Le last blog ended by saying there was lots to do in the week, what it didn’t say was that I had started to feel the beginning of a miserable cold ☹. That cold arrived with full intensity by the time I had woken up on Monday so it was a pretty miserable day for me and all I managed was to prepare Priory for some guests who had made a late-notice reservation and were arriving that evening.
On Tuesday I wasn’t feeling any better so, sadly, Hayloft didn’t get my attention and on Wednesday, when I was beginning the upslope, David’s Dad, Roger, arrived with us.
We had booked an appointment in Morlaix for Wednesday morning but with Roger with us we also took the opportunity to try a new restaurant for lunch, one we had seen online last year and had been meaning to try since. It is called L’Echappée and is an odd part of Morlaix, not very central, but quirky with good food and worth a visit if you’re in the town and looking for somewhere to eat.
Thursday was the first full day of proper activities for me as I continued to improve although, again, not spent in Hayloft.
David and I have a good routine with gîte preps and each of us have our own bits. David had been able to do his things on Wednesday so I spent a couple of hours preparing Granary for some guests who arrived on Friday night but the bulk of my time was spent on what will be the back lawn (the area between the buildings and the new pool).
A couple of weeks ago we had someone assist us with a digger to remove some soil and level the land but, being a big bit of kit, it left the ground with large lumps of earth and lots of stone, slate and rocks on the surface leaving a lot of work still required before we could consider sowing grass seed.
On Friday, another person came to assist us with a smaller rotavator-type tool to help break up the large clumps of earth and make the surface smoother and closer to something we could seed. However, before he was able to do that I needed to collect the larger stones from the surface and strim the small remaining areas of grass that were left and that we had let grow long. Just collecting the stones took the remainder of the day and was back breaking and tedious in equal measure!!
Our Friday plans were impacted by a longer changeover of Priory than would normally be required (that’s another story …) but thankfully I managed to get the strimming done just in time and the rotavator arrived as I stimmed the last piece of grass.
While I had removed all of the larger stones that could be seen on the surface, inevitably the rotavator unearthed a number of large ones which were buried and sadly, it managed to damage the machine – twice (once on Saturday morning too!)
Thankfully, he had managed to do the whole area once before we decided to stop and not risk further damage and it has improved the surface a little but there will be many hours of work for us to really get it ready to seed – and we need to do that soon to stand any chance of having a lawn for the summer.
While it has never been exactly centre-court Wimbledon standard, we were pleased with how it used to look (mole aside) and how we hope it look in the future but, at present it looks like a long way to go.
I did mention in last week’s blog that our tiler would be back for a day, and she was with us yesterday to continue. It will look great when done, but as I feared, every weather website I have looked at says there is about to be a major change in the weather so we can’t see much progress happening for the next week or so, our tiler thinks different and we hope she’s right!
The last 2 weeks have been perfect weather and some of the plants have started to spring into life, not least the wisteria on the front of Priory which will look at its best in a few days (assuming the blossom isn’t hit hard by the rain) and the cherry trees in the orchard.
The weekend has been gentle. On Friday night we were kindly invited to Au Lac restaurant where Mercedes (chef patron) wanted to experiment with a new dish she has found on her winter travels. It was great and we are looking forward to her opening for the season on Easter Saturday.
Saturday night we travelled a little further afield to try another new restaurant, to us, on the coast in Saint Sampson called La Maison de Kerdiès which we discovered on one of our Sunday strolls about 12 months ago. It has superb views over the Morlaix estuary and an interesting menu – another worth trying when you’re with us.
With Roger with us rather than a Sunday stroll today, we visited the ever-excellent Daoulas market Paul Arts Café which make for a great relaxed Sunday.
Thankfully, I feel better now than I have all week, so the focus absolutely is finishing and rebuilding Hayloft from tomorrow and then tackling the field to create something like a lawn between the spring showers!
À bientôt.