Sunday 28th June

I am starting to write this blog at 7.30 am having served our second breakfast. Today was the annual triathlon held around Lac du Drennec and we have had athletes staying in both Priory and Hayloft as our first Chambres d’Hotes guests. As you’d expect, Dave prepared a beautifully presented French breakfast of croissant, pain au chocolat, yoghurt and fruit but the first had to be served at 6.30am!!! A little on the early side any day but the morning after the village Tantad was even more painful …

This week we have continued in Granary, as our first guests arrive in 4 weeks, and have also made a start in our smallest ‘gîte’, Stable.

In Granary we have made progress in the en-suite bathroom, I have started tiling what will become the shower cubicle, and I have taken down some lambris in the main family bathroom which will also be tiled as we fit an over bath shower.

You may recall that we had sub-divided the large eaves bedroom from a large 3-bed room into 2 smaller rooms, initially a twin and a single. Despite looking at all sorts of ways of making the single into a double, because of the immovable stairwell we couldn’t see a solution. However, our friend Jackie suggested moving a(nother) lambris wall and removing a small storage space to make the room another twin. Evidently we couldn’t see the wood for the lambris!

 

Monday was spent in Brest (again) ordering new furniture (again) for Granary to be delivered in 3 weeks – although all of the items we ordered from IKEA, principally sun loungers, arrived early on Friday morning and are waiting to be assembled! After another painful day (for the bank balance) I will be glad when we have completed all of the gîtes and everything has been purchased!

We have left refurbishing Stable until last as it the smallest of the gîtes and we expect to use mainly for Chambres d’hotes but we have again accepted bookings in 5 weeks’ time giving us a deadline to complete.

Unlike the other gîtes, Stable doesn’t have a kitchen and, as Hayloft, it is a studio space with the sleeping and living area in one room although a little smaller than Hayloft. As such the major work is replacing the bathroom and (yet more) painting of labris. Again, we have managed to complete the easy bit of ripping the old shower room out and have a few weeks to rebuild. One major challenge was to locate the stopcock to isolate the water – turns out there isn’t one although we did find the valve for the water pipe to the gym building for when we convert that to a boot / drying room.

It is an unusual sensation having a few weeks to work on the gîte before our guests arrive – however, I am sure that the work will expand to fill the time available!

We continue to meet new and interesting people in Saint Cadou. Last week that included Philippe Dolivet who instructs fly fishing in and around Brittany including on our local lake, Lac du Drennec; and Julien Bertheleme, who manages the sailing centre on the lake – Centre Nautique de l’Arrée. All useful for us to enjoy this amazing part of the world, and to make sure we are able to give our guests options for an amazing holiday.

This weekend has again shown how active our little village and area is. Our local town, Sizun, had a carnival on Saturday with a Rockabilly concert in the evening although we weren’t able to attend as Saint Cadou had its own activity with its Feux de la Saint Jean. You may recall that we visited Commana last Saturday for their Fete de la Musique and feux event, Saint Cadou held its own event yesterday – with a much larger fire!! It amazes how many people attend events like these in this small village get involved with the music and dancing. We didn’t stay too late as we had the breakfast s to prepare this morning so we were home by 1.30 am!

This weekend was also the annual triathlon held on Lac du Drennec (TriBrezh). We walked down on Sunday to see the start of the full race (well we were up anyway!), Saturday being a shorter, sprint version.  It was a beautiful morning and ideal conditions for the 340 athletes who participated in the race. We watched the start of race from the west beach and saw the athletes do 2 laps around the buoys before we retired to view the running part from the comfort of our favourite spot on Au Lac terrace with a glass of wine!

We have already got a couple of invitations for our social calendar early next week, as well as progressing both Hayloft and Stable and, have I mentioned on this blog, that we are getting a dog …?!! Four days and counting – sooooo excited – but we’ve got to reorganise the house first!!! No photos to share this week but be prepared for many many after Thursday!

À bientôt.