La Chambre d’Hote

14 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

Susie decided to turn the main house into a bed and breakfast after she bought the smaller property next to the tea shop. She named the house La Bourge which in French means a lady who has to dress with everything matching; shoes, hat, bag and hat!

It’s a beautiful, traditional french house with 3 very tastefully decorated guest rooms and an attic converted into a studio that sleeps 4 people. While I was there only the guest rooms were being used and we had a steady stream of guests. They were mainly French couples and families travelling from the north to the south for their holidays and breaking their journeys in the village. Although we did have a lovely couple from South Africa who were touring Europe.

The main job in the guest house was serving breakfast and then cleaning, changing the beds and getting ready for the next visitors. At one point I considered changing my name to Widow Twanky as I washed and dried so much bedding!

Anyone visiting La Bourge is guaranteed a very warm welcome and great hospitality in a gorgeous house by a fabulous host.

Have a look at the website: http://www.chezlabourge.com, and if you are lucky enough to stay there check out the beautiful tiling on the ground floors.

sitting room the blue room the cream room the grey room

Le Salon de The

14 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The little tea shop in Le Grand Bourg I worked in is called Time for Tea, it is sandwiched between the guest house and Susie’s house. It is decked out in 1950’s vintage splendor from the cabinets to the Formica tables.

It’s open from Wednesday to Sunday between the hours of 12 and 5. The delicious lunches on offer are soup with homemade bread followed by the tart of the day with 2 salads. The tarts come in many variations such as Spanish tortilla, vegetable terrine and spicy pizza, I made quite a nice spinach tortilla which seemed to go well. My savoury muffins, however, weren’t such a great success and could have been used as a weapon when they went extremely hard after a couple of days! But I redeemed myself a few days later with a tomato and mozzarella bread straight out of the pages of Paul Hollywood’s baking bible.

For afternoon tea the customers can choose from the good old fruit scone and a variety of yummy cakes. I’m not really much of a baker but I did manage to knock up a decent coffee and walnut cake. Of course all these goodies are washed down with copious amounts of tea.

Most of the customers in the tea shop are British people who have houses in the area, although we did have a few French customers on my first weekend as there was an open garden event going on. I think only the Brits truly appreciate a lovely cuppa in the sweltering heat, although I did manage to convert my fellow Workawayer, Karet from Estonia, to my way of thinking that it’s never too hot to drink tea!

cake display formica heaven le salon de the my walnut cake the bread vintage cabinets

l’emplacement

10 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , ,

The tea shop and bed and breakfast were situated in a village called Le Grand Bourg, but it should have been called Le Petit Bourg because it wasn’t the biggest of places. Apart from a few restaurants, a hairdressers, pharmacy and a bakery there wasn’t a lot going on. But there was something peculiar about the place that I never seen anywhere else on my travels. Around the village were very freaky looking manikins dressed up in various outfits and in different poses.

bag lady boules man confused corpse bride family gathering french boyfriend get knitted grizzly adams just freaky just wierd paper man poker face pot stealer tour de france

I’m not sure what they were supposed to represent but they were definitely nightmare inducing up close.

Le voyage commence

23 Jul 2015 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

After a very early start and a ride to the airport with a very nosy taxi driver, I was soon jetting off to Limoges. An hour and half flight time later I landed in one of the smallest airports I’ve ever been to. Another taxi ride, this time with a very quiet driver took me to Limoges train station to continue my journey to La Souterraine. My internet search told me there might be a bus from the station that would take me to Le Grand Bourg, but as it only ran four times a week it would have been too optimistic to hope that Friday would be my lucky bus day. My host, Susie, very kindly picked me up.

Susie is a Brit and she owns the Tea shop, the bed and breakfast and the house next door. The other members of the family are; Pongo the dog she adopted while living in Morocco, Tripod the three legged cat, while she was a kitten a dog, (not Pongo), mistook her for a toy and bit off her leg, then there’s Colin the tabby cat with an identity disorder, he and Pongo think they are Yorkshire Terriers as they only eat dry food made especially for that breed.

There was another Workawayer here, Karet a French language student from Estonia. She had already been working for two weeks and had another two weeks to go.

My room was small and perfectly formed and I knew instantly I would be happy.

pongo tripod 20150709_214238

En Vacance

20 Jul 2015 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

When a person finds themselves single again there is always the dilemma of what to do for a summer holiday. A lot of my friends are married with younger children or in relationships. My sons are adults now and certainly do not want to spend a couple of weeks in a foreign land with their old mum. I’m not really a lying in the sun kind of person and definitely wouldn’t want to do that on my own.

So having scoured the internet for ideas for holidays for billy no mates I found a site called Workaway. In return for 5 hours of work a day, 5 days a week, (on average), a host will provide accommodation and food. There are hosts in a variety of settings offering all kinds of work worldwide. As this was my first adventure I decided to stay close-ish to home and look for a placement in France.

Imagine my delight as I found a vintage tea shop in the Limousin region in a small town called Le Grand Bourg. My joy continued when I discovered that I could fly directly there from Bristol.

According to the site, the work included baking cakes and bread, serving customers and helping out in the bed and breakfast attached to the tea shop. As none of this sounded too taxing I booked myself in.

The next few posts will tell the story of my grand adventure en Francais.

workaway