Changes on the Campsite

Since we started the campsite, 8 years ago, we have been constantly changing things in response to comments from the campers and changing things as we saw opportunities to improve the campsite, its facilities and the whole camping experience. It has always been our aim is to create a campsite that we would want to stay on. We wanted a simple campsite, with no frills, but one or two extra comforts. Hence the generous toilet facilities, the fridge, the freezer and telephone loading points, but no electricity on the site itself.

Originally we allowed caravans and campervans as we thought that if those campers were prepared to accept the lack of electricity, they were the type of people who would appreciate what we are offering, simplicity in peaceful surroundings. Sadly we discovered that the weight of caravans and campervans is such that we can’t permit them on the site, so we have been a tent only campsite now for a few years. It raised a few eyebrows when said we were not going to have any electricity on the site and it raised a few more eyebrows when we made the change to no caravans, but both ideas have have been sucessful and have been appreciated by the campers who come here.

Now it is time for the next big change.

Car park for the campsite

Our favourite campsite in The Netherlands in Loenen, was the model for what we wanted to create in France. We have followed most of their principles, but for whatever reason, we didn’t think that their policy of no cars on the site was a goer here in France. Having said that some damp summers have shown us that we can run the campsite successfully in this way and so from next year we are not only an electricity-free zone, but a car-free zone as well.

The car park has been spruced up since the summer, with measured and marked spaces and we have been looking round for the best way to help the campers transport their belongings from this new car park to their chosen camping spot. Thanks to Cees’ daughter and son-in-law, we have now come up with a brilliant solution.

New Brouettes

So here is a photo of Cees and me modelling the “his and hers” brouettes, just waiting for the first campers of our next season to use them to transport their camping gear.

I am sure our new policy will raise a few eyebrows yet again, but I am equally sure that our campers will appreciate what this will bring. Peace, quiet, your own tent and nature - what more could you ask of a campsite?


For more information see our website by clicking here.

Stolen goods or just recycled?

Please put your reclable stuff in the crates provided!

We are fanatical recyclers. It helps if you have to pay for all the rubbish that is not recycled of course, but I have always been a recycler. Ask the poor people I have shared houses with in the past, about the stacks of old newspapers and boxes full of bottles and cans if you don’t believe me. I even used to recycle the aluminium cans from work many years ago, you could get 1p a can from the scrap man. It was a pity I didn’t realise that half of the cans sold in those days were steel, which meant I had to spend a whole afternoon checking which ones stuck to the fridge doorpost (did you know there is a magnet in the fridge doorpost?) to split the recyclable aluminium from the non-recyclable (in those days) steel cans.

So it is no surprise that we provide the people who stay in our gîtes and on the campsite with recycling boxes. Most (but not all) people use them and we then make sure that the waste is sorted and gets to the right place. Often there are interesting magazines or useful jam pots put into these boxes and then I truly re-cycle them by using again.

But just the other day we found something which might have been stolen. So what do you do? Do you go to the police? Do you contact the owner and return the goods (we knew where it had come from), do you turn a blind eye because this is after all a rubbish bin and are we our campers’ keepers? Or lastly do you assume that the person who put the item in the bin had in fact bought it and after use, decided to throw it away?

Hanging out to dry

I’ll clarify things a little. The afore-mentioned item was in fact soaking wet, it had either been left out in the rain or dropped in a puddle, but even so it was worth saving. Cees brought it indoors and asked if I wanted it.

Having never owned one of these things, the answer was yes of course, so he carefully removed the centre staples and I peeled it apart sheet by sheet and set it out to dry. After a few hours on my wash rack all was dry and reconstructed and now I am the owner of a Taizé song book.

Recycled

There still rests the tricky question of whether I will be arrested for handling stolen goods or not... so please don’t tell anyone.



For information on holiday accommodation near the shop in Taizé where you can buy a Taizé song book click here.

Sleeping Barrels

Cutting the ribbon

There are some advantages to being a volunteer for the Office de Tourisme in St Gengoux-le-National, I get invitations to things I wouldn’t otherwise see. The other day was just one example. The president of the OT rang up and asked if I would like to join him to the official opening of the “tonneaux couchant” (literally translated as sleeping barrels) at a prestigious viticulturist near Lugny - a very good white wine and crément area. I jumped at the chance, I thought it would be very interesting to see the new barrels in place, in time for this year’s harvest. and I am not adverse to a couple of glasses of Lugny wine. I tentatively asked if Cees could come, but that was gently rebuffed explaining that it was because I was the head of the committee for holiday accommodation, he was inviting me. Tough luck, Cees will just have to miss out on the wine.

So on a blisteringly hot afternoon we headed off into the countryside for the opening. The president of the OT is himself a viticulturist and produces some very nice bottles too. So the conversation was easy in the car all about how you make wine and why the barrels are horizontal not vertical, how big they are and so on. Many of my questions were (as usual) met with a slightly confused look, a bit like the time I asked him for a good variety of vine to plant in my garden for big leaves, he couldn’t grasp the concept that I wanted to use the leaves in cooking to make dolmades and I was not interested in either eating the grapes or making wine – ah well cultural differences are the spice of life round here.

New barrels?

When we finally arrived, I noticed that they had used the old wooden barrels to make little houses just outside the winery buildings. I thought that was a clever idea, so while we waited for the official opening and tour, I took a few photos. I seem to remember have a confusing conversation about whether it might be a bit smelly inside, but I’m not too sure about that one.

Finally the big-wigs arrived and the ribbon was cut so that we could go through to the winery itself and we all oohed and aahhed at what he had done with the old barrels as we passed them on the way to the wine making area. The wine making area was not very big. Not many people seemed to be interested in that area and what intrigued me was that I couldn’t spot any new horizontal barrels. Now I am confused.

On to the speeches – lots and lots of them, the local MP, the chief man in our département (the Prefect), our Senator, you name it they were all there and they gave a speech. The owner told us how much it had all cost and thanked every man and his dog for helping him and he was convinced that it would increase tourism in the area etc etc etc.

As it all went on, I was beginning to suspect that I was not exactly on the same wavelength as everyone else. And then it dawned on me…. The “tonneaux couchants” were barrels to sleep in and we were at the opening of these brand new wooden barrels imported from Norway. These barrels have never, and will never, see a drop of wine in their lives unless the occupants spill some in a late night binge.

After the speeches were over, I tucked into the very nice wine and yummy snacks in a quiet corner of the courtyard, trying to be inconspicuous and I sincerely hoped that everyone would put the drivel I had been coming out with for the last hour or so, down to me being a foreigner and that they would forgive and forget. As I left I congratulated the owner on his ingenious accommodation that will be an asset to the region, in a vain attempt to make it look like I had known all the time what was going on.

New barrels in situ

For non-barrel accommodation, near some barrels that people and not wine actually sleep in click here.

Camping is good for you – it’s official

Beautiful sunset at La Tuilerie

The camping season has started here at La Tuilerie. Our first campers of the season turned up last weekend and pitched up for the week. The fact that many people come back year after year does not really surprise me because as any real camper knows, camping is good for you.  After a week in the open air, enjoying all that nature has to offer you, you feel just fantastic and you are set up to face anything that real life can throw at you.

Snoopy's got it right

Whilst that is of course my theory, I have now had it confirmed.  I was browsing the BBC website the other day and came across an article that stated just what I say - camping is good for you.

Apparently if you spend a week camping, you reset your body clock by setting your melatonin levels straight again. This will of course bring you enormous, untold health benefits.

So get your tents out and start planning your next holiday on our lovely campsite !

La Tuilerie Website

Givers and takers

In our line of work you meet all sorts of people. The vast majority are very nice people, people we love to have here, people who are friendly and polite, fun and interesting. But sadly, every so often we have “takers”. Not only do they actually take our time and possessions, but they also take our energy as well. Constantly having to be aware that we mustn’t give even a teeny weenie bit, otherwise we will be taken for a very big ride. Every time I am surprised by these people, even though they make their intentions very clear from the start. We will say something like “Please don’t drive on to the campsite the ground it rather soft at the moment”  and that will be met with “I am only going to empty the car, then I will be off” and yet again, we know what we are in for - a week or so of “takers”. The slightest favour turns into a demand for more and more, spoilt little children who have never learned any manners or consideration for others, they take and take and take.

This last fortnight we have had such a couple on our site. We did them a favour when they first arrived. We do this sort of thing all the time, someone forgets to bring something with them, we lend them ours, someone has a problem with the car, we phone and translate so that the mechanic and visitor can communicate, and many small things inbetween.  We don’t expect anything in return, except a thank you and a little respect, we are after all just human. I won’t go into the gory details, but the favour we did this time was rather big and it actually cost us money, time and effort. Even so, we did it willingly and so we have given. On the return front, we did not even receive a thank you and I must say, even though it shouldn’t have, that did irritate me, as I said before, I'm only human. All the time they have been camping on our site, he has been very unpleasant, probably using his skills as a psychologist to manipulate us into getting what he wanted. I always thought that being a counsellor was a caring profession, I always thought that if you had your own practise you at least cared about other people, but in this case I have been very wrong.

Normally we would let it drop, life is too short to get wound up, but last night when they came to pay for their stay, we suggested that they should contribute to our expenses. Without even knowing how much we were suggesting, they refused point blank. Maybe they were afraid to ask how much it had cost, maybe they thought that for 7 Euros a night they were entitled to everything or maybe they just enjoyed the “taking”. Who knows what was going on in their minds.

This sorry episode ends here and now.  I am putting into practice something I was told a long time ago: "the events and people in your past can only affect you today, if you allow them to”. So Mr G K (no hyphen) H of somewhere near Rotterdam, to put an end to your taking from me, I give you the 20 Euros we were hoping you would reimburse us with. I hope that you set it aside to buy something that will give you pleasure, because I fear that all of the things you take from people like us, give you no pleasure at all. 

That's it - one taker sucessfully exorcised from my life.


For information on our campsite and gites, which are now restored to being full of lovely people, click here.

Putting up tents.

Fifi by the water barrels

I was strimming the reeds in the reed bed at the end of this week, when I noticed that the large white communal tent had gone up at Taizé. Spring is on its way and Easter is just around the corner. Things on the hill are busying up with a veritable army of volunteers (the so called “permanents”) who are preparing everything to cope with the huge influx of people for the Easter meetings. Tent frames are going up all over the place ready for the masses of blue accommodation tents which will be full in a few weeks. It is not surprising then, that we were lulled into a false sense of security about the pending camping weather.

Ice transported to the ditch

Every time low temperatures are predicted, we empty the water barrels at the bottom of our stairs so that they do not get damaged by the ice, so it was with horror yesterday that we spotted that there was an inch of ice on top of the water and the Fifi saving ladders could no longer be moved at all. So with the temperature at –3 degrees yesterday afternoon, there we were breaking ice and carting it off into the ditch along with about 2-300 litres of freezing cold water. I managed to get Fifi to pose for the photo just after we had done the work and doesn’t she look nice and warm with that fluffy fur coat of hers.

We were just in time, it them started to snow and my beautiful view of the tents in Taizé has been somewhat wiped out. So no photo of the tents in Taizé I am afraid, but here’s a nice photo of tents on our campsite, not taken this week by the way !

Non-view of Taizé

Campsite looking out towards Taizé

For more pictures of the campsite or our holiday accommodation click here.

Changes at La Tuilerie

This time last week

I am a bit tardy this week with my blog, but I think I have a relatively good excuse - I’ve been hard at work.

The bathroom in l’Ecurie has been showing its age the last year or two - well who hasn’t really - so this winter’s big maintenance job was to give it a face lift.

As any cosmetic surgeon will know, when you start to correct one thing, something else lets the whole image down. In this case, I started chipping off a little bit of plaster back in November and well, one thing led to another.

The troops have arrived

This time last week, the bathroom looked like the first photo and I was beginning to despair that it would ever look like a bathroom again and even if it ever did, I had no confidence that that would be in time for our first guests at the beginning of April.

Despite the snow early last week, a very competent friend turned up to swell the ranks and things started to improve. At last someone with confidence that this could be solved. Walls rendered, tiles up and finally this morning, I have finished the grouting, now doesn’t that look great?

Grouting done

For the full reveal you will have a wait another week or so until the painting is done and the shower put up etc, but at last I feel we are getting somewhere.


For details of our holiday accommodation - almost with a new bathroom - click here.

Back in Business !

We have just received an email from a couple wanting to book for the campsite, they were concerned that our website said we were closed???

It took me ages to figure out they had read my blog. So to all you campers out there, WE ARE OPEN !!!

Well openish, you might not be able to park your car on the campsite if it rains too much in the next few days and we are down to three spaces because we can only accept as many cars as parking spaces that we have available off the site, but we have campers and we even have cars today and here's a photo to prove it!

How to Cheer Yourself Up

This summer continues to be strange weather-wise. For the people in the gîtes, the weather has been quite kind, the rain is keeping itself to concentrated periods, with hot sunny weather in-between, but for the campsite, every drop of rain, whether it falls in the daytime or during the night, whether it is drizzle or in a downpour, is a drop too much. So, with a very heavy heart, we decided to close the campsite temporarily, because the ground is just too wet. We managed to find spaces for everyone in local campsites, not as quiet and secluded as here, but still within the area. The same day we decided to close up, poor Fifi was bitten by a vicious insect that looked to me like an earwig (I didn’t know they bit and hung on for grim death) and we had an emergency dash to the vet to get her sorted. So this last week hasn’t been all that great to be honest.

Sunday morning, feeling a bit down, after yet another night of thunder storms and rain, we headed into Saint Gengoux le National where a free glass of wine and little snacks were on offer to tourists. I do voluntary work for the Tourist Office and not having ducked quickly enough at the last general meeting, I have ended up as the head of the committee for holiday accommodation, arts and crafts and other commercial activities. Don’t ask me what I am really supposed to do, but we have at least had one committee meeting. At that meeting we decided to jazz up the “welcome to our region” drinks. The drinks for the last three years have been a spectacular flop. No tourist seemed to want to have a free drink and brioche (which I detest) at 5pm on a Monday and so we thought Sunday morning, just before lunch, might attract more customers. The wonderful Marilyn in the Office de Tourisme has managed to get some of the local food and drink businesses to donate their produce to offer to the tourists and this morning was the first event of the season.

Cees and I tried to arrive on time (French time that is) but we arrived just before 11 for an eleven o’clock start. Surprisingly the place was a hive of activity, dozens of volunteers crashing into each other, spreading pâté on toasts, cutting up goats cheese and generally flapping about. Even the local journalist had arrived. A table had been set-up on the pavement outside the office and the president of the Office de Tourisme was trying to stop the table cloth from flying away by finding little stones from here and there. I felt rather guilty at not helping, but it was so French in organisational terms, I felt it would be better to give everyone a wide berth.

Finally at 11.15 our President started the speeches and then he said that “La Responsable de la Commission Hébergeurs, artisans d’art et activités commerciales” would like to say a few words, yikes that’s me ! Thanks for the warning Monsieur C. I managed to stumble a welcome and a little description of the delicacies that were before our noses and then invited everyone to a get glass of wine, but no, Monsieur C - the master a long speeches - felt that mine had not been long enough and continued for me, telling everyone what he thought I should have said. We finally got to have a glass of wine just before half past.

The snacks were very tasty and worthy of a mention. Smoked salmon (not tasted by me because of my allergy to fish) and smoked duck breast smoked in St Gengoux by a Scotsman, goats cheese and goat terrine from La Trufière in Lys where we buy our cheese, some delicious bread from the baker Gelin in St Gengoux, jambon persillée (parsley ham - a regional delicacy which I am personally not too keen on, but most people love it) from the butchers Guillemin in St Gengoux, fruit juice from Parfums de Terroir just down the road from here in Taizé and the wine was from the Vignerons de Buxy, which runs the wine merchants in St Gengoux where we buy most of our wine.

All in all not a bad way to cheer yourself up and there were even some tourists who joined our little party as well.

La Tuilerie Website

The Inauguration

There is nothing the French like more than a good excuse to celebrate, so this week we organised an inauguration at La Tuilerie. We invited the Mayor and two members of the council with their partners and all was set for The Inauguration.

The whole story starts really from the time we opened the gîtes in 2007 - a year after the campsite was opened. We had always allowed the campers to use our washing-lines in the back garden, to hang their washing or their wet towels on, but on a Saturday (gîte change-over day) if I wasn’t very clever, I ended up with nowhere to hang the masses of washing. We stuck up signs, warned people and as a last resort even moved their washing to take up less space, so that I could at least hang up one or two of the sheets, but there is no doubt about it, it has been difficult at times. So we were always asking around, if anyone had any old washing-line posts that we could have, to put on the campsite.

Finally last year, our friends Chris and Mary, from Varanges, came up trumps and announced that they were removing their posts and we could have them. Well actually, they had already removed one post and the second was due to be removed shortly. Sadly, Chris had already chopped one of the posts in three bits, because he was preparing to take it to the dump, but the other one could be collected intact.

I may have followed a twelve week welding course back in my student days, but rather pathetically, I never mastered the art or science of electric arc welding and so I had to find someone to reconstruct the continuity-challenged post. At the village party last year, we asked the Mayor - after he had had a couple of glasses of wine of course - if he knew anyone who could weld and his immediate reaction was that he would do it for us – result !

A couple of days later we had two whole posts, but the problem did not end there of course. Anyone who has visited here will agree that, in the dry months, the ground is harder than rock-hard and Cees and I failed to even attempt to dig holes for the posts, but Cees’ daughter and partner are not the sort of people to be defeated by a little bit of clay and they dug the holes. After concreting the posts in place and putting up the lines, we had a washing-line on the campsite, for the first time in our 7 years of being in business.

But what is a washing-line without an official opening? So Thursday evening the Mayor was invited to pin the official sock, with the official peg on to the brand-new line. He then declared our washing-line well and truly inaugurated. Thank you Jean-François !

We then all retired to the back garden to indulge in the real reason for the gathering, a few glasses of crément and aperitif snacks, leaving our campers wondering why on earth we had left a sock hanging on the new washing-line.

For more information on our lovely peaceful campsite with a brand new washing line click here.

Maintenance

It has been a beautiful autumn, which has allowed us to get some much needed maintenance done around the place. Well I say “us” quite loosely , let’s just say it has allowed some maintenance to be done. The front shutters were taken down more than a year ago by friends who can cope with ladders and have been waiting to be painted and returned to their rightful position and as has previously been blogged, we have had a TV aerial in our kitchen for a year waiting for someone to attach it to the wall or roof outside. That is not to mention the kitchen window shutters which were desperately in need of a lick of paint and a washing line that needed to be put up on the campsite. So how does on get all this done when you are a couple of weak wimps who can’t go further up a ladder than the second rung?

Well this is where children come in very handy. Not having any myself, it was down to Cees to supply the person-power. Cees’ daughter had said she was coming for a week one of the gites at the beginning of October with her partner who is not afraid of heights ! Now what better opportunity was there?

The last weeks in September were busy with painting shutters and organising a scaffold tower and we were all set for the work. And boy did they work. The shutters were up in a flash and then the TV aerial. Zip off to remove the kitchen shutters, felt the need to paint the window frame too while they were up there, shutters painted and replaced.

What more could one ask? Well…… maybe dig a couple of holes on the campsite for a washing line? Great here we go. The clay on the campsite was so hard and dry they had to use a drill to loosen the soil then dig it out using a trowel. Holiday over, no time to mix the concrete and put up the posts, oh well I suppose we ought to do something ourselves !

So a super big thank you to you two and I am glad you managed a couple of days of cycling, walking and sightseeing while you were here as well, next time……..


La Tuilerie Website

The Camping Season is Over

The season is over and so now all that rests is for me to announce the winners of the 2011 championship.

Before I do that, I must say what a successful season it has been this year, with summer starting early this year (at the beginning of April) we had a very long dry season, there was a little wet hiccup for two weeks in July but that didn’t dampen our campers’ spirits too much, which was good news.

For those new to this competition I will briefly recap the categories. Category 1 – the longest stay ever (longest number of consecutive nights); Category 2 – the most cumulative tent nights and Category 3 – the most number of single visits.

Category 1: We have a couple of cracking attempts at this awards in 2011. Sadly both attempts failed, but for different reasons, one misunderstood the difference between cumulative and consecutive and the other took one night out in a hotel just before reaching his target so his run of nights was broken (empty tents don’t count !) but even though both attempts were strategically flawed, it has shown us that with the right approach and with a lot of perseverance this record is definitely beatable. So Marilou and Niek have still managed to hang on to their lead at 25 nights and Cees and Bets remain second with 21 nights both attempts being in 2007 and third place is now shared by Coen and Marja (2009) and Thomas (this year) with 20 nights. Sadly Thomas could so easily could have had 25 or even 26 nights had he not made that serious error.

Category 2: We saw the return of Family H this year after one year’s absence and so in category 2 they are possibly becoming unbeatable, they work well as a team and they

all pull together to make sure that they clock up those nights in a most effective way. Hans and Joke do very well considering there are just two of them, but this year’s real surprise was Janine and Mijntje who charged ahead with great gusto at the beginning of May, they could have done a lot better, but they decided to spend their summer holiday somewhere else (how could they?). So the final score is Family H with a staggering 83 nights, Janine and Mijntje moved up into second place with 56 nights, just pushing Hans and Joke down into third place at 55 nights.

Category 3: Both Bert and Engelien and Kirsty and Angus returned after an absence of two years, so there has been some movement in this category as well. The placings are Hans and Joke at 7 visits remain the leaders, 2nd Janine and Mijnte at 6 visits and Dick and Marijke, Bert and Engelien, Kirsty and Angus share the third place at 5 visits each.

This year the first ever “Judges discretionary award for outstanding achievement in camping near Cormatin and Taizé” was awarded to Janine and Mijntje for their overall camping achievements, their valiant, if flawed, attempt at Category 1 this year and for their amazing leap from 8th place in Category 2 only two years ago right up to second place. So you see with the right effort these seemingly unassailable records can be broken.

The judges are looking for more categories to broaden the championships and to be more inclusive for newcomers, all suggestions are welcome.

Finally a big thank you to all campers past and present for your active participation and we wish you a good non-camping season and we look forward to seeing you again very soon.

For our website with more lovely pictures of the campsite and gites click here.

Water

My Mum has been with us for the last two weeks, she arrived during a thunder storm and left during a thunder storm with dry, dry days in-between with temperatures up to a suffocating 38 degrees in the shade. The first few days we managed some time in the garden, but then all we could do was find the coolest spot possible and sit and read.

What is better reading material for such hot, dry weather than Jean de Florette. The crux of the story is about water, our need for it, our battle to find it and control it and about the lengths some people will go to, to get hold of this life giving liquid. As the story tumbles to its inevitable conclusion where one man and his family is destroyed by the lack of water, I couldn’t help thinking how lucky we are to live in a place and time where we really don’t have to worry about where the next drop will come from. Yes - water has been scarce this year, yes - we have been banned from washing cars and using hosepipes, but that doesn’t come anywhere near to the struggle some people suffer every day in their search for the stuff. So as I looked out of the train window on my way back from London, whilst passing the water tower in Ameugny and the tents of Taizé drenched by rain, the prospect of having to shut the campsite for a few days, due to it being too wet to drive on, didn’t seem like a hardship any more.

La Tuilerie Website

World Record Attempt

We have had a valiant attempt at the “most number of consecutive nights” camping award class 1. Thomas from Germany who originally booked for 14 nights extended his stay by a week and at 20 nights, when he could see that the award was within his reach, he called for reinforcements by getting his wife to join him for three nights, but his camping rhythm was broken and he was all out of stamina and so he and his wife left after his tent had been on the campsite for 24 nights, one night short of Marilou and Niek’s outstanding performance back in 2007. However Thomas did not realise that the fact that he had an overnight stay in Dijon on night 21, when he went to collect his wife from the bus station, he had in fact broken his consecutive stay, so his real score has to be registered at 20 nights, which drops him down to joint third place. However, this attempt shows that the record is beatable, but forward planning and stamina are needed. So come on all you world-record seekers, there is still time this season to win the award.

For more information on our campsite click here.

Prickly Pineapples

I have been trying to make myself a light shawl for summer evenings ever since last year. My ideal was to use pineapples (a special crochet stitch/pattern that looks like a pineapple or the “eye” on a peacock’s tail) to stretch along the length of a straight shawl, but could I find a pattern for pineapples in a straight line ? All the patterns I could find in books and on the net were all for pineapples in a circle. So I set about trying to draw out my own pattern and even to crochet small pieces to see if I could figure it out. I soon got bored. - so gone was the idea of my lovely shawl.

This spring we treated ourselves to a new sofa and I felt it looked rather plain so I decided to crochet a nice little antimacassar for the back and some arm covers, but what pattern

to use? I stumbled upon an archived version of a site called “Vintage Crochet” which had been taken down a few years ago and although the archive is not complete, many of the chair backs were still available and what did I find? A pattern for straight pineapples ! It looked so pretty as an antimacassar I decided to use that pattern and here are the results, now all I had to do was up the hook size and use wool instead of cotton thread and my long awaited shawl would materialise.

Well the pineapples are proving more tricky than I thought in wool, maybe it is because it is summer and I am not concentrating as much, but whatever it is, I seem to have to keep undoing and re-doing bits of this shawl and the other day I just put it away so that I could chill out for a bit. During my

cooling off period we had some Dutch guests in one of our gîtes and after chatting with them one day I discovered that she was very interested in patchwork, we chatted out this and that, about my crochet and she showed me pictures of her work (amazing I must say) and that was that. A couple of hours later, to my surprise she arrived at our table in the garden with a little pouch. She said she always brought something to keep her hands busy on holiday and this was for me ! It was exactly the right size for my crochet hooks, so I dashed upstairs, put my hooks in it and started back on my shawl. Do you know what? I haven’t made a mistake on this shawl since – thanks Gon for getting me going again !

The Camping Gauntlet Has Been Thrown Down !

The campsite is not yet officially opened for the 2011 season and yet there has been a very brave attempt to smash the record for the longest number of tent nights in one stay! Janine and Mijntje have managed to clock up 31 tent nights by using all of their strategic planning skills. Their record breaking attempt was slightly thwarted by one of their party who dived into a gite at the last minute thus losing them an extra 4 nights and their careless removal of one tent for the last night, lost them another. The way they managed this feat will not be revealed in this blog so that other campers cannot ride on the back of their ingenuity, but it must be said that bribing the judges with corenwijn and peanut butter was a masterstroke of genius. It was however, with great regret that we had to inform Janine and Mijntje that they had slightly misunderstood the rules associated with category 1 of the camping championship, these tent nights need to be consecutive. So the record of 25 consecutive nights set by Marilou and Niek and held by them for 4 years, still stands.

Having said that it was felt that the incredible effort put in by this pair needed to be rewarded, so the first ever “Judges’ Discretionary Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Camping in Cormatin, Taizé and Surroundings” has been presented to Janine and Mijntje! Congratulations!

The judges are a little disappointed that the girls are not building on their success by holidaying in France this summer and in view of the fact that they now only just share the lead for both the most cumulative tent nights (category 2) and the most number of separate visits (category 3), they are unlikely to head either of these categories by the end of the season.

Marlotte, Jan-Luuk, Annaloes, Jeanine and Johan are returning this summer and with their world famous ability to clock up tent nights, they will most probably retain their lead in Category 2 but there are others who could also charge ahead with the right strategy. Category 3 is the most open category at the moment, Hans and Joke were the leaders last year and only have to visit once this summer to re-take the outright lead, however there are others who could move up to pole position with a little effort. So this could be the category to watch this year and records could be broken by the person or persons who really put their mind to it.

In any case the competition is hotting up in 2011 and we are looking forward to seeing new and old campers alike rise to the challenge.

For those interested in the results of last year's competition click here and for more information about the campsite and more pictures go to La Tuilerie Website.

Getting ready for our guests

The season is nearly upon us, every day we notice more and more tourists in Cormatin and Cluny, the big tents have gone up in Taizé as they are preparing for the huge influx of people for Easter and we are busy preparing our gîtes to receive the first guests this coming weekend. The last couple of weeks have seen us plastering and painting, measuring and mending, hoovering and polishing, gardening and making sure that everything is in working order and clean and ready to roll. The septic tank will be emptied on Thursday and then everything is done (I hope).

It is a busy time, but exciting as well, as our sleepy winter life turns into our busy summer life, meeting new people, many of whom will become our friends and greeting returnees to both the gîtes and campsite.

The last few days have been dedicated to digging out the drainage channel alongside the campsite. It is two years since we first cleared it out and there has been a build up of mud again so that the water has not been running off well. The final stretch through the hedge at the bottom was this morning’s job. When you are bald working in a bramble hedge is a painful operation, so we borrowed a hard hat from our friends Chris and Mary and in Cees went to cut through the hedge and clear the last bit. Done and working - bravo !

By the way this is what happens when you drop your glasses in the mud !

La Tuilerie Website

Winter's Here

Well winter has arrived and, as with every year, it comes as a surprise to me. Although we had our first frosts in October as usual, the weather has been very mild the last few weeks, I went to the market in Cluny in my shorts last week, but yesterday we awoke to a fine layer of snow and I had to admit defeat and put long trousers on. The girls who run the Dutch cheese stall in Cluny market even commented on the fact that I wasn’t wearing shorts! After lunch in Cluny (Café du Centre for a change) we came home and Cees went off to his painting classes in Cormatin. I have taken to going for a walk on Saturday afternoons while he is out and today I decided to go up the hill to Taizé and I was treated to a lovely view of La Tuilerie with a light sprinkling of snow. I walked into the shop in Taizé to look at the pottery, browse through the books and cards and warm up a bit before the walk home though the woods. It is lovely circuit, mostly on footpaths, hardly walking on any roads at all and I even bumped into Frère Alois in the woods obviously doing the same walk but in the other direction.

Finally before Cees came back I had to do my chores for the day, drain the water down out of the gîtes. As we don’t rent them out in the winter, we don’t heat them and so there is always the risk of burst pipes. I emptied the water from the campsite a few weeks ago and now with the temperature at –4 degrees last night and no sign of warmer weather in the next week, it is better to be safe than sorry. I even switched the TV on for a few minutes before Cees came back, very unlike me, but after the disaster with the transfer to digital TV, I keep feeling that I need to check that everything is still working. It is so nice to be able to watch the quiz again in the evenings and our favourite documentary “Les Racines et Les Ailes”. Fortunately we have discovered that we can get reception through the single glazed windows in the kitchen, so we don’t have to have the living room (double glazed) windows open to get a signal (a bit chilly to say the least) and even though it looks a bit weird to have the huge new aerial in the kitchen, it isn’t really in the way now that Cees has built a very smart new wooden structure to support it! We will have to come up with a more permanent solution at some stage, but that can wait.

More details about our gites and campsite are on La Tuilerie Website.

Camping Championship Results 2010

Well it’s that time of year again folks when the winners of the annual camping contest are announced! Ooh I can feel the excitement in my readers mounting, so I will not prolong your agony any longer. There is of course always the possibility of a last minute surge from some unexpected source, but I will risk it and I am going to announce the winners today.

For those new to this competition I will briefly recap the categories. Category 1 – the longest stay ever; Category 2 – the most cumulative tent nights and Category 3 – the most number of visits.

This year we had no serious contenders in Category 1 with the longest number of tent nights being a paltry 14 so the world champions remain Marilou and Niek with an outstanding and apparently unbeatable 25 consecutive nights way back in 2007, Cees and Bets remain second with 21 nights also in 2007 and third are Coen and Marja with 20 nights in 2009. We really would like to see some serious contenders in this category, it is as if the stamina has gone out of our campers, so come on potential campers, this is record that is crying out to be broken!

In Category 2 there has been some movement, with last years’ winners sadly not being able to come in 2010 due to family circumstances, it has allowed other campers to get within grasp of the title, however the impressive score of 56 tent nights for Johan, Janine and family still proves to be unbeatable. Hans and Joke have made inroads into their deficit, however, they remain second even though they have now clocked up an admirable 48 tent nights, not far to go! Third place stays with Marijke and Dick who also managed to improve on last years’ total and are now up to 39 tent nights. The most impressive change of position came from Janine and Mijntje who have shot up from 8th position to joint 5th, partly helped by bringing their parents with them this time (maybe that is a tip to others to help improve their rating).

Category 3 has shown the most exciting changes. Whilst Hans and Joke remain the all-time champions now up to 6 visits, Janine and Mijntje are snapping at their heals with 5 visits – it really pays to visit us twice in a season, your scores can leap that way. In joint third position we have Dick and Marijke, Bert and Engelien, Kirsty and Angus and Hans, Anja and family all with 4 visits.

Congratulations to all the winners, you can bask in your glory for another year, but don’t be complacent you never know who or what 2011 will bring.

Finally a big thank you to all our campers from the one nighters to the long stayers, you have made this a good summer, even though it was not a record breaking season!

For more information about the campsite and more pictures go to La Tuilerie Website.

Water and Guitars

I am starting to fear Saturdays. They are the busiest and most stressful day of the week, we have to prepare both gites for new guests, clean everywhere, repair any damage and have the gite looking just right in time for the new arrivals. It is intensive work, but if the leaving guests leave on time (before 10.00 am) and the new guests do not appear too early (after 3.00pm) then it can be achieved. Little repairs can knock the day off schedule and the last two Saturdays have been just like that.

Last week, along with the trauma of having to collect Fifi the cat from the vet’s in Cluny, I found out that the sink discharge in one of gites has been leaking for some time, mess everywhere and only a few hours to repair the damage, clean up and dry the walls (yes the water had really been going everywhere!) So the afternoon was spent with my head under the sink with hairdryer in hand pumping hot air on to the wall, all that with 30 degrees outside. This week, it turns out that the sink in our own kitchen has been leaking down into the bathroom below, mess everywhere, call out the plumber - I didn’t dare do it myself, I didn’t know what I would find when I opened up the joint. Monsieur Kotas our trusty plumber was called and he agreed to come out on a Saturday afternoon, what a star. Job done, we now have water again in the house and not pouring down the gite bathroom wall.

The guests arrived on time and fortunately on both occasions they were none the wiser about the frantic activity going on before their arrival.

We had earned an evening enjoying ourselves and that was just what we did. We went to the last concert in the ”Guitares en Cormatinois” series. We went to Saturday’s concert to “cheer ourselves up”, not really expecting much. The group was called Poivre et Celte (a typically French play on words) and they were playing “world music” umm... We have had renditions of how obscure French groups have treated the music from other countries, but it was local and this series is normally good. Much to our great surprise and enjoyment the group were superb! A guitarist, a viola player and a drummer who played what I think was a Makuta drum, he also played an African thumb piano to great effect in one song. The viola player changed instruments a number of times playing at different times the didgeridoo and a recorder and he had a beautiful singing voice. They played music from many countries in their own style and I for one will not forget their punk rendition of “Dirty old Town” in a hurry!

Maybe Saturdays in Cormatin aren’t that bad after all.

For more information on the accommodation here, click here.