fix the shower tray to the new tiled floor, so I did not progress very far with the shower, I’ll try again next weekend.
Otherwise it was a bit of a nothing weekend and once again I am standing at La Rochelle airport in the rain, the weather so far this year has been very poor according to the locals, so we wait to see some improvement now we are in a new month.
Continuing my tour of big shops on the way to the airport to kill time, I stopped off this week at Leroy Merlin a DIY store to beat all DIY stores, again so huge that you could buy a whole house if you wanted to, no boats for sale this week though. I did discover the French word for putty, which is handy since I need some to fix our windows, oh by the way if you are interested its mastic vitier, not something you will need in every day French conversation, but you never know. I will be back at Leroy Merlin to buy a few things en route home on Friday, if Hertz can get their act together so I can get out of the airport quickly. Otherwise it will have to wait until I have bought my own airport car, its got to be a cheaper option, as I have already handed over more than £2000.00 in car hire fees this year. It may not be too long in coming as I have my eye on a couple of left hand drive cars in the UK. By the way next weeks store is Castorama, I bet you can hardly wait….