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Well, what a fun month August was! Against all logic when running a seasonal B&B in southwest France we were closed for 15 nights, but we had good reasons for this self-indulgence: the marriage of Ollie (my eldest) and Abbie (my lovely new daughter-in-law), Paris 2024 Olympics and some quality time with friends and family.

Having had wedding guests staying in our B&B almost every weekend over the last 3 summers, it was a such a pleasure to be able to close and host our own family here for a week while we celebrated Ollie and Abbie’s wedding nearby at the beautiful Manoir du Bout du Pont in La Sauvetat du Dropt. A three-day celebration weekend started with a gathering at the marché gourmand at La Sauvatat on the Friday evening, the main event at Le Manoir on Saturday was just perfect followed by a chilled Sunday pool party and barbeque. What a fantastic time everyone had.

Earlier in the month we closed for a few days in Paris. Tom secured tickets for 2 days of Olympic athletics in Le Stade de France so, after a full house, we cleaned all the rooms, caught the TGV from Bordeaux and spent 3 nights in Paris. It was a fantastic trip. Paris was looking beautiful, everything was extremely well organised, the atmosphere in the stadium was awesome, the bistros and bars didn’t disappoint, and I even managed to run a ‘Paris landmarks’ half-marathon one morning.

Before we re-opened for business, we held our 3^rd annual summer garden party for our running group friends. Despite the 39 degree weather, it was a very chilled afternoon with great company and some lovely food that people brought, and the kids (big and small) all enjoyed the pool!

For the two weeks of the busiest month of the season that we did stay open, we were much busier than we expected to be with a lot of last-minute reservations, so we were turning people down because we were full. During our busiest week we checked-in 20 guests over a period of 5 days which was another ‘Le Portanel record’.

Apart from our family wedding of course, the main event for me in Eymet during August was the fabulous Fête de l’Huître et du Vin Blanc which takes place every year since 1989 on Assumption Day, 15^th August. I have talked about it before on here so I won’t go over the details again, but it certainly lived up to expectations again this year and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

So, the peak season is behind us for another year and once again it has absolutely flown by. We’ve got around 30 room-nights pre-booked for September as it stands, which sounds nice and relaxing compared to the ~65 per month we tend to have during peak season. I’ll do one more update at the start of October to reflect on this month and what the winter has in store for us.

Well, I really enjoyed July this year. With the very wet winter / spring and having been so busy with the B&B during May and June, I was feeling very tired and a bit disillusioned with it all at the start of this month. I was struggling to stay on top of things in the house and garden and was often too tired at the end of the day to get out and enjoy the long warm evenings.

With this in mind, we closed off some days in July that we still had free (and to avoid the dreaded 4-room-changeover days) and after a couple of days at the start of the month with the house and garden to ourselves, I had already started to feel better about life and I am ending the month in such a better mood than I started it 😊

Of course the B&B, the village and the whole region have been extremely lively with the school holidays underway, but the atmosphere has been great. The night markets, marchés gourmands, live music, apéros at the château and of course the big party for La Fête Nationale on 14^th July have been a lot of fun.

La Fête Nationale Française is a big deal and is celebrated right across France. For the 3^rd year running we headed down to Parc Bretou where volunteers had set up trestle tables, a stage, marquee tents and were selling food and drink. With a band playing, the dancing and the fireworks it was once again a lovely summer evening.

July also saw the return of the Apéro Cadix events on Thursday evenings in the garden of Eymet château. Organised by Le Comice Agricole with a strong focus on local wines and food, with live music followed by Wholly Vinyl disco and in such a beautiful setting, this is one of my favourite events of the summer. To mark our 3^rd anniversary of moving to France Tom and I had a night away in Bordeaux by train where we did some shopping, ate some lovely food and soaked up the atmosphere.We’ve had B&B guests attending 6 different weddings during the month which I think is a record for us and it looks like next year’s wedding plans are being firmed up because we’re receiving bursts of long-weekend reservations for next summer. Meanwhile we are now in the middle of our first proper heatwave of the year which is making everything a little more challenging! 

I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy running, and how lucky I was to find our local social running group here in Eymet. I thought I’d reflect on this again this month. Why? Well Tom and I have both signed up to run the Marathon Des Alpes Maritimes later in the year, a one-way 42km race from Nice to Cannes along the mediterranean coastal road, and our training plan starts in earnest this month. We are keeping our fingers crossed for some cooler days for our long training runs or we are going to have some very early mornings!

Our running group has settled into a really good routine meeting outside the Eymet Centre de Loisirs on Friday mornings for a gentle 5k run, and somewhere in the area for a 10km run that normally has options for shorter routes too. We vary in numbers from 2 to 12 runners each week and the Sunday run is often followed by coffee and cakes (the photo this month is in our garden after one such run from our house)

Several members of the group sign-up for some of the local races and 7 of us have already signed up for the Semi-Marathon de Bordeaux in December. We also have a few social gatherings during the year including a summer party at our house and a Christmas meal in the village.

I have started a paper collection of routes that can be run or walked from ours for B&B guests to use and that is proving popular, so I’ll keep building on that.

Speaking of our B&B guests, June has been very busy with more returning clients, wedding guests, people on holiday and people just passing through. An old friend of mine who I started work with in 1982 stopped for a night on their way down to Spain which was great. One couple stayed for 11 nights and another for 13 nights which is a new record for us. They have both already booked to stay again next year.

The first Eymet night market of the season took place last week which was, as always, very popular with a lovely atmosphere and a good night out. The weather for the first few weeks of June continued to be very unsettled which was disappointing, but we are finally serving breakfasts on the terrace most mornings now, and we have been up in the 30s with hot sunshine long enough for the pool to be lovely and warm.

Our marathon training starts mid-July with a plan to be running up to 70km per week by the end of August including a weekly long run of around 30km. The B&B is full for 3 or 4 nights every weekend through July but we’ve got some mid-week breaks with an empty house as it stands, so we should be able to get our running in before it gets too hot.

This weekend brings with it our first wedding guests of the year and signals the start of our ‘silly season’. Looking at the calendar, there are just 2 nights in June when we don’t have guests booked in. It is time to put the house ‘to do’ list firmly on hold and focus on the B&B as well as enjoying the summer activities.

Tom and I were chatting the other day about how nice it was to have the house to ourselves for a few days. With reservations for just about every week / weekend between now and the end of August, that is going to be a rare occurrence until the end of the summer.

When we are busy here, it is easy to have a bit of a moan about the early mornings, the never-ending laundry and cleaning, having guests in the house and garden all the time etc. Besides, who doesn’t like a good moan sometimes? To keep things in perspective, we remind ourselves that 3 or 4 ‘full-on’ months per year is SO much more preferable to the daily grind (‘metro, boulot, dodo’ as the French expression goes) we had before we moved to France.

I was thinking about what our hourly rate of pay is running the B&B. It is hard to say when the business merges so closely with our daily lives and varies so much day by day, week by week and month by month, but on balance, I’ll take our current mode de vie over our previous one which had a much higher income from our salaries.

During the winter months we have a lot of free time to get work done around the house and garden, but also to take some proper holidays away from everything and to take some time to just ‘do nothing’ at home, which I’ve never been that good at, but I am learning…

I know from experience now that the summer months are going to fly by with so much going on and we are already planning our holidays for when things quieten down again.

I have to say, the weather during May has been pretty rubbish with the heavy rain and chilly nights from April continuing for much of the month. Temperatures are on the way up now and the long-term forecast looks much more settled which is very welcome and is going to make getting my B&B laundry dry much easier! I’m looking forward to finally being able to start serving breakfast on the terrasse again, oh yeah and having a good moan about how hot it is all the time 😊

Last month I wrote about house-hunting being one of the recurring reasons bringing our guests to Eymet. Another reason, which I hadn’t considered at all before we opened the B&B, is to attend a wedding celebration in one of the nearby châteaux / manor houses.

We are lucky to have several excellent venues close by and they are very popular, particularly with British and Irish couples celebrating their wedding in France. Our beautiful Bastide town of Eymet with the bars and restaurants, the B&B and gite options, 3 airports in easy reach, is a great choice as a ‘hub’ for such an occasion.

In fact, my son and his fiancée who live in London are doing exactly that in August at Le Manoir du Bout du Pont at La Sauvetat de Dropt. They have been here this month to finalise their choices for catering, wine, arrangements at the venue, the supply of all the ‘stuff’ they are going to need and to start their detailed planning. We tasted wines with Manu at the lovely and recently refurbished Cave in Eymet and with Christophe at Domaine de Sauban whose wines I really like, to name a couple, but we are so spoilt for choice! We also sampled Rosie’s food from Party In France at Goujounac which was excellent.

For many weekends from late May to Early September, we have wedding guests arriving on the Thursday or Friday and leaving on the Sunday or Monday. There is often a gathering for food and drinks in Eymet ahead of the big day and usually a pool party / BBQ back at the wedding venue the day after.

Sometimes the wedding party will stay with us for a couple of nights before they move to the venue for the weekend. Some guests have stayed for a week or even longer making a proper holiday out of it with the wedding included. For the guests of local French weddings, it is fair to say that we hardly see them for the whole of their stay given the duration of the parties for those occasions.

I like it when we have a houseful of guests all attending the same wedding. The party atmosphere spills into our house, garden and pool, but we’ve also had guests from three separate weddings staying on the same weekend comparing notes about their respective venues.

I realise the large number of wedding celebrations here over the last couple of seasons was fuelled by a post COVID backlog, but I hope it continues moving forward because they are such good weekends for all involved.

We made good progress on the ‘to do’ list during April as well as welcoming B&B guests throughout the month, including several returning customers who have enjoyed staying with us before which makes me so happy 😊. As we move into May the B&B is getting busier, our pool is open (although given the weather this April it still has some warming up to do!) and we are seeing more tourists in the village and surrounding area. Bring on our 3^rd summer season here!