I finished my last blog – FIVE weeks ago!! – saying that there was likely to be less work the following week as the weather was about to heat up (again) and our guests looked to be pool users.
It turns out that the subsequent 5 weeks were perhaps not the most productive (as high seasons tend not to be) as the weather has at times been extremely hot and the gîtes have been fully occupied with our guests enjoying the pool and hot weather so I didn’t want to do too much to disturb their peace.
The extreme heat and drought conditions persisted for most of August which is great for holidaymakers, less good for the plants and grass. As I write this we have got bright sunshine and temperatures in the mid 20s so certainly pleasant for early September. We have however, had some rain over the last couple of weeks, nowhere near enough to end the drought restrictions but the back lawn has recovered amazingly. Less so the front areas of grass!
We are amazed at how green this patch of lawn has become so quickly after such a dry summer. Not having cut it for weeks, as it simply wasn’t growing, I have now had to mow it 3 times in 2 weeks and it’s growing furiously, almost as if there is a certain annual growth it has to achieve but just had to wait until the rain arrived to do it!! Of course, not having used the lawn mower for weeks meant that as soon as it was required it broke and needed to go to the repair shop!
We have done some things over the course of the last 5 weeks, both work and social, and there were a couple of significant events, one personal the other more ‘global’.
So, in no particular order …
One French couple came back to Kergudon for their 7th summer holiday and, as they have been here frequently they are now friends. Their visit coincided with the global event, the solar eclipse on 12th August, where we were able to watch this rare celestial event from the comfort of our own back terrace. While we weren’t in the zone of totality, we did have 97% obscuration which was exciting to watch (and so much clearer than the 100% cloud cover I experienced for the 1999 eclipse in Plymouth!)
With our friends we made the most of the continuing heat and enjoyed a walk along the canal near Chateaulin and a few days on the beach of course.
I also took advantage of their being here to use a bit of muscle. We have already ordered a new wood burner for our own house as the old one was getting less efficient and was nearing the end of its useful life.
While they were with us, I was assisted lifting the old, stripped out, stove out of the house which allowed me to remove the register plate and open up the chimney completely. This was a job I had not been looking forward to as the plate would have been installed at least 25 years ago. We knew that birds often nested at the top of the chimney and so we assumed that there would be huge amounts of twigs, feathers, waste and other nasties sitting on top of the plate.
I decided to do it when David was at work so out of the house for the day, and sealed the fireplace as best I could with a dust sheet – and me with a face mask and googles. It was a bit of a fight, and I found the plate pivoted, but not in the way I wanted, so the detritus fell away from the fireplace rather than into it!
That said, there was no where near as much as I’d feared and so there were far fewer sacks that I needed to remove.
The next step is to have the rear wall of the fireplace cleaned, as we suspect it never has been since being an open fire. We have found someone who is able to do this with a laser that we hope will be quicker, easier and cleaner than traditional sandblasting, but they haven’t yet committed to a date.
Once that is done I will repoint the joints with lime mortar and then we can have the new stove installed. Ideally all before the winer really gets cold – its just down to our laser cleaner coming good!
In the 5 weeks since I last blogged, it has been David’s birthday which happened to be when other friends were holidaying in Bénodet on the south coast of Finistère. Why not with us you ask. They have a very large caravan that they make good use of and 2 kids who really enjoy campsites with pools and waterslides!
We went to meet them for the day and had a road-train ride around the town. Bénodet is a pretty town with a great beach but very touristy in the summer (hence the mini-train) buy does have lots of bars and restaurants. Our friends had prepared a lovely lunch and afternoon for David’s birthday so we celebrated in stye and thank them for their kindness.
I have continued with a few additional tasks including some preparations for autumn. I cleared the gutters behind Grange and cut the large yew tree back a bit to reduce the needles that block the downpipes.
I have also continued, albeit slowly, with the storage space I’d started behind the pool house (Pavilion) and hope to make better progress this week. While we have guests who will be using the pool, we suspect we won’t have the cover open as much and no one sunbathing on the terrace.
We have however found today that one piece of fairly essential equipment for the pool has already appeared to pack up, the automatic chlorine dosing system, so I now have a new priority to get progressed tomorrow. And, for a number of reasons that I will share with you in next week’s blog, it may not be easy.
I will write again next Sunday – honest!
Kenavo.