This is our 5th season of running our gites and we are proud to say our best year yet.  The availability calenders for all 3 gites are showing the much sought after ‘booked’ message for the main school holiday weeks with  many ’shoulder weeks’ also booked.

It isn’t all a bed of roses though, just when you think you’ve cracked it. our healthy bank balance has taken a beating with a few unexpected expenses cropping up as well as the usual stuff…

• £5000 on a new car – had to replace the old banger -  back in November last year we were on our way back from visiting Jeff’s brother in Catalunya in Spain when the engine decided to blow-up on the motorway.  After searching our local garages for a replacement 2nd hand car we gave up as they’re sooooo expensive here in France.  We really would have preferred buying in France but resorted going back to the UK for one and are now the proud owners of a Citroen Picasso… it’s 5 years old but very tidy and with only 4500 miles on the clock was perfect.   9 Months down the line and ‘touch wood’ it’s been fine, not as nifty as the old SAAB (I miss that Turbo kicking in) but much more practical with 5 doors for airport pick-ups and for taking Ruben out.
• 9000 Euros on New Gnashers – Yes, that was a shocker but Jeff had used and abused his so our Dentist was on to a nice little earner there!
• 1400 Euros on New Garden Furniture – Finally got around to replacing the white plastic tables and chairs that have given almost 5 years service.  Well, Tempete Xanthia gave a helping hand back in February but I must admit the new wooden furniture looks a bit classier, just hope the gite guests appreciate it and don’t swing about on it too much.  We originally had our eye on some lovely ‘all weather raffia’ furniture that we’d seen in our local E Leclerc supermarket.  Their summer promo catalogue came out back in February and we hurried along to the store on the first day of the promo only to be told that although they could order the furniture they couldn’t give us a delivery date.  With the customary Gallic shrug the sales assistant told us that it could be 1 month, 2 months maybe even 3 months.  That’s France for you but being ever optimistic I did place an order and here we are 6 months down the line and still no sign… that reminds me, I must cancel that order or we’ll have 2 sets of lovely garden furniture turning up that we can’t now afford.

Nearly £500 wasted on non-performing gite directory listings – Advertising has proved to be a major headache, we still class our selves as ‘beginners’ in this business and rely heavily on web based directories for promoting our gites.  Trying to find the right company that works for us is not an easy task, researching different sites, speaking to other gite owners locally and via forums (a very useful one is Lay My Hat) we’ve tried and tested quite a few over the last 5 years.  What may work for us will not necessarily work for others and vise a versa.  I still do not know the answer to this illusive question although I have come to the conclusion that you cannot be complacent and simply rely on one company/directory year on year.  For some bizarre reason they seem to have a ‘positive return rate’ for the first 2-3 years and then drop off . This last month I’ve reviewed our advertising (again), we’ve spent nearly £2000 in the last 12 months (that includes nearly £1000 on this new website).   I was recommended a oouple of sites to try to encourage more European guests, gites.nl for the Dutch market – this was over 300 euros and we only got 1 booking… arghhh.  The other was ‘pourlesvacance’ for the French market – this was even worse, not a single booking nada, zilch, rien!!!  Fortunately ‘ownersdirect‘ have proved very successful with over 16 bookings in the 12 months I’ve been with them and we have just renewed our subscription for another 12 months listing.  We’re forever receiving unsolicited emails from companies promising to ‘get you lots of bookings’ and you could waste a fortune trying them all.  As well as Owners Direct I thought I’d give ”flipkey‘ (the lettings directory for Trip Advisor) a try, they are currently offering a 60 day free trial, my ads went live today so we’ll see how that goes although I’m not holding my breath…

To address our problem of  not being able to gain bookings from the French (well anything other than 1 or 2 night enquirers) we are going to get classified by our local tourist board (www.dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr).  unfortunately we will have to wait until after 2nd October 2010 (after our last guests leave) for an inspection visit.  The visit will result in us being rated and awarded stars (up to 5).  We will then be listed on their website and in the local tourist guide book which is distributed throughout the Tourist Information Centre’s in the whole of France.

We’re obviously pleased that we’ve had a successful year with our gite bookings this year and hope to at least match it next year if not improve on the figures.  I’m probably sounding a little pessimistic which isn’t like me at all but I have come to realise that no two years are the same in the gite business.  We have raised our prices slightly for 2011 (the prices are now listed on the rates page) although we are promising to hold this years prices for any bookings confirmed before 1st January 2011.   I would be absolutely delighted if 2011 was as successful and 2010 so lets say ‘bring on the bookings’ and make me a happy bunny!

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!

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.

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!

It wasn’t going to be easy… We had bought this large house big enough for all of us, we were now thousands of pounds out of pocket (had to give my parents their money to go back home), I was missing my mum and dad, workmen we’re screwing us around with our pool build and we’d got  only just started to renovate the barn with perhaps 90% of the work still to do.   Considering Jeff is normally a pessimist he was confident we could get through this.

Jeff is not a builder by profession but an enthusiastic DIYer albeit a perfectionist to the point of being a pain in the proverbial.   We had done a considerable renovation job on our old house in the UK so were somewhat prepared for what was ahead.

Anyway, I’ve already digressed too much… the meaning of this particular post was to rejoice the end result of all this hard work and that we have achieved our goal.

One of the most rewarding parts of this business is seeing the  comments left in our guest book – One of our most recent guests wrote “We have ‘Gited’ in many parts of France over the years.   La Treille is by far and beyond the best“.  If that doesn’t make it all worth while I’m not sure what will and like any conscientious hotelier we care about our guests and are delighted to hear that they have had a lovely holiday here at La Treille.

You can see all their lovely comments here!

We are now successful gite owners with happy customers – they must be happy they keep coming back!

About an 8 hour ride from the Ports at Calais etc you will be given a warm welcome when you arrive at your gite(s) at  La Treille.   We are ex-bikers ourselves and understand the ‘needs of bikers’.   We have 3 seperate gites that are perfect for groups of  up to 14 ‘well-behaved bikers’.

Here’s a few photo’s of our previous guests and their machines…

Bill & Olwen with their GPZ's

Bill and Olwen with their GPZ Kawasaki’s – GPZ1100 and GPZ500.   They stayed with us last year for 1 week and came back this year for 2 weeks this time.    Here they are  all kitted-up ready for their homeward-bound journey having enjoyed 2 lovely relaxing weeks in the sun.

David with his Honda Valkyrie Cruiser

David and his lovely wife Norah were here just last week.  They are members of the VRCC and you can read their feedback of their stay at La Treille here!

FJR & Blackbird - June 08

Our mates came to visit last year on their bikes – lovely aren’t they!

Robo Cop aka Pete on his FJR!

Biker guests

This snap was taken pre-renovation of the barn when our biker mates from the UK visited us.

And here’s our bikes.  They’re still here but unfortunately not ‘on the road’ at the moment.  Read all about it on my ‘bike blog‘!

The babyblade and the busa!

I think most people in the world today have been affected by this credit crunch, including us here at La Treille and other gîte and holiday home owners here in the Dordogne region of SW France.  Fortunately this is our 4th year in the gîte business and our bookings were growing steadily year on year.  I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting-out in the gite business this year!  Our success is reflected in the lovely comments our guests have left and the amount of repeat guests and recommendations that La Treille is generating each year.  Don’t get me wrong… it hasn’t been easy!  5 years ago when we first arrived in France many ‘experts’ were saying the French tourist market was already saturated with too many gîtes and gîte complexes, especially in the popular Dordogne region.  This had been our dream for too many years to ‘throw in the towel’, so,  we ploughed-on with our plans and all our hard work and optimism was starting to pay-off with last year yielding 46 weeks worth of bookings – pretty good when you think we were told by the ‘experts’ that a 12 week season was good!  We were delighted to find that many of our guests were either booking up for their next years holiday whilst still here enjoying this years or within a week or so of arriving home.  Neither of us had any experience in the tourism industry so it was nail biting stuff the first year that people liked what they were paying for.  Things were looking pretty rosy by the end of last year although Jeff was starting to be pessimistic about 2009 being as successful as 2008 due to this ‘credit crunch’!

Inevitably the crunch has hit us this year and enquiries and bookings did start to dry-up.  Fortunately we’d got most of July and August booked-up for all of our gites by the end of May but the shoulder weeks of our already ’short season’ were looking worryingly vacant.  As suspected many holiday makers have left booking late and are now looking for those ‘last minute bargain holidays’.  Our phone lines and email in-boxes have been very busy this last month with enquiries and we have now filled many of our vacant shoulder weeks although we are still falling short of our target of at least 36 weeks bookings across the 3 gites.  Enquirers who are still trying to book the main school holiday weeks during July and August have however missed out by leaving booking until ‘last minute’.  They may well find alternative accommodation but ‘what will it be like’?  We understand the importance to holiday makers searching for availability – especially in today’s economic climate.  Because of this we are vigilant in keeping our availability calendars up to date wherever we advertise but we are still receiving many enquiries for these ‘already booked’ weeks of July & August.  I can totally understand people leaving booking till late (we are guilty of doing it ourselves) but you just cannot guarantee getting the accommodation you would really like if you do this for July and August.

We also understand the importance of keeping up-to-date with marketing and have ploughed much of our hard earned cash back in to the business.  This year we have a brand new website that has been set-up with the help of a web design expert Gite Guru aka Dave Smith who specialises in the gîte market.  Hours of work, research and much thought have gone into the design and set-up of the site and the integration of this blog will hopefully help with search engine optimization for bringing-in direct enquiries.  We have also reviewed which advertising directories we use and have placed adverts with new directories to target a wider European market, these include Owners Direct (for the UK market), Pour Les Vacances (for the French market) and gites.nl (for the Dutch and German market).  As well as these we also advertise on many ‘free’ Internet sites that occasionally bring in the odd booking.  I don’t know if we will ever get to the stage where we no longer have to advertise, I know there are gîte business’s out there that are very successful and fully booked via their own website, recommendations and many loyal repeat guests – The mark of a good gîte business is to eventually not have to ‘pay to advertise via these directories’ and that is my goal!  We’ll keep maintaining the property whilst business is good and making improvements where possible. We were hoping to add pool heating and a games room this year but it looks like those improvements will have to wait until next year… such a shame but it will happen eventually.

The future is very optimistic at La Treille with bookings already coming in for 2010 so if you are thinking of taking a gîte holiday in the Dordogne why not make sure you ‘get the gîte you want’ by booking now.  You can secure your chosen week(s) with just a small deposit of £100.  Come and spend a week or more here at La Treille in one of our stunning gîtes – Le Ble, Le Tournesol and Le Maize – you will not be disappointed!

Oh and don’t forget September this year – we still have availability and the weather is still beautiful!

Jeff and his new 'boys toy!'

I’ve had to download the English Manual from the net for Jeff so that he can get to grips with ’starting it’ (typical man doesn’t think he has to read the instructions)…

That's the first half nearly done!

So, here we are Saturday morning and we’re doing a joint effort of trimming the hedge… Jeff doing the trimming and me collecting, it’s hard work but hopefully I’ll burn a few calories into the bargain… and these photo’s are proof that I could do with loosing a few pounds.

Me looking fat!

I haven’t told him yet but we’ve still got all the ‘top drive’ to do too… that’ll keep till for another day though!

Top drive at La Treille

Tonight we’re off out to Perigueux for the annual Fête de la Musique which I’m really looking forward to.

• Mow lawns and do some major strimming.
• Take photo’s of childrens toys for website.
• Type-up electric box ‘fuse labels’ for gites 1 & 2.
• Update ‘Welcome Notes’ for gites.
• Call Gite Guru to help with new website.

Oh, and take Ruben for a walk.

Other than that Jeff’s doing the 2nd coat of paint on the windows and shutters and I’m slogging through tons of ironing… must be mad!!

Update – The storm by-passed us so we’ll just have to wait for the next one to take some photo’s.