Blog | Gites at La Treille

Gites offering flexible arrival & departure dates

By admin | Published: January 31, 2010

Mid-Week arrival and departures to suit our guests.

Fun in the pool

Are you looking to book a gite during the months of April, May, June or September? Perhaps you can’t get flights or ferries on a Saturday or would prefer a short stay of just 3-6 nights – well, hopefully we can help!

Where possible we will try to work with you for your preferred dates, just ask and we will do our best to make sure you get the holiday you deserve on the dates you want! – click here to enquire!

We are almost fully booked during July & August with just 2 weeks left in our small gite from Saturday 10th July 2010 – click here if you are interested in booking these weeks!

Posted in News Flash, Special Offers | Tagged april, august, dates, flexible, gites, july, june, may, september, short stay | Leave a comment

Bordeaux Marche Noel 2009

By admin | Published: December 10, 2009

Christmas Markets in the Dordogne, SW France

European Christmas markets are world famous and France boasts some of the best inlcuding our favourite in the Beautiful city of Bordeaux – just one and half hours drive from our lovely holiday cottages – La Treille Gites.

The Bordeaux Christmas Market or ‘Marche Noel’ is held every year and is ideally placed right in the heart of the city, it’s open during the whole month of December with the stalls trading their unique wares up till 8pm on weekday evenings and 10pm at weekends.

We went with friends and had a lovely time browsing around the pretty market kiosks searching for ’special gifts’, having lunch in one of the numerous bistro restaurants and then sipping hot mulled wine later in the evening.

Getting to Bordeaux was a breeze with 90% of the journey on the motorway. We drove straight into the centre of the city and parked in the underground car park at the Allee de Tourny – this was immediately below the market stalls – perfect! We purchased ourselves a Sat Nav a few weeks earlier and although we took it we really didn’t need it – we found our way directly to our chosen car park with not a single wrong turn… an unusual feat for us!

In between visiting the markets we stopped for lunch in a lovely little bistro restaurant. The prices are amazingly good for city centre dining – in our eatery we chose the menu de jour which consisted of 3 courses including a bottle of wine for just 11 euros each. Fully refreshed we hit the streets again and made our way to the famous ‘rue St Catherine‘ – one of the longest pedestrianised shopping streets in Europe. Here we discovered France’s top department store ‘Galeries Lafayette‘ and many other trendy French high street stores… A shopaholics mecca!!!

There are so many interesting places and buildings to see in Bordeaux including The Grande Theatre, museums and many churches and monuments including this beautiful bell tower ‘Gross Cloche’ and Cathedral Saint Andre… Here’s a link to a very good site with lots of information.

We had such a lovely time and would definately recommend a visit to Bordeaux – especially at this wonderfull time of year… we’ll definately be coming back to explore more that this amazing city of culture and all it has to offer. If you want to come too you’re in for a treat!

Posted in Days Out, Local Events, Places to go | Tagged Bordeaux Marche Noel, French shopping, Galeries Lafayette, rue Saint Catherine | Leave a comment

Bourdeilles winter walk

By admin | Published: December 7, 2009

Promenade around a beautiful village

It might be early winter here in the Dordogne but that doesn’t mean we have to hibernate. The local towns and villages are just as pretty as we may remember in the summer but they take on a different hue and are just as pleasant to visit in these cooler seasons.

Just a 10 minute drive from La Treille heading NE on the D78 towards Brantome is the pretty village of Bourdeilles. The narrow cobbled streets and pretty little houses are clustered around the Renaissance Chateau and it’s Fortress. The River Dronne meanders along side the chateau and through the village making it perfect for a brisk afternoon winter walk. Others obviously had the same idea as us as there were quite a few people promenading arm in arm along the river. It’s possible to take a tour of the chateau and a climb up to the top the tower gives visitors a magnificient view over the town and surrounding countryside.

We walked around the narrow streets and then called in for a warming coffee in one of the little cafe’s that still had a few tables and chairs outside. The cafe owner was preparing a huge couldron of duck and vegetable soup ready for that evening. He asked us if we would mind tasting his soup to make sure he hadn’t over salted it… it was delicious!

Want to know more about Bourdeilles – click here!

Posted in Places to go, Top 10 Pretties Villages Near La Treille Gites, Walking | Tagged Bourdeilles, Chateau, Dordogne, Walk, Winter | Leave a comment

A re-newed passion for the Dordogne

By admin | Published: November 1, 2009

Well, here we are it’s the 1st of November already… where did the summer go?

We finally got back from our short break in Spain and although we had a lovely time staying with Jeff’s brother and visiting lots of amazing places, to be honest we were quite pleased to get back to our ‘home’ here in the Dordogne. You may have heard rumours that we have been considering selling-up here at La Treille and perhaps even making a move to Spain but the trip has opened our eyes of exactly what we have here and how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful part of the world. So, to put it plainly we will not be going anywhere, well, not for quite a few years yet at least and let’s face it, the market (yes, even France’s property market) isn’t at it’s best to be selling. So, with our re-newed passion we are staying put!

We have always kept the gites and gardens in tip-top condition, personally I wouldn’t like to stay in a ‘tired gite’ and would not wish to subject our guests to one either, but with our batteries fully re-charged and this new inspiration in our hearts we are enthusiastically putting those finishing touches to the property. Jeff started in the Spring by starting to re-paint all the shutters a beautiful shade of terracota and is now pointing-up the exterior walls to bring them back to their traditonal ‘Pierre-Apparent’ glory. What a difference it makes… photo to follow!

I’ve been doing my bit too, mowing the lawns – hopefully for the last time this year and collecting the ever falling autumn leaves as well as collecting a few of this year’s bumper walnut harvest. It’ll soon be time to go marron (chestnuts) collecting in the woods – I love all this ‘freebie food’!

With all this going on unfortunately I have been neglecting to keep my eye on the gite admin. You cannot afford to sit on your laurels in this competitive market. Having checked my daily analysis (yes I know, I’m turning into a ‘gite owner anorak’) I realised I needed to sort out which advertising directories were performing for us and which were not. We have been advertising with Chez Nous since we started 4 years ago and dissapointingly for us they are no longer performing. You cannot afford to be loyal to these businesses and I made the decision to not re-new my subscription for our 2010 advertising budget. As well as Chez Nous, I have also dropped Holiday Rentals and French Connections. It may have been a risk as all 3 of these companies are well-known within the French lettings market but they were just getting so expensive – I was spending nearly £1000 annualy just on these 3!!! So far I have no regrets and with our brand new website and brand new adverts taken out with Owners Direct, Pour les Vacances, North Of The Dordogne and many others we are optomistic for a busy 2010. These are holding their own on the numerous search engines but I really need to keep up to date with regular blog posts too. These help to keep our own website on page 1 of the search engines – especially Google.

No 2 years are the same in the gite market as we’ve discovered over the last four years of renting our gites. Although we are well-established now (I think, although I try not to get complacement) we are still in our infancy in comparison to other gite business within this area. Last year started off a little shaky with only a few bookings received by the end of December compared to previous years. This was perhaps hardly surprising considering the credit crunch and although we tried to tap into a broader European market including French, Dutch and German visitors to broaden our customer base they have proved elusive to date – this is obviously something I need to work on. Never the less the bookings did come in, fortunately for us from the loyal UK market that obviously still loves France, these included 8 re-bookings from previous guests and although we were ‘down’ on the previous year we did a lot better than some of our competitor’s. 2010 is looking much more promising so far with 22 weeks booked-up already (again from the ever loyal UK market) thankfully/ This is unusual but as I said no 2 years are the same and if things carry on in this fashion we may just have a bumper year next year (fingers crossed) and perhaps we’ll have a little left over to get the pool heated!

Posted in Chit Chat | Leave a comment

Autumn around La Treille Gites, Dordogne

By admin | Published: October 2, 2009

It’s a busy old time around La Treille at the moment so I”ve done 2 posts in 1 here…

1 – Rambling around La Treille Gites in the glorious September sunshine -

It’s been an absolutely perfect summer and even now during late September the sun is out giving us temperatures in the mid twenties. It may well be the end of the main summer holiday season but there is still so much to see and do around our gites this time of year. If you are looking for an Autumn break in the French countryside the Dordogne is a wonderful region with so much to offer all year round.

Our last guests of the season arrived yesterday (Saturday 26th September) and are here for 5 nights – the forecast is good all week with no rain predicted.

In the meantime we donned our walking boots and went out to enjoy a little ramble (sounds like we’re really getting into this country lark) around our patch of the woods. We headed down the lane to the hamlet of Bernichoux, up the white calcaire track and then down into Tocane St Apre. It’s only a short walk of about 45 minutes but quite lovely this time of year.

Jeff & Ruben enjoying the late summer sunshine

Lovely walks around La Treille Gites

Julie the rambler

Blackberries and elderberries are in abundance and the walnut trees are promising a good harvest. I scrumped a few apples and made some scrummy apple and blackcurrant pies and crumbles

… mmm lovely comfort food for stocking up the freezer and to remind us of our summer’s past during the chilly winter months.

Home-made Crumble

Ruben in the Dronne

Here’s our dog ‘Ruben’ cooling down in the River…

2 – Autumn Harvest in the Dordogne -

All our local farmers are busy right now and the Combine Harvester is working overtime – the sunflowers were harvested at the end of August and they are now starting to harvest the corn crop.

Here’s a few pictures showing the harvester working around La Treille… they worked well into the night and were still going strong at around 1am!

Mr & Mrs Harris

Corn Harvesting

Corn Harvest

Fortunately I’d pre-warned our gite guests this might happen but they were absolutely fine about it… even commenting in our guest book “that ‘it was magic”‘!

Harvesting into the night

The municipal workers have been around and trimmed all the hedge rows and cut the grass verges – it’s all looking very neat although there’s a secondary reason for keeping the grass verges short… when the walnut’s fall from the tree’s lining the lanes a few local folk are out collecting them for hours on end. It must be a back breaking job and I hope it’s all worth while when they take them to the local markets to sell. (they must have claim to these particular trees)

The walnut trees at La Treille

Walnut harvest

This is a picture of our neighbour James Hatton…

James on his Tractor

Sitting proudly on his latest project, ‘A Massey Ferguson Tractor’. He bought it off our other neighbour and has been restoring it over the last few months to it’s former glory. James along with his wife Jane and their two lovely boys successfully run a dog and cat kennels just over the hill from us – it’s where Ruben will be staying in a few days. The Kennels are called Pattes et Griffes Pension Canine (Paws & Claws boarding kennels).

We were passing through St Astier today and there was a farmers fair along with the usual Sunday vide grenier (car boot sales that seem to be in every village on every Sunday these days). The farmers had this old fashioned bailing machine, at least I think it was old fashioned it looked ancient and they were demonstrating it… it was really noisy and creating a lot of dust but fascinating.

Bailing machine

St Astier Farm Fete

Well, that’s about it from me for a while as we’re off on a well earned break to sunny Spain to visit Jeff’s brother who lives in Catalunya. Our last guests have left, we’ve closed the gites and put away all the garden furniture and Jeff’s even cleaned the car (a very rare event) so we’re almost set for the ‘great get-away’.

Autumn at La Treille

Jeff & The SAAB

I’ll be back though with posts throughout the rest of the Autumn and Winter of our life here in the Dordogne.

Posted in Chit Chat, Local Events, Walking | 1 Comment

Circuit des Remparts, Angoulême

By admin | Published: September 21, 2009

Ideal ‘long-weekend’ event for classic car enthusiasts in SW France!

If you are into street car racing or classic cars you would have loved today’s event… the streets of the ancient city of Angoulême were closed off to normal traffic today to allow hundreds of classic cars owners the chance to rev their engines, don their racing gear and hit the streets with their mean machines trying to win a place in history at the CIRCUIT DES REMPARTS IN ANGOULEME.

Classic car

It’s actually a weekend long event held every 3rd weekend in September and this year was the 70th Anniversary. Thousands of spectators from all over the world came to see the spectacle. The programme of events runs from the Friday when all the cars are exhibited in the stands around the city. On the Saturday there is the ‘Rallye International de Charente‘ starting fromm 8.30am and departing from the Géant Casino (Supermarket) in the North of Angoulême and finishing at 5.30pm at the place Victor Hugo Square. There is also the ‘Présentation du Championnat de monde des Rallyes 1973 : Alpine A1100 Gr 4‘ – this starts at 3pm at the Esplanade du Champ de Mars. These events are all free! Then on the Sunday you have the main street racing events…

Spectators at Circuit des Remparts

There were ancient Bugatti, Morgan’s, Maserati, Alfa Romeo and dozens more actually racing. The roar was incredible as they raced through the streets, taking the hairpin bends at break-neck speeds and thundering towards the finish lines. The crowds were loving it even the rain couldn’t dampen our spirits and the when the sun came out everyone cheered.

Spectators on the remparts

The city of Angoulême (the capital of the Charente Department) is, at any time pretty spectacular… with it’s Beautiful cathedral, churches, ancient fortifications (known as the ‘remparts’) encircling the city and so much more to offer visitors, that this most unusual weekend event only adds to it’s many attractions.

There were numerous ticket offices about were you could purchase entrance tickets for 13 euros each which allowed you to enter the remparts for excellent viewing or an armband was available for 26 euros each which included entrance to the remparts, the seated viewing area’s and the paddocks. Not sure what the prices were for children – sorry!

There was also a very good Programme available from the ticket offices. Here’s all 48 of the photo’s that I took on the day as well as a few scanned snaps of the Programme pages…

: An ancient Austin

: Classic Bugatti

: Chevrolet

: Entry to the paddock

: One of the hairpin bends

: Spectators at Circuit des Remparts

: Hold that line!

: Red Ferrari

: Sexy Lancia

: The Beautiful Morgan

: Classic cars thundering down the streets

: Spectators on the remparts

: Porche racing down the streets

: Classic car

: Any idea’s???

: 1966 Triumph Vitesse

: Lap of honour

So, if you fancy joining in all the fun next year why not book yourself in to our lovley gites here at La Treille which are only an hour away from all the action!

Posted in Days Out, Local Events | 1 Comment

Vide Grenier at Tocane St Apre

By admin | Published: September 14, 2009

Our first and last Vide Grenier (Car Boot Sale)

Jeff doing the 'hard sell'!

We’ve been living here at La Treille in the Dordogne for over 5 years now and still have many ‘un-packed’ boxes of ornaments and ‘who knows what” sitting in our barn. I’ve been threatening to do a ‘Vide Grenier’ now for about 2 years and clear out all that ’stuff’ that we no longer want or use.

It took us about a week to go through all the boxes and decide what was ‘going’ and what was ’staying’… we were going to be ruthless, that collection of crystal sugar shakers, pictures that we’d got bored with, a set of crockery that I was never going to use and lots of other stuff including all the ‘nail technician equipment, products and paraphanalia’ from my former life.

We re-packed the items, boxed them and loaded them into the car on Saturday night. We still have gite guests here and didn’t want to disturb them too much with our early start on Sunday Morning.

Getting up before 7pm was a novelty for us and felt like we were going off on our holidays not just popping down to our local village. We set-off down the lane to Tocane St Apre where the Vide Grenier was being held. It was chaos with cars trying to get-up to the main square to set-up their stalls and unload their wares – I think most must have arrived at least an hour earlier looking at their neatly laid out gear and unbelievably buyers were browsing already!

Fortunately our friends Janice & Paul who recently opened their new café bar ‘Rouge’ right in the Centre Ville of Tocane had reserved us a ‘prime spot’ right opposite their already bustling café. Paul had obtained a special ‘one-day’ licence enabling him to sell alcohol without food (although food was certainly available) and it looked like it was being appreciated by a few ‘early birds’!

Janice & Paul serving at Rouge

We quickly got to work setting up the tables and laying out our cherished possessions. It was an unfamiliar and weird feeling seeing your possessions being scrutinized by the general public and quite rewarding when somebody chose to buy something.

Browsing our stall

Jeff & I trying to off-load our 'junk'

Fortunately it was a glorious sunny day, good job we’d remembered to bring our parasol or we would have got quite frazzled.

The crowds really picked-up about 10am and then thinned out at lunchtime for a couple of hours. Well we were in France after all and nothing stops the French from their 2 hour lunch break. We made the most of the lull and I sent Jeff off to order lunch from ‘Rouge’ – take-away fish et chips… perfect fodder for car booters!

After lunch the crowds came back out into the sun and started browsing again. We’d sold many items and had made just over 200 euros so were very pleased with all our hard work. There were still many people ‘browsing and buying’ but the crowds were starting to thin-out a little so just after 3pm we decided to call it a day, we were both shattered but had had a thoroughly enjoyable day.

We packed away what was left and headed home feeling quite rejuvenated having de-cluttered and made a little bit of cash into the bargain.

Just not sure that we will be doing another for a long time though!

Posted in Chit Chat, Days Out | Leave a comment

Limeuil Village – A day out from our Dordogne Gites

By admin | Published: September 9, 2009

It’s the 8th of September, our gites are still busy and the temperatures are still hitting an average of 30ºC this week. Our guests are making the most of their late summer holidays here in the Dordogne by relaxing around the pool so we decided to leave them to it and have a day out to visit what is officially classified as one of the prettiest villages in France.

Limeuil is about 90km (57 miles ) SE from La Treille Gites using the viamichelin website. We set-off about 11am and arrived about an hour later in the village. Driving through the village following the sign for Tremolat there was a free car park on the left about 250m outside the main village rather than the main ‘pay and display’ one that you see when you first arrive in the village.

The Rivers meet

The river beach at Limeuil

The village is nestled on the banks of two joining rivers – the Dordogne and the Vezere.

View down street at Limeuil

Ancient archway over street

Cobbled street at Limeuil

With parts of the original fortified walls still surrounding the village, its narrow cobbled streets with honey coloured houses gradually meander up the steep hill toward the Ancient chapelle of Sainte Catherine.

Sainte Catherine Chapel, Limeuil

Another view of the Chapelle

View across the Valley

Here’s a view across the valley where you can just see some ‘ancient cave houses’ built into the sandstone cliff’s opposite… Don’t forget you can click on any of these photo’s to enlarge them!

Right at the top of the village was a park but we were too tight to pay the entrance fee of 6 euros each so didn’t venture past the entrance gates. Apparently the views are pretty spectacular!

Gateway to the parc at Limeuil

Hidden among the shady cobbled streets about half way up through the village are 2 or 3 quaint little restaurants with lovely shady terraces. They all looked quite busy today as suprisingly for this time of year there were quite a few tourists about. The food looked and smelled delicious and appeared really good value with one menu listing a 3 course meal with wine at just over 10 euros… so refreshing not to see ‘rip-off prices’ at these top tourist attractions. We’d already decided to have lunch at the restaurant that we’d seen earlier down near the river where our dog (Ruben) hopefully would behave himself.

Having reached the sumit we started to head back down but were being hotly pursued by this cute little pooch…

Dog on the loose

I just had to take his photo as the poor little thing only had 1 eye… I could have so easily have picked him up and stashed him in my rucksack, he’d make a great playmate for Ruben!

We managed to shake the ‘follower’ and kept moving down, Jeff spotted this water tap in the wall and cheekily filled the dogs water bottle…

Helping yourself to council pop?

We reached the bottom and found a table on the terrace at the restaurant. They were only serving snacks like quiche, croque monsieur and frits but that was fine with us.

Lunch by the river

After we’d eaten we let Ruby go for a paddle in the river…

Ruben paddling

We’d definately recommend Limeuil for a day-out, it’s not too far from the gites and with lots of other lovely towns in this area it’s well worth a visit!

Us at Limeuil

Posted in Days Out, Places to go, Top 10 Pretties Villages Near La Treille Gites | Leave a comment

Chateau Puyguilhem & Go Karting

By admin | Published: September 8, 2009

Things to do in the Dordogne for all the family

The title of this blog may seem a little strange… that is to say who would put a Chateau and Go-Karting in the same sentence?

Here’s the logic behind my madness… During the summer we have quite a number of families holidaying in our gites and we like to be able to recommend interesting places for them to visit. Whilst researching ‘places of interest for children in the Dordogne‘ I came across a Go-Karting Venue near Javerlac which isn’t too far from the beautiful Chateau of Puyguilhem. In my wisdom I thought what a brilliant idea to combine the two places for a fantastic day out where the children (and the adults of course) will love to go go-karting in the morning (and wear them out a little) and then mum and dad could do a spot of ‘culture therapy’ with the Chateau visit in the afternoon. Some great photo oportunities at both events are of course promised.

The day we went to have a look at the Go-Karting circuit was unfortunately the day after the schools started back after the long summer holidays here so we were the only people there besides a couple of members of staff. There are 2 circuits – a small one for the children and a large circuit (over 1200m) for the adults. They both looked very professional especially the large one ‘La Grande Piste de Karting’ as you can see in this photo…

Go-Kart track at Javerlac

Childrens Go-Kart circuit at Javerlhac

We’ll definitely be going back at sometime in the near future with a few friends to ‘have a go’ ourselves. It’s not cheap at 24€ for kids (gives 3 x 8 minute sessions) and 36€ for Adults (gives 2 x 10 minute sessions) but the kids will love you for treating them. Click here for a link to this Go-Karting Circuit website.

That afternoon we then headed to the village of Villars and in particular on this occassion the ‘Chateau Puyguilhem‘ which was just half an hour east of Javerlhac and the Go-karting circuit. Villars is in it’s own right a very pretty village, well worth a visit and of course, famous for the ‘Grotte de Villars‘ – the ancient prehistoric caves, but we’ll leave those for another day… Today is Chateau day!

Château Puyguilhem

We paid our 5€ admission fee, the lady in the reception automatically handed us the ‘English language’ information guide (my “Bonjour” was obviously so ‘English’) and headed into the Chateau. From the outside it really is in a quite exquisite setting even without the lake that used to be in existence many years ago. The surrounding open countryside with the valley sloping away from the chateau and a forest behind is very fitting for this glorious castle. It looked like we’d just missed the start of a guided tour but the guide kindly called us over to join the party… the guide turned out to be quite a character (I guess it goes with the territory) and made the visit so much more interesting with his little quips and jovial manner. He did go on a little though about the tapestries that hung in some of the rooms.

Tapestry in Her Ladyships Bedroom

At one point he insisted a couple of the tourists including myself take 3 different photo’s from different angles to help us appreciate the detail of the ‘Leonardo effect’ after the painter of the Mona Lisa.

Tapestry at Puyguilhem

Puyguilham tapestry

Puyguilhem Tapestry with Leonardo effect

This effect is also known as Trompe-l’œl (to fool the eye) – you can see another blog on this ‘paint effect’ and a local museum in Perigueux that we visited earlier this year. The guide was obviously very proud of these artifacts and I felt quite a ’smarty pants’ that I understood what he was talking about. Anyway I’m waffling now so to get back to the subject in hand… your supposed to feel like the horse’s eyes are following you around the room! Not quite sure it worked on me as I was getting a little flustered at the guides attention and enthusiasm. The tour took us through about a dozen rooms including The Great Hall, The Dining Hall, The Kitchen, Weapons room and The Lord and Ladyships Bedrooms. Oh here’s a picture of the guide himself sitting in ‘Her Ladyship’s Bedroom’…

The lovely tour guide at Puyguilhem Chateau

You’ll just have to go see for yourself to see what I mean. x

Posted in Days Out, Places to go | Leave a comment

Dordogne gites For Summer 2010

By admin | Published: September 5, 2009

Vacancies for summer school holiday dates 2010!

La Treille Gites is proving as popular as ever with holiday makers securing their next years summer holidays by booking 12 months in advance. We are filling up fast so to make sure you do not miss out on your preferred weeks contact us and book your gite now!

Fun in the pool

Posted in News Flash | Leave a comment

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Dordogne Gites to rent with beautiful swimming pool

Mid-Week arrival and departures to suit our guests.

Christmas Markets in the Dordogne, SW France

Promenade around a beautiful village

1 – Rambling around La Treille Gites in the glorious September sunshine -

2 – Autumn Harvest in the Dordogne -

Ideal ‘long-weekend’ event for classic car enthusiasts in SW France!

Our first and last Vide Grenier (Car Boot Sale)

Things to do in the Dordogne for all the family

Vacancies for summer school holiday dates 2010!

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