About La Tour de Genèbre

7 charming holiday cottages in the Dordogne. Heated pool, 9 hole pitch & putt course, farm animals & much more. Perfect for all the family!

Another season over

The last of this season’s guests have left, it’s now gone eeriliy quiet here and once again it’s time to reflect on the past few months….

dordogne holiday cottagesIt’s been a strange season this year with a very wet Spring , an up & down Summer and an absolutely gloriously warm September. Apart from the mixed weather, it’s been a great year! ( Not according to many restaurants though who are complaining that their takings plummeted this year… 🙁 )

This year’s Good Bits…..

The Guests!

The best bit must surely be our wonderful guests….some have been so many times before that they have now become old friends. When they arrive they let themselves in and by the time we’ve spotted them they’re already on the terrace with a glass of rosé waiting for us…..what could be better than that??!

family holidays at our dordogne gites

Lots of lovely first time visitors here too this year and some have already booked to come back next year so 2015 is looking good!!

(Not much usually happens before Dec/Jan but we already have 39 weeks booked for 2015 and August is already fully booked up at La Genèbre so not much hope for the French enquirers who always seem to phone in July to enquire about availability in August 🙁 )

Here’s a good place to say a massive Thank You to everyone who chose to spend their holiday here and an extra special thanks to those who enjoy it enough to keep coming back!  Thank you too to everyone who has taken the time to like & comment on our Facebook page and to all of you who follow this Blog – it all helps to spread the fuzzy pink aura!!

The Kittens!

gites with animals dordogneOn a close par right up there with the guests must be Poppins and her kittens…too long a saga to repeat here but if you’re interested you can read all about it in these posts!

A Tale of Two Kitties                                                                                                            The New Arrivals

A big thank you to all of our lovely guests who brought toys & treats for the kittens and played with them whenever they could …. you did a fantastic job of socialising them – well worth the little nips & scatches!! This made going to their new homes so much easier for them…not for me though – I cried buckets when they left 🙁

Thank you too to all of you who arrived after the kittens had left home and gave Poppins lots of much needed attention -she certainly enjoyed being fussed over and making herself at right at home whenever a potential tummy tickler or a knee to curl up on was on offer!

Latest news is that Miss Molly has reverted to Top Cat and tolerates Poppins as long as she doesn’t push the boundaries too far and Poppins has reluctantly accepted that Miss Molly will not be bullied and has decided to back down…..a much better outcome than I was expecting!

La Tour de Genèbre

After a stressful start and much, much more work than was supposed to be needed (isn’t that always the way) we are now on the home straight, finishing off the little bits & pieces and just about to start work on the last bedroom…The website is up & running and August is already fully booked! Keep up to date with the progress on La Tour’s own Facebook page (not many likes as yet- fuzzy aura still to appear!)

Loom Bands

This year’s latest craze! Children of all ages were deftly weaving these tiny elastic bands into wonderful creations! At one point the games room was almost turned into a loom band factory with someone always on the production line from dawn till dusk! I was beginning to fret about the ever growing pile of bracelets when one enterprising group of children decided to hold a charity loom band sale!

loom bands

Loom band snake!

The selling technique was aggressive and I think they did a roaring trade – I never did ask which charity was to be the lucky recipient of all this cash but I handed over my €1 for this glorious snake which has since been loitering in the bottom of my cluttered handbag (having parted company  with the keyring several times). I also have a loom band guitar which a little boy made for me & two bracelets which I found in the dressing up basket – quite a collection!!

 This year’s Not So Good Bits…..

Yellow Liner

We don’t usually have any not so good bits but if we did have any this year it would have to be the swimming pool’s new liner. Well not actually the liner itself which we were really pleased with, more the effect of the copious amounts of sun protection lotions & potions which come off and stick to everything as soon as the wearer jumps into the water. ( I have just disposed of a huge inflatable black & white whale with a distinctive greeny/yellow  line all along its underbelly!)

16m x 6m heated pool

New sand coloured liner fitted in the pool at the beginning of May 2014

After much deliberation and a season with a temporary frieze stuck on to 3 sides (see this post) we finally got a brand new liner fitted in April. The pool was filled & tested and ready for the first guests in the last week of May. We sat back, admired and smugly gloated over the fact that we’d have a pristine pool at least for another 4 or 5 years.

Fitting the new liner

By the end of June we were beaten. Despite almost daily cleaning with products so powerful that if you don’t wear rubber gloves they literally burn through your skin, nothing would remove the vicious yellow stain. Scrubbing away at 44 linear metres of liner every evening is a laborious and soul destroying task, especially when it has minimal effect.

discoloured waterline

Maximum strength - minimum effect

Amar has now announced that he’s thinking of providing a supply of French sun protection products which don’t have the same damaging effect on the liner as the UK ones. According to our French pool guru, the UK products have carotene in them (not labelled as such on the packaging) which is the real culprit but as the most damage seems to occur when we have very young children here who use a much higher protection factor than adults I suspect it’s more something to do with that …not sure where the carotene theory comes in there…. anyway the jury (that’s me 😉 ) is still out on Amar’s idea – I’m not so sure people will like being told what to use. Time will tell.

Loom Bands!

Just kidding – but they did get everywhere……in cupboards, down the sides of the sofas, in the washing machine, in the swimming pool filter, up the hoover…

Thanks again – roll on next year’s craze & roll on next season!!!

Cluttered handbags

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” Famous quote from Albert Einstein

Of what then is a cluttered handbag a sign, I wonder?

Just wondering though because I don’t actually have a problem with my bag or my mind. (Just as people in an AA meeting don’t have a problem either until they are forced to say “My name is…and I am an alcoholic”.)

My revelation came last week at a supermarket cash desk of all places. My shopping had amounted to the princely sum of € 50.32 and as I was paying by cheque I was asked for two pieces of ID. Not one but two – understandable of course, having to identify myself twice as after all this was an enormous amount of money for a few bits & pieces and if you’re a leading supermarket chain you can never be too careful.

pink purse

High viz salmon pink purses are indispensible for easy location in a crowded environment!

The two required pieces of information were unfortunately not conveniently at the top of the bag thereby necessitating an indiscreet & full  rummage around in its cavernous bowels.When I failed to locate the passport & driving licence within the first couple of minutes Emma joined in the search, muttering away to herself in French & drawing enormous unwanted attention to the intestinal condition of my poor handbag cum holdall.

With two people now unable to find the necessary documents I was beginning to panic that I may well be forced to empty the entire contents out on to the cash desk. I smiled apologetically at the evergrowing queue and grovellingly asked the cashier if she would accept my carte vitale (social security health insurance card) instead. It was in my high viz large salmon pink purse which was relatively easy to find 😉

Now if I were in Scotland this would be the point when I would have expected a humorous remark & some easy banter to ease my obvious embarrassment but no, this is France (maybe best not to make such sweeping statements) my local Carrefour and instead I got a steely glare and a straight “No” along with some very loud drumming of her fingers on the cash desk catching the attention of the people at the end of the queue who up until now had been blissfully unaware of the reason for the hold up.

I was just about to admit defeat and leave ( first having of course humiliatingly replaced all the unpurchased items back on their respective shelves myself as this is outwith the remit of any of the staff’s job descriptions) when I spotted the burgundy edge of my passport sticking out between a carry out menu and a pair of pop socks. Crisis averted and another life lesson learned.

“My name is Elena and I have a cluttered handbag.”

empty desk empty mind

some of the contents of a cluttered handbag

Here we go….

  • Paint sample charts
  • Two lipsticks
  • Mascara
  • A nice bundle of pens (probably why there are none on my desk)
  • 14 individual packets of sugar
  • 5 wooden coffee stirrers
  • 1 large notebook
  • 1 small notebook
  • Wallet with store loyalty cards
  • Tourist information leaflets
  • Some receipts
  • Empty wallet for car registration papers (wrote off the car last January)
  • Two cases for reading glasses
  • Only one pair of reading glasses
  • 2 cheque books
  • Small calculator
  • Cleaning cloth for computer screens (for the reading glasses)
  • Takeaway menu for a Chinese restaurant in Brive
  • A paper clip
  • Measuring tape
  • 1 pair of pop socks (I don’t wear pop socks so they must be Emma’s)
  • Broken light bulb (need to match a replacement bulb)
  • Collectors booklet & stickers for supermarket promotion
  • Roll of sellotape
  • Small piece of electric cable (??don’t ask,no idea)
  • 2 wrapped boiled sweets
  • Sample tube of moisturiser
  • Camera
  • Money off vouchers
  • Perfume samples
  • Set of house keys
  • Loom band snake (bought for €1 when some of our enterprising young guests held a charity loom band sale – must have fallen off the keyring)
  • Big high viz salmon pink purse
  • Passport
  • Driving licence
  • Dust, crumbs and other unidentifiable debris
loom band snake

loom band snake, this year's latest craze

Well, I suppose that’s me well on the road to recovery….first stop, I’m off to buy a much smaller handbag, but one still big enough to home the high viz purse.

Next stop,off to have a good look at my desk…..