We have made great progress with the gite marketing since the last blog post. We have now finally got the website live (www.hirondelles-chabanol.fr) and I have to say it looks good.. It seems to have taken ages to get there but we are really pleased with it. We have also been doing the rounds of the local tourist offices and following our visit to the Issoire office we had a visit from the lady there to inspect the gite and give us a temporary classification so she could put us into the new guide book which comes out in January/February. This was quite a tense afternoon but she liked the gite quite a lot thank goodness! We have to get several more things such as bedside lamps for each bed, different mattress covers and some more crockery ( 15 plates of each size, would you believe). The two best things though were the requests for an electric blender ("so the holidaymakers can make soup") and a cake tin ("to let them make a little gateau"). I`m afraid my jaw must have hit the floor with these two demands! Just who makes soup and cakes on holiday?? However, like good little gite owners we have bought all the extras so you can all rest assured you can now go to the markets and make soup and cakes all your holiday long!! We have to have another inspection in January by the big boss from Clermont Ferrand to confirm the classification. Boy, am I looking forward to that!
I have also been working on more intregration stuff and have joined the Issoire branch of the Croix Rouge as a volunteer. At the moment I am to help out with their "social services" type activities such as helping to sort donated clothes for their charity type shop and they also have a "Boutique Bebe" with clothes and equipment which I can work in. The first aid stuff will come later when my French improves - I need to be able to understand what is wrong with the casualty after all!! At the moment there is a little army of lasdies( including our holiday house neighbour, Suzette) who are who are working their fingers off preparing for the annual Marche de Noel, and I spent a very happy afternoon helping them last week with their art and craft stuff. They were all very welcoming and I think I will enjoy being part of this team very much.
The weather has been really mild. we have had some beautiful clear blue sky days with daytime temperatures in the high teens. It does get cold once the sun goes down, and we have seen a light dust of snow on the mountains across the valley on a couple of mornings, but we have not experienced anything like the winter weather the locals delight in telling us about! Having said that, we are going to put some winter tyres on the cars this week as we have a sneaky feeling that we will wake up to lots of snow one day soon. The post lady`s van was having it`s tyres done today and that is enough indication for us to get ours done!!
Our quest to get to know the area continues too. We had a fabulous day out visiting Puy-en-Velay recently. This is a very picturesque town with some really spectacular volcanic peaks in its midst, which are adorned with chapels and statues. It is worth a visit in its own right, but we were there specifically for a hot air balloon festival and were treated to the magnificent sight of about thirty balloons taking to the skies and drifting over the countryside. it was pretty awe inspiring and definately not to be missed if ever you are here on that weekend.
One thing which has been a constant source of irritation to me since we came here is that I cannot attract any birds to my birdfeeder in the garden. We have lots of birds around as you would expect, including all kinds of tits, finches, nuthatches and all the usual garden birds, but not once have I seen one anywhere near the well stocked peanut holder or seed dispenser. I have tried moving the feeders around, and placing tempting seed piles nearby, but all in vain so far. those of you who know me will realise that this is a real frustration as I love to watch the birds. I can only wonder if the regular presence of a family of buzzards has anything to do with this reluctance to visit the feeders. I suppose being a sitting target for a bird of prey is not an attractive proposition! We did toy with the idea of having a dove cote when we first arrived here but I decided that the buzzards might view this as a new outlet of McDonalds! Anyway if any of you have suggestions as to how attract my feathered friends to the free meals, I`d love to hear them.
12/11/06 Toussaint and latest news
The Toussaint holiday is now over and winter has started in earnest with several very cold nights. We are in the process of tracking down the draughts one by one and trying to eliminate them. However our heating is coping well and once we get the fire going (something we are getting very good at!) the rooms are very cosy. The days are still lovely with bright blue skies and lovely clear air which means that the views over the valley are terrific. We have also been treated to some fantastic sunsets but once the sun goes down it gets very cold and dark. It is most definitely soup season now, which is just as well as the vegetable presents keep on coming!
Toussaint is a school holiday here and there were suddenly thousands of chrysanthemums for sale everywhere. Nice we thought – I’ve always been partial to chrysanths and the geraniums at the end of the drive were well past their sell by date, so we bought three lovely plants to put in the stone pots. Only later did we read that the chrysanths are sold to be taken to the cemetery to put on your loved ones grave! Not a present to take to your mum then! Hazel reckons that the neighbours will have thought the stone pots were urns containing ashes – a very strange thing to have at the entrance to your home! No wonder the post lady looked at them very strangely!
The winter walking season has also started in earnest with organised walks taking place in a lot of the local villages each Sunday. Geoff and Chester did the Cider Walk organised by the committee at St Etienne sur Usson (our village) and really enjoyed it – although both of them were very stiff the next day. They only did the short walk too – 10km – but as it is very hilly here it was a good trek. We both enjoyed the meal which is part of the day and this time some of the locals did talk to us so we feel that we are slowly becoming known in the community.
We have also started to decorate – which those of you who know us will realise is not a job we enjoy! However we have made a start on the hall and staircase – just freshening the paint and it has made a big difference. Until Brian ( the electrician/plumber) comes back to start the new bathrooms and kitchen it is difficult to know what to do as there will be major decorating to be done afterwards, but the house does need a bit of freshening up now.
Another major change has been the purchase of a little run around car. It is a bit of a luxury having two cars but when Geoff returns to the UK each month it is too isolated to be here, alone, without a car. So we have sent our old English car to the scrap heap in the sky ( it was going to be too complicated and too expensive to transfer it to French registration) and bought a Peugeot “society” (ex company car) which only has two seats and so is a sort of cross between a car and a van. Chester has lots of room in the back but he does tend to slide around a bit when on the twisty country roads – of which there are many round here!
Our marketing of the Gite continues too with visits to the local tourist offices to tell them of our existence. We have managed to get onto the Pays De Sauxillanges web site and are in the process of talking to the office at Issoire to get into their directory. The gite is now being advertised in Holland and is also on the Chez Nous site in England. Our website (www.hirondelles-chabanol.fr)is about to go live too next week, so hopefully I will have news of our first bookings next time!