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.
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