Manoir de Coat Amour as seen by You-Tube

In September 2012 we entertained two guests from England, Chris and Nangi and, as you do, spent some time talking about our respective professions.  We all got on famously and we discovered that Chris is a film producer based in Totnes Devon. They were  very enthusiastic about our lifestyle, house and its grounds.

After they had returned home , Chris e-mailed us and suggested that he produce a film for us along the lines of one that he had produced for an hotel in the UK.  It took Jenny and I a hesitant six months to decide, courageously, to go ahead!

Chris and his family returned for a weeks holiday at the end of May with a large camera!  Over a fascinating and most enjoyable week, he collected over two hours of film and terrified Jenny and me  into giving interviews in both English and French. When you see  the film , you will recognise that interviews are not our strong point!

Chris then distilled the two hours into two You-tube films of just under five minutes in length.  One is in English and the other in French. We are very pleased with the results, although a little self conscious and critical of ourselves.

Here are the links :~ English Version  and the French Version

or go onto our web-site and click the you-tube button ~ web-site

We hope that you will enjoy the films for what they are – a bit of fun.

If you want a You-tube film made for you, I recommend Chris Watson of Totnes. Contact him by e-mail at Chris Watson Films thechris.watson@virgin.net and/or 07770 790 762

Pendant le  séjour  de deux hôtes ( Chris et Nangi) au mois de septembre 2012, nous avons appris  que Chris était un producteur de films a Totnes dans le Devon. – (Grande Bretagne) Ils aimaient bien notre Manoir et parc.

Après ils sont rentrés chez eux, Chris nous a envoyé un courriel et a proposé qu’il produise un film pour nous comme celui qu’il avait produit pour un hôtel au Royaume-Uni. Il a fallu pour Jenny et moi une période de six mois pour nous décider, hésitants, courageusement, pour aller de l’avant!

Chris et sa famille sont revenus pour une semaine de vacances à la fin du mois de mai avec un grand appareil photo! Au cours d’une semaine passionnante et la plus agréable, il a filmé plus de deux heures et nous a impressionné  en donnant des interviews en anglais et en français.

Voici le film en français ~ French Version

English Pirates raid Morlaix, Brittany!

Attacking through the woods

Pirates ship moored at Coat Amour

A group of nine English pirates successfully returned to their base in Bristol after a profitable raid on Coat Amour, Morlaix, Brittany, today.

On Friday last the pirates fought their way past the Chateau du Taureau and into Coat Amour in Morlaix, mooring their ship behind the chateau.

The fighting continues

They thoroughly searched the grounds for buried treasure, using clues left by two local conspirators.

They soon found the map telling them where the treasure was buried.

Gold pieces of eight were found in some quantities, with other trinkets and precious stones, in a brass bound treasure chest.

 

Hmmm ~ Yep its Gold!

Pirate ship moored behind the Chateau

Flushed with their success they settled down to a hearty meal on board their ship before turning in for the night!  Aarrh!!

Hearty pirate grub!

Co-incidentally the notorious pirate captain, Henry of Bristol, was celebrating his fourth birthday on the same day.

Walking the plank

What a Surprise ~ Figs

Jenny and I have picked many kilos of figs this summer and our cupboards are full of jams and chutney already.  We thought that the fig tree were exhausted and had finished for this year.  Imagine my surprise at finding a tree with loads of ripe figs, ready to pick, and on 9 November.  I picked 6 kilos of figs and filled a trug.  Our guests had fresh figs for breakfast this morning and Jenny has made some more jam this afternoon.  Things in the garden are definitely a little wonky this year, as we also have several rhododendrons in flower now and some of the magnolias have some pretty advanced buds on them.  They are all in for a massive shock soon.

Early Booking Offer

Bretagne

A big hello to all of our Blog readers.

Brittany Ferries will be introducing an early booking offer on or soon after 19 September that will last through until 31 October 2011.  The early booking offer will provide a 25% saving on car and passenger fares with Brittany Ferries instead of the usual 20%, available to our customers.  So take advantage of this offer and come and see us here in beautiful Brittany.  Take an night ferry, even better have a commodore class cabin with breakfast in bed, arrive in St Malo or Roscoff followed by a gentle drive to Coat Amour.  Spring is a wonderful time to visit us, the garden will be full of primroses and daffodils, the magnolias will be if flower, together with a host of other flowering shrubs and trees.  Come, relax and let us help you to throw off the winter blues.  As a little incentive we are offering a stay four days at Coat Amour for the price of three between the 12 March and 13 April 2012.

Primroses at Coat Amour

Recycling ~ a passion?

At Coat Amour we try to do our bit for the environment and follow the normal route of recycling.  Bottles, plastics, cardboard are recycled.  We have large dustbins for all of these things near the house and near to each of our two gites.  Vegetable peelings and of course grass weeds and other vegetable material goes into our compost mountain.

We have now gone one stage further and used wood from a sequoia tree, some reclaimed oak panelling, parts of the old swimming pool roller mechanism and some salvaged pulleys and have started to build two climbing frames.  We cut down the sequoia about four years ago because it was threatening to topple over across the main road.  We had the trunk cut up into large lengths, then planked and left to dry.

After three days work the first of two identical climbing frames for my grandchildren was finished.  Planks from the sequoia form the frame and the floor, the oak paneling the side walls, the alumimium tube from the roller mechanism forms the fireman’s post, and the old roller handle has been adapted to make a winch to hoist supplies into the camp!  I even donated the Jolly Roger from ‘Silent Flight’.  The grand children want a slide, however I may have to buy a plastic one.

The next job will be to make another one, then take them to pieces, flat pack fashion, and take them to the UK for final erection.  Jenny is not sure who is most excited about all of this ~ the grandchildren or me!

Recycled ~ a climbing frame for our grandchildren

Jam, Jam, and more Jam ~ Confiture, Confiture, et encore plus de la Confiture!!

Many of our guests comment on the home made jams we serve at breakfast. This, they tell me,  is one of the joys of a B&B or guest house.  I try to have a varried supply of jams and conserves but supplies have been dwindling.  But all is not lost as…

Just one picking of Figs!!

the preserving season has started… yes, the fruit garden is cropping like mad !

More great Pears

Blackberries ~ mures

Just when we are at our busiest with guests, everything  is  cropping at once and far earlier this year than before.  Any free time at present – and there is not a lot of that here –  is spent picking and preserving.The fruit garden is very old – and well establised  and we are very lucky to have such a resource.

It is so satisfying to be able to serve our guests with fresh fruit from the garden for their breakfast.  Each day we pick several bowls of ripe figs from our 3 fig trees. We have just finished  picking all the  plums, so the jam supplies are starting to be replenished.  Also cropping at present are mulberries from our single mulberry tree.

I planted two cultivated blackberries 3 years ago and they are covered in fruit.  The strawberry bed is still producing  and the autumn raspberries have started.

I am amazed at the size and quality of the pears this year. We ate the first one today !

I have been tending the rhubarb more carefully  – feeding it with garden compost and watering it – so I hope rhubarb jam will be on the cards soon.  I stew  rhubarb and orange together to serve for breakfast.  Yum !

The cutting garden  where I grow flowers to use in the house, is producing lovely blooms– gladioli, roses, dahlias, crocosmia, all look delightful with the many colours of hydrangeas.

POUR NOS HOTES FRANÇAIS

Nos hôtes adorent les confitures maison. Ils me disent que c’est un des plaisirs  chez les chambres d’hôtes. Alors, c’est la saison de sortir la bassine  de confiture ! Le verger à Coat Amour commence à donner son fruit.

C’est très agréable de présenter les fruits du jardin pour le  petit déjeuner.

Notre jardin fruitier est ancien et grand. En ce moment, nous cueillons pleins de figues, murs, prunes, fraises et framboises et le murier a produit une grande  quantité de fruit. Je viens de préparer la confiture de figue et de prune. Les poires sont énormes et en belles formes.  J’ai bien soignée la rhubarbe cette année et je vais préparer de la confiture.  Je prépare une compote de rhubarbe et orange pour le petit déjeuner.

Les fleurs – les roses, les glaïeuls, les hortensias, les dahlias  sont suberbs et me donnent des fleurs  pour les bouquets pour  les chambres.

Bienvenue dans mon Jardin

Magnolia

Reportage par Le Telegramme ~ Morlaix 

Jardins. Les trésors du patrimoine naturel

6 juin 2011

Du côté du manoir de Coat Amour, les curieux venus arpenter les cinq hectares du parc ont pu découvrir un espace magnifique jalonné de bouleaux, de pins, de hêtres. Ils ont été accueillis par le charmant couple britannique, propriétaire du domaine depuis 2004, Jenny et Stafford Taylor. Avec un délicieux accent «so british», Jenny nous confie qu’elle est «très heureuse de recevoir les Morlaisiens» dans ses jardins. Stafford estime qu’il y a eu «près de 200 personnes à être passées depuis ce matin». Très fiers de leur parc qu’ils entretiennent eux-mêmes, ils reconnaissent que les conditions climatiques exceptionnelles ont assuré une floraison très précoce, magnifiant ainsi les lieux pour le plus grand plaisir des visiteurs.

Photos

Mon Jardin ~ Everything in the garden is ROSY!

Des Roses

The weather that most of us are enjoying in northern Europe has brought everything in the garden forward by about a month.  All our roses are out, including all of the lovely old French perfumed roses that we cut for the house.  These are even better this year as we managed to spray them sufficiently often at the beginning of the year with “repulsif” that deters the visiting chevreuil from eating the buds and soft shoots.

Perhaps the only, and rather minor, complaint about the weather, that I have, is that everything seemed to flower at once earlier on this year.  We had snowdrops, primroses, daffs, wood anenomes, wild orchids, azalias, magnolias and the rhodos all at the same time. It was a shame that we did not have more clients to enjoy the spectacle.

Tulipier fleures

Normally our four huge tulip trees flower on about 3 June (Precisely!). They are beginning to flower now and will be an absolute sight in a few days time.  They are huge trees and covered in what seems like thousands of beautiful creamy yellow and orange tulips.  Our red squirrels used to love them and spent hours chattering away in the tree tops and throwing the debris all over the drive.  Alas the cold winter seems to have killed the squirrels off, or perhaps they chose to move on to pastures new, we shall never know.

Poires

Figues

We are taking part again this year in the  garden open scheme “Bienvenue dans mon Jardin”on the 5 June, organised by les Jardiniers de France.  I rather fear that all the flowering trees and shrubs normally out at that time will be over.  Our garden does tend to have a biase towards spring and autumn. We have lots of flowers in the spring and a wonderful array of autumn colours in September and October.  Still the garden should be varying shades of green and the grass should be cut.

Despite the dry weather the weeds continue to grow and the brambles continue to flourish despite all our hard work.  Our large garden mower refused to start yesterday and I thought that I could manage for now with a smaller one.  I had hoped to wait for another day to repair it.  Then this afternoon I ran over a projecting tree root with the smaller lawn mower and bent something underneath, turning the mower into a rather effective plough ~ aargh!.  Perhaps everything in the garden is not quite so rosy as I first thought!

Cassis

Jenny picked a huge bowl of strawberries this afternoon, so roll on breakfast, they are yummy with cereals.  Our guests should enjoy them too.  The figs are bigger than I can ever remember at this time of year, and the pears and apples look promising too.  We have planted two female and one male kiwi plants this year and look forward to seeing how these will flourish at Coat Amour.  They take up quite a bit of space, but the experiment should prove worthwhile.  Our friend Barry and Heather Cummings have Kiwis in their garden and gave us the plants as a Christmas present ~ so thanks to both.

Potager

Rhodos

We have not had much rain really for a few weeks now.  The veg patch is starting to cry out for water.  The plants that were put in several weeks ago are pretty well established.  I fear more for the recently planted leeks, cucumbers, and lettuce.  There is supposed to be a bit of a water shortage and watering the garden is soon to be prohibited.  We do have an underground cistern that holds about 125 cu metres of water, that is collected off the roof of the manor house. I can see that I shall have to invest in a pump and run hoses all over the garden.

A flying visit to Coat Amour

Bruce and Vanessa land at Morlaix airport

We were delighted to welcome Bruce and Vanessa over the weekend of 9 & 10 April.  Bruce is Jenny’s cousin and lives near Abingdon, just south of Oxford.  The journey time was less than 2 hours and they chose a perfect weekend weather wise.  They had a great flight passing over Southampton, Guernsey, Jersey, Treguier, Lannion and Morlaix.

The rear elevation of Coat Amour from the air

Jenny and I were treated to a wonderful flight around Morlaix on Sunday morning in slightly misty conditions.  Coat Amour looks fantastic from the air, well sited in the middle of the park, and even the vegetable garden looked tidy!

The viaduct that crosses over the centre of Morlaix looked even more impressive from the air, dominating the town as it does.  We could see various chateaux nestling in the woods either side of the estuary and the Cafe du Port at Le Dorduff, where we eventually had a super lunch on the terrace.  We often go here as it is reasonably priced, the food is always good and the staff very friendly.

The fruit and vegetable garden at Coat Amour

Bruce and Vanessa share their aeroplane amongst a group of four like minded associates and are becoming bolder in their choice of destination.  Apparently a tour of Ireland is on the cards.

The grand railway viaduct above Morlaix

The “flying weekend” was a wonderful diversion from the norm and Stafford has mentioned that he would not mind having a go!  How he will find the time to do the garden, help Jenny, help run the business, go sailing and learn to fly is yet to be discovered.  We need to retire first!