Our Travelationship in Review: March 2016

Last Updated on July 12, 2025 by Travelationship

Umm, where did March go? Our intention was to slow down by house-sitting, catch up on our blog posts, and solidify some plans for the next year. It is now April, and the only goal we conquered was our house sit.

The chores at our farm/guesthouse in Montilliers, France along with crappy weather most of the month kept us pretty busy. Our responsibilities included managing a 7-bedroom guesthouse, two herds of sheep during birthing season, two horses, a dog, and a cat. We mowed an acre or so of grass, mended fences, weeded a bit of the garden, and split & stacked wood in between the almost daily rain, cold, and wind.

Mostly, because of the weather, we didn’t spend nearly as much time exploring the area as we wanted. Early in the month, we took a two-day road trip through the beaches of Normandy and onward to Mont Saint-Michel. The weather was cold, but it was worth every second. One day, we would like to return and explore the area at a slower pace.

We were also able to spend a day at Fontevraud Abbey in Fontevraud. We are still in awe over how much we enjoyed this place. One midday, we spent a few hours with Global Greeters, Antoine, and Janna, in Angers, learning about the history and architecture of the city. And we admit we ate McDonald’s more than once during our time here. Shameful, we know, but we couldn’t help ourselves.

Overall, March gave us time to eat a lot of home-cooked meals, catch up on some TV and Netflix shows, and remind us that we have no interest in starting our own guest house.

The Stops

United Kingdom: London
France: Paris, Montilliers, Vihiers, Angers, Normandy, Caen, Bayeux, Angers, Saumur, Fontevraud

The Great

Our first international house sit with TrustedHousesitters.com was a success. We had both done plenty of house and pet sitting back in the States, but this was our first overseas job, and it couldn’t have been more suited for us. We spent about four weeks taking care of a guest house and sheep farm during birthing season in Montilliers, France, at La Gaucherie aux dames. The owners, Beverly and Olivier, welcomed us a couple of days early to show us the ropes and introduced us to a few of their helpful friends. They were departing on two different trips, so we had about a week to ourselves to get our feet wet before they returned for a few days and then left again.

We were really glad they returned when they did because one of the sheep had a difficult twin birth, and one of the babies died, and Ebony also died during that time. Selfishly, we were glad they were around because we would have thought the deaths were our fault or that we could have done more to assist. By the way, if you find yourself in central France or are planning a trip to France, we highly recommend staying at La Gaucherie aux dames. It’s a perfect place to relax and enjoy the French countryside.

Matt and I both grew up on (separate) small farms, and we realized how much we missed having lots of animals around us. We thoroughly enjoyed caring for all the animals, even in the pouring rain. We loved playing around in the mud with the animals. We will definitely look for more farm stays in the future.

Visiting the Normandy Beaches was emotional and inspirational. Northern France is truly beautiful; we would really like to return and see more of it. The history and the beauty of Northern France are extraordinary. If you ever have the chance to visit France, be sure to include the Normandy area on your itinerary.

Our visit to Fontevraud Abbey in Fontevraud, France, was really cool. With so many abbeys, cathedrals, and castles in Europe, it is easy to confuse their names and locations, but we will never mix up Fontevraud with any other place. We loved everything about this location. It features a self-sustaining energy center, organic gardens, and hundreds of years of history, all seamlessly meshed together with amazing art exhibits. Thank you, Olivier, for hosting and showing us around Fontevraud.

Our taxes are done and submitted!

We met some truly great people who helped us feel right at home. An extra special thank you to Bev, Olivier, Alain, Pascale, and her family for their help and for making us feel so welcome.

The Not So Great

After the heat of Sri Lanka, London, and our time in France, our return felt so cold. Neither of us packed exceptionally warm gear, so our days in the city weren’t as enjoyable as we had hoped. We have both become extra sensitive (aka whiney babies) to wet, windy, and cold temperatures. We counted four days of the entire month without rain or wind. With that said, France remains beautiful even on a cloudy day.

Losing two lambs on our watch. First, our little Ebony died the morning Beverly and Olivier left for their second trip. Per the veterinarian’s advice, we gave him some oral meds, and I even had to break out my vet tech skills and give him a shot of meds, but we still lost him. The second was a breech (born bottom first, instead of head first) baby, and we weren’t able to save it. This loss haunts me because I wish my skills had been keener. After all, I think he could have been saved. Matt thinks not, and we did all we could properly, but it’s one of those moments you look back at and wonder “what if”.

After 11 months of traveling, being still wasn’t as relaxing and productive as we thought it would be. Instead, the idle time and the rainy weather stirred up arguments and irritability in both of us. Relationships are tough, and constant travel with very few to zero stress outlets is a recipe for possible disaster. Time-outs or day breaks seem to work best for us in taking the edge off, but fighting for whatever reason still sucks. Compound it with a lack of familiarity with the area, creatures of comfort, and local friends to blow off steam with, and stupid things turn into drawn-out, dramatic arguments for way too long. Anyone who thinks traveling, let alone traveling with your partner, is always blissful and trouble-free is delusional. The reality of traveling or even vacationing with someone else is that it’s not always fun or easy. We knew this going into it all, so we aren’t surprised, but it still sucks to fight at any time.

We are missing our dog and cat more than usual. Hobee and Soma are both doing well with Grandma and Grandpa, and we received some lovely photos of both from Matt’s niece. We still miss them every day.

The Oops!, WTF?, LOLs – Lessons learned, head scratchers & hilarities

Oops! Let’s not do that again lessons

Trying to sit down and focus on writing blog posts has been tough for us. Our plan was to find a lovely, relaxed house sit and spend our time getting caught up. For the entire month of March, the 2 of us wrote three blog posts. We found too many ways to distract ourselves. Between the animals, the daily chores, and mind-numbing movies and TV shows, we found ourselves with lots of things to do other than write. We both need to work on our focus skills.

WTF? Did that really just happen?

We timed our day in Paris so poorly that it was ridiculous. We forgot to change our timepieces to Paris time (nope, neither of us has our phones set to automatically update), and we read our train departure time incorrectly. We ended up losing about 3 hours of the one morning we had in the city. Instead, we spent the time rushing to make our train departure, which we made with about 3 minutes to spare.

LOLs our laugh out loud hilarious moments

We absolutely suck at sheep herding. When we first arrived at the farm, one of our tasks was to move two mothers with a set of twins each from their barn stalls to a grazing pasture twice a day. The distance was approximately 50 meters, and it was a relatively straight shot. What should have taken us 2 minutes, tops, usually found us running, jumping, crawling, spinning, finagling, and pleading for at least 10-15 minutes. The sheep always slipped by the wrong way and galloped past us all bahhing in laughter at us while basking in their few minutes of freedom. We did improve at this as the month progressed, but we won’t ever list it as a skill set on any CV.

Jojo the sheep and Figaro the cat kept us laughing throughout the month. Jojo thought he was a human and should be allowed into any place where people were allowed. He followed us around like he was a puppy. At one point, he even chased after the car when Matt was leaving for the store.

Figaro was the plump, live version of Puss ‘n Boots from the movie Shrek. The side ears and big, round eyes, along with their changing attitudes, caused us to laugh constantly. Our favorite was that he would follow us around during the feedings and watch over us to make sure we were doing everything correctly.

As a kid, I was quite the equestrian, but I haven’t been on a horse ride in years. Beverly and I went on a maybe 30-minute horse ride around the neighboring farms, and my gosh, did I pay for it the next day. Granted, I was too short for the shortest notch of the stirrups and basically rode stirrup-less; my knees and inner thighs were sore for days afterward. I felt so pathetic. But…Once I switched horses, I convinced Matt to at least ride around in the yard for a few minutes. It was fun to see him on a horse.

The Posts

• Our Travelationship in Review: February 2016
• Burj Khalifa A Bird’s Eye View of Dubai
• Photo Essay: Bac Ha Sunday Market

The Features

Instagram:

• Streetart_Daily
• Transfer_Visions

Our Ears and Eyes

Heather

“Lucky Man“ by Michael J. Fox
“The Call of the Wild“ by Jack London
“Whalesong: A Novel About the Greatest and Deepest of Beings“ by Robert Siegl

Matthew

“Red Rising” by Pierce Brown
Skins – UK TV Show
The Americans – US TV Show on FX

Up Next

Our time at La Gaucherie aux Dames will conclude in early April, after which we will head to a different farm site in southern France. We will be in the Midi-Pyrénées area until at least the 25th or 26th of May. The remainder of the month will either find us in France, Spain, Morocco, or Nepal.

Have any suggestions on where we should go next? Let us know in the comments!

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