The Good Life

collettsmountainholidays, dreamjob, Espana, GR10, GR11, hiking, hotelsabocos, mountains, mountaintraining, nature, naturephotography, Ordesa, penatelera, pyrenees, Spain, trekking

Last month’s unexpected and awesome jaunt in the Dolomites has been closely followed by the training of the new Collett‘s staff in their two Spanish resorts; the Picos De Europa and the Pyrenees.

First up was the Picos. A bit of an unsung hero in the mountain world- probably due to its lack of skiing in the winter. This is also its greatest attribute because not only is the national park more beautiful without ski lifts, it also encourages a steady flow of visitors around the year and makes Potes, the main town, pretty vibrant very early on in the summer season.

Posted on May 25, 2016 by Kungfuflee

collettsmountainholidays, dreamjob, Espana, hiking, Mountaineering, mountains, nature, outdoors, potes, Spain, tama, walking

It’s Mayday soon and spring has really sprung here at Les Vignes Basses. Despite an odd cold snap, the plants and trees are blooming and everything is turning a lush shade of green. We’ve been busy bees planting out seedlings as well as spring cleaning (and fixing) the caravan in preparation for summertime visitors 🙂

Dan has been busily mulching around our trees, which we planted last autumn to make sure that they aren’t out-competed by the ever-growing grass. Dan was a little overexcited about all the orchids that have popped up this year, including the elusive Vanilla Orchid. I think all flower walkers will understand… Read More

Eco-Building, Permaculture, Sustainable Futures, Teaching English Online

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Kungfuflee

awning, bluebells, caravan, charente, collettsmountainholidays, doityourself, Environmentally Friendly, france, fridge, growth, growyourown, lesvignesbasses, Low Impact, orchids, organic, organicfood, permaculture, permaculturedesign, rainbows, seedlings, solarpower, spring, Sustainable, teaching, teachingonline

After feeling pretty cold and damp in the caravan, it took us a mere nano-second to jump at the opportunity to do some cover work with, what feels like our old family, Collett’s Mountain Holidays in the Italian Dolomites.

Not that we are particularly keen for injuries during the winter season, I know how disappointing this can be, but we are very happy to help out if the occasion demands it 🙂

Two weeks working in Ciasa Verena? YES PLEASE. So we headed over to the Dollies in our little Jazz, stopping over in Turin along the way. Once we reached Corvara we met up with friends old and new and proceeded to have a total blast skiing with guests and all of the Collett’s crew. The days out on the mountain with guests and friends were awesome; great snow, great weather (except for the top of the Marmolada!) and delectable food, everything we’ve come to expect from the Dolomites.
Read More

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Kungfuflee

altabadia, collettsmountainholidays, corvara, Dolomites, mountains, Skiing, wintersun

To realise our dream of building a straw bale house, our first port of call is the local town hall or “Mairie”. Although the land came with outline planning permission for two dwellings, we still have to submit our designs and have them approved by the powers that be – all hail the planners 😉

A daunting prospect at first, collating the information required took some effort on our part, indeed deciding upon a final design was a lengthy process in itself! Once our permaculture design for the land was finalised we knew exactly where to situate the house. From there we utilised the skills, knowledge and research of building techniques to design a….<wait for it>….rectangle. Although a round house would have been our preference, the Charente is super strict with its rules and regulations about new house design. This means a roundhouse is out of the question. Similarly, the other regulations are quite restrictive; windows must be taller than they are wide; the pitch of the roof must be no larger than 35%, which is extremely shallow; the roof must consist of French tiles; the list goes on. Although this sounds like a large list of restrictions, in some ways it helped to give us a framework to start designing from, and that coupled with the design restrictions imposed by building with straw bales moved us along greatly with the design.

Posted on February 15, 2016 by Kungfuflee

Eco-Building

Low Impact, Natural Building, permaculture, Sustainable

Thanks for the great title Clare! And Hilaire Belloc of course…

Right lucky beans we are to have been invited back to work in the Pyrenees for a couple of weeks with our old company Collett’s Mountain Holidays. We were lucky enough to spend an entire summer living and working in Panticosa and the surrounding mountains during the summer of 2012. Since then, we have been asked to help out with staff training as well as making up staff numbers during the GR11 special holiday weeks in September.

We had a bloomin marvellous time there this September, all thanks to the guys already in resort; Remy, Clare, Will & Claire. So many excellent days walking along with the absolute highlight, canyoning. Here are a few snapshots:

An insanely gorgeous view over the Sierra De La Partacua, on the Punta Del Pacino walk.
Read More

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Kungfuflee

canyoning, collettsmountainholidays, dreamjob, Espana, hiking, hotelsabocos, penatelera, pyrenees, Spain

After spending a few weeks in September working in the Spanish Pyrenees we returned to Les Vignes Basses with fresh motivation to finish our workshop/woodshed. It was a design produced by Dan but which is is better explained via pictures. For those interested in how we built the workshop ourselves, here come the photos: Read More

Environmentally Friendly, Low Impact, Natural Building, permaculture, Sustainable

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Kungfuflee

Eco-Building

For a while we have been banding ideas between us, trying to decide upon which type of eco-building method to use. Comparing the different ways of building a sustainable, eco-house is a bit of a daunting task these days. Not that this is a bad thing; wonderful architects, designers and conservationists are finding more and more innovative ways to provide this much sought after form of housing.

So ideally the house would provide shelter off-grid with small rooms but enough space for family and friends to come and visit.

With energy prices predicted to rise and rise over the next few years, a house that is self-sustainable and perhaps even earns money by selling its energy to the grid, makes sense.

Now back to the question of which type of eco house to build?! There are merits to each and every type of sustainable build, choosing between them can feel like wading through a quagmire. We explored each option in as much depth as possible before committing to our final decision.

Environmentally Friendly, Low Impact, Natural Building, Straw

Posted on September 15, 2015 by Kungfuflee

Eco-Building

Before we moved to Les Vignes Basses full time we lived and worked in South Korea teaching in the public school system. Whilst there, we had large chunks of free time to look a the internet, which we used to research, learn, read and discuss what we want from our lives in France and exactly what we want to do on the land. Through various blogs, Facebook pages, pages shared by friends and oodles of trawling on the internet we stumbled upon permaculture.
Read More