Day out with the Office de Tourisme

Beautiful day

Every year about this time, the gîte and B&B owners, who are members of the Tourist office in St Gengoux, have a day out. We visit gîtes and B&Bs and various artisans in the area, normally have an excellent lunch and generally have a good chin wag.

It helps us feel more of a group rather than isolated service providers. We may be competitors to an extent, but we are also co-workers and this day helps to boost that side of things, we pass on clients from time to time, when we are full or if we feel a potential client would prefer a different type of accommodation and these visits help us to assess if we would want to pass on customers and to be able to stand behind any comments on the quality of accommodation provided.

Spinning disaster

When visiting the artisans in the area, we are treated to demos, something you would be hard to have if you visited alone and it lets us see what is on offer in the area, so we can pass on that information to visitors.

And last but not least we generally have a good meal and can put another restaurant on our list of places to recommend. I never recommend an artisan or a restaurant that I haven’t visited myself, I like to speak from my own experience, that way I can be confident about the information I am giving.

We were blessed with a sunny but cold day this year. Our day started in a large gîte (for 16 people) in St Gengoux, where we had coffee and brioche and then we moved on to the Weber’s new venture, cloth making. Apart from being able to buy the lovely hand made cloth, you can also have lessons in weaving and spinning. My attempts at spinning were hopeless, hence the almost hysterical look on my face. Magrit was very patient, but in the end she had to undo all my efforts to disentangle the whole mechanism - better luck next time..

Cappilati's designs

Sadly lunch was a disaster and I won’t give the restaurant any more publicity, but the rest of the day was very interesting with a lovely visit to Kathy Cappilati’s brand new studio where she does leaded glass designs, bronze sculptures and spectacular calligraphic ink designs.

Wine to end the day

It wouldn’t be a Burgundian day out if we didn’t finished up with a glass of wine or two. This year we were treated to pink crément or red or white wine and gougères at the cave in St Gengox-le-National.

I can’t wait for next year’s offerings.