Life and Times at the Gite de La Muzetière

A few of you have asked me to write more about our gite, called La Muzetière, and I think today's aborted randonnée gives me the perfect opportunity!  :D

The weather is iffy, so I am trying to map out a really short trip.  I want to try to locate the hiking trail that leads northward from our gite along Rue Le Cocon, then through the fields to either La Chapelle (no relation to La Chapelle de la Salette) or to Chamelet.  The map indicates that the path in question starts right after Le Cocon makes a sharp left turn.  That should be easy to find, and if not, we'll just end up doing a quick up-and-down along Le Cocon.

As we step out onto Rue Le Cocon, I am rewarded almost instantly by my clearest photo to date of the Common Buzzard that has been circling our valley since we arrived.

The trailhead seems obvious enough, right where we expect to find it, and we take a left off the road.

The trail leads to an amazing viewpoint, and we look down on the left to see... our gite!

After the viewpoint, the trail gets rougher and rougher, as it drops down rather steeply.  We finally get to a point where there are more bushes than trail, when I hear Colin's rather panicked voice from from behind me: "I've got a tick!!"

I rush back up towards him, where he is examining his pantleg with surprising calm.  Yep.  It's a tick all right.  Colin flicks his pantleg a few times and the tick flies off back into the grass.  Colin is shaken, but totally ok.  There is no way a tick can bite or attach through pant-material.  Colin just wants to get out of there as quickly as possible.  As we retrace our steps back to the road, Colin is freaking out over contracting Lyme disease, a terrible bacterial infection that is passed on by ticks, whose effects resemble a combination of Multiple Sclerosis, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, and HIV, and I just keep saying: "See how our precautions paid off?  We were smart and careful and it paid off.  Even though there was a tick, it couldn't bite you, you were safe."

Let me tell you, we are no longer fed up with tights and jeans!!

We decide to stick to the pavement of Le Cocon, and about 50 feet North of the first path, we realize: that wasn't the path from the map.  THIS is the path:

Colin takes one looks and shudders.  "That looks like tick central!"  I agree: we won't do that route today.  We go a little farther and see a nice open dirt path through the field.  Now THAT looks better... what about that path?  My eyes scan down the path through the field.  It's a no-go:  there are cows actually ON that path.

We decide today is not the day for a randonnée, and head back to the gite for "cheese time."

Our days at the gite have settled into a routine that mostly involves various "times."  (Our dog Rory would love it.  He has learned that everything good in life is followed by the word "time."  We are now learning this simple wisdom from him!)

When we get up in the morning, it is "shower time" and "croissant time"... although not always in that order.  Then, it's "work time," as Colin does about half of his workday via telecommute, and I usually blog.

After "lunch time," which is somewhere around 1-2pm, it's "walk time," and we do a few hours of randonnée. When we get back, usually around 4:30-5pm, it is "cheese time," which usually involves a glass of wine or beer for me, but not for Colin, who must soon start "meeting time" over Skype with his work.

"Cheese time" is one of the most anticipated times of our day.  We've been slowly sampling our way through the plethora of amaaaaaaazing cheeses here.  A few favorites so far have been: the Morbier (centre) and the Saint Agur (indistinguishable by sight from the blue cheese below, which is Bleu d'Auvergne and also good). The Morbier has an interesting genealogy:  when cheesemakers don't have enough milk to make a full cheese round, they just use whatever is left from the day and boil it to make a thin layer of cheese, then they cover it with ash to preserve it and stop it from creating a rind.  The next morning (or whenever they can get another batch of milk), they fill up the rest of the mold, thus creating the cheese's distinctive look.  We've also been incredibly surprised by the high quality of various "cheap pre-packaged supermarket cheeses" like le Motin Charentais and Vieux Pané, which are both soft creamy cheeses, something like a double-cream Brie and a barnyard-stinky Camembert, respectively.  While Colin usually loves goat cheese, the goat cheese here has been disappointing.

After Colin's first set of Skype meetings, we usually squeeze in "supper time" just before 6pm, when he goes back for a second course of  "meeting time" until 9pm.  We tried to do the French supper schedule of eating at 9-10pm, but it just wasn't working for us.

We have been trying to slowly add a few local traditional French dishes into our menu, with reasonable success.  We have made quenelles (kind of a fish dumpling) several times.  I also successfully made mussels for the first time ever.  Colin made a vegetarian cassoulet, and has also purchased some duck thighs and pork sausage from the farmer's market in Bois d'Oingt to try his hand at the original Languedoc recipe, which is the way we first encountered the dish ourselves.  We have also been trying to balance off "cheese time" with many huge salads, made from fresh veggies purchased at various local farmer's markets.  The biggest surprise:  green bell peppers!  They are very sweet here, almost like the red or orange varieties back home. 

The gite's kitchen is great.  There is a gas stove, an oven, a fridge, and a dish washer.  There are also a ton of useful kitchen accessories, although I do still miss my classic Wustoff-Trident knife set.  One of the kitchen cupboards also conceals the washing machine we are using so often.

Unlike Colin, who is tied to his "desk" for set hours, I am free to wander around outside the gite at any point during the day, and when the weather is nice, it's great to go in the back yard and enjoy the sun.  Especially when the sheep are "on vacation in the next town."  ;)  Our host Alban has set up several places to lounge about in the back yard, including a bistro set under a tree, a tree-swing, a couple chaises lounges, and a couple patio sets near our back door. Although we have not used the patio sets yet, the lamb has settled into one of them quite nicely.  ;)   She also seems to think that our solar-powered lamp is a mechanical nipple of some kind, and frequently tries to nurse from it.  When the lamp refuses to yield milk, the lamb will then rip it out of the ground and dump it onto the patio. There is also a covered porch on Alban's side of the gite (not shown in photo), which he has invited us to use any time we like.  It's the last place to lose the sun in the evening.

When the weather is not as great, I still often pop my head out the skylight in the spare bedroom, and listen to the birds.  I've even gotten Colin into the habit!

At 9pm we settle in to the living room for "beer/wine time," usually quickly followed by "cookie time."  Cookie time has recently overlapped with "Netflix time," but whereas "Netflix time" is optional, "cookie time" is not.

We chose the smaller bedroom for ourselves to sleep in, because without the skylight, it is much darker, which makes it easier for Colin to sleep ("bed time").  Also, originally Colin had planned to use the second bedroom as his "office," so he could close the door and leave work behind at the end of each day, but it turns out the wifi connections in the bedrooms are significantly weaker, and not suitable for his work.

So that's a typical day at the gite.  I hope you enjoyed it.  If you go to the gite's airbnb website, you can see a lot more professional-quality photos of the gite's inside and grounds. You can click on the right side of the main big photo on the site to see the next photo, or you can scroll down to where it says "Voir les 41 photos" and click that.