We don’t normally head down to our gîte in the Vendée during the February break but with external building works in full swing, this year we decided we needed to be there to make sure we’re still on track for the arrival of our first guests in spring. So we braved a journey that included torrential rain, sleet and snow, buffeting winds and a dog with a poorly tum and arrived on a soggy Saturday night.
There’s a fair chance that a holiday in France at this time of year, is not going to include great weather and the omens certainly weren’t good, but the Vendée never seems to let us down! On the morning after our arrival the sun was out, the sky was brilliant blue having cleared overnight, the temperature had dropped to well below freezing and we enjoyed an early morning coffee (well not that early) wrapped up on the terrace admiring the frosty fields and woodland in one direction and a quagmire of a building site in the other direction.
With guests arriving in less than three months, what I was hoping to see was a sunny, decked terrace area around the pool, a sheltered barbeque area backing up against lime washed old stones walls and views across the grassy fields. What was actually there was piles of stone, sand and aggregate, miles of plastic tubing and corrugated iron, a lot of mud and a very large hole where the pool will go. My other half reassured me that we’re on course for completion in early April but even with my imagination, it was hard to believe.
First job of this visit then was to start moving the heavy stones and rubble which had been thrown across the surrounding grass and what we (laughingly) call lawns where the digger had dug out the hole for the pool, the aim being to give the churned up grass a fighting chance of recovery. The trouble was that on day one, despite the whole family being ready to work, the ground was so frozen we couldn’t shift or lift a thing.
Never discouraged, plan B was to start clearing the vast pile of old wood and timbers which had been cleared out of what will be the new terrace (and used to be a tumbled down barn), and dumped unceremoniously in front of the house. This involved sawing up some of the old timbers for burning and firewood but the day had other plans for us and the chainsaw broke at the first cut.