{"id":652,"date":"2016-01-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kergudon.com\/https-www-kergudon-com-sunday-10-january-into-the-swing-of-2016\/"},"modified":"2020-05-12T15:54:39","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T15:54:39","slug":"sunday-10-january-into-the-swing-of-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/sunday-10-january-into-the-swing-of-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday 10 January – into the swing of 2016!"},"content":{"rendered":"

We hope you have settled into the routines of 2016 and suspect that Christmas and New Year festivities seem a long time ago!! We have had a relatively quiet week as the poor weather has prevented us making any progress on the garden work although we were able to take down all the Christmas decorations in Kergudon and Priory \u2013 it always makes the rooms seems so bare \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

On Monday we started the wheels moving on our major project which we want to complete in 2016 which is to build a garage next to Kergudon. Having a garage will benefit us in a number of ways not just having somewhere covered to put our car, and our guests\u2019 cars as we believe this is an amazing part of the world for those who enjoy driving and the open road especially if you own a classic car.\u00a0 The scenery is fantastic, the roads are in great condition and, best of all, they are completely empty of other traffic.<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

The other advantages are that it will give us more space so we can store garden furniture over winter to keep it in the best condition possible (our friends have allowed us to use some space in their hanger this winter for the larger items) and, more importantly we can re-create a games room for children to use if the weather isn\u2019t great. There was a small games room before which is now Dave\u2019s fitness studio so gets much more use but we want to replace the games items.<\/p>\n

Also if we have a garage we can have a smarter and tidier \u2018service\u2019 area for the mundane things like the bins and wood storage \u2013 dull but essential \u2013 and we can use the current car parking area for a proper petanque pitch which we have always wanted to create.<\/p>\n

We started the wheels moving by visiting our local architect who will assist us navigate the French planning process. While the design of the garage will be very simple, we thought it would be worthwhile having someone assist us liaise with the various bodies that need to be engaged as we live within the natural park d\u2019Armorique and so additional bodies and regulations are involved such as B\u00e2timents de France.\u00a0 We are told that there is a chance we could complete the planning process and have our \u2018permis\u2019 within 3 months (even in France!) as we don\u2019t want to build anything that is likely to cause controversy but what could take longer is finding an artisan to do the building as, we are told, they can be committed up to a year in advance!\u00a0 We\u2019ll keep you posted \u2026<\/p>\n

\"Garratt-1<\/a><\/p>\n

Otherwise the week has been one of routine things. We visited Brest and Quimper at different points to buy some material for David to create some new curtains for Priory during the wet winter months and see if our favourite store (where we have bought a lot of furnishings for the g\u00eetes) had any bargains that we could pick up in their Ventes Priv\u00e9e \u2013 not as many as we would have liked!<\/p>\n

The poor weather has allowed me to do some work inside including something that I have wanted to do for the entire year we have lived here but has never quite got to the top of my \u2018to do\u2019 list. When we moved out to France we were very grateful to be gifted a couple of pieces of furniture by some of our good friends.\u00a0 The sofa in Hayloft was a gift from our friends the Perkins and has given sterling service since we opened.\u00a0 We were also gifted a lovely kitchen island by our friends the Highams who had it made by a local firm for their lovely kitchen when they lived in Southsea, Hants. Having moved to their chocolate box cottage in Oxfordshire their \u2018fantasy island\u2019 (as it was referred to) had been relegated to the shed as a work bench and was looking very sorry for its demotion.<\/p>\n

\"Into<\/a><\/p>\n

It was always the plan to have it in Granary\u2019s kitchen but has been moved around since we arrived and I had time to renovate. It is currently in David\u2019s fitness studio but I have begun to bring it back to life (which makes the fitness studio a work place for a while!) but, when finished, will look amazing and remind us of the fabulous hospitality we received in Southsea with our great friends.<\/p>\n

We reached the milestone of our first year at Kergudon on 8th<\/sup> January.\u00a0 While our furniture arrived some weeks before we did, we first arrived as owners and residents at about 1 am on 8th<\/sup> January 2015 having sailed into Caen.\u00a0 Then we had to live in Hayloft for a couple of weeks until our own house was sorted and a bed built, this year we marked the event with our house champagne from our own \u00e9picerie!<\/p>\n

\"Garratt<\/a><\/p>\n

During the weekend I joined the work parties of the Assomniak team who are developing the hangar as a village asset in Saint Cadou and assisted them clear out the main floor space and started to dig out the sand and soil floor that will eventually be concreted to make a more durable and useful surface.<\/p>\n

This evening we attended the annual village \u2018Galette des Rois\u2019 in the Pub St Hubert. It is a French tradition to eat a frangipane cake at epiphany with a small token in the cake (a little like the threepenny bit in a Christmas pudding) that allows the finder to become \u2018king \/ queen\u2019 and wear a crown.\u00a0 This takes place in families around France and, in Saint Cadou, is a village event which brings people to the pub for a fun afternoon.<\/p>\n

\"DSC03177\"<\/a>\"DSC03179\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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As I don\u2019t have many photos for this week, I have inserted a few random pictures of the dog which were taken by our friend Will when he was with us for Christmas!<\/p>\n

Salut.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We hope you have settled into the routines of 2016 and suspect that Christmas and New Year festivities seem a long time ago!! We have had a relatively quiet week as the poor weather has prevented us making any progress on the garden work although we were able to take down all the Christmas decorations…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":659,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ben-and-daves-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}