The start of the Tour de France 2018 in the Vendée

The circuit of the Tour de France 2018 is known! The Tour starts close to us on the island of Noirmoutier in the Vendée. Unfortunately, the course does not go over the Passage du Gois this year and thus does not pas in front of our house. The Tour starts a week later than usual, something to do with a soccer tournament in Russia (which we Dutch do not understand at all😉), which made that the Tour the France will no longer go over the Passage du Gois because of the tide. But it will be a beautiful stage along the coast. Also the team presentations and a team time trial will be held very close to us. We are really looking forward to it. And you?

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Successful week at Au Passage du Gois

Friends of ours who have also started this year cottages and B&B 300 km south of us came to our place this week. If you want to know more about them, check out their website www.lepetitchenac.com . We helped them to make this website and with all kinds of French paperwork and they helped us now with a variety of DIY jobs. We have replaced two WCs, installed a new boiler, fixed a new sign along the road and we made two wooden headboards for one of our holiday homes. That’s how we keep all four of us busy ☺

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Update October 2017 at Au Passage du Gois

Hola, after the high season we took a little break and we have just returned from Madrid. In the 5 days we stayed there, a girlfriend looked after our little paradise in France. She is a fanatic photographer. (want to follow her see https://www.facebook.com/naturallemand/). Here is a small selection of her photos at the Passage du Gois, Noirmoutier, our garden etc. We are going to so some DIY this week. New WCs, boilers, extra power points, etc. are in the planning. A new update with all the improvements will follow shortly.

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 Update Au Passage du Gois August 2017

The summer holidays are almost over, but it is still busy over here. Here are some pictures of the past few weeks.

We have been fishing with our guests several times in various ways and caught all sort of things. Prawns, rye, mullet etc. Guests have also been fishing at sea in a boat departing from Port du Bec (3 km). They caught a number of mackerels, that we smoked afterwards. Some friends came by and brought huge oysters. Martine cooked them in the oven. With all the summer fruit that is currently available, we have been working hard on our stock of home-made jam for our B & B guests. The wildlife in our garden keeps surprising us. Both the tree frog and emerald lizard have gotten little ones and we come them across everywhere.

We have also found time to see some new things (Ferris wheel, street theater etc.) near us. Martine’s sister, brother-in-law and niece were here, so a good opportunity to test a new waterpark in the south of the Vendée. What a beautiful waterpark; it has been approved by everyone. Hemko is still suffering from a crushed rib though ☺.

A bientot and until the next update

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Update end of july 2017 at Au Passage du Gois

Over the last few weeks we had a lot of returning guests (last week 3 and now 2 families). Of course we are very happy about that. See the pictures of the notes that we received. We made a few very pleasant trips with our guests. Amongst others we have a special fishing net of 1 square meter. We caught 20 small fish one time and the other time a lot of crabs and an eel (which we gave to our French fishing colleague for lunch). Furthermore, we finally have all Dutch television channels back on our tv’s. It has taken us a few months to achieve this with various helpers. Hemko’s bucket list has also got a new check “watching a live concert of The Pixies“. This week they were the main act on a festival (Les Escales) in St. Nazaire (60 kilometers away from us). They played at 11.45 pm, but we stayed until the end (not bad for 2 old farts☺) and the next day the bread was in time at the doors for our guests. We are also working on our new website. This week we made pictures in and around our village Beauvoir-sur-Mer. Until the next update ….

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A small update from France. We have done many fun things with our guests last week. For the first time this year, we had made an attempt to shrimp fishing, but as the experts know, it is always difficult with western wind. However, everybody liked it and we all caught something (shrimps, crabs, garfish, plaice, etc.). Our Swiss neighbor Sylvia has a very large herb garden, which you can visit. She cultivates for herbal tea, herbs in the kitchen, and makes some ointments. We have been with a number of guests for a tour. We also had some sad news, our Clio, who drove us around for 15 years was town away. The brother in law of our neighbor Stéphane was very pleased with it. This week we also have a new resident, a tree frog, in the parasol of our holiday cottage La Bergerie. He has been sitting in it for almost 4 days, but has travelled on now. Unfortunately, our egg production is not good at Au Passage du Gois. One of the ladies is breeding again and is sitting in the chicken house on her eggs day and night.

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