Le Couvent Diary

The guests have all gone home, the rooms are cleaned for winter, the cooling fans await their winter home in the loft, but the pool's still swimmable. Yesterday was our first day without guests for five months and I felt truly ill after a rather-too-long lie-in. 

However, today has been magical. I woke at 6.19 am, just as I have all summer - one minute before the alarm, although it is now turned off. I felt fit as a fiddle and zipped off to the market in Clermont l'Herault. My basket crammed with plants, 20 Christmas cauliflower, 2 basil, 15 oak leaf lettuce, 3 celery, along with finely cut jambon sec, a paillasse loaf, tiny coffee meringues, yellow courgettes, five different types of tomatoes, leeks, french beans, pork loin and the crowning glory - huge cep mushrooms from the hills in Lozere, I was home again by 10am.

 

 

I'd be very happy to spend this winter gardening, so this afternoon found me planting all that I'd bought this morning. The potager has been easy to prepare this autumn, thanks to a fantastic attachment made by Wolf tools. It hoes and breaks up the soil to a fine tilth like nothing I've ever used before. God knows what it'd be like in wetter, heavier soils, but here, in the dry, fast draining bauxite of our vineyard it is brilliant. 

 

 

 

The potager is so packed with winter vegetables that I've started filling up the extra space with Australian everlasting flowers. I have no idea how they'll do, but we'll see.

 

 

I sit here on another sunny morning that portends a perfect day for the guests who love to read and snooze by the pool. We've been full-on with guests, leaving no time for blogging, so I'm playing catch-up.

Our main news is that we've decided to move our wine-making mini-operation to Le Couvent, so we've been clearing out the cave and buying new tanks in preparation. It'll mean that we can keep a closer watch on our wines, and guests will be able to learn a bit about the process, and to taste the wine in all its stages.

Last year's wine is just about ready for bottling and we're hoping to get that completed in the next three weeks before this year's harvest. If you're coming to stay at Le Couvent towards the end of August, or the beginning of September, it's highly likely that you'll be able to witness the harvest and wine-making first-hand. Unless we have another hail storm, that is.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, guests continue to arrive from all of Europe, the Americas and Australia, except England. We have far fewer guests from England this year. We still have lots of Irish and Scottish. So what is it about the financial crisis that it appears to have affected Les Anglais more than anywhere else in the world? I don't suppose the media could have fuelled it at all - could they? Very bizarre. But for us it is all the more rewarding to have a house full of different nationalities. This morning we have Swiss, Irish, American, Scottish, Colombian - and English - around the breakfast table. It inspires wonderful conversation.

Having said that, the weather appears to have taken a turn for the worse in the UK if the flurry of late booking enquiries is anything to go by. And receiving an e-mail asking for four rooms for next week does sometimes drive me to mentally conjure a response slightly less polite than the reply that I actually send. Ho hum.

The weather's been hot and gorgeous, so the ice-cream machine's been put to good use. It's hard not to when the hens are producing such luscious eggs at the moment, thanks to leftover croissants, pains au chocolat and fruit.

This week saw the Roujan fete, with four nights of music, food, wine and dancing and a carnival procession through the streets of the village. I'll leave you with some photos of the jolly events of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This last photo's here because I love the small dog, eager for the chap in the yellow jacket to move so he can see the action. 

We have two broody hens at the moment and broody hens don't lay. With nine hens in total that leaves seven potential layers. We have eight guests staying today and boiled eggs are a favourite, so at their laying best the hens are struggling to keep up.

Some guests take matters into their own hands. I came down to prepare breakfast this morning to find two eggs 'bagged'.

 

 

This is a dilemma because I can't bring myself to buy eggs when our hens lay the best in the world- it feels disloyal to the hens and it misses the point. I'll just have to serve boiled eggs on alternate days. Or pray the broody girls see the pointlessness of their nest-squatting given that we don't have a cockerel. Otherwise we have a wait of up to three weeks.

A few years ago we had a lovely jazz singer to stay.  She has a friend who lives close by here who makes soap and she told us that her friend's soap was exceptional.  Now, I don't know about you, but to me the notion of making soap seems somehow rather arcane.  It's a process I know practically nothing about, I just know that like anything that's good, it takes effort, knowledge and skill to make it terrific as opposed to ordinary, and, hey, we all know that most bars of soap do the job in a wet and suddy kind of way but, basically, ordinary is missing the point.  Isn't it? 

So.  Ripple, lather, dissolve.  For the last couple of years we've bought our delicious organic soap from the Savonnerie de Saint Privat.  (Her lavender soap, by the way, is the very same gorgeous, purple stuff sold by Neal's Yard.)  Anyway I phoned the savonerie yesterday to find out if she or her partner were going to have a stall at Clermont market.  She told me she'd just had a baby and wasn't going to be making any soap for the next year or two.  Eekamouse.  PANIC.   

So today, on her advice, I headed for the Olive Oil Co-operative at Clermont l'Herault which is where all the local growers take their olives to be pressed.  I discovered that it also has rather a fantastic shop, which apart from olive oil also sells regional artisanal products like wine, pottery, honey and wine.  And soap.  Lots and lots of soap.  And also our girl's soap. 

I bought it out.

 

 

 

So, when you arrive, you may find in your soapdish:

Lavender (lavendre)

Honey and Geranium  (miel et geranium)

Rosemary and Spirulina (romarin et spirulin)

or

Orange and Cinammon (orange et cannelle)

I drove back with the car heavily, headily, drowsily pungent with all of the above.  Oh my, oh my, it smelt good. 

We can't actually afford to give you a whole big bar of these soaps because, like most things good, they're pretty expensive and it would be enormously wasteful to throw out almost all of a bar each time.  So we hope you enjoy trying a taste of something that couldn't be more real or more local. 

 

 

Halfway through last season we decided to take the plunge and use a commercial laundry.  On the face of it this doesn't seem much of a leap.  Sheets need laundering.  Laundry exists.  QED take sheets to laundry. Plus, four years of ironing huge cotton sheets in the height of summer isn't one of my happiest memories though it may be my hottest.  There is a hurdle to leap on the road to laundry-heaven though, and the hurdle is size.  It does matter. 

If the laundry already has a week's laundry which takes a week to process, and the house is full of two night stays, how many sheets and pillowcases does that come to?  Well, the pillowcase answer is 144 and the sheet, 80 (assuming there are no twins and no duvets.)   This, of course, is a "worst possible scenario," though in a world where "worst possible scenarios" usually involve earthquakes or famine, my laundry list obviously doesn't amount to a hill of beans. Nonetheless it is MY hill of beans and with not a shop selling super king-size sheets this side of Oxford Street, we just didn't have enough, not nearly enough, to go round.

So last year we bought more sheets.  And pillowcases.  Then more sheets.  And pillowcases.

 

 

 

And now at least once a week I head off to the lovely CATAR in Pezenas, the blanchisserie behind Lidl.  CATAR is a work scheme for people with learning difficulties which is run, usually like clockwork, by Monsieur Tall (grey curly hair and blue eyes,) Madame Roland (blond hair and glasses) and Madame Short (enough said.)  The only times the clockwork goes lumpy is when M. Tall breaks his leg or a machine breaks down. (M. Tall I'm thrilled to say is now back in harness after 5 months.) 

 

 

 

Each Christmas Lizzie and I drop off a huge gift-wrapped tin of Quality Street.  The resulting sugar-high makes me enormously popular with the troops and accounts for my name of Madame Ballantyne-Bonbon.  Despite the Everests of laundry being scaled each week, I've never been sent home with someone else's candy-striped flannelettes or surgical scrubs for which I'm enormously grateful.  Mille mercis to all at CATAR for making our lives cooler and cleaner.

The Yanks are coming back to France. (Is it rude to say Yanks?) For a few years we have had three or four American couples each season, but this year we have dozens. So what's changed? I've been talking with our current American guests and we are unable to decide. Is it that liberal Americans are travelling now that they are proud of their President? Has the US media stopped saying, erroneously, that the French were anti-American? It surely can't be the dire exchange rate. Either way, we are thrilled to have you here. Thank you.

However, despite our bookings being just as high as last year, we do have far fewer guests coming from the UK. Is it as a result of the forecast of a heatwave in Britain? Or the media endlessly talking up the financial 'crisis'? Or shame at a government in disarray? I really don't know, but we'd be very happy to see more Brits taking their hols in this lovely part of France.

Yesterday was a 'stay in front of the computer all day' kinda day. It was raining, so the garden maintenance was out of the question. There's always plenty to do to get ready for the new B&B season which starts on 1 May each year. So yesterday we trawled through websites looking for new bath sheets. Big fluffy Egyptian cotton ones. We'd already searched in more local shops, but no-one had the 18 we need so we settled on the lovely John Lewis in Oxford Street, London. Maria, my new friend in the export department,  has secured us a big parcel and they are on their way. A mere 500 quid including delivery.

 

 

That's the problem with a B&B. Everything you need to buy comes in large numbers. When we were setting up six years ago we would find a really beautiful bedside lamp at £100, then realise we needed ten of them. Eeek. And things wear out fast. For example, we have struggled to find good poolside sunbeds. I'll guess that in the past we have bought at least a dozen that were absolutely hopeless after one season. So last year we went to the people that supply all the sunbeds they use on the big beaches here on the Mediterranean. We bought a dozen - more than the number of people we have staying - and they were cripplingly expensive. But, mercifully, they look the same now as they did at the beginning of last season. So, the moral of this whingeing tale is, spend the money, buy the best. Don't hesitate. It's a saving in the long-term and you'll enjoy the item so much more.

Yep, it's my fault. I'm responsible for the rain here in Languedoc today. Yesterday was bright and sunny so I was eager to take the cover off the pool to start its pre-season warming-up. Ali and I spent the entire day working on it. Ali jet washed the paving - a long and noisy job, while I set to cleaning the pool. It looks fantastic and the sun shone so brightly I was tempted to take a dip. I'm guessing it's around 16 degrees so it'd feel like the Arctic. I resisted.

Still, the vegetables in the kitchen-garden are happy.

Today we're going to do repair jobs round the house. You know, all those niggly little jobs you don't do unless someone's coming. And we have lots of people coming - all through the summer, to Le Couvent, Roujan - the best bed and breakfast in Languedoc. There, the day isn't going to be entirely wasted. I managed to get in another shameless plug.

 

 

 

The sun's shining, the wind's dropped, my sickly hens are looking better, we're off to prune vines this afternoon and all's well.

Over breakfast this morning Ali and I were discussing the terrible exchange rates and decided we'd do our bit for your holiday plans by reducing the room prices for next year.

So for 2009, a double room is now reduced to 90 euros per night and a single room 80 euros per night. Of course this includes a luscious breakfast, a bottle of delicious Le Couvent wine, free wireless internet, use of the bikes, freedom to swim, read or sleep all day long, aperitifs and assorted other treats as they come to mind.

Have a very merry Christmas and a healthy, happy 2009.

Lizzie & Ali xx 

In an idle moment yesterday I was meandering through Youtube videos and came across this one. The chap's name is Michael Schulte. I like it a lot. Click on the big arrow, sit back with a coffee and think happy thoughts.

 

 

Ali and I wish you a very Happy Christmas and a peaceful, healthy and happy 2009. We hope to see lots of you next summer.

Bisous à tous de Lizzie et Ali du Couvent, Roujan.

Six hens weren't enough to keep up with demand for luscious boiled eggs for all the guests this summer, so we bought five more today. The new girls are Light Sussex and should lay creamy pale eggs to go alongside the brown ones our older biddies produce.

 

 

Although they are just babes at 5 months old, they will look like this in a few weeks' time, but for the moment they look like this:

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, the old girls are looking mean and moody, ready to jump the new ones when they're released. We currently have the babes in their own quarters until they've settled in.

 

 

 

It'll be a week at least, by which time the old ones will have forgotten the new ones are new. This morning one of the white ones rewarded us with an egg. Just 16 hours after moving in. I guess that means she's happy enough.

I'm thinking of naming them after small Sussex villages. So we'll have Firle, Glynde, Ripe, Chiddingly & Cowbeech. God knows which will be which - there's not much difference between them yet.

We have three days left until the end of our season. The penultimate guests have just left and we are now waiting for three couples from Australia and a couple from Cheltenham, UK. Two of the guests are called Nutter, so we start with the stoolball team and end with the Nutters. Handily we come full circle.

Our guests have been just wonderful again this year. No-one trashed their room, everyone was impeccably behaved, books that were borrowed to finish arrived back in the post. No-one failed to arrive, only one couple arrived a month early - thank God. The vast majority let us book restaurants for them weeks in advance, saving us the nightmare of trying to find restaurants for nine people on the day.

No-one lost their keys, no-one forgot the gate code. (Burglars please note, we've just changed it.) No-one crashed their car, only one person broke a bone. Everyone enjoyed the wine, but no-one made a fool of themself. Only one person expected to pay in a currency we can't use - thank you. Very few people were defeated by PayPal. No-one ate enough breakfast so our hens are now on a strict diet.

No-one wrecked Ali's beautiful linen sheets, everyone put up with Magali's distant, yet persistent, cockerel. Lots of people wrote lovely reviews and those who hated it here have, thus far, not said so in public. For that we can't thank you enough. People let their hair down, but remained dignified and charming. Only a couple of people found they didn't much like the Languedoc, the rest walked, drove, cycled, cruised, rode and canoed huge swathes of this beautiful region and have gone home enchanted.

Now Ali & I will have time to explore again all those magical places people have discovered through the summer. We even have a couple of new restaurants to try. 150 pineapples, 200+ room changes and 650 litres of coffee later we'd be lying if we said we weren't tired. But we've had a fantastic time. Thank you one and all. Next year?

Today's blog post has been written by Doug & Caroline, who came to Le Couvent, Roujan hoping that they could take part in our grape harvest.

Following a long drive to Roujan on Monday two weeks ago, we arrived to a very warm welcome from Liz & Ali, only to find the weather had put a premature end to this year's grape harvest. Therefore no vendange for us this year, however as some of the harvest had been salvaged there was the option to be involved with the next process, turning it into wine (yip-pee).

Thanks to lots of hard work before we arrived the grapes had already been transported into the village were in a vat and starting to ferment. So twice a day the fermenting grape & juice mix had to be mixed by hand & on the 2^nd occasion daily the specific gravity of the liquid had to be measured for percentage of potential alcohol.

Within a few days of doing this the mixture was at its prime, and time to extract the grapes from the juice, it was decided that Sunday would be the ideal time for this 1100 to be exact.

Sunday 1100 we all met at the Cave (Caroline, Liz, Ali, Colin, Judith, Justine, Michelle, Josh & I) ready to start the separation process. This involved draining the grape juice from one tank into another (by bucket), after we had transferred approximately 280ltrs of liquid from the first tank all that was left was the remaining grapes. These grapes still had potential to produce more juice so they needed to be taken out of the tank & be pressed, this meant that someone would have to get in to the tank and bucket the remaining contents out. I was that volunteer, so off with the shoes & socks, down to my speedo's and in I got. What a sensation paddling in soggy grapes being overwhelmed by the pungent smell they were giving off. It was great.

Once the remaining contents of the tank had been transferred to smaller containers and put into a van, we all went a few kilometres to where the press was situated. We all then took it in turns to press the juice from the grapes, which resulted in a further 100ltrs of juice that could be added to the 280ltrs back at the Cave. The following day we did exactly that, so there is now nearly 400ltrs of premium Chateau Mal Au Dos vintage 2008 maturing in a secrete location somewhere in Roujan.

Despite not being able to pick any grapes on this visit to Roujan we have had a fantastic time and feel very honoured to be part of the team that helped produced the very first batch of wine from Chateau Mal Au Dos. And who knows what other years will bring..

A very, very honoured & overwhelmed

Doug & Caroline.

 

We just had the lovely Rosemary Neave from Women Travel New Zealand & the World to stay. She wrote incredibly kind things about us on her blog . Here she is on Mother Superior's balcony chatting with Ali across the void.

Meanwhile we've had two couples staying, both called Kay & Ian. What's the odds for that? Here they are at breakfast.

 

 

 

I've just come back from collecting the morning bread, cakes and fruit. Here's the list:

One watermelon, one yellow melon, one green melon, 5 apples,  5 slices of ham from the bone, 5 croissant nature, 4 croissant beurre, 3 croissant abricot, 3 noix de pecan, 2 pain au raisin, 2 pain au chocolat, 1 pain au lin, 1 pain complet & 1 festivale brune.

I already had peaches, oranges, bananas, nectarines, salami and cheeses. The hens have laid enough eggs for me to offer all 9 guests boiled eggs too this morning. It's now 8am and the table is complete. I just have to wait for guests to come down to breakfast.

 

 

It's jumper time at 6.30 when I trot off to the village. There's suddenly an autumnal nip in the air. Worry not, if you're still to have your hols here, it warms up wonderfully during the day, but pack a jumper eh? We close in a couple of weeks' time and I love the change to autumn. After the languid summer heat which is just ennervating, I adore the re-found energy that comes with cooler days.

And I'm longing to get going on the vineyards, to help them recover from their hideous hail-bashing of last week. If you're interested in seeing how the wine is going you'll need to nip over to our sister site at Chateau Mal Au Dos . I've copied all the wine-related entries over there and will be continuing the wine story there.

Meanwhile I think I hear footsteps, so I'm off to boil eggs - for exactly 3 minutes 20 seconds. With no food-miles to count, our hens eggs are nest-fresh and take less time to cook to perfection.