Happy New Year from Le Couvent

It's 5.30pm. The skies are clear blue and bright pink, but the light is fading fast on 2007. Tonight we're off to see in 2008 in Alignan du Vent and although neither of us particularly needs another seasonal party we'll have a good time, no doubt. We hope you have a good time, celebrating however you do in your corner of the world. We send you our love and hope you have a happy and healthy 2008. Perhaps we'll see you in Roujan sometime soon.

L'Entrepôt Restaurant

Isn't it just a delight when an unexpected present arrives? This luscious basket of foodstuffs and wine arrived from our lovely friends at restaurant L'Entrepôt in Pezenas. We happily make lots of bookings there for our guests during the summer. Darling Lionel and his team look after everyone with huge grins and endless care. There was no need for a present, but it is a measure of their kindness that they bothered.

Christmas au Couvent

A happy time was had by all, great evening at Erzsi's on Christmas Eve, two geese and Bourdic wines on Christmas Day, before setting off camping at the mazet on Boxing Day.

Ali bought me a fab sleeping bag for Christmas, so what was I to do but agree to sleeping in a 9 square metre hut in the middle of the vineyards in December? After all, seven bedrooms all with their own bathrooms can make one forget the essential things like - will we be warm enough?

So off we trundled with the dogs, soup, breakfast and good books. (Actually the car was filled to the gunwales, but mostly dog-stuff - oh yeah?)

It was magical. I was never less than sweltering thanks to a roaring fire and zillion-tog sleeping bag. The books were excellent and it was wonderful to be away from the phones. But the real corker was waking at 2am when Kit the labrador decided on a comfort break outside. The moon was so bright you could have read outside. Looking back towards the lights of Roujan, Caux and Neffies just made me grin. It's hard to feel anything other than enormous gratitude when you look up at a billion stars.

Next day voices drifting up the hill announced the arrival of Erszi, Heather and Alex who'd come for a walk, some lunch and a bit of pruning. The views were beyond divine.

Oh no, not another painting

Yep, Ali & I bought another painting. We can't afford it, but we've never, ever regretted a rash painting purchase. This time it was one from our old chum Dominique Caby. We have a couple already, but this one is exceptional - not least of all because it is a portrait - something of a departure from the pure abstracts we usually go for. Here's a crummy photo of it - but imagine a good deal more colour and an area of a metre and a half by a metre. It's huge and brash and wonderful and will look superb in our apartment.

To see more of Dominque and his partner Line's work, click the picture below.

Dom Caby & Line Mangin - Paintings

Five dogs and eight people

The great thing about dogs is their enthusiasm. Never having met before, Kit, Flynn, Biba, Jasper and Alfie rendezvous'd near the mazet with Ali & I and six friends. The dogs did a few manic turns around each other then scampered off for a fantastic walk together. They didn't stop for one second of our hour's walk. It was just a joy to see.

Cat nap

Anyone with a cat will know all about this. Gouttierre, the convent cat, wakes me at 5am by sliding her scratchy little toenails down the bedroom door. I'm thinking of buying her slippers.

Hot dog anyone?

The freezing weather's departed, but that doesn't fool the dogs and cat who hog the fire.

I'm hugely relieved to have finished a new website in time for Christmas for our chums over the road - in the biggest and most amazing house in Roujan. La Maison Verte is a centre from which people can run courses. So if you fancy running a gardening, walking or wine-tasting holiday for around 20-odd people, why not give Anne a ring at LMV? There are still a couple of weeks available for next season - and these are just suggestions - you may have a fantastic idea for a completely different course/holiday.

Hey, how about this?

This is at the top of my Christmas wish-list.

Pruning lesson

The sun shone, we lit fires, hot soup fortified us and we had an excellent pruning lesson with Hans & Christa. Are we lucky or what? Above are Ali and Christa cogitating the best route with a less than perfect vine.

When our lesson was over and the profs had departed we stuck around a while and fulfilled our role as Hans' chief tasters. Here are pruners extraordinaire, Ali, Alex and Debbi. Just another 10,960 vines and 25 olives (we found more) to go. Shouldn't take beyond 2010.

Snow? In the Languedoc? Shurly shum mishtake.

With 20 huge old olives to prune, I set off for our bit of land shortly before lunchtime today. A nip in the air and a lifetime of pleasure in real fires had me setting up a heap of burning vine stocks in the fireplace of our little mazet.
Armed with a flask of coffee, a saw and some shiny new secateurs (thanks Mum) I was set to do a few hours work. After giving lots of air and light to two of the olives I noticed the odd flake of something kind of wet. Surely not sleet? It was 17 degrees last week. After a few more minutes the olives looked like this:

Oh crikey, we have another vine-pruning lesson tomorrow, after which lots of people are going to be coming to the mazet for lunch and a bit of work in the vines. At the moment it looks like this and Ali tells me tomorrow's supposed to be worse. Ho hum. I'll let you know how we get on.
Meanwhile, we've had my Mum and her husband, John, here for a fortnight. Thankfully, they are happy to sit around and witness our lives rather than have us chauffeur them all over the place. At one point I brought in a chainsaw and strimmer to mend. It was cold out so I put them on newspaper on the kitchen table. "I'm rather glad you left home" observed my mother.

We're back - and grinning.

We've been busy for a while, so no blog entries. First of all Ali and I took a short week in England to attend our friend Ingrid Thomas' book launch. She's written the most gorgeous, definitive book about shells called, for some obscure reason, The Shell. The perfect Christmas present for someone who loves beautiful books.

While we were in London we did a huge shop for silly things the English here miss, like curry spices and horseradish, and also for English Breakfast tea which is requested daily all through the summer by our B&B guests. A very happy day was spent ambling along the South Bank and around the Tate Modern. Another night we were on our pal's alpaca farm - a haven in the middle of Oxfordshire.

But the prize for the most comfortable bed goes to Nick Kent, who oh-so-sweetly lent us his divine house in Maida Vale. Yes, we are very lucky people. Thanks Nick.

But the really big news (to us that is) is that we have paid the deposit on 10.5 acres of vineyards and forest just ten minutes from Le Couvent. We've signed the papers and would cough up right now, but we have to wait a couple of months for the agricultural organisation S.A.F.E.R. to decide they don't need the land more than us. After that it's ours. Meanwhile, the current owner, the sparkly-eyed 87 year old M. Gineste, has given us permission to start work on the land. As a result Ali and I, along with my family comprising Justin (aka Freddie), Michelle, Poppy & Josh plus Teddy and Nicola, have been working our socks off.

The vines have not been tended for nearly three years, so are pretty overgrown but, according to our expert pals who've been tending vines all their lives, they're rescuable. We're only going to look after the best of them, many will be grubbed up to make way for a new forest. (Freddie and I were, after all, children of the New Forest in Hampshire) Our purchase includes shares in the Cave Cooperative in Roujan, so with luck we'll be able to take our grapes there.

A couple of things make this land extra special. The views are absolutely superb - on almost any day you can see all the way to the sea at Sete. Secondly, there is the most delightful small building (known as a mazet) which has been used over the years as the centre of fun for the whole Gineste family. Oh, and I forgot the huge reservoir that doubles as a swimming pool.

Here we are with M Gineste and Christiane & Michel Rouille, plus Freddie & Poppy.

For the want of a decent-sized tractor, or any tractor at all, Josh had to clear the first vineyard using a domestic lawn-mower. He's young, it only took all day, and there're just 9.75 acres to go, so what's the problem?
Apart from producing some grapes to go off to the co-op, we intend making some oil from our olive grove and using the mazet as a place where we can bring guests to play during the summer. The walks are superb - a walk in the wild herbs is better than aromatherapy, the pomegranates, pears, figs, kiwi, table grapes and cherries are all divine and will appear on the Le Couvent breakfast table during their seasons. As Michelle said yesterday - I can't wait.

Old, plump and nerdy

Yep, that's me. But these aren't words you can use against my luscious new Mac laptop and the all new and shiny Mac Leopard operating system. Before I was  a B&B landlady in the south of France I had a computer company in England which built PCs for businesses and installed networks. We were very good at it, but it was tricky and stressful. I suppose, if one is going to fix computers you may as well choose the ones that go wrong, i.e. anything Microsoft. 

All that work that we used to struggle with is a complete snap with Leopard. Seconds after I had upgraded my Mac to luscious Leopard it had not only connected me to the Internet, it had also found our other two Macs and two PCs and logged me onto each of them. Automatically. I just noticed they were available. Not that long ago it would have taken half a day battling with settings and software to network PCs and Macs. 

 I just love the fact that Leopard knocks spots off Vista. Never again will I build or buy a PC. Hooray. I'm free!! I can get down to being a real B&B landlady.

So today I have my niece and her pal Etienne here lugging new sunbeds up the garden ready for next summer.

Strewth Ali - howdya get here?

All was going well with Ali's trip to Australia to see her family until she reached the BA check-in desk. Somewhere between leaving Eurostar and arriving in Heathrow Ali misplaced her passport. Lost, nicked? We may never know. Either way she was about to have to forgo her entire trip. Darling BA moved her ticket on 24 hours with the words 'it's a pity as we were about to give you a complimentary upgrade to First Class' - (worth having - we came back that way last year). Still, at least the ticket wasn't lost.

An overnight stay with Yvonne, our friend and wrangler of the impossible, who lives in London left Ali ready to tackle the passport office. By some great stroke of fortune I had taken copies of Ali's passport and birth certificate years ago and, after a few minutes trawling through an old computer to find them, I winged them off through the ether to Yvonne's computer. Armed with these documents, a skip load of charm and a great deal of height (both Ali & Yvonne are 6 footers) the Passport Office very graciously said they'd have a new passport ready at 6.30pm. Just three hours before Ali's flight and quite a distance through rush hour traffic back to Heathrow from central London. Meanwhile I applied for a new Australian visa to go with her new passport from my computer here in France. It worked, she took off and is currently having a lovely time with Don, Pam, Trisha & Tam.

Thank God for technology - and Macs which don't fail you in your hour of need.

Spread the WiFi

Visitors to Le Couvent have always been able to log onto our WiFi network free of charge. Now we have joined a bigger community of free WiFi centres by 'FON' enabling our router. Here in France the internet service provider Neuf has updated the software on their NeufBox to allow shared WiFi for anyone in the area who has enabled their own box - free, in hundreds of places throughout the world. What a fantastic idea. Click the logo above for more details. It's really very simple.

The guests have all gone...

... and the most common question we are asked at this time of the year is "so what do you do in the winter?" We're going to carry on the blog during the time that Le Couvent is closed to guests (1 October - 30 April, but taking bookings for next year) so the question will be answered.

Yesterday, after preparing breakfast, I drove to Barcelona to see my Mum & John, my step-father. They take cruise holidays each year, so I took the opportunity of catching up with them in my favourite Spanish city, just a three hour drive from Le Couvent. We had a lovely couple of hours in the luscious Placa Real and then I drove back, happy to have seen them.

Today Ali & I took off to Bouzigues


for some moules frites and Picpoul.

The weather was perfect, we made our winter's resolutions, and lunched well in a little restaurant called La Nymphe.


overlooking the oyster beds in the Bassin de Thau. Perfect.

Anyone need a new old car?

Three cars, a scooter and six bikes are too many vehicles for an eco-friendly B&B like Le Couvent. Two of them have to go and the first up for a thorough scrub is this handsome Mercedes 450 SL which was originally owned by the illustrious Albert Finney. It has a hard top and a soft top and a stonking 4.5 litre engine (so it goes like the clappers). At 25 years old and with just 69,000 miles on the clock it's in good condition, is barely run-in and is a snip at 5000 quid (no offers) for the first person here with the filthy lucre in their hands. It has been exported here to Roujan, but we have not changed the number plate to a French one yet. You could either drive it back to England and re-import it, or do the necessary paperwork here in France if you intended keeping it here. Ali and I are just too hopeless to do the official stuff, so it would be up to you. Hence the low, low, low price.

A single bed for affectionate friends

This bed is in the only single room at Le Couvent. It has a private shower room and super pretty beams, but it's absolutely not a double room. Occasionally, however, when we have no doubles left and slim, insistent guests, we offer them a very snuggly night in a 1.20m bed. You'd be amazed how many accept - even famous TV presenters. To make up for the discomfort we put on the prettiest antique linen sheets. It seems to work.

Crikey, it's still summer

It's the 25th September and 25 degrees. The water's glacial, but we and the hardier guests are still managing to squeeze in a few lengths. Now that's about ten days longer than most summers so we're thrilled.

With just five days to go until we close for the winter we're thinking back on all the lovely guests we've had staying this summer. Far fewer were house-hunting. Many more were simply enjoying all the fantastic things the Languedoc has to offer. Ali and I have been horribly jealous of our guests' day trips to interesting places, so this winter we're going to visit them all ourselves. It's hard to believe that we've lived here about five years, but have yet to see all the major places of interest. Although Le Couvent will be closed until 1 May 2008 we're going to continue the blog all winter. We hope to be able to give you lots of information so you can plan next year's holidays here. Some weeks are already fully booked by the forward thinkers (and stoolball players!) so start planning.

Grapes a go-go

The harvest (vendange in French) is almost over and the mornings are decidedly nippy at 14 degrees. I'm struggling to walk the dogs before sunrise and still be back in time to have breakfast ready for 8am. It's a little worrying to walk in the vines in pitch black having so recently seen a chunky wild boar. Anyway, with just eleven days to go to the end of the season it's not exactly a major problem.

My observation from daily visits to the vineyards is that the bunches of grapes look smaller this year, with individual grapes appearing much smaller than previously. I'm assuming this comes from no rain at all for months on end, coupled with a falling water table over the past five years. However, speaking to the lovely Christa from Domaine Bourdic last night, it appears that their superlative husbandry has seen them double their crop of Grenache this year, where everyone else has seen a falling yield. Their only problem now is where to put all the extra grapes - they've run out of tanks!

An hour later ....

I've just been to Domaine Bourdic to repair their computer. Christa says everything's broken down. The tractor broke down and the huge harvesting machine fell over when the driver misjudged the lie of the land. No doubt the labelling machine will break down when they start the bottling too! Who cares, they've got loads more grapes.

Punctured blogs

I haven't blogged for ages. Normalement (Norman Lamont for the initiated) I cycle the dogs before breakfast, get breakfast ready, then do the blog. However, for the last month there have been horrible little seeds from puncture vines littering the vineyards. Seven new inner tubes and two teflon tyre liners later I have given up. Now I have to walk. It takes much longer. Hence no blog. I'm praying for rain so mud swallows up the seeds. They're horrid and their latin name is Tribulus terrestris. The Latin name tribulus originally meant the caltrop (a spiky weapon), but in Classical times already meant this plant as well. They are formed so that wherever they sit there is always a spike facing upwards. Poor Kit the dog gets them in her paws all the time and we have to stop every few metres over some patches to remove them from her foot. I blame it on the fact that she's so fat. Flynn the husky moves so lightly they rarely lodge in his paws.

I've also read that the pesky Tribulus terrestris is sold as nature's viagra. Kit the labrador has several little pricks of this every morning and she's showing no odder behavioural traits than usual. Should I just be shovelling the seeds up and flogging them as the first sex aid ever to be sold from a convent? More later.

What was that?

For almost three years I have taken a walk or a bike ride in the vineyards with Kit the Labrador and Flynn the Husky. Same time, same place. It's never boring. The vines change all the time and the wildlife is extraordinary and never more so than today. Having finished our walk the dogs were bundled into the ancient van and off we toddled homewards. In a flash a sanglier (wild boar) about the size of a big Rottweiler tore across our path and skittered off down the hill ahead of us. My heart flew into my mouth for a moment while I worried that there may be a whole family of them about to appear through the vines. Although I was in the van I've seen a car pretty much written off by a collision with a chunky sanglier. And who knows, they may have a violent dislike of Kangoo vans – many do.

As it happened the boar was a lone ranger and scampered off into the vines looking rather jolly. Sadly he probably won't last long as we are tripping up on the start of the hunting season and the local chasseurs are drooling already. None can wait until the grape harvest is over so they can fill the air with gunshot.

Feeling guilty in the heat

A friend from England sent us this photo entitled 'Footwear for a British Summer'. It led us to look at the shocking photos of the recent flooding in England. As we sit here in 33 degrees, with the sound of cicadas filling the air, we can't help but feel for the poor souls who are desperately trying to clean up their flooded homes. I can't begin to imagine how soul-destroying it is to watch your home fill with muddy water and sewage. All of us here at Le Couvent, Roujan wish you well.

Music festival at Domaine Bourdic

When guests arrive at Le Couvent they find a complimentary bottle of the fantastic Rosé de Saignée from Domaine Bourdic in their room. This wine is made by our friends Hans & Christa who were classical musicians before they moved here eleven years ago. Not content with producing jolly good wine, H&C have created a fine music festival at Domaine Bourdic, now in its eighth year. Click on the images above to see the flyer in a readable form. There are still a few places left, so why not come?

Sunday = flea market

So yesterday I toddled off early to the fab flea market in Marseillan. Bright sunny days tend to bring an early crowd, so the car park was pretty full when I arrived. Although I didn't buy anything wildly interesting, I did spot these two treasures:

Ouch!

For those long conversations that make your ears hurt.

A small tour around Le Couvent

Just recently we've had prospective guests ask for extra photos of the house. I'm not sure why. Maybe the photos on the website aren't good enough. I'll have to ask next time. I always find it slightly disquieting because, although the house is very beautiful, a stay at le Couvent is not just about the look of things. I'd like to think there's a good spirit here which is equally as memorable as a simple bedroom.

Nevertheless, here are some extra photos to lead you round.

This is Flynn the Husky waiting at the gate.

Entrance Hall

The first floor landing - yep, there's light in this old house.

Each bedroom has an en-suite, clean and modern bathroom - but simple, like you might expect in a former convent.

Beds are simple and comfortable

The sheets are pure cotton

You can have twin beds if you prefer

Breakfast is served in the 50 square metre kitchen

The garden is verdant

And the pool has pure, chemical-free water

Goodbye clank

For the last five years we've put up with a noisy gate. Guests have lived in fear and trembling of disturbing night-sleeps or afternoon-siestas whenever they return. But no longer. Thanks to the lovely Cyril and his side-kick we have quiet gates. It's great. Now we don't have to slither through a barely open gate hoping it won't drop on its hinges and produce a cannon shot.

You might ask why we didn't get it sorted out before. Good question. We didn't want to throw them away and buy new, but had no idea you could get people who'd come to repair things like gates. But in France they mend rather than replace; a philosophy we like very much.

The world of EdVon

Sometimes our lovely guests write about us. We hesitate to write about them as we'd like to let people have a discreet holiday. But these two young Americans won't mind at all. Edgar & Vonda are two of the most delightful people we've ever had to stay - here's their blog entry about their time here. Edgar & Vonda's stay at Le Couvent.
To them we say thank you for being such sweethearts. Come back soon & we'll find you more bush tucker.

Flea market treasures

On Sunday we took our fab guests K&C to the flea market in Marseillan. It's a colossal cross between a car boot sale and an antiques fair. Lots is complete tat, but occasionally you can find real treasure - which is what keeps us going to it.

Ali came across a wonderful huge black and green butter-dish. Ridiculously big and colourful. It was just before the stall-holder settled down to lunch and there were ominous spots of rain. Ali presented the dish to the woman and gently enquired the price. "I know what you're going to say - that at 15 euros it's too expensive so how about 5 euros?" said the stall-holder. Ali hadn't uttered a word. So she was thrilled. Today she's wearing a matching ensemble in its honour.


I, on the other hand, had reverse fortunes. Having spotted this sweet little dog-cart the following conversation ensued:

Me: C'est combien?
Seller: Cinquante euros
Me: Quarante?
Her: D'accord.

Foolishly I handed her a 50 euro note.

Her: Cinquante? (she's holding the dosh by now)
Ali: D'accord.

Ali to me: Were we just beaten up then?
Me: Yes, you were.

Our extended team

It occurs to me, as our beautiful electrician, Fabien Castan, installs the new door-entry system (with a little help from his Dad) , that it takes quite a gang of us to keep Le Couvent looking swell. Apart from Ali being chief housekeeper, laundrywoman and single-handed maintenance team (with star appearances from Alex, our wildly over-educated part-time chamber maid), I have the occasional dead-heading and web-site updating to do.

Then there's the lovely Pascal & Nadine Vie who cook all the luscious breads and pastries for guests' breakfasts, the hens who lay the breakfast eggs and Christian Andral who supplies the breakfast fruit. (I flatly refuse to buy any supermarket fruit - it's picked under-ripe and never reaches full ripeness, flavour or texture.) Big Frank Perez supplies the saucisson for aperitifs too. And they're all in Roujan.

The fantastic Maintenance Thermique in Beziers keep our boilers running so there's lots of hot water for guests' showers. If ever there's been a breakdown MT have sent an engineer within a couple of hours - they are saints. M. Lafitte coaxes his little oil delivery lorry backwards up our drive and complains that our Banksia rose will scratch his pristine truck, but he arrives in an instant should stocks get low.

Our red and rose wines for aperitifs and guests' bedrooms come from the wonderful Domaine Bourdic and is made with Swiss exactitude and love by the handsome Hans and divine Christa. For luscious white wine Jaques and Francoise Boyer from La Croix Belle supply us with their fantastic No7. When we need good quality quaffing wine in quantity we trundle off to the Cave Co-operative in Neffies.

Our guests need places to dine well and we count on our good friends Didier & Karen at Restaurant Les Goutailles in Neffies, the boys at L'Entre Pots in Pezenas and the team at Les Jardins de la Mer in Bouzigues. We have to thank the ever-welcoming staff at Apres Le Deluge for being open on Monday nights too. We'd like to say the bar in Roujan is as good as last year, but truthfully, since the divine Arielle left it in the hands of a manager, it isn't anywhere near as much fun.

And finally for the moment, I have to thank my lovely builder brother, Justin, for coming to the rescue every time the drains get blocked, something falls off a wall or water comes through the ceiling. Then there's ma belle soeur Michelle who's done everything from mixing concrete to wiping up litres of dropped gazpacho moments before an event - what a star. Where would we be without all these good people keeping Le Couvent in fine form?

I'm in love with The Butler

For the first two years of our life with a pool I struggled with an automatic flappy pool cleaner which glued itself to one end the second my back was turned. I reverted to using a long sucking tube attached to an unwieldy pole with a brush on the end, which was alright until I broke my shoulder falling out of a hammock. Ali's sick of hearing me whinge about it every day so we've bought a hideously expensive robot pool cleaner which has been named The Butler.
It came in a box which declared it 'Plug & Play' which filled me with dread since Microsoft uses the same term and I've fallen out with anything Windows since the advent of Vista. Anyway, unlike software The Butler really was P&P. I just lobbed it in the water, plugged in and went off to clean some windows. Two hours later the pool was absolutely spotless. As you can see.


Any debris swept up from the pool arrives in a removable filter in The Butler. This filter has to be removed and cleaned out - a quick and painless process, and all rather amusing since the filter bears a striking resemblance to a pair of bloomers. Below is a photo of The Butler's Bloomers.