A Year at the Chateau

by Dick Strawbridge

  Arthur and Dorothy have always had a very special relationship with my dad. He is such a soft touch with them. I guess that is part of the joy of being a grandparent. Rules and discipline are left for us, which allows them to do all the fun stuff. Being just eleven months old, Dorothy was obviously not speaking yet, but Arthur had got to grips with a few words. ‘Mama’ being one and ‘G’, short for Grandad, another; this is how my dad got the name Mama G. They were both very excited to see him.

  My plan worked and the kids fell asleep within minutes. I was driving our English car so decided to give myself a little extra time to avoid the motorways and the toll booths. Having to climb over the seats or get out of the car to pay the toll was a small inconvenience I did not fancy today and driving on the slower roads is actually wonderful if you have the time. Even in March the villages are full of flowers hanging from lanterns: fuschias, lantana, begonias. There were purples, reds, deep pinks and yellows and they all looked like they had been lovingly crafted. The greens of new leaves are almost lime coloured and somehow every tree seems to be a little different. The average small French village has charm in abundance and the daffodils and magnolias were out in full force as well – a lovely reminder that there was lots familiar in our new homeland as well.

  It takes just over an hour to get to Rennes this way and the roads are lovely. There must be around fifty roundabouts and a very long road, which always reminds me of a Roman road. On the way I spotted a very large brocante, which got me very excited. I could see baths, bricks, statues, pans, lights … My hands were getting balmy just thinking about the bargains.

  I reached the airport in great time but as it is so tiny I chose to park about fifty metres away in a row of spaces outside a small row of shops and restaurants (I didn’t want to clog up the petite slip road). It was lunchtime and the restaurant I parked near was rammed and I was starving. I’d packed brilliantly for the kids but forgot to include myself in the equation. I could see on the chalkboard that the restaurant has a carte de jour for just €13.50. I could have eaten a horse at that moment!

  I decided that this might be the time to feed and change the kids. Arthur was still asleep so Dorothy went first. A few minutes later, the restaurant owner must have realised that I wasn’t planning to dine in his restaurant and he let me know in no uncertain terms that this was not acceptable. He was shouting and waving a serviette at me and, although I couldn’t translate everything word, I knew he wanted me to leave. There were zero ‘No Parking’ signs, he was just being a bit of a tosser. What annoyed me most was that I couldn’t tell him that in French, so learning a few naughty French words got added to my list of things to do.

  I’m not sure I have ever been so happy to see my dad. We hugged and he took the car keys straight off me, as my dad loves driving abroad. Finally, I could relax. When you have two children under the age of two, even having a shower and a couple of toilet breaks in a day can feel like a success. My dad’s presence meant that we could start getting things done. It also gave me a new braveness. If I found a huge spider or a bat, or a rat, he was on hand!

  Dad had a number of roles. Come bedtime, his first job was to hoover up the flies I could not reach. This meant climbing up a ladder with a long attachment and hoovering the thousands of flies that had appeared that day on the ceiling. At the same time I was on the floor, sweeping up the new ones that had appeared there. We were aiming for ‘fly zero’ by bedtime.

  Dad stayed in the salon, seemingly happy with what was essentially glorified camping. Dorothy slept in our bed. We knew we had created a rod for our own back, but she never slept in a cot. She just loved human contact and I loved the snuggles, especially when Dick was away. Arthur loved his snuggles too but only to get him to sleep, then he wanted his own space to wrestle with his duvet. With the kids successfully settled I would get out my laptop and start work.

  One night, I looked up and saw the shadow of a bat on the wall – it was around four metres wide. Firstly, and very quietly (to ensure I didn’t wake the kids), I shat myself. Then I immediately called for my dad. Next thing I knew, the bat started flying around our bedroom. I have no idea where it came from, but it felt like I was in a Dracula movie. It must have been huge. Luckily Dad knew exactly what to do. He said there was a net in one of the outbuildings that was made for this, so he dashed out, got the net and a ladder and caught the bat before releasing it out of the window. After that, he really was my hero. I called him Batman for weeks. I don’t think my dad ever saw himself as a knight in shining armour but he earned his spurs that night.

  The weather in March had been kind. There were some rather cold days, but more often than not we had beautiful clear skies. Our family suite at the front of the house often felt snug from the sunshine that streamed through the window after midday. And as the grounds of the château started to warm up, it was a joy to be outside in the fresh air. I could not get my head around the fact that only weeks earlier we had been in the gîte and it had been freezing. You could feel and hear the thaw happening around you. I started going for regular walks with Dorothy either in her papoose or in a pram, and if I wanted to get Arthur to sleep as well I took our double pram.

  I went from the main staircase at the front of the château over the muddy front, through the gate and round to the right, which led me to the path that went right round the moat. A walk round the moat and back again normally took about twenty minutes, but mostly the kids would be asleep by then, which meant I could then use that time to be productive (which sometimes meant just getting the washing done!).

  One day, close to Dick’s return, I was out on the walk, feeling so excited to have our family back together again. I often daydream when I walk. When the kids were not in the pram, my time was mostly spent ensuring they were safe, feeding them and playing with them. My walk was an escape. It allowed my brain to rest. I would dream what each of the rooms would look like, or what kind of wedding we would have, or how the kids might be in one, three, five years’ time. It seemed like a million things entered my brain in seconds.

  On this particular day, as I looked up from my daydream, I noticed our cherry tree over on the right of the moat in full blossom! Millions of delicate, dusty pink flowers. It was a visual feast. I stopped immediately and took a photo with the château perfectly placed in the background. What with everything that had been going on in our first couple of months at the château, taking in the beauty did not happen as much as we would have liked. This felt like a special moment – I immediately sent the photo to Dick and felt very excited he would be home soon to see it.

  I feel guilty admitting it, but when I wasn’t worrying about everything going on at the château, Dirty Rotten Survival was an amazing experience. From driving a sixty-year-old Willys jeep that was prone to break down through the swamps of Louisiana and having to build beds hanging from trees to avoiding alligators and poisonous snakes, while eating frogs and crayfish, it was a doddle. Then Dave (a survival expert), Johnny (a builder) and I moved onto Texas to live off the feral pigs (it’s thought there are over 1.5 million of them devastating farmers’ crops. They basically revert to type, and to all intents and purposes become wild boar within a couple of generations). We trapped and had an abundance of boar. I even showed them how to make bacon, it was great!

  The journey home was long and very slow but getting back to Angela and the kids felt wonderful. I just couldn’t get over the fact that the children had changed so much, especially Dorothy (three weeks is a long time for a child under one). Thankfully, they appeared to recognise me, as I don’t know how I would have handled being a stranger to them – good old FaceTime! I was knackered, jetlagged and undoubtedly a bit smelly, but we all held hands and went for a walk.

  I’d left château in deepest winter but had come back to spring. Everything was bursting with life. There were small flowers popping up everywhere, the cherry trees had thrown out their first blossoms of the year. It wasn’t even that cold. Within moments, it was as if I had n
ot been away. It was great to be back home; however, we didn’t really have time to savour the feeling as returning to the château also meant a walk around to catch up on progress. And, with that, we were fully immersed in the detail of the renovations. There were a thousand things to see, a thousand decisions to be made, and a thousand things to do and of course the clock was already ticking until I had to disappear again in just over a week’s time.

  The filming abroad was essential for us to be able to afford all the work we had to do to make the château comfortable and launch our business in France but the next few months were to be difficult for both of us as we hated the separation. As a team, we are more than the sum of our parts and we love being together, but on top of that we were undertaking a mammoth task that would have been challenging even with both of us being present all the time.

  Dick arrived home late morning, which was great as it gave me time to clean the house and put on a face. Hugs were tight and, within a couple of minutes, we were walking around the château taking in the beauty of our run-down home and admiring the blossom. These few moments were precious, but it did not take long for our brains to start racing off onto the list of things that needed doing.

  Despite the fact that you could have fit the three-bedroom flat we had been renting in Southend-on-Sea into just one of the château’s five floors, we’ve never felt it was dauntingly big in the way some other châteaus we had viewed were. One property had doors that were so massive they made you feel like one of the Borrowers when you reached to open them. Whereas we have always felt our château is beautifully proportioned and small enough to still be a family home.

  After we’d completed the tasks required to enable us to move in we focused on a number of priority rooms. But ultimately we knew the château was going to have to pay for itself if we were not to end up working away from home to pay the bills. In the light of that, we decided that we needed to have the reception rooms, at least one guest suite and a functioning kitchen up and running as a priority, so we could start advertising a high-end ‘château experiences’. These would fund the work needed to get the château ready for weddings, which we planned to hold in the orangery, which would be our events space. We knew we wanted to offer packages that we would enjoy ourselves, so the first château experience we developed was the ‘Food Lovers’ weekend’, but that was all still a long way off at this point …

  If anything, our list of high-priority tasks was getting bigger. We urgently had to address the fact our heating was just not practical. It seemed impossible but it had to be sorted out before my next trip to America, so it became our number-one focus. We had intended that the log burners would be powerful enough to warm the room they were in and also pass excess heat via the back boiler up to the thermal store. Even though we had done the sums, the poor glazing, the construction of the outside walls and possibly the fact that the wood was a bit rotten, rather than just seasoned, all contributed to the wood fires not being as effective as we had hoped, so the gas boiler was even more important. Supplying our heating system from 13kg gas bottles was just not viable, so we had to find another way. Our initial thought was to get two 47kg bottles linked together with an automatic switchover, which meant when the first bottle was empty there was a seamless changeover and a quick visual examination would tell us if there was an empty bottle (the inspection window turns red). It would mean if it was cold and we were using the boiler a lot, we’d still be changing bottles every three or four days, but that was better than daily. It was always going to be an interim solution but then we failed to find any larger bottles in our local area. However, research and a nudge in the right direction from a French friend of Angela’s showed that Butagaz installed large gas tanks as well as filling them.

  Where could we put the tank that would not be too ugly? After devising a cunning plan to screen and camouflage the incoming monstrosity, we contacted Butagaz and arranged for an onsite meeting. Compared to some of the interactions we had had, it all moved quickly. The salesman arrived to talk to us and we weren’t sure who was going to kiss him first when he said the 1,000kg tank would be buried so as not to be an eyesore. The deal was sealed when he said the installation was free. Free! OK, we knew there is no such thing as a free lunch, it meant we were to be contracted to them for two years, but we’d get a tank big enough to mean heating and hot water would no longer be an ordeal. We tried to play it cool and said if he could sort the installation as soon as possible we’d sign there and then. March can’t be a busy time for gas tank installation because a couple of days later a very nice man and his little digger turned up and set to work.

  I couldn’t believe the lack of pain getting our large gas tank. When our installer arrived, I immediately joined him for a coffee and he explained what was going to happen. We knew that the tank had to be within fifteen metres of our external isolation tap, but we hadn’t been told that the trench joining the tank and the external tap was our responsibility. Bugger!

  As the small digger started to excavate, my navvy blood kicked in and I started digging like a man possessed. If I finished on time, he would connect the tank for us. If not, he would leave and we’d have to find someone else to connect our gas. With a pickaxe, a trenching spade and a lot of sweat (which on a chilly March day is no mean feat), I matched his work and by the time he had bedded in the tank we had a trench along the side of the château to our isolation tap. True to his word, we had a connected tank that was neatly buried by mid-afternoon. As our new best friend was so skilled with his digger, I even asked him for a very quick favour and without a quibble he went to our gatepost and gently nudged it back into correct alignment (a delivery driver had failed to look up and the top of his vehicle had caught the granite block on top and skewed it out of kilter). That day couldn’t have gone any better!

  All we needed now was gas, and again that was so much faster than we had grown to expect. A cynic could surmise that the salesman had to hit a year-end target but who cares, it arrived and life at the château instantly became a lot easier. All our energy was no longer purely going into surviving as hot water and heating were available at the flick of the thermostat or tap. We never had any illusions about how much it was going to cost to heat our home, but it really makes you think about the amount of fuel you are using if you have to replace two gas bottles in a single day. That knowledge reinforced our desire for a more environmentally sound heat source but we also knew we wanted convenience. We were never going to be slaves to our heating again.

  As well as being invaluable sources of information on anything to do with the château or the local area, Jacques and Isabelle De Baglion had become our friends. Even though the language was sometimes a bit of an issue, with a bit of sign language and a fair bit of laughter we all generally managed to communicate. One evening they invited us to join them for dinner. This would be our first social evening with them and we didn’t know quite what to expect or how to dress. Although Isabelle invited the entire family, Arthur and Dorothy had a much earlier bedtime so we used that as an excuse to have a date.

  Dad was looking after the children and the novelty of not being in a boiler suit covered in dirt or sick was already making me smile. Our walk must have been 600 metres round the moat and then a short hop across the countryside and we arrived to find quite a large social gathering. Jacques and Isabelle had very kindly invited a number of local châtelains* and friends they thought we would like to meet. It was a lovely evening and there was enough English spoken to make for lively conversation.

  On arrival, two of the six Baglion children, Jaqueline and Louis, were serving aperitifs: sparkling wine with a homemade kir in champagne flutes. I’m not sure what the fruit was to be honest; it was orange in colour, but the flavour wasn’t strong, so it could have been mirabelle. Whatever it was, it was cold, fizzy and tasty, and the fact that the children were serving it on trays (probably for some pocket money) made me smile from ear to ear. Then came some canapés. I was hungry and they were very tast
y, so I had to try hard not take one every time Louis or Jaqueline offered, but it was hard. They were mostly little biscuits with a mixture of cheese, tomato or meat, but there was also a lovely homemade cream of mushroom soup shot, which I could have eaten a gallon of given the chance. The gathering was in the very large room next to the kitchen and I could smell dinner.

  Isabelle worked the room, ensuring everyone was happy and that the children were practising their English on us. It made me feel very guilty as I knew I needed to practise my French too, so thirteen-year-old Jaqueline and I made an agreement: we would both speak to each other in the other’s mother tongue. The gathering in the main room lasted for a good hour. It was lots of fun but it was torture smelling the scents of dinner getting stronger as the evening progressed.

  We were really interested to see what food they were going to serve. The menu reflected their connection with the land and their love of hunting. Like we do now, they store their squashes over winter, so we started with a simple squash soup. Then arrived the star of the evening: Isabelle’s wild boar terrines. There were fourteen of us round the table and two massive, glazed terracotta terrines were passed around with chilled cornichons. This was proof that there were wild boar here as the meat used in the terrine had come from within sight of the château. They served butter with the baguettes, which is not always the way in France, so we were as happy as happy people. Next there was a lovely hearty venison casserole, followed by a compote and cream that ensured no one was hungry.