Once again I have been inundated with inquiries regarding the unexpected availability on the 18th of April and I would like to thank everyone who tried to put a group together, unfortunately the vacancy has now been filled.
Any week in April has the potential to be a record breaking session and I can understand the level of interest even though it was very short notice.
A couple of local lads who normally only fish on day-tickets have decided to treat themselves to a full session.
Due to very tragic circumstances the week commencing the 18th of April has now become available.
One of our regular guests has suffered a broken back and is not able to travel over from the UK.
I appreciate that this is very short notice but if anyone wishes to take up this vacancy please contact me at your earliest convenience. Call directly on 0033 (0)555 486974 or via e-mail at moulindegraf@hotmail.co.uk
Firstly I would like to say thank you to everyone who tried to put a group together to take advantage of this unusual opportunity, I appreciate that it is quite difficult to find another 2 or 3 like-minded individuals at such short notice.
The week has now been filled by one of my regulars who just so happened to be here the week before and decided to make his one week session a 2 week session.
I am still receiving inquiries from people regarding this vacancy so please share this information with as many people as you feel appropriate.
Due to unforeseen circumstances the week commencing the 23rd of May 2020 has now become available.
It is rather short notice but if you wish to take advantage of this unexpected availability please contact me at your earliest convenience, directly by telephone on 0033 (0)555486974 or by e-mail at moulindegraf@hotmail.co.uk
If you are not able to take advantage of this opportunity please share this information with anyone who you think may wish to.
Not everything has gone according to plan this month but Helen and I keep slugging away and things are progressing at a steady pace, if not necessarily in the right order.
My priority has been to finish off the new kitchen in the Gite, this is where I’m at :
At first glance you will think that it has not progressed since last month but that is not the case, the painting is done, the plumbing is in, the new electrics are all in place, it is ready to go, the stumbling block is that I do not have a kitchen to fit !!
My shopping trip with Helen to choose a kitchen went surprisingly smoothly, we knew what we wanted and it was all ordered in less than one hour, but then we hit the snag.
The kitchen that we have chosen is Grey ( when I say we I obviously mean Helen) but Helen decided that she didn’t want white units with grey doors, she wanted grey units as well, and guess what ?? Yes, they are a special order !!
Good job she was with me really because I would have just took the white ones.
2-3 weeks the lady in the shop said, well, we are 2 and a half weeks in to the wait with no sign of our kitchen, yet !
Hopefully when I write the February SITREP I will have better news.
The weather has been atrocious, we have had rain, with heavy rain, and then some torrential rain, it has proven very difficult to get the water level down on the lake in order to complete the winter tidy-up, and some days I have had to force myself outside to get things done. I HATE working in the rain !
Rain or no rain I felt the need to progress something and if that could not be the Gite kitchen then it had to be lake. I finished the far-bank yesterday and I intend to make a start on the swims tomorrow.
As previously said I was going to take a greener approach to things this year and make better use of my chipper, thereby cutting out the need for big bonfires. Here is my beast of a chipper at work :
It can cope with wood up to 150mm (6inches) in diameter. We have cleared out hundreds of young saplings and dead-wood from along the far bank and in minutes it converts a pile of unwanted wood in to this:
The best bit about this process is that it generates a by-product that has a use; bedding for dogs and horses:
So impressed is Helen with the new horse bedding that she has decided to layer her riding school with it to make the going underfoot nicer for the horses.
That’s all well and good thinks I, but now I have another job-for-life, chipping. You need to make a lot of chips to cover a riding school.
The horses love the stuff, since we put it down they will not come out of the shelter, primarily because some of it is edible, to horses that is. A nice soft warm bed that you can eat, why ever move ??
One thing that I am really pleased with is my workshop, as at today it looks like this :
One last drive over the next few weeks and it will hopefully be in full use ready for the Spring. It still needs to have the cladding finished, and the doors fitted, and the electrics replaced, and the rest of the shelving to be fitted, and, and, and !!!!!
Nearly there.
Unexpected availability. We have just had a cancellation for the 23rd of May so if anyone fancies a session during what is prime fishing time then give me a shout quick. I will be putting this up on Facebook as a general advert shortly but if you have read this post all the way through then you deserve prior notice of this opportunity.
Keep your eyes peeled for next month’s Sitrep.
I hope that you all had a very good Christmas break and your New Year has started well.
Helen and I have been trying to squeeze in a bit of down-time since my last blog and very sociable it has been too, we had friends and family over for Xmas, and we went to friends for New Year, Helen managed a couple of weeks in the UK to catch up with her shopping, and, even I managed to get back to Blighty for 2 days.
My first trip back to the UK in 3 years so I thought I would make the most of it, while I was there I made a visit to Specsavers and bought myself 4 pairs of new glasses, what a treat, now I can see what I am doing !!
The main reason for my trip was to get home to visit my Mum and to add to the occasion my big brother Paul was over from New Zealand. Little brother Matthew, who is actually the biggest, organised a family party down the Pub and 22 of us had a great get-together.
This is a very rare photograph of my Mum with me and my 4 surviving brothers :
Mark and Paul on the left and Glen and Matthew to the right. My Mum is looking great considering she is 89 in the spring. Bit of a shame that my sister could not join us.
Other than a bit of extra social life the work continues at a normal pace, I am going to start dropping the water level on the lake tomorrow so the following week will see the start of the annual trim and tidy along the far bank and around the swims. I am going to be a little more “climate conscious” this year and instead of burning the waste wood cuttings I am going to chip it all, hopefully Helen will be able to use all of the chippings for bedding for the horses.
I have been promising to upgrade my workshop for the last 8 years and at long last I have made a start, you all know the one I mean :
Unfortunately as I progressed other jobs around the place, of which there has been many, the tools and the rubbish seemed to gravitate toward my workshop, shamefully it looked like this inside and I was struggling to find things :
The heavy bit has been done, that was taking down those hideous steel folding doors. Just to do that I had to sort out the true rubbish from the bulk rubbish, I hate throwing things away as they always come in handy at some point. It now looks like this :
Once the rest of the facade has been stripped away it will be replaced with an all wood facade which will have double garage doors, my intent is to be able to park the ride-ons inside and clear some space in the other barns and garages.
I will let you know how that develops.
The more pressing project at this moment is the Gite. So far it has turned out to be one of those proverbial cans of worms that one regrets opening.
It sounded so simple; replace the kitchen, and strip out a couple of stud walls to gain a little extra space. That was relatively easy :
from this :
to this :
The damage to the original walls was so bad that it suddenly became clear why they were studded out in the first place, on top of that the wiring was inside the stud walls so the whole place is having to be re-wired and re-plumbed.
Anyway, no point in moaning, it was simply a case of “get it done”, I am pleased to say that all of the hard stuff is finished and it is now at the stage of being ready for a coat or 2 of paint :
I am waiting for the January Sales to start next week and that is when the really difficult task will have to be tackled; shopping with Helen for a new kitchen, aaaaaaargh !!
My target date for completion is the end of February but I do have a bit of wriggle room in the event that any of the lake work gets a bit complicated.
Our first guests arrive on the 27th of March so it will have to be finished by then.
Watch this space for further updates, till then ;
I have a bit of a problem that I cannot fix without your assistance !
While sorting through the flood of bookings for the 2022 Season I have had numerous requests from people who want to be put on my 2022 Waiting List.
This morning I went to transfer those requests into my little blue book only to find that it has disappeared, I have turned this place upside down and cannot find it anywhere.
Obviously I still have the names for the 2022 Season and I have started a new list in a new blue book, my problem is that I no longer have the names of those of you who have previously asked to be put on the waiting list for the 2020 and the 2021 Seasons.
In order to correct this I must ask you to re-submit your names if you still wish to be on the waiting list for 2020 and 2021. If you can also indicate your preferred periods that would be helpful.
We do not get many cancellations but we do get one or two most seasons and it is always nice to think that they can be given to someone who has been waiting a while rather than someone who just happens to be in the right place at the right time.
Thank you for your help with this.
