See website for full details. We listened to all our guests when we asked them what we could improve, and have followed up on all their suggestions.
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4* pet-friendly self-catering holiday cottage in the Loire Valley France, Spacious and comfortable accommodation for up to 6 people, with its own secluded garden. In 2015 Jackie and I decided to take early retirement and move to France with the intention of setting up a pet-friendly holiday letting (gîte). After a lot of property searching, we eventually found the perfect one, and moved lock stock
and barrel (+dogs, horses and everything else) to Les Vieux Auberts in February 2016. After a lot of hard work, we finally opened for business in May 2017, and were really pleased to get 13 weeks’ of bookings, including 2 over Christmas and New Year. The end result was that we were awarded 4 stars in the category “meublé de tourisme” (furnished holiday accommodation) by the Anjou Tourist Board in November 2017. This is quite a stringent set of mandatory and optional requirements that have to be met in order to achieve a minimum score for the category:
“4*: top-of-the-range comfort accommodation with very good quality amenities and a wide range of services and facilities (information media available in several foreign languages including English, bilingual reception, broadband internet access, mirrors, freezers, etc.)”
We scored 202 out of a possible 207, with the missing points being lack of a tumble drier and lack of a dedicated landline telephone. We are still listening and still improving!! We advertise on our own website, lesvieuxauberts.com, as well as VRBO.co.uk, Cheznous.com, France-Voyage.com, Holiday France Direct and Anjou-Tourisme.com, and have received bookings from guests in several different countries. Our advice is that if you want to book with us, do it early, as we have received almost all of our bookings by the end of January, and we have been full up to the end of September!
Once again Jackie and I wish everyone a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. Also, a really big thank you to all of our guests for your custom last year. Several of you have stayed with us previously, and several have already re-booked for 2024, so we must be doing something right.
Hopefully all the vaccinations etc will keep the dreaded virus in check, so we look forward to seeing many more of you once again.
It hardly seems like 5 minutes ago, but Jackie and I wish everyone a very happy, safe and above all, healthy New Year. The virus seemed to be less prevalent last year, although it's on the rise again now.
In 2022 we had 23 bookings covering 27 weeks, so we thank all our guests for your confidence, and for sticking with us. We already have 13 weeks booked for 2023, and we look forward to welcoming everyone.
Jackie and I wish all our family, friends and guests a very happy, safe and healthy New Year. Let's hope 2022 is not a repeat of the past 2 years, and we finally get this wretched virus under some kind of control.
Jackie and I wish all our friends and guests a very merry Christmas🎅🎅, and hope you have a great day. Stay safe and keep well.
Summer must finally be here. We are in T-shirts, shorts and flip flops, and had our first bbq yesterday. Temp then was 25C but now it's even warmer at 28C, so we're doing another bbq later on. Soooooo nice to sit outside at last, even if we can't go to any restaurants yet 😥.
Well, that's it. Brexit has happened and the world hasn't imploded!!! Jackie and I wish everyone a very happy New Year. Let's hope it's better than the old one. Take care and be safe. Prenez soin et soyez prudent.
This is Phoebe... We would just hate to think of her having to strain anything to eat her bikkies 😊
Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas 🎅
Decided to renovate some of our garden furniture using Ikea wood stain/preservative. Brilliant stuff as you can see from the before and after photo of two of the chairs.
Shots from the "Foire aux vins" at the Leclerc hypermarket in Saumur. They really go for it here - literally thousands of bottles, ranging from 1.95 up to LOTS!! The 2 on their own were in the normal wine section and were only 688 Euros each, so I thought we'd have a couple of cases 🤣🍷🍷
Just love this about France - a tray of 15 beautiful, sweet, yellow nectarines for less than 4 Euros. These are so juicy you can almost eat them with a straw 😋😋
Jackie's been busy in the garden this year, so she was really pleased when this whopper appeared! It's a hibiscus, and the flowers are at least 9" or about 225mm across. There are loads more buds too.
Patio and BBQ area
You know how you get lorries with "Wide Load" signs on in the UK? Well how about this one? We followed it from Saumur all the way to Vernantes, about 12km. Anyone who has stayed in our gite will probably have been through Vernantes at some stage, so you can imagine how close the edges were to all the houses and vehicles!!!
Jackie and I wish all our followers and guests a very happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year for 2020.
A few photos from Angers Christmas market. Lots of interesting stalls, completely different from the usual stuff.
This year's brood of barn owls, who are still nesting in our roof space! Not a good quality photo, but it was taken in complete darkness, with only the camera's auto-focus beam to guide me. Only took a couple of shots, as we don't want the flash to scare them. You can see that there are 3 this year, compared with only one survivor last year.
Took this yesterday of the thermometer which is in the shade of a tree just outside our kitchen door. It ain't half hot mum!!! Far too hot to do much except sit in the shade and drink something cool. Today is much cooler, sitting at about 28C.
The beautiful area around Saumur, and the Loire Valley, taken from the balcony of Gratien Meyer, one of the local wine producers, famous for their sparkling wines.
How about these for a weird cloud formation? Taken a couple of weeks ago just before a heavy rain storm passed over us. The cloud spotter's guide says they are "Mammatus", meaning mammary, or udder.
These are the "Farfelus poilus" (pronounced something like "far-fell-yu pwahl-yu"), which translates roughly as "Wacky hairy" or "Hairy weirdo". It's a dog competition for bearded collies, held just near us over the weekend. The puppies are dead cute at 3-6 months old, but take some serious grooming when they get a bit older, and the fur begins to grow!!
Another first over the weekend! It's apple picking time here, so we and some friends took about 200kg to a local producer who has a commercial apple press. He squeezed the apples and sterilised the juice, and bottled it for us, all for the princely sum of just over 1 Euro a litre, including the bottle. We got 118 bottles in total, of which 55 were ours, based on the amount of apples. You have to collect the bottles from the bottling machine yourself, and load them into your own crates or boxes for transport back home. By the time they come out, they are absolutely boiling hot from the sterilisation process, so it's essential to wear thick gloves. We tried the juice for the first time this morning, and it's absolutely superb - much tastier than anything you could buy in the supermarkets! And it's supposed to last for 2 years.
The last swallows have now gone (hopefuly it's not the end of summer just yet!!). Managed to take a couple of shots of the last brood as mum and dad were feeding them, just outside our bathroom window.
We were out and about again this week, at yet another wine festival, this time on 15 August at Bourgeuil, about 20 minutes from us. This time it was wines from the whole of the Val de Loire, which is basically about 185,000 acres stretching from Nantes on the coast (where Muscadet comes from), to Sancerre in the East. Loads of red, white, rose, both still and sparkling, fron the driest to the sweetest - something for everyone really. There were over 60 growers, all presenting a selection of their wines, so probably about 350-400 different wines to taste, all for the princely sum of 2 Euros, which was the price of the tasting glass!!! You could also have a 4-course meal for 12 Euros.
There were strolling bands, entertainers, food stalls and a group of people called "La Confrerie de la Dive Bouteille" who were going round with Bacchus, the god of wine, on his chariot.. To say "Il aime la dive bouteille" means "He likes his drink", so they are basically a brotherhood of winos!! All light hearted of course, but you get the idea. Can't wait for next year to do it all again.
Wine festival in Bourgeuil
Mouliherne
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