It has been far longer than I’d hoped since I wrote my last blog and there is far less to show you as progress too.
This isn’t that we’ve been idle but more as a result of being far busier at this time of year than previously in the gîtes and, having guests that want to use the pool, restricts me working in the pool house, especially very dusty work progressing the plasterboard.
In my last blog, a month ago, I had completed putting up the plasterboard and had done the first stage of papering and filling having had a masterclass from a friend. I said I then needed to do the second and third stages of filling which would involve a lot of sanding and creating dust.
In an effort to minimise the amount of plaster dust getting into the pool itself, I decided to pin up a plastic dust sheet in the front of the pool house but, with the various draughts and differences in pressure between the spaces, it didn’t always stay in place but I am sure it made a difference and I would have had to do a lot more cleaning up had I not had it. What the dust did highlight was just how many cobwebs had already built up – it was like Halloween decoration but I don’t know if the photo does it justice!
Once the sanding had been done, which is pretty much complete now, I was able to fix a ‘skirting’ at the top edge of the boards and around the beams giving a more uniform finish and something that will look crisper when I am able to paint. I couldn’t do this however, until I had bought the skirting pieces and that meant I had to wait for a dry day so I could get to Brest and bring them back in the trailer. That took longer than I’d hoped.
The good news is that I now have 1 day of work left before I am able to start applying the base coats of paint which will make a massive difference and I will be able to do that when our current weekend guests leave us on Tuesday.
The top coat won’t happen until April as we have chosen to get that in the UK as it is so much better value and that will be coming out shortly after Easter with David’s Dad.
We have however managed to use the time to plan a little ahead and get a number of estimates and visits for work that we need to do in both the short and medium term where we require outside professionals. I will be able to share these with you as they come to fruition.
With most of our guests at this time of year arriving on Friday nights we have been able to get out to our favourite local market in Morlaix on the first sunny Saturday morning that we can remember for some time! We are fortunate in that there are lots of amazing markets locally with fabulous fresh produce Morlaix being one of the larger. As it is a Saturday we can’t get there in the summer months but it is definitely worth a look around, as is Morlaix as a town itself.
The old market square is very attractive with some amazing 19th century buildings around it, and it was good to see the café Touline taking advantage of the sunshine with lots of tables on the pavement. We popped into our favourite hostelry, Ty Coz, also on the market square where they were selling oysters in the bar which we had not seen before but thought a great idea. Somewhere we’d definitely recommend to visitors in the area.
The weather has continued to be fairly mixed, even to the point that we got fairly damp on one of our Sunday strolls and we skipped one altogether. But for the last couple of weeks we have done different stretches of the Nantes Brest Canal near Châteaulin principally because, as the old railway line earlier in the year, we knew the path was well maintained and less likely to be muddy.
It was evident that the canal had burst its banks in a number of places with all the wet weather we have had this year, and the weirs by the many locks had lots of water roaring over them. Today was brighter than last week (as you can see from the second photo), almost spring-like, and we saw our second ever otter, the first also being on the canal in January last year.
We have had a couple spring-like days (finally!) in the last week, that has enabled me to get outside. I hadn‘t mown Granary’s lawn since about October last year so it was like a field, or any of the grass at all this year so that took some time to tame. I have also managed to take down the Christmas lights at the front of the buildings and give our wisteria its spring prune, jobs that we generally manage to get done in January and February respectively but it has just been so wet so far this year.
Both are jobs I am pleased to have finally achieved. I tried to take a photo of the trimmed wisteria as it looks so much better but it doesn’t come out well as brown branches on a grey slate wall!
Finally, we have been relatively social over the last couple of weeks as friends who winter away from the area come back for the summer. On Friday we returned to La Croisée bar in the nearby village of Lopérec with a group of friends for one of their regular concerts. Somewhere else we’d recommend for a night out if you stay with us.
When our current guests leave us on Tuesday we have a few quieter weeks and, as we hope spring may be just around the corner bringing with it some drier days, it should be a more productive time for project work.
I will update next week!
Salut.