Volunteering at the chateaux







Many chateaunauts enjoy welcoming volunteers.

The volunteers bring the world to us. It was a benefit James a​​nd I had not anticipated when we embarked on our castle rescue dream. We moved from Elephant and Castle in London to a tiny village South of Carcassonne, in the Aude, one of the least densely populated departments of France.

We were soon informed by an encouraging neighbour and fellow chateaunaut about sites like https://www.workaway.info/en/hostlist/europe/gb

https://wwoof.org.uk/how-it-works/be-wwoofer and https://www.helpx.net/ .

These are sites where volunteers can post their interests, skills, dreams and availability and hosts can explain their projects, accommodation standard, work routine and expectations.

The volunteers get themselves to you and you organise the work and everything else.

Some stay for months, some pass through.  Over 22 years several settled permanently in the Aude. We as hosts learn to roll with their talents and interests and cajole them with food and excursions. Amazing things are accomplished, food cultures shared and friendships ​made.

We met young and old from all corners of the earth. The cosmopolitan conversation and company made a ‘Leaving London Paradox’. We had rarely mixed with and heard about such a cosmopolitan and diverse collection of lives and experiences in our London bubble.

Volunteers come from Japan, Korea, Germany, Poland, Israel, Czecholslovakia, Russia, USA, Bosnia, Italy, Australia, Canada and more.  We also welcomed volunteers from many regions of our own country. An opportunity not always available in the daily grind of Brit life.

The great geographical sweep of folk was true also of the expat community in the Aude.  Many only swanning in like swallows.   Literally fair weather friends.  But when we hunker down for the winter months it is the volunteers who bring the world to our door steps all year around.











































Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chateau or Castle

Image
Château de Lalande, kept in the family for centuries In English, when we think of the French word château, or the plural châteaux, we think of the fortified castles brought to the British Isles by the Normans. We think of crenellations, moats and stone spiral staircases. That is not what château means in France. In France châteaux range from medieval forts to a farm estate producing wine. You will find examples of them all in the legendary Loire valley. Fortified royal castles, ‘wedding cake’ palaces, manor houses, hunting lodges inspired by fantasies of antiquity and residences of the vineyards built up by wine producing families. There are examples of each of them also in the first series of ETTC DIY. Alison and Paul’s Château Brametourte, ( http://brametourte-test.com/home/weddings/wedding-service-options/gothic-courtyard ) in the Tarn department, is an example of a fortified building that has been little altered over the centuries. Eleventh century Roman vesti
Read more

What will the paysans think of your chateau rescuing shenanigans.

Image
What will the paysans think of your chateau rescue shenanigans In the English speaking world calling someone a peasant is a term of abuse. You could say that ‘peasants’ in the UK are an unprotected and disappeared species. In France the word for peasant, ‘paysanne’, is a badge of honour. If you are a ‘vrai’ Paysanne’, you are a keeper of secrets and skills of the countryside, holding the fort against a rising tide of rubbish. Rubbish food, adulterated dairy, radiated lettuces. A modern life of keyboards and fashionable ideas in a pre-fabricated world. Paysannes still pick great bundles of vegetation every afternoon for their rabbits and measure the rainfall. They have their own winter wood growing, cut, drying, stacked and split. Some things are best not left to others. Whopper crops of artichokes, beans and tomatoes are transformed into exquisite preserves. Dried mushrooms gathered at ancestral glades in the woods dry by the fire, a stock of home made confiture always at the ready. It
Read more