Starting a chambres d`hôte

24/07/08 Busy, busy, busy ..

Every month I wonder if I am going to have enough news to make the blog interesting and up to now I have been astonished at all the things we manage to fit into a month. This last month has been a pretty hectic one really – much more than usual.

We made use of the couple of weeks at the end of June and beginning of July to try and get some outstanding jobs done before the summer visitors began in earnest. The first task was to get the chimneys swept. We had tried to do this earlier in the year but an unexpected fall of snow put paid to that idea. However this time round the guy arrived, and after telling us he was a couple of months off his retirement, put us “youngsters” to shame by shimmying up his ladder and onto our roof in no time! There was absolutely no mess at all (I had been a bit worried at having this job done just before our first summer guests arrived) and both the gite and house chimneys were done in next to no time. I think the last time I saw a chimney being swept was when I was a very small child but here it is an annual requirement as part of your house insurance deal and is a common occurrence.

The second outstanding task was to get our winter wood supply sorted out. This year (thanks to our friend Jeannot at the bar) we have managed to find someone locally who would sell us proper logs. He delivered them with his tractor and trailer and stacked them as he unloaded them which meant that the previous year’s chore of making the woodpiles was negated. The fact that he was 80+ years old and that he was stacking a lot quicker that Geoff or I, again put us to shame a bit! They obviously breed them tough and long living here! So now we have a very healthy woodpile and squeaky clean chimneys an fireplaces in which to burn the logs.

These tasks out of the way, we had a few days to enjoy the good weather and the BBQs to which we found ourselves invited. One of these was at our friends Julie and Jean-Luc`s farm. It was a bit like a scene from “The Darling Buds of May” TV series with a long table set under a shady tree and lots of people tucking into wonderful meat, sausages, salads, cheese and puddings on a very warm summers day. Idyllic.

The arrival of the much appreciated Broadband also made it possible for me to enjoy a bit of Wimbledon coverage this year. We do get a bit frustrated – remember we still only have French TV here – with the sports coverage as the events only get covered if there are French players involved. This bodes well for the Olympics .. ! However, back to the tennis, boy what an exciting men’s final that was. Geoff was complaining that it was time to go to bed before it finished! (We are an hour ahead don’t forget!) I really enjoyed the radio commentary – and just wished that I had had the pics too.

We are well into our busy period now with both the gite and B&B. We have had some lovely visitors so far and are really enjoying meeting all the different folk who are coming to stay. It is nice to have children playing in the garden again too. We are picking up quite a few wedding guests this year as there have been some big weddings locally – and there are more to come. Our last lot of these guests hardly used the beds at all as they didn’t get in til 5.30am! Needless to say they were a little subdued over a very late breakfast! We have also had some English visitors who really enjoyed their brief stay with us and even took the trouble to send an e mail when they got back home telling us how good it was. That was much appreciated. We have just had a visit from some friends who decided to have a week here and a week at the coast. It was lovely to see them and to show the place off a bit. I can tell people how beautiful it is here but it needs to be seen to really appreciate it.

One of the really exciting events locally has been the Tour de France stage which finished at Super-Besse. Our daughter, Hazel, and her friend Rachel came out for a few days to experience the excitement! We set off early in the morning – well early by Hazel’s standards – and managed to drive to the end of the final bit of road leading into Super-Besse itself – much further than I had thought we would get. After a relaxed picnic, we were able to install ourselves on the roadside just before the last 1km sign and had a fantastic view back down the road to watch the riders approach the final killer slog to the finish. The atmosphere was great – totally crazy but such good fun! We enjoyed all the daftness of the “caravan” as it passed and managed to collect lots of useless articles such as caps, key rings, giant foam hands etc, not to mention several much appreciated bottles of water which were thrown out by the girls and blokes on the floats. They cyclists were quite split up when they went past as it had been a very hard stage so we were able to get a good look at them all and take photos. All in all it was a great day and great fun. The girls went to Brioude the next day to watch the start of the next stage but said it wasn’t as exciting. They did enjoy the atmosphere in the town though.

I am experiencing an empty nest syndrome at the moment! No not because my daughter has gone home again, but because our one and only nestful of fledgling birds this year flew the nest last night! They were a family of redstarts which had nested in between the shutter and the window of one of the outbuildings and we have been actually able to see into the nest and follow their progress by climbing up on to the mezzanine. We were able to get some good photos of the chicks without disturbing them and it was lovely to see them fly last night – even if one of them did get stuck on our bedroom windowsill for a bit. I’m missing their constant chirping already! Sad or what???