Monday, September 13, 2004
Running gites - what do you do all day ?
It's like being on holiday every day. Well actually it not quite like that, running gites is fun and rewarding and also hard work. It involves a much more than drinking wine in the warm summer evenings with the guests. It's nice to have a holiday atmosphere and we both enjoy a glass or two outside the gites and the trips to the beaches with the children, but there is much that goes on behind the scenes to make the gites what they are and to giving people a nice holiday.
For us the season is split into two fairly separate chunks; the 'summer' months (Easter & June through to September) when we have guests staying in the gites, and then out-of-season with the occasional guest, but usually the gites are unoccupied.
During the Summer months we have much more of a routine. It varies with the weather and job list in the garden but it generally fits a similar pattern:-
- Saturday - All day cleaning and preparing for the next guests due to stay in the three gites. It can be a bit touch and go sometimes if one of us has to rush out and buy a replacement item. Any urgent remedial maintenance. Buy fresh bread and croissants for the welcome pack.
- Sunday - Load after load in the washing machines. It's just a continuous stream of washing and drying. If possible we try to go out with the children because we are busy all day Saturday.
- Monday - Tidy and clean our own house and shopping. Bit of gardening and weeding and mowing the lawns. Hours and hours of ironing gite linen.
- Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday is our weekend. There are always things to do around the grounds, we are effectively running four houses, but our time is much more flexible and we spend more time together as a family.
- Friday - Bin day, strimming and mowing lawns again, replenish stocks for gite supplies and prepare for gite changeover day tomorrow.
Along with the time required by a young family we also spend a while chatting with the guests and answering queries, checking the play equipment works, making sure the play area is tidy, feeding and cleaning the chickens and other animals, recycling glass etc. Granted it is not a full time job every day, but the mental commitment is full time and during the summer we are always available.
It is much easier with all the gites together on the same property with our house. I don't think it would be possible if the gites were scattered around. Day to day maintenance and emergency repairs are much easier if you can DIY. Having to call on a plumber for a blocked drain or some other problem at short notice will certainly be difficult, if not expensive.
Out-of-season is our chance to make larger changes and improvements to the gites and the grounds. Apart from any remedial and maintenance work done in the Summer this is our opportunity to update each gite. For example last year,
- we replaced a fixed window in Pomme with a new opening window to allow more fresh air into the gite.
- fitted a new staircase in Cerise, replacing an old steel spiral staircase.
- resculptured some of the gardens to put in three new flower beds and some hedging around the lawns.
- replaced some old fencing.
- painted the windows and doors at the front of our house and two of the three gites
- shifted 30 tonnes of gravel
This winter the planned changes, apart from creating the two new gites, are to change the staircase in Poire and enlarge the larger bedroom to include a extra window.
In addition to the work on the gites there is the paperwork required to run a French limited company and our End-of-Year accounts to prepare and submit. No easy task in a foreign language. Marketing and promotion via printed advertising and our web-site needs updating, checking and supplementing. You can't just sit back and hope guests will arrive.
Last year I spent a couple of weeks pollarding, copicing and chopping down trees for firewood. All the wood needed logging and splitting for storage. Most of the wood is stored for a couple of years, so it vital to plan ahead and replenish your stocks. We use wood burning fires exclusively to heat the house, and just keeping them stocked and running is no mean feat.
I haven't included the problems of finding your way around, learning the language and culture, putting the kids into a foreign school, making new friends, living and working with your spouse 24 hours a day. The activities outside the day-to-day routine is not that easy, but maybe that story is for another time.
It's not all work and no play. We have fetes and festivals we can attend, English and French friends we see for dinner and repas. There is often something going on and the French culture involves the children much more. We rarely have a baby sitter and usually take the children out with us, especially the French events.
We have had wonderful guests and take great pride in what we do. We both worked for IT companies and then for ourselves in England, but this is much more satisfying. It is very hard work, in fact I've never worked harder in my life, so why are we doing it ? Giving people great holidays is very rewarding and the choices and benefits you gain by being self-employed are worth it, even if we will never be rich. It's not the easy life, or the quiet life, but it is the good life.
| 11:11:32 PM
Running gites - what do you do all day ?
