Thursday 27 September 2012

Here Comes...


'The Hurdy Gurdy man'...


Part the entertainment at Legueil's recent 'Fete du Lait'...charming.

You can listen to a sample of it here...

Friday 14 September 2012

Energy conservation...French style


A recent set of guests at Les Balcons were really charming and also very considerate of their French neighbours.When we popped over to check they had settled in and were comfortable we also asked if they had any questions. They asked if the village people (not the 70's lot) had got together and agreed the light curfew at 11.30pm unanimously. Let me explain...
In Le Grand Pressigny, like many other villages in the Loire valley and indeed France, the lights go out at night to conserve energy, so, as to not have our guests be met unknowingly by this, we inform them during our introductory chat and in our information booklet (very professional don't you think?).This means if they do go out and are returning late they are not met (as we were in the early days) by a 'black wall' and have torches with them to find their way into the house.  However I may have to re-write this as the guests thought it meant a total voluntary ban on the use of electricity and had being going about for the first couple of nights (after 11.30pm) with torches - how sweet. When told they could of course 'light up' they were very amused and somewhat relieved, that this conservation act was over for their stay!

It is easy to understand their thinking this as we have often looked over our part of the village and found it difficult to find a light source - this will be a lot to do with shutters but also the careful use of an expensive resource!
As we were leaving they said it was nice that they could stay up a little later that night....