This week’s blog won’t have much detail and won’t include any pictures of the work we have done, as there hasn’t been too much!
I will show some images, courtesy of Eurosport, of the Tour de France passing through our local town of Sizun, and there are many more of the 3 days in Brittany at this link. It really does show that Brittany is a very varied and beautiful place to come and visit.
The reason we haven’t achieved so much is partly down to a very mixed week weather-wise with lots of dreich days preventing much happening outside where my focus needs to be. As I look out of the window now there is a very heavy drizzle so, on the upside, our garden should, finally, be benefiting!
The other reason is that one of us, David, has been out of action with a particularly painful week of, what he thinks was, sciatica so he has been lain up and I have been nursing (a bit!) It would be bad enough any week, but especially so last week which was David’s birthday week – and another reason for a couple of quiet days, one celebrating his birthday as best we could and the other feeling a bit delicate after a lovely birthday meal and late night at Au Lac. All entirely self-inflicted.
As such, despite a bit of lawn mowing and gîte cleaning and maintenance, I haven’t done a huge amount to progress our projects. I have however, now hung the gates that we were preparing for last week, although I won’t share pictures now but will do so next week; and I have managed to progress, although not finish, the hedge cutting. The French have a saying about doing things little bits at a time …
David and I have been starting to discuss 2019 already – and we are delighted to have taken our first booking for June next year – and thought that we would ask for people’s view on one aspect.
During our high season (July and August) we, in common with most gîte businesses, ask for a minimum booking of 7 days. Our weekly periods, again mirroring the vast majority of gîtes, run from Saturday to Saturday. The idea behind this is to minimise the risk of unoccupied days in the gîtes and so one set of guests arrive as others leave. The reason Saturday was chosen by us is that everyone else uses it and that is the model used at Kergudon by our predecessors.
The consequence of course is that Saturdays have the chance of being really busy in comparison to other days; that the ferry company is wise to this and hikes their prices for crossings on Friday and Saturday; the traffic levels, while nowhere near M25 levels, are obviously busier on Saturdays; and we, and our guests, don’t have the opportunity to visit the festivals and activities which are generally held at the weekends, or perhaps benefit from the food markets which tend to be held later in the week, so missing out on aspects of Breton life.
Because of the reasons outlined above, we were wondering if it would be better to move our changeover day to another day in the week, although which, we are not sure.
The advantages of this would be that people probably wouldn’t pay as much for their ferry crossings and they could then attend any activities in the region that were taking place during the weekends and find and use the food markets more effectively.
The one disadvantage we could think of is that if guests are having a week with us and then another week elsewhere, it would lead to a mismatch in dates if the other location runs the traditional Saturday to Saturday (though why they would want to move elsewhere is a mystery!)
So we thought we’d seek advice and ask you as followers and, hopefully, past and/or previous guests of Kergudon.
Do you think having a different changeover day would work? When I worked in a ‘normal’ job, I tried not to take leave Monday to Friday preferring to leave and return to the office midweek, but I don’t know if others can do that.
If we move changeover days, what do you think would be best? Something early in the week such as Monday, or later such as Friday? There is no reason all the gîtes have to have the same changeover day, in many ways it would make things easier for us if they differed.
We’d be very keen to hear your views.
Next week definitely finishing the hedge and definitely starting wall to the east side of the back entrance and possibly starting to cut and split some wood to put in our new wood store in preparation for the winter. Everything depends on the weather which I half want to stop raining and half don’t, at least not for a few days until the plants get a good soaking!
Salut.