September certainly met my expectations this year. The weather was (mostly) great with temperatures up in the 30s for the first 2 weeks and late twenties for the second half of the month, we did get 3 or 4 days of cool air and heavy rain in the middle, but that was quite welcome. The bars, restaurants and markets were still lively but without the crush of July / August. The B&B was still busy but without the full house of the peak season and we were able to have some downtime, family visitors and plan some holidays for the winter months.
We made the most of the last of summer events, spent some time with friends and family, kept up our running and started this year’s French classes with ACFAA as well as serving just over 100 guest breakfasts over the course of the month. Like last year, we are definitely ready for a break.
The pool started the month at about 26 degrees but was down to 21 by the end thanks to some storms, the colder nights and fewer hours of sunshine. We have closed it off now until next May.
On the admin side of things, I have at last managed to stop paying tax on my income both in the UK and in France and had all my overpayment returned. Our 2022 joint tax return went through OK, plus Tom finally has his ‘numéro fiscal’ which makes life a lot easier moving forward.
The association Maquizart have asked us to host the jazz musicians over the winter again when the concerts are on at the Chateau d’Eymet. It is obviously good to keep some € coming in over the winter, but I also enjoyed these weekends last year because I met some interesting people, had the opportunity to keep using my French and had an excuse to put the central heating on in the whole house instead of shutting ourselves in the petit-salon with just the pellet burner on!
As we wind down for the year in the B&B I can see that our takings for this year are about 30% up on 2022, we’ve managed to keep our overall score of 9.8 on Booking and we have over 100 room-nights reserved for 2024 already so we must be doing something right!
I’ll pause this blog now until we are getting ready to open again next season…
