September Trip

Last weekend we were over in La Matha with Bill & Shirley for a brief stay, which went very well.  We arrived on Friday and decided that we'd try La Terrasse again for dinner.  If you've read previous posts, you'll see that we'd all but given up going there, as it was always closed when we tried.  When I phoned to book, it was answered by someone new; table booked.  It turns out it now has a new owner, who took over in mid-July.  He's a local man who had sold a restaurant nearby some time last year, and ended up buying this one.

The weather was lovely and warm, so we ended up eating outside.  The menu was not like under the Belgians, where they had three or four differently priced menus - this was a single menu with a bit of blurring between starters and main courses: some dishes could be either, and it was limited to about a dozen items.  Food turned out to be very tasty, and the price not too high - about €120 for four, not including drinks.  Normal service resumes - let's hope it lasts!

On Saturday we shopped tn the market at St Foy, as we had guests for the evening.  The guests were people we'd met at Le Moulin restaurant in Les Lèves back in July.  Before the guests turned up, we had a massive thunder storm - see photo below of the river going past the terrace!

Dinner went well, although the son of our guest had a disastrous evening - lightening had set fire to his hay bales, and he'd lost 200 of them just over in Riocaud!

On Sunday, we had a trip to Les Jardins du Sardy between St Foy and Castillon - well worth a trip.  Afterwards, we headed back over the Dordogne through Pessac to Flaujagues - I'd never been there before, and we found it very pretty.  At the recommendation of a guest, we then went on to find La Table Rouge - a delightful restaurant on the road from Flaujagues to Castillon, overlooking the river.  The owner let us eat a late lunch, which was really good.  La Table Rouge is another decent restaurant to go to!

Table Tennis under the Pergola

Our idea has finally been realised.  The table tennis table fits neatly under the pergola, and the columns don't interfere with playing!

After this photo was taken, we moved some potted climbing plants round, so that it doesn't look quite so clinical.  It was a bit windy on Monday, so, with the table collapsed into storage mode, we pushed it up against the house wall, as we don't want it blown over - I suppose it's a balance between that, and, at the moment, having it down and collecting rainwater whenever it rains.

One thing we did with left over paving slabs was to make stepping stones across the gravel from the terrace to the pool - I'm sure this will be welcomed by everyone!

I took some photos around the pool, as there is one photo I've been using on the website which is very out of date.  Here are a couple of them

Gensac or Balllykisangel?

We were confused.  On Friday evening, we went to Gensaké restaurant in Gensac for dinner.  We hadn't booked, thinking there wouldn't be a problem getting a table, but when we arrived, it seemed very busy.  We did manage to get a table, and had a very enjoyable meal.  However, there was a large party on a big table at the back, and it would appear it was full of Irish people.  Then it turned out that most of the people on that table knew people on every other table (apart from us - we did feel left out!).  All the other diners appeared to be Irish too.  Now had we gone through a worm-hole and ended up in Ballykisangel?

It turned out that there was to be a wedding in the village over the weekend, and Gensaké was full of wedding guests.  As we left, we noticed that Café de la Paix, which is normally closed in the evenings, was open and doing good trade as well.  Big drinkers these Irish!

Website

I've written a couple of posts in the past about our website www.la-matha.com.  The site has always been simple and straightforward.  Upgrades I've put in place over the years have been restricted to a new "flashy" new photo gallery written in HTML5 rather than Flash, and the introduction of buttons which change when the mouse hovers over them.  Our thinking was to just keep it simple, and let the property do the talking.

Talking to a Google advertising re-seller, I realised how poor the site was as a marketing tool, compared to what it could be.  That was perhaps borne out by the fact that we have had no lettings directly from the website.  The re-seller wanted me to buy his web-design service, but that would have meant me losing control of the content, and I didn't want that.  I found that his service used an on-line tool called Wix, which can be free, if you want their advertising on it, or you can pay for an unbranded site.  However, studying a site that had been produced using it, it became clear that even with the paid for service, a lot of the content and coding was retained by Wix - losing control again!

So, I set about re-writing the site loosely based on a Wix design I had been toying with.  The result, if I say so myself, is a big improvement.  It may not have the slick sliding progression as you move page by page (I think done by HTML5), but I have got a small slide show on each page, drop-down menus using CSS, the menu and formatting are all on separate files, so if I want to add a page, all I need to do is to change the menu once, and the change appears on all the pages.  I've now even updated the French version of the site, so that it is the same, albeit in French!  I have just finished adding a form for visitors to use to contact me - possible now, as I have had to upgrade the hosting so that I can use PHP, a relatively new programming language which allows for the menu to be on a single page which is referred to by all the others.

Anyway, check it out - I hope you like it!

Pergola - the Pictures

Here are some pictures of the construction of the pergola:

 Bill and Ali help with getting the first of the poles up:

 

Bill helping me with the cross beams, and then fixing the cane canopy:

 

And finally, the finished pergola, with a lot of the gravel in place.  The slabs under the pergola will be laid by Chris, our builder, in the coming weeks.

(Thanks to Shirley as official photographer!)

Les Hommes des Camionnettes Blanches part 2

I have previously posted about a café in the nearby village of Landerrouat (click here for that article).  When we were out in April, Bill and I decided to go there - a first experience for Bill, but the third time for me.  We went in our van, which was not out of place, as there were at least half a dozen parked along the road outside the café.

On entering the café we found it packed.  Bill and I were squeezed in at the back near an elderly English couple.  Food was good: vegetable soup, terrine, steak and chips, cheese, and rum baba, followed by a coffee, and washed down with water and a bottle of  vin ordinaire.  All this for €12.  Amazing value.

Following that lunch, Bill and I are definitely in the secret society of Les Hommes des Camionnettes Blanches!

Another New Restaurant - Le Moulin des Lèves

During our week at La Matha, our friends left for home on Thursday, leaving Pip and me to drive back in the van on Saturday.  We decided to go out for a meal on Friday evening - not too late, as we wanted an early start - and tried phoning La Terrasse.  No reply.

We then planned to go to St Foy and en route see if a new-ish restaurant that we seen in Les Lèves was open.  We didn't know what it was called, as we had only seen it side-on, turning off the D672 on a short cut just outside the village, just before the restaurant.

It was open, and it is called Le Moulin des Lèves (although I couldn't see a windmill anywhere near!).  At first, we were the only people there; a bit later a party of 16 women arrived, but they went into a separate dining room.  Just as we were finishing, a family of four arrived, who were clearly friends of the man who was front of house.

It was an interesting menu, and the food was delicious - I had red mullet tartare as a starter, followed by maigret.  Both were well presented, and the duck was cooked perfectly.  The wine list was slim, but had wine that we liked.

We would definitely recommend it - not as good as Gensaké, but worth a try.

Les Hommes des Camionnettes Blanches

It almost sounds like a secret society!  It certainly is more pleasantly sounding, perhaps without the slightly thuggish connotations of White Van Man!

Anyway, Bill and I were les hommes de la camionette blanche last week.  The Iveco Daily long wheel base van was rented from Europcar in Slough using Rhino Car Hire - I had originally booked it some time ago, but cancelling that booking and re-booking at the last minute saved about £90, even allowing for the loss of deposit on the original one.  Next time, I will risk doing a last minute booking, as long as it is not a busy period.

We left early (05:45 ish) on the Saturday morning, heading for Folkestone.  Despite a detour to drop my son off on the verges of the Medway towns, we made it to the Eurotunnel terminal in good time.  Bill paid for what was one of the worst bacon, sausage and egg baps I've ever had, and the coffee was not good either; at least we consoled ourselves that things could only get better: we were going to France, after all!

At Calais, we took our normal route of Rouen, Le Mans, Tours, Bordeaux - the A16/A28/A10 route.  This is more expensive toll-wise, but avoids the uncertainty of Paris and the Boulevard Peripherique.  The only problem we encountered was at Rouen.  About 50m before the turning for the A29 west, there was a diversion sign, saying that the main bridge over the Seine in Rouen where the A28 finishes was closed, and it was "obligatoire" for us to go A29, A151.  Unfortunately 50m is not really enough time to digest this information and work out the options etc, so we kept going.  Sure enough, just before the river, we were shepherded off the motorway.  At the traffic lights, there was a v big queue turning right, so we headed left; unsure as to whether we needed to head towards the airport or not, with Bill trying to make sense of it with the road atlas, I forked to the right.  It turned out this was the best route for us - we were heading south (always a good thing as that is the general direction we wanted to go!), and were driving along the east bank of the Seine.  This took us to the A13, a couple of junctions before we would have joined it if the main bridge had been open.  We probably were delayed in total by about 15 minutes, which I suppose is not too bad, all things considered.

For refueling both us and the van, we were unfortunate in terms of timing - the van needed diesel before we needed lunch. Diesel just after Rouen, and we hung on until Le Mans for lunch.  Along the A28/A10 route, there are two tedious legs - Rouen to Le Mans and Poitiers to Bordeaux.  Anyway, at the end of the first drag, approaching 14h, we stopped at the service station at Le Mans.  After Bill's breakfast, it was my turn to buy lunch.  We didn't want to hang around, so, stupidly, we bought a Wendy's hamburger, forgetting that the last time we did the trip we did the same thing and regretted it!  Lunch was really no better than breakfast.

That over with, we continued, and ended up at the house just before 19:45 - a journey time of around 13 hours.  We decided to take only the bags out of the van, turn on the heating in the house, and head out to Duras and dinner at La Terrasse - we deserved it after the drive and bad breakfast and lunch.  Second issue of the day - La Terrasse in complete darkness.  No problem, we could always go to Don Camillo for a pizza..... Oh no, that was closed too!  We then had no choice but to go to the Hostelerie des Ducs, which was more expensive than the other two, but food was essential, as we had nothing in the house.  The meal was great, and was a good end to a long and tiring day.

The Utility Room

We had hoped that our builder would have rendered the walls of the utility room - full render over the breeze blocks and "pierre apparente" where the walls are stone.  However, it has been so cold out there this spring, rather like in the UK, that he has not been able to do it: it needs consistent temperature of at least 20 deg.

He will be doing the walls in early May; however, this didn't stop us from painting the floor.  Well, the primer coat and the second coat went down, with our builder promising to do the final coat after he's done the walls.  We used Ronseal Diamond Hard Floor Paint, which went down a treat.  I was looking on line for some tips, and I read that someone painted the edges with a brush, then poured the paint onto the floor to roller it in.  Brilliant! I had the whole floor painted in a single coat in an hour, with a four hour drying time, the second coat went on later that day.

The result - absolutely no dust from the floor!  It is so good, and will make such a difference when the walls are done.  All we need now is to put a sink in there and move the washing machine to the corner, and it will be finished!  (oh yes, and the rendered wall painted...)

Balthazart Comes to the Rescue!

If you're reading this blog, you will be aware that we have recently put up a pergola by the side of the house, in order to make that part of the grounds more attractive.

The whole of that side of the grounds was covered in concrete - the previous owner was a builder, and that was his "yard".  Therefore, we needed to put six holes in the concrete for the posts.  We came armed with a small angle grinder, electric hammer drill, bolster chisels,  mallets and a sledge hammer.  In reality, this was naive - it turned out the concrete was some four inches thick in places!

On failing to make little more than a dent in the first hole, I decided that I would have to hire a kango hammer.  Bill suggested that we should see if we could hire a man with a hammer rather than just the hammer, and mentioned that Mr Balthazart, our gardener, might know of such a man.  A brilliant idea, I headed straight over the Landerouat to ask him, even though it was Sunday.

Mr Balthazart asked if we wanted someone to do the kango'ing or just the use of a hammer - I replied that it didn't really matter.  He then headed to a large shelving unit, and, from a selection of large tool cases, pulled out a Bosch Professional Demolition Hammer with a chisel bit and a borer.  A quick demonstration later, I was heading back to La Matha full of optimism.

Using the hammer in the concrete was like putting a knife through butter - it really made light work of the concrete, and we had got the first three holes dug by the time our wives arrived from Bergerac Airport in the afternoon.  The final three were quickly finished on Monday morning.

We were really grateful to Mr Balthazart and his hammer - it meant that we could finish the pergola on Monday, and saved having to find a hire shop to rent one.

Pomerol

When Bill and I were here in 2011, we visited the brother-in-law of a French colleague of mine.  The brother-in-law, Charles Estager, has three wine parcels: a Pomerol, a Lalande Pomerol and a Montagne St Emilion.  When there, we bought some of the 2010 Pomerol "en primeur", which means we buy it before it is bottled.

We have just visited Charles again, and picked it up - here is the evidence:

The boxes are in the van already, to which we will be adding some local wines from Berticot and Univitis - we have to do this to make sure the van does not come back empty!

We're Here!

We've now been here for a few days, working hard.  The pergola is up, and the cane shade cover is securely fastened.  Photos of work in progress and the completed works will be posted on our return.

Planting is also now complete, with the whole of the bed along that side of the house now finished - looking good!  I've fixed a hose up along the back of the house from the tap so that the new bed can be watered, but we're having to work out what to do with the high water pressure.

New curtains have been put up in two of the bedrooms, with one more to go, and cushions have been attached to the benches in the dining room.

There is more work to be done, some of which we will be able to complete, and some we won't.  One big piece of work is laying the slabs under the pergola.  That would be a big job for relatively inexperienced people like Bill and me, so we will get Chris our builder to do that when he renders the walls in the utility room.

It does seem like Pip and I will have to come out here for a weekend next month......

Gensaké - New Restaurant to Try!

We had tried to book a table at the restaurant Les Ramparts in Gensac; however, we were told that for unspecified reasons, they will not be opening the restaurant this year!  When we heard that, we looked to see where else we could go, and found Gensake (http://www.le-gensake-restaurant.fr/).

A charming restaurant with about four simple set menus (a choice of two dishes per course per menu) - plenty of foie gras, duck, steak and so on.  There is a Menu Atlantique with two fish dishes for pescetarians. The food was delicious - steak perfectly cooked "à point", really tender lamb chops.....

The "wine list" was a series of shelves containing the wine stock - red, white and rosé.  They were all priced for take-away, but you add €5 for corkage.  The only downside of this was that the white wine was not chilled, and the red was cooler than "room temperature" (the room was a little chilly).  You can bring your own, but what might be better is bringing an ice bucket!  We had a bottle of a local Bordeaux white (which was as you would expect), and a lovely half bottle of Côtes de Blaye red.

We would thoroughly recommend this restaurant - very reasonably priced for very good food. (Bear in mind the wine comment above!)

Well That Went Well!

We've just come back from an eventful weekend at La Matha.  The weather started off positively - we had lunch outside in the sun on Friday, and it was a beautiful early morning on Saturday, but then got a bit miserable for the rest of the time.  It is March, after all!

We managed to sort a few issues out, none of which were really a problem, and we've taken all the necessary measurements we need for paint, curtains etc.  I took some "before" photos of the "utility" room, which hopefully will have the breeze-block walls rendered and the stone walls finished in the pierre apparent finish we have elsewhere in the house.

I will of course take the "after" photos showing the finished walls and the painted floor!

I also took a photo of where the pergola is going - note the stones on the concrete showing where the posts will go!

Only a couple of days to go

We're off to the house on Friday for the first time since last Autumn.  We have lists of things to get done over the weekend, mainly measuring things in prep for the April trip - for floor paint, curtains and so on.

It's a good job we arranged for a delivery of firewood, as it seems the weather looks like it will be cold!

We will be trying out a new restaurant in Gensac called Gensaké - we will provide a critique of it on our return.  We had attempted to go to the Hotel Les Ramparts, which we first tried last year, but have been told by the owners that, whilst the hotel is opening this spring, the restaurant won't be for some obscure reason; we had tried to book with them last year, but couldn't get through on the phone, so I think they've been having some problems.

Anyway, we have been looking forward to this trip for some time now - it's been too long since we were last there!

ps Forthcoming Trip

Mr Balthazart, our gardener, has just sent more photos of the work he's done, including a very warming one ahead of our trip in a couple of weeks time:

That will make sure we will not get cold when we watch England play Wales, hopefully for the Grand Slam!

Pergola (again!)

That's done it!  Pergola ordered, with delivery just before we go.  Van booked, as is Eurotunnel.  The other good thing is that London Wasps (English Rugby team) are playing their European quarter final match against Leinster on the Friday evening before we go, so we get to see the Rugby, as well as go to France!

Here is a marketing image of the pergola we will be taking down there, made by a chippy from Swindon.

In addition to this, we've loads of plants to take down.  Our gardener has just delivered some "terre du pays enrichie avec du compost" - see photo below - ready for the planting

As you can see, that area looks a bit scruffy, but that is part of our project: to tidy it up.  The wall will be painted, and the concrete will be covered in shingle.

Oh yes, did I mention that we are going out there in March - now just over 3 weeks away for the weekend of my birthday.  We can't wait to get out there again: it's been too long!

Bookings

There we were, thinking that in these extended credit crunch times, the number of bookings we've achieved so far is way down on previous years.  When suddenly, we get four enquiries in 24 hours, including two for the same week!  Added to a couple of weeks which friends are interested in, and suddenly, we have the potential for having 10 weeks booked.

That is shaping up nicely - if we get the same number of weeks booked as last year, that will be great; even better if we get the same feedback as last year!

We're Going to France!

Now that the New Year is upon us, we have now started to book our time at La Matha.  We've already booked a weekend in mid-March, and are planning a week's trip with a van for around Easter.  A long weekend in June with girlfriends has been organised by Pip, and we're talking about a weekend and week in September.

The trip at Easter with the van will take some furniture, a Pergola kit and a load of plants.  The Pergola and plants are for the side of the house which is currently a bit boring.  We'll be creating a space for the table tennis table, and make it a bit more attractive.  Oh yes, with the van, we will be able to buy some wine and bring it home!!!!

Buttons or Links

The website advertising La Matha (www.la-matha.com) has served us well since I set it up in 2008.  It was created in a simple way using a free development tool called NVU.  There was nothing fancy about it - pages made up of tables with text and pictures in, and the menu merely comprising a list of links to the different pages.  A recent upgrade was the new picture gallery in HTML5 (see post "Is this flash, or not").

Things have moved on since 2008.  I no longer use NVU, but BlueGriffon - basically the same, but brought into the Mozilla family with Firefox and Thundebird.  That software is still simple - there is WYSIWYG functionality as well as pure HTML scripting, but again, no gimmicks.  For another website, I have been using Coffee Cup Visual Site Designer which does allow some gimmicks, but is a bit restricting for what we want at La Matha.  However, I have been able to copy some functionality from that software through to BlueGriffon - buttons!

Using this, I have replaced the simple menu with a series of buttons which change colour when the mouse goes over them.  In order to make this more organised, I have grouped the pages together a bit better - the Local Area pages were already grouped, but the House now has Pictures, Guestbook, Location and Activities under it.

I hope this makes the site look a bit better, and less amateurish: it probably still is that, but it at least gets the message across.  The old format is still alive and well on the french version.