If you come to stay at Les Terraces and explore the house thoroughly you will find conkers in the corners of the house on each floor.  You may think that we don’t do a good job of cleaning, but you’d be wrong.  They are there for a reason.

We are very keen to do anything that we can to make sure that Les Terraces is as “green” as possible.  This includes line-drying the laundry when the weather permits, using environmentally friendly lightbulbs where we can (although this can mean that light in the bathrooms isn’t as good as we would like it to be at times), and so on.  Really, nothing different from anything that anyone else is doing.

It has been our experience that old timbered buildings hold a particular attraction for spiders, especially in the autumn months when the tiny “flying” spiders are at their peak ……. and doors and windows, at least at Les Terraces, are wide open.  The ballooning spiders (money spiders, nothing big & hairy – worry not) seem to drift into the house on their strings of silk and quite happily set up home in corners, under counter tops and anywhere else that feels welcoming for that matter.

Friends of ours came to stay in Sainte-Foy-La-Grande this September.  One afternoon we were sat chatting over some drinks at the Globetrotter and the annual invasion of spiders (and the consequent battle to remove them and their webs) came up in the conversation.  “Ah!” said Graeme, “Conkers!”  He proceeded to explain this somewhat obscure outburst.

15 years ago Graeme & Maggie had moved to the BVI for Graeme to take up a “post-retirement” job on a 3-year contract.  As they packed up their house in Yorkshire Maggie put conkers into the boxes that held their linens as a precaution against moths.  It was 14 years before they returned to the UK and unpacked their boxes.  There was no sign of the depredation normally wrought on fabric by these pests.  Graeme said that they were also a well-known spider deterrent when left in the corners of rooms.

During the course of their stay Graeme & Maggie went out on several walks and, it being the right season, they picked up a bag full of conkers for us.  Those conkers are what you’ll find in each corner of every room at Les Terraces.  What you won’t find are as many cobwebs!