Opening Night at our Restaurant

We recently opened a small restaurant at La Vieille Fromagerie. After reorganising the house again, we now have a very cosy dining room, complete with log fire, seating 16 customers. Our opening night was a great success with both our British and French guests, including the mayor and our local councillor.

Janet is in charge of the kitchen and is sometimes helped out by our friend Kay.

We serve a mixture of British, French and Mediterranean cuisine and also cater for vegetarians upon request. Dougie is in charge of the dining room and service, ably assisted on occasion by our friend Jane.

Since opening night, we have continued to attract new customers, some of whom are returning on a regular basis and are always very complimentary in praising our food and hospitality.

Creature Comforts

Roger Moss, a professional photo-journalist, who took our publicity photographs last year, approached us some time ago with an idea for a magazine article. We didn't hear anything for many months and then out of the blue Roger informed us that he had sold his idea to Living France magazine.

Then the post arrived one day last week and lo and behold we were in print!

The article entitled "Creature Comforts" in the October issue of the magazine describes how we bought and converted La Vieille Fromagerie and now have a business in the "over-subscribed" gite market that stands out from the crowd (the words of the article, not ours!).

We're delighted with the article but can't reproduce it here due to copyright, however, the photos are ours to use as we wish so we've used a selection in this Blog. For those who are interested, the magazine is on sale now.

Beware of the Crocodiles!!

A brand new attraction has recently opened in Civaux, about 45 minutes from us:

"Planète des Crocodiles" or "Planet of the Crocodiles".

An amazing place to visit with 200 crocodiles and alligators from 7 different species housed under a huge Biodome.

This looks like it will become one of the "must visit" attractions in the area.

We hope to visit soon and we'll let you know how it goes.

Find out more at:

http://www.planete-crocodiles.com/

The donkeys arrive!

A few weeks ago our friend Jane asked what we intended doing with our field. Other than getting it cut and keeping it as tidy as possible, not much we replied. So we now have Jane's two rescue donkeys, Belle and her sister Lena, living at the bottom of our field.

Belle

Her farmer neighbour, Jean-Denis, very kindly cut and baled the hay from the field before the donkeys' arrival.

They are no trouble, make no noise and are surprisingly sweet smelling. They are a delight to watch and are proving to be a great attraction to both our guests and all our neighbours.

Lena

The latest news is that Jane thinks that Lena is expecting a foal, though the arrival date is undetermined as yet. We'll keep everyone posted as events progress.

Kay & Jim’s Hog Roast

Our friends Kay & Jim run a smallholding about 10 minutes from us and are starting up a little business running Hog Roasts. We along with some of their other friends were recently invited to the trial run of Jim’s specially manufactured roasting equipment. The pig had been running about in their fields until a few days before, living a happy, healthy life as a free range, organically reared pig.

The pork was fantastic, especially the crackling which was gorgeous. This was a real treat for the British as the French think that eating a pig’s skin is disgusting - somewhat rich considering some of the things they eat!

This is us.

Normally resident at La Vieille Fromagerie are the two of us, Janet & Dougie, the two dogs who came out from the UK with us, Bella & Charlie, and our four cats who adopted us last summer, Marge, Little Marge, Fluffy and Ginge.

Bella and Charlie love life in France with several acres to run around in - much better than the postage stamp garden in Wales.

Marge the cat adopted us last summer when she hid in our barn and had her litter of kittens. After feeding her up, we had her spayed as we didn’t know where she had come from and we weren’t ready for more kittens. On her return from the vets, one of neighbours recognised her and said “Nafnaf” belonged to someone else in the hamlet. Oops, but from that day on Marge has not strayed form us and shows no interest in her old home - too well fed probably. The cats do earn their keep, particularly the Ginger Ninja, by keeping the field mouse population under control.

Welcome to La Vieille Fromagerie

You’ve no doubt seen TV programmes, read books and magazines selling the dream of living in France and making a living from B&B and/or gites. Well. we were like everyone else thinking about it and then in February 2006 took the plunge and moved to Brux. Our new home is in the heart of Poitou Charente in sunny SW France.

That was 2 1/2 years ago, now we have a thriving 3 bedroomed B&B and also 3 beautiful, luxury gites. A lot of blood, sweat and tears and more money than we ever imagined or budgetted for have gone into creating our dream.
We still have more plans for developing our business and you will be able to read about them here first!