Twas the weekend before Christmas

I have had an interesting few days one way or another, with the weather and a very petulant daughter who is over excited about Christmas, and full of cold. The snow in the UK on Friday threatened to stop me getting home, however in the end I was only delayed by an hour and a half. I took the car to Gatwick 1st thing Friday morning ready for a return to Nottingham on Monday, and to avoid any problems on the roads, and caught the train back to London to work.


The trains were all over the place timing wise, but there was still a good if slow service running, and so when I got back to London Bridge station to go to the airport I caught a train that was running over an hour late, but it actually meant I arrived at Gatwick earlier than normal. This being the last weekend before Christmas the tourists were out in force, having left their brains at home as usual, so security took an absolute age, especially as Gatwick security is amongst the slowest in the UK, they would say for slow read thorough, so combine the two and you spend a good 45 minutes looking through the metal detector arches before you finally take your turn.

Once we took off we were looking down on a winter wonderland all the way from the UK to Angouleme when suddenly the snow disappeared and we landed in a green Bordeaux, and bizzarely I saw no snow on the drive home from Bordeaux until I reached Jarnac, you could say the river Charente was the snow line so Sigogne was a winter wonderland, but our neighbours south of river were surrounded by the more usual winter green.

Our daughter is, for the first time, suffering from over excitment in the run up to Christmas which has resulted in some huge mood swings and some not so pleasant fits of temper, which we have never really seen before, when she does not get her own way. Now I can see why parents can sometimes say I'll be glad when Christmas is over. All this is not helped by the fact that she has a streaming cold at the moment so has been inside for 5 days, I hope she calms down whilst I am away otherwise I shall be returning on Thursday to an exhausted and exasperated wife and mother in law.

So its Monday morning and I am heading back to the UK for a short week of work, I'm only working about 3 days though I already have too much to do both in both my work and private life, but that is how it is a Christmas, then, when I get back home on Thursday afternoon I will have 10 days of staying on the same place with my family which I am really looking forward to. Weather permitting I am heading to Nottingham, Harrogate, Mansfield, Ashbourne, Bourne and Southend to name but a few before I head back to France in the car on Thursday morning.

Christmas 2009

Its been an interesting run up to Christmas, with all the weather disruptions in the UK, the threat of strikes (by British Airways) and the Euro Tunnel shinanigans, so I was amazed that apart from loosing one day to the snow I escaped somewhat unscathed, and arrived home on Christmas Eve via the Euro Tunnel bang on time.



The family at Christmas, Christmas Table, Fleur & Oma singing Carols, and of course the one and only Franca happy now she has a bottle of Amaretto

The run up to Christmas is as always a great big panic, even though every year I try to get organised, this year the weather threw a big spanner in the works with the snow and ice meaning I was always playing catch up, especially as I was visiting lots of people in remote parts of Derbyshire during the bad weather, well at least trying to. One nice visit in Derbyshire, not work related, was to catch up with my oldest friend Alice whom I am ashamed to say, I have not seen for 17 years!, she has not really changed so why have I got all the grey hairs then! Christmas in Sigogne this year was celebrated in a fairly low key way, unless you were my 7 year old daughter, its the first time she has got really exicted over Christmas so of course we were woken up at 5:00am, 6:00am and she finally got up at 7:00am. Franca's mum was also with us which is always good fun, and since she had been here since the middle of December she headed back to Rotterdam on 27th. I hope everyone had a good Christmas, and have a Happy, Peaceful and Prosperous New Year

Time to get ready for action again...

Made a bit of a boob this weekend, or rather I made it back in October when I made all my flight/travel bookings for the rest of the year. I managed to miss out this weekend for some strange reason lost in the mists of time. Hence I am now sitting on the Eurostar heading from Paris to London on my most expensive weekend return of the year. To get the trains I want I had to book the full 1st class return, but it was still £200.00 cheaper than British Airways wanted for a last minute return to Bordeaux.

In all it was a bit of a lazy weekend just pottering around doing little jobs. However this will have to stop as we need to get on and do things, if we are to be ready for the next season. To show willing and convince myself we had restarted work I knocked down a wall, not a very big one but it meant that things were starting to move forward again. We are coming into the Christmas season and this will slow things down a little as we are suddenly getting guests again so there will be no major work this side of the New Year.

I have a list of small jobs that all need to be tackled before the next major onslaught of guests, hopefully around Easter next year, the biggest of which is to fix the walkin shower which seems to continuously get blocked which means ripping up the shower floor and part of the bathroom floor to re-lay the waste pipe. Pipe work will take about an hour to do , ensuing tiling and flooring will take 2 or 3 weekends. So its busy busy time again, however we have some nice things to do again, it is Franca's mother's 75th birthday and we are celebrating it in Paris. As part of the trip Fleur is being taken to Disneyland, and she is already saving up all her Euros ready for the big day.

Winter is coming

The weather has really decided to take turn over the last couple of weeks in our little corner of France. After July the sun shone and almost not a drop of rain fell, now in November the sky has thrown nothing but rain at us. From ground where you would need a kango to make an impression and where carrots refused to grow down into the baked soil, we now have ground that does not know if it should be liquid or solid.

I know we have fared much better than lots of people in both the UK and France in that we have not had any flooding, and it is highly unlikely to happen to us as we live the top of incline that runs down to the River Charente some 7km away, if we are under water the entire Cognac industry would be devastated, not to mention 10s of 1000s of people loosing homes & livelihoods, so we should count ourselves fortunate, though it does not stop us moaning about the weather.

One remarkable thing about our recent weather is that it is not cold, they are not reaching the heights of 30 degrees that we saw in October, we are still regularly reaching between 15 an 18 degrees, though when we left to drive to Angouleme this morning the car was showing an outside temp of 1 degree, so maybe that is a sign of winter arriving, but atleast that will hopefully mean the sun will make a welcome reappearance.

Being a bit of a snow-a-holic I have been monitoring the mountain ranges in France for the start of the snow fall for the winter season, and the Alps are doing well, the first snows of the winter have fallen in the Massif Central and it looks like the Pyrenees are get in on the act as well with a good covering. I am hoping to do atleast one weekend in the snow this season so Fleur can have a go a sledging and maybe skiing too, we will have to see what the winter snows bring..

Fleur's lucky afternoon

Fleur's long awaited birthday arrived at the weekend the weather forecast said the weekend would be typical late autumn weather, i.e. wind and rain, so we were not too hopeful that the horse & carriage ride we had planned for her and her friends would be that good. However as Saturday mid-day approached the rain stopped and the sun came out, and it was a lovely autumn afternoon. The children all enjoyed the afternoon, and the horse and carriage picnic was a great success. The lady that led the afternoon was great with the children, the children could sit on one of the horses if they wanted. We had two horses to pull a lovely carriage which had room for 10 children and three adults.

We were pulled, sometimes quite quickly, through countryside between the vines, woods and fields, stopping for a picnic in a sheltered spot by a bridge, it was wonderful afternoon, and not much clearing up after the party either. Fleur got lots of lovely presents too with people being very generous in what they gave, so she has quite a few new books in French, lots of things for the bath and costume jewelry too.

From mum and dad Fleur had a PlayMobil castle, and with her Nana and Grandad contributing to the Castle building was started and completed by the end of Saturday. It needed a big table to put it on, and Fleur is very happy with it. From her Oma Fleur got a book of fairtales from the Efteling, if your Dutch you know that is a very famous Dutch theme park, going back much further than Disneyland, to say it was just a book does not do it justice, it is a fine work and wonderfully illustrated.

Sunday morning saw the return of the rain, and we count our selves very lucky that we ahd a great day on Saturday.

Aubeterre sur Dronne

It must be getting close to Fleur's birthday as her grandma (Franca's mum) has arrived in Sigogne, we marked the occasion with a trip out to Aubeterre sur Dronne. Being autumn we managed to see all 4 seasons during our visit. We arrived in bright sunshine, lunched through an April shower and were attacked by a hail storm when walking from one end of this picturesque village to the other.

Aubeterre is one of the 20 best villages in France according to some body or other, but I can't remember which. the village is quite small, has a very neat little square which would obviously be full of tourists eating and drinking in the summer, but I could not help but think that the villaged looked pretty lifeless at this time of year even by French standards, probably way too many holiday homes here.

Aubeterre has an amazing church carved out of a rock face, with some of the best accoustics I have ever come across. To be honest there is not that much to see in the village, the Church being the highlight, there are the usual picturesque houses clinging to the rock face, 2 very nicely restored but unspectacular churches and a monastery which been turned into an old peoples home so you can only visit the chapel, and have to peer through a glass door to see the cloister. I think it is a nice place to stop and visit on the way to somewhere else, it certainly has one atmosphere in summer and a totally different one once the tourists have gone home.

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...

The bathroom so far

Well here is two days work, if I get the photos right No1 shows day one, it does not show too much as most of the day was spent plumbing but you can see the new ceiling rails, I still have to put the isulation in before I fit the plasterboard to the rails (the rails are the metal bits going in the opposite direction to the wooden joists).





The second shot should show the large sections of plaster board ceiling up, in France green means waterproof, I still have the little bits to do and you should also be able to see the frame of the toilet dividing wall taking shape..





and finally our builder has made a new entrance to the bathroom, it still needs finishing off, but you can just see he has started pointing the wall on the right hand side, you get a good impression of the before & after in this shot.





If all goes well I'll be able to post a picture of a new toilet ready for use, such an exicting life I lead...

I think I need to cut the grass

After the high of last weekends birthday celebrations this weekend is a bit of a low since I cannot get back home to France, due to having to work in Limerick for most of Friday.

However this does give me a chance to do a few chores at London HQ, Joy & Simon I hope your reading. I must admit to negelecting the garden a bit, well be honest....alot, I've not been out there this year, so I thought it was time to cut the grass. So Saturday dawned and it was raining but it cleared up by 10.00 so grass cutting was on...

It would certainly would have been a lot more bover with a hover, taking words from a very old advert, so I purchased a heavy duty petrol powered strimmer, which we will need in France as well as it carrying out a little job for me here in the UK.




So I am ashamed to say this is the before shot....




and hopefully below it is the after shot with Toro the strimmer who made short work of the elephant grass in the back garden.


There you go Joy and Simon, next time your over you'll be able to sit in the garden with a glass of something, but don't leave it too long, don't think I'm due another weekend in London for a while.

Hopefully it will now be a lot less bover with a hover...

Time for a glass of something....

Franca's Birthday

Last weekend was Franca’s birthday so the occasion had to be marked in French style which means going out for a meal. Franca chose the restaurant and so early on Saturday evening we headed off to l’Essille in Bassac. www.hotel-restaurant-essille.com/. Strangely I was talking to Sue one of my fellow commuters on the way over to La Rochelle and she was singing the praises of this very restaurant, at the time I didn’t know that it was the same restaurant Franca had chosen.

Franca, her mother, Fleur and I set off for Bassac arriving at the restaurant bang on 7:30, making us first the guests of the evening. The restaurant was light and airy so they were off to a good start in my book as I do not like stuffy dingy restaurants, and l’Essille had plenty of charm too.

The meal was great and the atmosphere was good too, and by 8:30 it was pretty full, although the quality was reasonably high, the restaurant had a good relaxed atmosphere of people out to enjoy them selves. Sometimes high quality food means the atmosphere is a bit to still as if you are supposed to respect the food rather than enjoy the whole restaurant experience, and that was not the case with l’Essille. The food was well cooked and presented, everyone enjoyed what they ordered and the wine list was one of the better ones I have seen in our local area. The menu had a wide choice, but focussing on localish food, so lots of fish & seafood from the coast and meat from the Limousin.

We finished off the celebration with an excellent birthday dessert for Franca, so a good time was had by all and with Franca’s birthday well and truly celebrated we can recommend L’Essille the to one and all.

We are family

Some family pictures with Franca, Fleur and my mother-in-law. Fleur's picture has been taken in restaurant l'Essille in Bassac where we've been on Saturday for Franca's birthday celebration dinner.

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the office…..no really

I was dashing through Liverpool Street station heading for the tube when I spotted a gap in the crowd to a free ticket gate, so I went for it.

It was only as I went base over apex flying through the air watching my mobile phone performing aerobatics above me that I realised why the gap was there.

A gentleman was pulling, perfectly concealed behind him, the largest wheelie suitcase I have ever seen (or not seen in my case - pardon the pun).

As I lay flat on my back on the station floor watching my phone trying to make good its escape through the ticket barrier I had a moment to remember something I heard on Danny Baker's 5 Live program the night before. He was asking had you ever been fouled in real life, well here I am laying on the floor of Liverpool St station waiting for the ref to show the puller of the titanic suitcase a straight red card...he took both my legs out ref...

It made a few commuters smile for a moment.... I hate wheelie suitcases almost as much as I hate umberallas.

They marched us up to gate 45 and marched us back down to 43 again

Another busy weekend at Au Bellefleur, the change of Ryanair?s timetable means I have less time in France at the weekends for a short while. We also had guests staying with us and they wanted to eat with us each night so that kept the kitchen busy too. I also had to try and get at least one toilet ready for use downstairs before Easter as we are basically full over the Easter Break.

Friday was a farcical departure from Stansted, not only was it foggy, and Barack Obama was departing from Stansted shortly before us, but Ryanair could not work out which gate we were going to be flying from, so we were marched from gate 45 to 43 and then back again to 45, and then back to 43 again in the space of 15 minutes. We were also well over an hour late on departure, mutter mutter mutter. Then again it has not been a bad flying winter, the Stansted ? Limoges bus service was pretty reliable, I guess around 80% of our flights were on time, not many were early though. The summer is going to be a challenge as Ryanair keep changing flight times, so I have no flights settled past the early May bank holiday.

Our guests over the weekend were returning for their second visit, its always great to greet returning guests because it means we must be doing something right. One story which will go down in the annals of Au Bellefleur history was when our guests went down to Jarnac market, a cheese seller from the Basque country was selling his sheep cheese and giving away free samples. Our guests thought this cheese tasted so good they would buy some, unfortunately forgetting to look at the price first. They enthusiastically encouraged the cheese man to make the slice they were buying bigger and bigger. They handed over a €50.00 and €2.00 back, €48.00 for a piece of cheese!! Of course they never heard the end of it, cheese jokes all night? they took it in good spirits, or at least I hope they did, maybe if they never come back we will learn that they did not take the ribbing that well.

I was busy with new toilets for the two bathrooms I am building at the moment. I had the job of concreting in the waste pipes, always a scary moment as this is the point of no return or least not without and awful lot of pain. Fleur always wants to help, and so she must be one of the only six year old girls that knows how to mix concrete, and she did a good job working with a full size shovel. The pipes are concreted in and the plumbing for the toilet is half complete.

We are full for Easter which will slow production down, but the good news is that Bogdan our builder is back so things should speed up for a while after Easter.

I do not like flying back on a Sunday evening as this makes the weekend feel quite short especially as my flights to France in the summer are on a Friday afternoon, however, since I will be in France for 5 days at Easter this trip back is not so bad. But I will be searching the timetables for a Monday morning flight after Easter.

I am flying from La Rochelle, and a slower bunch of passport control and customs people I have never met. They were taking an eternity to process each passenger through passport control and then the security checks, if that is standard the I will be doing everything I can to avoid La Rochelle. Fellow travellers have said that flights have been delayed because they are so slow.

Another little move around

We have had another little shift around in Au Bellefleur as we prepare the B&B for the Easter rush, and the ongoing building works for the next two rooms.

We now have a new cosy office with an en-suite bath/shower, as we have moved all our computer equipment into what was our old bathroom. Blogging from the shower, now that is an interesting concept, luckily the laws of physics dictate this is not a good idea, so please do not try this at home, as they say on some TV programs.

Having moved all the computers and cleared our old downstairs bedroom we are ready for the builder to knock through a doorway into the new bathroom I have been working on. I stripped a bit of the old plaster board off the wall around the window of the bedroom as it was wrecked anyway to see what sort of a damp problem we have, and it is what can only be described as potentially big. I have found another French stone wall that has basically been tanked meaning it is sealed on both sides so the moisture stays in the wall. If the whole room is like the little bit I have looked at so far then this room is going to be the biggest challenge yet to get sorted out. Hacking off all the old concreting & plastering could take weeks, gulp... I'll have to think about this...

Watch this space, more updates after Easter?..