Last week’s blog ended with the Sizun Grand Prix as one of the amazing activities that we have near us. This week ends with another – Assomniak’s ‘Fête du Bourg’ in the heart of Saint Cadou. More of that later.
Generally this week has been a contrast with last week as we returned to amazingly hot weather – too hot at times – which was enjoyed by our guests but makes us think we need to apologise to David’s uncle and aunt who stayed with us last week! They don’t always see Brittany in the heat!
The settled weather did allow us to make some good progress on Grange and we are starting to feel that perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel has at least been ignited! Having installed the first roof window last week we were able to attach the first run of guttering and dismantle the scaffolding on one quarter of the building.
We have been told that the remaining windows and flashings were delivered to the shop on Saturday so we will be able to collect early next week and make great strides in completing the roof totally.
The remainder of the week was spent rendering the block walls – a job that I left entirely to our builder while I focussed on mixing the mortar. Rendering does seem to take an awfully long time – mostly the smoothing off and making good – but it certainly makes a huge difference to the aesthetics as the building starts to look a little more finished helped as I managed to make a start to the exterior cladding. One garage bay is now practically complete internally – the interior walls are likely to be a way off!
Initially, we will clad the building with unstained wood which will make it bright yellow for a little while but this will fade quickly in the sun and, eventually, we will stain the exterior a more appropriate colour – when time allows.
We stopped work on Grange on Thursday so that I could assist the Assomniak team prepare for the festival as I always feel guilty attending these types of event but not having assisted with the set up before. The plans were very ambitious as they had 5 separate concert venues in the centre of the village, 3 of which needed stages and / or tenting erected as well as kilometres of electrical cabling and lighting to erect with other stalls and stands. I was principally focussed on marquees outside our Salle de Fête and, most important of all, building the bar!
As well as assisting with the set up I had volunteered to be staff for a couple of sessions during the event and to help out where my French language skills would be best used – directing traffic in the car parks!
Saturday was a lovely day and saw lots of people converge on the village and enjoy the music and sunshine. As with most of the Fest Noz events lots of people were camping either in their cars and vans or at a specially set-up camp site in the centre which sounded great fun and allowed them to enjoy the festival until the arranged music stopped at 3 am – right up to the thunder storms and torrential downpours that inevitably come at the end of a period of hot weather.
Sadly the wetter weather appeared to have an impact on numbers attending the event today and there were very few cars which arrived during my car park patrol time today – but none got stuck in the mud on their way out in my car park at least!
I had a look around the festival yesterday afternoon (one advantage of volunteering was free entry) and David and I went together to the evening activities. The music was very different to that which we are used to at the other Fest Noz being less Breton traditional and a much wider mix of rock, acoustic and, at times, more Ibiza house DJs!
Our builder isn’t available tomorrow so I will assist the team dismantle the venues and return the village back to its usual sleepy character. Despite the wet weather we hope the festival was a huge success and we wait with interest to see what the 2018 activity will be.
Next week more Grange work and, sadly, we haven’t yet found a Sunday cultural activity to visit!
Kenavo.