Last week’s blog said that the forecast was for more ‘Breton’ weather which turned out to be, surprisingly, accurate! This was unfortunate, not just for progress on Grange, but also for David’s uncle and aunt who had come to visit us for the week.
We started off making some, slow, progress installing the first of 6 roof windows on the Grange, this one to the rear, whose installation, flashing and slating around took the best part of 2 days. I am hoping that the next 5 can be done much faster although we do have to wait for another 10 days for all the remaining items which we require to be delivered to the shop we have bought them from. The first looks great – and will certainly help lighten the rooms above the garage – and, having completed that area of slating, will allow us to start attaching the guttering which was delivered last Friday.
The remainder of the week has been wetter and more unsettled preventing any further significant progress on Grange. I did manage to do a number of smaller, but still useful, tasks but more importantly it allowed us to enjoy spending time with David’s uncle and aunt and visiting some new restaurants, all in the name of research of course!
We are always keen to visit new restaurants in our area as, while our gîtes have everything required for the perfect self-catering holiday, it is always good to have a number of options for a night off cooking including Dave’s amazing catering which is always well received as it was by our guests last night who had cycled from Roscoff.
As our closest restaurant we returned to the Auberge du Menez in Saint Rivoal which continues to develop and impress as the new owners settle in – even to the point that, unusually for many small French businesses, they have set up a website.
We also visited a couple of new restaurants to us which have been recommended. One, the Café du Port in Dourduff, to the north of Morlaix, was an excellent lunch spot specialising in fish as you would expect with its location overlooking the Baie du Morlaix (sadly no website – see my comment above!) For one dinner we visited Le Viaduc in Morlaix – another location worth an outing.
We have also had a couple of ‘cultural’ activities this week. Last night the Maison Cornec, also in Saint Rivoal, participated in the Europe-wide ‘night at the museum’ programme. We have (still) not visited the museum during its normal hours although it is based around a restored building of a similar age and design to our Priory and recreates life in a small-holding at the time of its construction. For the night at the museum, they opened their doors for singing and story-telling around the fire. Thankfully, there were professionals and willing volunteers to do both the singing and story-telling so we didn’t have to participate other than to enjoy the experience. Sadly, a little too smoky and dark for any photos.
However, today’s cultural activity was in bright sunlight and gave lots of opportunities for pictures – the Grand Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe Sizun. While a biennial event, we didn’t attend in 2015 but will certainly be doing so for all future occasions. It was a great spectacle to see some fantastic old cars race around a circuit on the streets of Sizun – a real petrolhead’s dream! Hopefully, with our new garage, we can attract some participants, or at least classic car owners and enthusiasts, to come and stay with us in 2019 (and hopefully before that!)
Another significant cultural event coming up which you may like to put in your diaries is the Picasso exhibition in the Landerneau cultural centre between 25 June and 1 November.
Thankfully the week ahead is forecast to be much warmer and drier than last week we should be able to get a lot more achieved. I’ll update next week.
À bientôt.