{"id":856,"date":"2016-04-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kergudon.com\/https-www-kergudon-com-sunday-3rd-april\/"},"modified":"2020-05-12T15:54:44","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T15:54:44","slug":"sunday-3rd-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/sunday-3rd-april\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday 3rd April"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mentioned at the end of last week\u2019s blog<\/a> that we were waiting with trepidation for the arrival of Storm Katie that was passing up the channel over Sunday night into Monday morning and we had battened down the hatches in anticipation.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we hadn\u2019t battened all of the hatches down and we suffered a little damage. \u00a0Fortunately more with \u2018things\u2019 than with the buildings.\u00a0 We lost a fence panel outside of Hayloft which, thankfully, didn\u2019t cause any damage to our guests car which was parked next to it (phew!) and 2 very heavy objects on our own small terrace, a gas BBQ and large clay chiminea, were both blown over and damaged. The BBQ should be repairable but the clay chiminea needed rather more than a little bit of glue and is sadly now in the d\u00e9chetterie.<\/p>\n

It meant\u00a0that the winds were stronger than any we have experienced since moving here as both these items had come to France with us from the UK and had survived all the previous storms.\u00a0 Bizarrely, other much smaller, and lighter, objects on the terrace were completely unaffected!\u00a0 Lesson learned!<\/p>\n

The storm did lead to the annual March\u00e9 sur l\u2019eau being moved from the barrage at the Lac du Drennec to the Salle des F\u00eates in the village.\u00a0 However, as the storm had stopped pretty abruptly in the middle of the night and led to a fairly good day, we took Garratt for a walk around the lake and popped into our local restaurant, Au Lac<\/a>, who had opened for the Easter weekend.\u00a0 As often happens a \u2018quick drink\u2019 with our good friends Mercedes and Jean-Pascal became a very enjoyable evening which led to a very late night home and a very ginger day the following day!<\/p>\n

The remainder of the week has again been focussed in the garden (when the weather allows) with planting, tidying and developing.\u00a0 The major change being cutting a second flowerbed behind Priory (our mushrooms as we are calling them) which now clearly defines a small lawn area and increases the privacy for our guests in Priory.\u00a0 This will be planted up in the coming days.<\/p>\n

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

David had cut the first and did the same for the second while I used the lifted turf to fill some hollows in the lawn and edge the flower bed on the eastern side where we had cleared the brambles and Japanese knot weed in the autumn.\u00a0 These photos I hope show what changed we have made.<\/p>\n

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Last November:<\/p>\n

\"South-Granary-Boundary-Before-From-North-Holiday-Cottage-Rent-in-France\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"South-Granary-Boundary-In-Progress-From-North-Holiday-Cottage-Rent-in-France\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As there isn\u2019t much of our progress to publicise this week, I thought I take the opportunity to highlight something else we hope people enjoy when they arrive at Kergudon \u2013 our welcome box.<\/p>\n

We know that \u2018Welcome Boxes\u2019 are supposed to be a surprise and, part of those additional extras that people don\u2019t expect but I think now there is an expectation that they are provided and we are very fortunate to have so many high quality local farms and businesses to source the contents of our box.<\/p>\n

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

Pictured are some of the basics that we provide, all of which we source as locally as we can, and, if enjoyed by our guests, more can be purchased.<\/p>\n

Within the village of Saint Cadou we have our own organic boulangerie, Ty Forn Nevez, which produces a range of baguettes and pain as well as the favourite croissants and pains au chocolat.\u00a0 Also within Saint Cadou (within 200 yards of the g\u00eetes) we have some artisan honey producers, Philippe et Sylvie, who have a number of hives in the local area the closest being in the field the other side of Stable g\u00eete whose bees we hope will be attracted by the flowers and plants that we are introducing.<\/p>\n

Within the surrounding villages, all of which are no more than 10 minutes away, are a number of organic pig, sheep and cattle farms most of which are open every Friday evening for people to go and purchase their products (although a number operate on a very small scale so may not slaughter a lamb \/ pig \/ cow every week).\u00a0 For our boxes we include a jar of terrine from one of the pork farms depending on which market we have visited that week.<\/p>\n

No Breton visit and welcome box would be complete without cider and ours is sourced slightly further away from the Manoir du Kinkiz<\/a> in Quimper.\u00a0 The Manoir is open every day for people to visit their cider museum, distilling plant and shop but most importantly they produce excellent cider.<\/p>\n

The last item you can see in the box is filter coffee.\u00a0 Perhaps not a product traditionally associated with Brittany(!) is coffee.\u00a0 We love Coic coffee<\/a> blended and packaged in Plomelin just outside Quimper.\u00a0 The French love their coffee and we love this particular Breton brand.<\/p>\n

There are other small surprises in the g\u00eete when our guests arrive (I wouldn\u2019t want to spoil all of the surprises) and we even provide a welcome box for our four-legged guests but we have found that all of the items we gift are enjoyed and appreciated.<\/p>\n

Tasks for the coming week is a little weather dependent, although there are many indoor jobs moving higher up the priority list, and we welcome more guests to Granary on Friday so there is a little prep to do.\u00a0 All keeps us out of trouble (except for last Monday!) but at least with the clocks having gone forward last weekend it is now light until almost 9 in the evening \u2013 fabulous, just need to get the BBQ repaired!<\/p>\n

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

I mentioned at the end of last week\u2019s blog that we were waiting with trepidation for the arrival of Storm Katie that was passing up the channel over Sunday night into Monday morning and we had battened down the hatches in anticipation. Unfortunately, we hadn\u2019t battened all of the hatches down and we suffered a…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":864,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-856","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\/856","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=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kergudon.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}