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Help on the land, around the house and dog walking in Normandy

4.0
(5 reviews)5

The experience

The summer is the busiest time in our chambre D'hotes. We could do with help in July & August. We don't expect any help with the actual chambre D'hotes but we could do with help in the gardens and on the land as well as general maintenance, painting, cleaning and dog walking.

What you offer

30 hours of help per week

Pet Sitting: Taking care of and looking after pets.

Painting & Decorating: Help with painting or decorating the property facilities.

Cleaning: Help clean the kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms and common areas.

Gardening: Help grow plants and cultivate gardens

What you get

2 days off per week

Private Room: You will have a bed in a private room. In other words, a room just for you.

Tent: You will sleep in a tent at a camping site.

Breakfast: You are entitled to a free breakfast, every day of your stay.

Lunch: You are entitled to a free lunch, every day of your stay.

Dinner: You are entitled to a free dinner, every day of your stay.

Free Laundry: You can use our laundry room freely.

Get free drinks or beverages.: Drink up! Get free and tasty drinks for yourself.

Pick Up: We will pick you up when you arrive, and take you to our property.

Language lessons: Take free language classes at our place.

Use our equipped kitchen: Feel free to use our kitchen and make your own delicious food.

Basic Internet Access: Basic speed internet for you to work remotely

Dedicated Workspace: Specific space for you to work remotely

Requirements

Intermediate English or Intermediate French

Only hosts solo volunteers (doesn’t accept couples or partners)

What's not included

Flights, Travel Insurance, Internal Transportation and Visa

Program Details

Although we've put 30 hours and two days off a week that's not set in stone. We're not going to be strict about hours & would hope for a similar flexible approach. We are very happy take you to local places of interest when time allows or to the train station on your days off.
Please be aware that the area we live in is very rural, the nearest shop and bar (until 8pm) is in Ouville, (3 mins by car) Nearest small town is Cerisy la Salle (7 mins by car) nearest large town is Coutances (15 mins by car) The nearest large city is Caen (1 hour by train or car) The coast is 15-20 mins by car. We would ask for a willingness to embrace the local culture.

Activities & Shift

We would prefer to keep this fairly relaxed. We will be fairly flexible, but we would hope for a similar flexibility. You will be living on our premises and sharing our lives, community and friends. We would prefer to treat you as one of the family and would hope to be treated in a similar way.
Your bedroom will be either a private double room in the loft with the use of a first floor shower room or on some nights you will need to sleep in a caravan on the land (the caravan is clean but very simple and has no electricity, you can also use it as a place to chill out if you want to) and use our ground floor shower room. Obviously you will also have access to our parts of the house and the grounds. Freddy can help you learn French.
We will ask you to maintain the grounds, general maintenance, painting and occasionally dog walking too.

Rules

Our attitude is relaxed, and although we have had excellent volunteers, we have also had volunteers who have taken advantage of us, unfortunately in future we would ask those people to leave.
Although we won't ask you to be involved with our chambre d'hotes, we would ask you to be polite, friendly and considerate towards our guests.
We do not ask you to speak French although we would ask for a willingness to embrace the language and culture, As Freddy is French and spent 26 years living in the uk, we very much consider ourselves to be Europeans and it obviously goes without saying that any sort of prejudice would not be welcomed.
We have two dogs, two cats and six chickens and then there are both of us, so you obviously need to be both animal and gay friendly :>))