One lot of guests actually stole from my neighbour’s wood pile for a barbeque.
Another lot let their dog fertilise our neighbour’s potager and tomatoes. So, my scope of concern is quite wide reaching.
And then I worry about whether the local wildlife with which we share our land and which includes muskrats, Courleuve (the brightly coloured but large local snakes) and even the odd salamander (not to mention the occasional wild boar), will thrill and delight them or leave our guests running for cover.
And I often have misgivings that the local farmer will repeat his antics of a year or two ago. On the day of our departure he sprayed muck on the fields that adjoin us. A six hour drive with a very smelly dog in a hire car is not something I want to repeat in a hurry and I certainly don’t want to inflict it upon our guests. And if I was cynical, I might even suspect that the farmer did it on purpose.
Finally I worry about whether the housekeeper will have enough time to turn it all around on changeover, whether the towels are white enough or whether she’ll remember to dust on top of the cupboards.
I love our holiday home and think it has the wow factor. We’ve tried hard to make it the sort place that is of course clean, tidy and a little bit stunning. But we also wanted to make our gîte a place where guests can relax, particularly if they have children, so they don’t have to worry constantly about dirty finger or footprints.
Of course not everybody wants the same thing from their holiday home. I’ve heard stories of guests complaining because they don’t like the fact that the kettle has been used before, there’s a piece missing from the Monopoly set, a spider in the