Next week will see the second anniversary of when I welcomed my first guests to Maison Lamothe.   Now I’m well on my way to getting my 100^th review on the leading hotel booking platform.  I am often surprised and moved when people post the most wonderful recommendations and I am regularly rated as the best stopover for chambres d’hotes people walking the camino de Santiago, or chemin de St Jacques as it is known in France.

Back in the summer of 2020 when I opened Maison Lamothe’s doors, I was terrified.  I treated the couple from Bayonne just seeking a couple of days’ tranquility in the middle of nowhere as if they were Michelin guide mystery shoppers.

I’d had a couple of false starts; friends and friends of friends who all dutifully reserved their 2020 spring-break or summer holiday, melted away as we were forced into lock-down and uncertainty caused by the pandemic.  I used the time wisely, or so I thought, decorating, scanning internet-brocante sites searching for suitable furnishings, carrying out improvements that I had planned to shelf until later years. 

Trust my son Jack to state the blindingly obvious on his Saturday morning check-in call as he queued for his turn to be let into a Tesco superstore somewhere in east London, ‘Mum it isn’t a giant doll’s house.  You need to stop shopping, advertise on-line and get some bookings.’ 

‘Can’t be done,’ I replied, ‘Everyone’s staying in the UK this year.’

‘The French aren’t Mum.  They’re doing staycations too.’

‘But my French is rubbish,’ I moaned.

‘No it’s not. You’re fine.  Your friends understand you.  Get yourself listed on a couple of internet sites and see what happens.’

My friends pretend to understand me.  But I did as I was told.

I immediately received a week-long booking for a family of six from Paris.  I panicked, then realised I had three-weeks to plan their arrival, so I started a new jigsaw, an obsession that got out of hand in the first lockdown, and procrastinated for a few days.  I was edging ever nearer to my ‘opening date’ – the arbitrary date in the future I had told the internet I had room availability.  And the Parisians were arriving a whole week later than that.  I had loads of time.

But time when you’re not looking slips away and a booking on my actual opening day blind-sided me.  I spent an age preparing their room and friends who had driven all the way from the UK and decided to do whatever quarantine the British government may or may not impose on their return, were less than impressed that their room was far from ready, having been relegated below my first real guests.  Or that I wouldn’t let them use the swimming pool if the guests were down there or be in the kitchen when I was preparing breakfast – a two-hour effort of freshly squeezed orange, croissants obviously, several types of bread and complicated arrangements of charcuterie, cheese and fresh fruit.

There was an extensive list of things my friends could definitely not do and they constantly seemed to be breaking my rules.  Would it be rude to ask them to go their room and stay there until my guests left? Even if they weren’t mystery shoppers, or government officials checking I was Covid measures compliant, they still had the power to give me a bad review. And then I’d be finished.

I was as pathetic and neurotic as anyone in those weekday afternoon TV programmes as I started my new life in the sun.    In my head I had a constant commentary from the voice-over narrator commenting on my every move.  She wasn’t complimentary.

The guests had a lovely time they assured me as they checked out.  We chatted about Bayonne. If they didn’t understand a word I’d said, they were as polite as my French friends and at least pretended they did. They gave me their address. If I was ever in Bayonne, I should look them up.  I was thrilled, but still too embarrassed to ask them to sign my guest book.  They were not mystery shoppers, or government officials, they didn’t give me a bad review, or a good one, I’ve never been to Bayonne and if I do I’ll probably never look them up.  But for one night in July 2020 they were special to me.  My very first paying guests. 

And now two years later, I’ve come a long way.  I take everything in my stride, even when someone rocked up with a huge boat in tow and then when it was time to leave, couldn’t manage to haul it back up the long and steep drive.  Imagine a scaled down drama of when the container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal. Well at least that was how some of my other guests were reacting, realising that they were not leaving until the boat did. 

‘It’s a lovely day,’ I assured them, ‘Have a swim, have some more breakfast. And I’ll run and find help.’

My French neighbours are practical souls and it was soon sorted.  Drama averted.  Something to talk about.  A memory from their stay at my house.  A chambres d’hotes is just that – a room in someone’s house.  You are staying as a guest in my house, along with everyone else who is staying here, paying or otherwise.  There are no longer any divisions, family, friends and strangers muddle along together.    And that’s the fun bit.  Having lots of people to stay, all sitting down to dinner or breakfast together, laughing, joking, learning a little about each other.  Everyone has a story. An of course for me, it’s one big adventure, that changes every day, as I ask myself who is coming today and what amazing discovery will I make before I go to bed tonight.