We have had a fairly productive week but managed to balance it with a really relaxed weekend.
At the end of last week’s blog, I said the forecast was for the first fabulous week of spring weather and, amazingly for some of the forecasters’ accuracy, that is what we enjoyed.
I also said that I hoped to complete the next big leap forward in the pool house so it is as prepared as we can make it before we receive the paint for its top coat and finishing off. I am pleased to say that I managed to achieve it.
From last week’s photos of the painted plasterboard, you will have seen that we left a large section unpainted. This wasn’t because we had run out of paint but because we had planned to tile that section and, towards the end, install a bio-ethanol fire.
The tiling took slightly longer than I’d anticipated and, like some of the plasterboarding, looks great from a distance as, close up, it has some faults that I’m a bit disappointed with. However, when the walls are painted their final, not-white, colour, I suspect that the faults will be harder to spot.
In preparation for the next step with the pool house, I have painted the render on the pool side of the house. Our intention has been to make the pool house visually as similar to the garage as possible which is why I rendered the bottom breeze block courses of the building. That was in November 2024!
I started painting the exterior render in October last year but hadn’t done the walls inside the pool enclosure. They are now painted which will allow me to start the frame for the wood cladding next week.
I didn’t do much more clearing of the driveway although I did find a pile of travertine off cuts that our terracier had left behind and have cut them down to create about half the tile skirting I will need when the pool house is painted. Waste not, want not!! As these won’t go on for a few weeks, I’ll show you when I actually use them.
As I mentioned at the start, we have also had a relaxed weekend.
Being creatures of habit we have a weekend routine that we enjoy. It starts on Friday evening after David has finished the Pilates course he runs and we go out for Friday night beers in one of the bars within 20 minutes of us that we enjoy visiting.
Saturdays in the summer are our arrival and departure days in the gîtes so we are generally busy cleaning and preparing accommodation so we wait and go out for a Sunday stroll somewhere either on the coast or in the fabulous countryside around us followed by post walk refreshment in a bar or tabac.
As yesterday was amazing weather, and it is likely to be one of the last Saturdays for a while when we don’t have guests arrive or leave, we decided to have both a Saturday and a Sunday stroll and tied both into visiting a great local market beforehand.
Saturdays are popular days for markets, such as Morlaix last week, which we generally can’t get to. One of the larger in the area is in Saint Renan which is about an hour from us but well worth a visit as it has a large selection of local food producers.
Saint Renan is also en route to Aber Ildut where we had a great walk in April 2024 and have wanted to go back to. Yesterday was our chance but we didn’t do the same walk as it would be too long for Garratt now as he gets older, especially as it was hot and we had planned to walk today as well.
We started at the same point as previously, a fun marina bar / restaurant, and headed north along the coast and, as it was low tide, onto Île Melon to see its many neolithic monuments. Île Melon is known for the number of standing stones it has, and had as a number have been destroyed and you can see much of the WWII defences that used to be there, as well as a, sadly collapsed, allée couverte (prehistoric covered burial chamber).
Today, we did a similar thing and headed to another excellent market in Plestin-les-Grèves which was recommended to us by some guests a few years ago. They were right in that it is a large market and has lots of amazing stalls of cheeses, olives, vegetable and local produce.
Plestin is en route to one of favourite coastal towns, Locquirec, which is located on a headland that affords lots of great circular routes and a choice of tabacs and bars for post walk refreshment.
Next week is looking a little more mixed for weather but there should be another great leap forward in the pool house tomorrow – but done by someone else rather than me!
We’ll let you know what we get up to.
À bientôt.