Rainbow Cottages in France - my new web page

Finally I've got organised and am ready to advertise both the cottages for letting.  I have already been having guests but didn't previously have a web page for them to view. 

My new web page is called:

 

 rainbowcottagesinfrance.com

 

 

and once I've managed the intricacies of website design I hope to have it up and running properly.  

Meantime, I have done a temporary page with most of the information that potential guests need and anyone can contact me on sandrachubb@orange.fr or 'phone me on 0033 (0)2 96 29 71 96 to book or discuss a potential booking. 

 

Small Cottage is for two people and is just that - a small, newly renovated cottage with combined sitting room and kitchen area and upstairs a double bedroom with ensuite. 

Middle Cottage, also newly renovated, has two bedrooms, one with a 6ft/180cm wide bed and the other with a small 4ft/120cm double bed.  Downstairs the large room has sitting, dining and kitchen areas.  There is a very large Breton fireplace in the sitting room.

 

There are rabbits, Boris, Ruby and Bert, in a fenced off area of the garden and Muscovy ducks on the field along with goats and chickens - the latter lay wonderful free range eggs.  Claude and Gracie the kittens arrived in October 2012 and have grown somewhat since then.

Both cottages are comfortable and well equipped.  They each have a logburner with logs supplied, television with basic UK television channels, wifi etc. etc. The garden is south-facing and there are tables and chairs for relaxing and dining outside. 








I won't go into great details here now as they are all on:

rainbowcottagesinfrance.com

 

 

Today's post is my 200th and it seems fitting that for this post there should be something important happening in St André for me.

Three things I like:

1.  Welcoming guests here from all everywhere - so far they've come from Holland, Germany, Russia, America, Australia, Costa Rica, England and Scotland.
2.  Finally getting myself organised to do the web page.
3.  Having lovely comments left about the cottages, garden, location and host.

Visitors, power cuts and hospital appointments

I had some lovely days this week with my oldest son and three of his friends, staying here in St André. 

The weather was mixed but we all got some good sunshine hours in the garden, particularly on Thursday and everyone is more bronzed than we were at the beginning of the week.  One afternoon saw them over at a friend's house in Bonen and then walking the Nantes Brest canal while I sat in the sunshine and read my book club book on the bank side.

Here are Mike, Matthew (my son), Leslie and Brett -all lovely boys!

The hot tub was popular the first two nights into the early hours of the morning until a power cut in the village seemed to take out the motor.  Where’s a repair man when you need one?  The repair man for my laptop is my son, and he has spent more than a few hours working on problems on my new laptop – just one email account to sort out and it’s done.

The power cut came at 08.15hrs on Friday morning and bizarrely we had one at exactly the same time this morning too.  EDF decided it was nothing to do with them but was to do with my neighbour’s house itself until I called and reported it too and another neighbour telephoned as well.  We were promised a team to arrive in the afternoon and they did.  They had to replace some part on the main pole in the village after hearing about the explosions happening in there simultaneously with the cut.  Unfortunately, the incubator with twelve blue Cream Legbar eggs dropped in temperature during these cuts so the lives of the twelve little chicks due to be born this week was in doubt.  Another cut yesterday and a very short one this morning.  EDF workers have been down both days but seem pretty ineffective.
 

Since we replaced the polytunnel cover last week I have been sowing seeds and some of them have already germinated and are pushing up into quite decent plants.  So I’ve got runner beans, broad beans, courgettes, pumpkins, cucumbers, lots of different salad leaves and tomatoes coming on well. The door still have to be recovered but need some welding so the old ones have been kept for the time being.  I’ve had two decent bowls of strawberries. 
 

I don’t know what sort the plants are, there are lots of different ones but they all taste very good, and one of my guests brought clotted cream with him which makes them taste even better!

The boys left today and took six dozen of my free range eggs back with them.  Yesterday I had the biggest eggs I have ever seen.  It weighed 104g and I wonder if it’s going to turn out to be a triple yolker.  I get lots of double yolkers but have never yet had a triple. 

The nephrologist saw me on Wednesday this week.  The appointment was made after a very high creatinine level on a blood test weeks ago.  This high reading indicates severe kidney disease - which seemed unlikely as I recently had a kidney scan and my kidneys were both deemed very healthy.  Since that high reading there have been two normal ones and the consultant decided that there was no immediate worry but that he would just monitor me with three blood tests over the next six months and another appointment with him in November this year.

The lung specialist appointment this week showed that my oxygen levels were good and my lungs fine.  I asked if we could stop the six monthly appointments and she agreed with the proviso that I have a sleep apnoea overnight recording done in twelve months time and then annually.  Result!

I have yet another medical appointment, on Monday with the endocrinologist.  My parathormone level is still very high but dropping all the time through the last three blood tests.  I am still taking 2g of calcium a day and two doses of Vitamin D each month in the hope that I may absorb more calcium.  I am now on daily folic acid too so let’s hope that is also helping absorption.

So far there have been guests during June in both cottages who all said enjoyed themselves and promised to recommend the accommodation to others. They were my first English guests – previous visitors have been Dutch, German, Russian, Costa Rican, American and Australian.  I have no-on booked in now until the third week of July but there may be some more enquiries from the two websites with which I’m registered.  Anyone reading this who fancies being welcomed to a self-catering holiday in central Brittany in one of two well-renovated stone cottages, only needs to contact me by email at sandrachubb@orange.fr.


 

Here are some photos of the two bedroomed cottage.

The wisteria is just going over now with all the wind and rain it hasn't had much of a chance, but hopefully it will have a second flowering later in the year.

 

Many of the roundabouts here in Brittany have great designs on them but I think my favourite is this one just outside Roscoff with the beach and beach huts recreated.

 

Three things I like:

 

1.   Hearing the baby chick cheeping in the incubator. 

2.   Eating icecream while relaxing on a sunbed in the sunshine.

3.   Seeing newly sown seeds poking through the compost as bright green leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Books, baby and sunshine

While I was at book club yesterday the commune verge cutter came through the village.  Such a shame – all the lovely wild flowers are now no more.  I particularly miss the bluebells in amongst the grass, ragged robin, celandines, buttercups, dandelions and stitchwort.  It was the same when I lived in Cornwall when they cut slightly later in the year and chopped down all the foxgloves along our lane.  Have they no hearts these people?

We held the book club outside – I didn’t fancy sitting inside when it was so sunny, but after about 45 minutes the sun disappeared behind clouds and it became  distinctly chilly.  The book we were discussing was

 

 

this is a seriously long book at 612 pages and I had only managed to read up to page 350, so I spent a lot of the meeting with my fingers in my ears to avoid spoilers.  As far as I've read I don't feel it is the most exciting book I've read recently, but having invested my time for just over half the book I will continue with it to the end.  The consensus was that perhaps it lost something in the translation to English. 

 

This week I've also read a book my friend brought over with her "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" by Rachel Joyce. 

 

 

June thought it was brilliant so perhaps I was expecting something extraordinary.  I enjoyed it - it was certainly an interesting story - but it didn't move me in the way it had her.   While she was here she read one of my favourite books "The Best a Man Can Get" by John O'Farrell.  She - like me before her - was laughing out loud while reading it. 

 

After our sort out on the field last week, here is a section where we've put wood which needs sawing up for kindling and stacking in the woodsheds. 

 

There's still loads of stuff on the left behind the galvanised sheet which needs to be sorted and shifted.  I advertised some old brown plastic bread crates - you can just see them at the end of the galvanised sheet - and someone came to collect them on Saturday to use them for supporting jumps for their horses. 

 

 

Some more of the inside stuff was collected too - portable TV, paperbacks, empty jam jars etc,  so that's about it until I sort out some more things.  I am being such a good girl! 

 

Saturday was a glorious weather day here.  Wall to wall sunshine and bright blue skies.  I was determined to lie out in it and did.   When the nurse came and took blood from me yesterday morning she asked me where I'd been on holiday as I looked so brown!  Sunday was lovely until the afternoon when it all fell apart, but I did get another whole morning in the sun listening to two Archers omnibus podcasts on my laptop and reading my books.  So lovely to smell sunoil on my skin again - it seems so long since the sun has been here.

 

Here's a photo of Andy and Flick's new baby, Lucas.  He is so beautiful, his skin is just perfect and he seems a really content little chap.

 

 

I forgot last time to post this photo of June outside a Tattoo parlour in Pleurtuit last week.  Did she or didn't she?

 

 

Well, no she didn't - thank goodness!

 

Three things I like:

 

1.   Having a long awaited cuddle with Lucas.

2.   Finally getting into a swimmer and sunbathing all day.

3.   Holding the new baby chicks.

Visit from a dear friend, eggs and chicks

Nearly two weeks ago a very good friend from the 1960s, when we shared a house together, came to stay for a week.  The weather didn’t rally for us and it was unseasonably cold while she was here.  We did manage Lannion market in the sunshine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

where Fish and Ships  (sic) were being advertised on the blackboard!  Just look at this gorgeous plate of olives on sale

 

 

 

but we spent most of the visit chatting in front of the woodburner each with a glass of red in our hands. 

The day I went to collect June from Dinard Airport, I went via my Bowls Club to deliver eggs and then to collect some things for sale on an expat website.  I meandered northwards and stumbled across Jugon les Lacs where there is a Brit run Charity Shop.  While I was browsing through the book section, an English couple came through the door and told the shopkeeper that they’d only come out to buy some eggs.  Jokingly he replied that they hadn’t yet started selling eggs.  I couldn’t resist.  I said “I do though – free range eggs” and they bought a dozen from me.  Since some horrid political tension at my Bowls Club some of the members, who used to play and also buy eggs from me, have not been coming and I had spare eggs in the Land Rover – so it was very fortuitous!

The weather is now beyond a joke, even if the sun is out the wind is bitter and I have to wear a fleece and scarf to do anything outside, particularly early morning and evening.  The runner bean plants which I had grown in the polytunnel and planted out ten days ago have all died and I have now had to start again with pots in the polytunnel again.  Other sown seeds in the raised outside veggie beds have simply found it too cold to germinate.  It’s Midsummer’s Day in twenty-seven day’s time – hardly believable!

The six blue Cream Legbar eggs which I had in the incubator only produced two chicks and when I cracked the others they were not fertilised.  I had popped three of my own hens’ eggs in there too and they all hatched giving me five chicks.

The chicks all went into the brooder and seemed fine but yesterday morning when I went in to feed and water them one was squashed flat and dead.  I suppose that the other four must have laid on her and suffocated her – such a shame.  I have another twelve blue eggs in the incubator now so hope I have more success with these.  Here are June and Gracie taking far too much interest in the incubator contents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first two chicks to be born were christened by June - June and Terry - although, of course, we have no idea what gender they are as they are ordinary hen chicks and not the colour sexed Cream Legbars.

 

The wisteria is out now and scenting the terrace with a beautiful perfume. 

The large flower bed is also getting fuller as the foliage takes off, in spite of the cold.  Primulas, ajuga and aquilegia are all out, surrounded by hundreds of mid-blue forget-me-knot flowers.  The azaleas are just breaking out of bud and the vine is romping along the house walls and covering them with lovely green leaves.  The roses are covered in buds and there should be a good show before too long.

 

 

It was nice having company for egg collecting and putting the animals to bed at night - I think June is a closet farmer's wife as soon she was feeding the ducks and hens and even managing to herd them into their houses for bed.

 

While she was here she sorted out some of the stuff from my glory hole storage room – brass things, lamps, horse brasses, table mats, a camera, vases and other china etc. etc. which I put on an expat website as giveaways and apart from five paintings these things have all been collected. In return I received two bottles of wine and a polythene tub of homemade mushroom soup. I have also sold a small portable television and given away carrier bags full of clean, empty jam jars to jam and pickle makers.  There’s still loads to go but at least it’s a start.  My worker and I have started clearing up the field too and having done one trip to the tip we now already have another trailer full.  Anyone who knows me realises that I have great difficulty in getting rid of things so I feel very proud of myself!

 

Ah - on the subject of my worker - his wife gave birth on Tuesday to a very beautiful baby boy.  I have had my first cuddle and he seems a contented little fellow whom they have named Lucas. 

 

Well - incredibly the sun is out now at 17.20hrs and it seems quite warm out there.  I am going to put on my fleece and read a few pages of my book out there accompanied by a mug of sweet, black coffee.

 

O - just one more photo - some of the baby goats on the roadside when we came back home one afternoon last week.

 

 

Three things I like:

 

1.   It's only eight weeks today for the due date of my granddaughter, Mia, I can't wait!

2.   I am beginning to get holiday bookings for the cottages alongside my house.

3.   Packing the first things into the campervan ready for my first night away in it.