Busy Summer

Mohon Vide Grenire.

Summer is still clinging on valiantly in our part of Brittany and we are still getting a small number of guests coming to enjoy the beauty and peace of the area now the schools have returned. 

July and August have been really good for bookings, considering this is our first year, and we're on a big learning curve I think we've coped quite well. Of coarse "you can't please all the people all the time" but in the main customers have gone away pretty happy. Reading reviews placed on web sites such as Booking/Trip advisor etc. can be a torrid experience, and over time your skin becomes a little thicker. And when the good ones out weigh the more negative ones it doesn't seem to matter so much. 

On the whole I think my assumption that B&B'ers are pretty likeable people has been proved correct. Since we opened we've met some real characters, from pilgrim walkers to Belgian bikers to enthusiastic wedding parties, and all, in one way or another, have made their mark on our French life, and hopefully have made us better at what we've chosen to do.

 

Vide Grenier's, we have discovered, are a big part of the French summer, and are a great  social occasion. They knock the British boot fair into a cocked hat, in my opinion. You just never know what you're going to find at the next stall. The food is great and there's usually a bar, which the French men make good use of due to the fact that, unlike England, the regular bars are mostly shut on a Sunday.

 

 

  

 

  The garden has been full of surprises this year, due mainly to the fact that we hadn't a clue what the boarders contained or, more importantly, what kind of trees we had. One of which, as shown above, turned out, in the end, to be a plum. We had pounds and pounds of the things, people weren't allowed to leave our house without taking a bag full with them. We also have many apple trees and one pear and a peach which this year we don't seem to be making best use of, hopefully next year we will be better organised and perhaps make some cider.

Mind you the whole community seems to grow vegetables on a vast scale and we have been kept well supplied with Courgettes Lettuce and the such by our lovely French neighbours. Next year, with the help of our friend Pete, and his rotavator, we hope to have our own vegetable garden to tend.

Karen has put some of Maison Driscoll's home grown produce to good use by making raspberry and plum jam which seems to be going down well with the guests at breakfast.

Life here, I have to say is pretty idyllic, and we are very lucky  to have picked a location that has given the chance to  hopefully make a go of this hare brained scheme, and make good friends along the way,. However this year has been made so much easier by the occasional visit of friends and family from the U.K. Thanks to everyone.

 

So now we have to knuckle down and see what trade the Autumn and Winter months can bring us, to make this work we can't rely on just the summer rush. November in Brittany is the next big thing....Tell your friends!!

 

 



Village life

Home sweet home.

Summer is now here, well it was yesterday anyway, and we find ourselves settling in to village life. Bookings have been steady, if not over whelming, but I think it gives us hope for the future.

We have now been inspected and accepted by the local tourist board, so we can now place our fliers round and about in other towns with a view to pick up more trade. Add that to "Booking.com", "Bike Stay" and the rest, we've done about all we can on the advertising front.  

I've made two signs proclaiming our existence, one for the front and one for the side of the house, hopefully they look the part, at least people will know when they get here.  

Beach life.

Up to this point we have been so busy with builders and then guests that we have rather been neglecting our surrounding area. So we have taken on the task of exploring a little more. Due to the fact that when we have guests it tends to be at the weekend, our time off tends to be at the middle of the week.  Karen had mentioned on a couple of occasions (hundreds) that we hadn't seen the sea since we left England. And she was right. A couple of Sundays ago the weather was gorgeous, 27 degrees and sunny, this was to be the day. I insisted that it was going to be busy and that we should leave early to ensure a parking space. It takes about an hour and twenty minutes to reach the northern coast of Brittany from Trinite, and we arrived at ten thirtyish to an almost empty car park, and a huge, drop dead beautiful beach that we had almost to ourselves. Clearly I have yet to grasp the kind of country I was living in. So much space for so few lucky people.

Also we stopped by the very eye catching town of Rohan this week, with the canal and lake and pretty building, a nice place to visit.

 

 



Village Life.

Seven months have now past since we took the plunge and moved over to Brittany and I am amazed at how quickly time has gone. I am also amazed by how well we seem to have fitted in. We already have a sizeable group of friends that we see regularly, "Brits night " at the local tabac, on a Tuesday evening, is always fun. The local French also enjoy the spectacle of us trying out our appalling language "skills", they are so patient.

There is also a very fine bar in a nearby village that has live (very good) music weekly, so that's catered as well. The owner is trying to persuade me to bring along my guitar one night.....But it's taken him a while to build up a good reputation.....I don't want to ruin it for him.

One of the most important days of the La Trinite calendar is the "pardon of St Trinite" a day that consists of much eating and drinking, fairground rides and general merriment, followed by a church service. Then there's a procession through the streets down to the bottom of the village, where the vast bonfire is lit and a lot of chanting takes place. Then more drinking. I was told it was all to do with cleansing of sins, and wishing for a good harvest, either way almost the whole village turned and everyone had a grand time and it made me feel even more a part of things and of the community.

 

 

 

Bookings

Le Petit Dejeuner



 Maison Driscoll is now open. Sounds strange. To think, this time last year we hadn't even set eyes on the house, and now it seems we've been here for ever. All the planning, re-planning, worrying and hoping is all over, (well perhaps not the worrying). The people we now call friends we didn't know existed a year ago, and now I'm not sure how we ever did without them quite frankly.

Karen an the Mairie



 We held a opening soiree on the 17th April and invited everyone we could think of. All our French neighbours, all our ex-pat friends (moral support), the Mairie (grovelling) and the great and the good of the village. We were told the French would never turn down an "apero", and we weren't disappointed. It turned into a very busy evening, and by the time the last guest left we were exhausted. Our French teacher, the lovely, and patient, Angela also came along to help us and apologise on our behalf, for our crap language skills.
But the all the effort did have a positive outcome, as subsequently we have been picking up bookings from people in the village who have relatives and friends visiting but don't have the room to accommodate them.
Although we are by no-means snowed under with reservations as yet, we have been quite encouraged by what we have had. Two weekends, one in June and one in August, we are fully booked, and this coming weekend we have three rooms booked. We also have a couple of other bookings dotted about so it's been a good start.

Maison Driscoll (Furthest Right)

 So now it's just a matter of making the guests feel as welcome as possible in the hope they may come back, or tell their friends about beautiful Brittany and a very nice B&B to see it from. We are doing our best to get our name out there by various methods, "Motorcycle News", "booking.com" etc., all we can do now is wait............easier said than done. 

The Finishing Line

New Plates

Things here at Maison Driscoll have been a little hectic of late to say the least. With the building work complete it was down to Karen and myself to get the place decorated, furnished and looking pleasant enough to attract paying customers. And the time we had disappeared very quickly indeed. Free paint (left by the previous owners) ran out and due to the extortionate price charged in France we had to rely on friends of friends importing it for us from the Channel Isles, and visiting friends smuggling tins over from blighty. But yesterday the last of the doors in the main hall way were finished and I can safely put away my brushes for a while. Saying that I still have several windows to gloss, but I can pick and choose when that gets done. Pheeeeew!

   

New Log Burner

The last of the major jobs was also completed recently, the installation of our new log burner. (Just in time for a prolonged spell of beautiful warm weather). The old one was in quite a sorry state and was badly sited, with a huge false chimney breast almost boxing it in. Prompting the sweep, back in November , writing DANGER!! on the report he gave us, but it got us through the winter alright. The new one is quite splendid and taking everything back to the wall has made, I think, a much better looking feature of the whole thing. In fact if we are lucky enough to have any guests during the winter, I may be a little envious of them sitting  toasting in front of it, whilst we are upstairs with our radiators, but you can't have it all.

As is plain from the first pic, the French number plate issue has now been resolved . It took a while and a lot of miles but it got done. I even drove into Vannes, the largest town in our area, which I was not looking forward to, but as it happened, was a piece of cake. Mind you, we had to pay to park the car, would you believe it, the first time since we've been here.

So when we got home I treated the car to a wash and brush up, and how splendid she looks, or looked she's filthy again now but what the hell.  

Last bedroom Complete





Last weekend we trial ran the rooms in final preparation for our opening. My sister and her husband, and four very good friends from the west country came over and, all things considered, I think it went quite well. There was the "toilet seat incident", which involved a quick dash to where else but Mr. Bricolage, but otherwise fine. I'm not sure our usual guest will require us to go to the bottle bank with quite such a large bag(s), but the tradition of beer o'clock had to be upheld.

Lastly, big news, we had our first real booking tis week, and we're very excited, only one person for two nights, but you have to start somewhere. It came through the add we placed on "Bikestay," a motor-cycle friendly b&b site, lets hope we get lots more!     

Edging Closer

Village Square

 Things have been progressing well here in La Trinite Porhoet. we've had our fair share of problems and mishaps, but nothing that a quick re-think and a re-design didn't fix. Of the three identical shower cabins we purchased only one now remains, on account of the others wouldn't fit. The other two were taken back and exchanged for ones that would. I'm not sure how popular we are at Mr. Briclolage but never mind. However, with those now fitted, and the tiling done, the overall feeling is that they look OK and we're very pleased with the final outcome. All that remains is for the electrics to be completed and then it's down to me and my paint brush.
French and English T.V. are now installed in the downstairs salon, so that's another box ticked. And we also managed to get ourselves a 50" 3D T.V. into the bargain for a very reasonable price, so that's us sorted upstairs.

The Lower Village



 Getting the car French registered is causing us a few headaches. In the first place we were told we had to get ourselves a certificate of conformity. No problem...We thought.... We told Ford we were exporting the car to France and could we please have one, they said yes, that will be £85. They then duly despatched said document to us here in La Trinite. All was fine until we showed in to the man at the "control Techniques". Who told us "this is no good, this is an English one, you need a French One". "I didn't know there were different types" I replied. "And why would Ford send me  an English one when I told them I was taking the car to France". "Because they're idiots" he replied. And on top of all that the car failed the control technique because of an imbalance in the back brakes. But the up shot  was once we have the brakes fixed we can take both the car and our paper work back to him and he'll sort it..........I do hope so. 

Lower village

Along with the UK, Brittany has been having the most awful storms since the beginning of the year. It's not been as bad here as back in Blighty but pretty grim all the same. The houses in the lower part of the village have had to cope with flooding more than once. And our hanger garage is still suffering from the over high water table and has half an inch of water covering half the floor space. But on the whole we've got off lightly, I can't imagine how I'd cope if I had the problems that a lot of poor folk in England have.
The most exciting news however is that our official website is  now active and anyone can view it. The French translation option should also be ready this week. We can be found at......
www.maisondriscoll.com
We have also got a facebook page of the same name, so if anybody wants to have a peek please do, and if  you could hit the like button that would be good too.

Next time I hope to have photos of a completed room or two and a pair of shiny Breton number plates.

First Fixing Blues

Winter Home

Christmas and the new year is now behind us and work has re-commenced on trying to turn our house into somewhere people would like to spend a day or two whilst touring the many delights that this part of the world has to offer.

We managed to weather the storms that affected Brittany over the holiday period and came out pretty much un-scathed.

Our "hanger" is still partly flooded, but considering the amount of rain that fell, thats only to be expected. The worse thing was losing the internet, and therefore our land line, for the best part of five days. I Know many people had a lot more to cope with than that, but we found being out of contact with our children and other loved ones during our first Christmas away quite hard. 

On Christmas morning we actually showed our faces at the village church, the first time either of us had been for an occasion other than a wedding or a funeral for a very long time. It also helped by the fact Karen had heard that the priest was, quote, a bit of a dish, and she wasn't dis-appointed..........Apparently.

Our good friends Dave and Sue Price made the long trip to come over to see us over new year, unfortunately their arrival coincided with another batch of awful weather, and the staff at the local tabac going on holiday. But we did manage a few hours in Josselin before heading home for food wine and ping pong.  

First Fixing

The en- suites are slowly taking shape, however the "first fixing" stage seems never ending. And being I can't begin any real decorating until they're complete, it,s quite frustrating. We have purchased Three shower cubicles, one of which wont fit properly in the space allowed and has to be changed, three loos and three hand basins. Also we have a huge pile of both wall and floor tiles. The second boiler is in place and being tested as I write this.

Our poor plumber did manage to drill through our phone line at one point, depriving us of phone and internet yet again. But fortunately the very resourceful French "sparks" fixed it before we had to pay Orange shed loads of euros for doing the same thing.   

More First Fixing.

We have made a start on the garden, mostly to get away from the noise and the mess in doors I'll admit. Now we seem to spend half our days at the dechettirrer (the dump) and my car, both inside and out, is so filthy even a French farmer would be embarrassed to be seen out in it. Two days ago Karen discovered a path running across a large flower bed at the back of the house we didn't know existed. Uncovering it was hard work and involved another two trips to said dechettirrer.

Last Saturday we went down to the community hall where the Marie and other notables spoke of how the commune had fared over the last twelve months and what they felt was in store for 2014. Of coarse we couldn't understand a word of what anyone said, but we were introduced  to many people, got to meet more of our neighbours and had free drinks and nibbles, so an evening well spent in my book. We were surprised to find just how many people knew who we were, where we lived and what we planned, and they all were all so friendly, I think we picked the right place.

Well, next post I hope to have pics of some tiling and maybe even a fitted shower......Bet you can't wait.