The guys got their toys to play with today and are having such fun!

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I throw this ball into the court…………

Bellaugello gay guest house.  Exclusively for gay men?  That has always been the intention.  As it says in our web homepage; “..in a gay enveronment….  in the company of other like minded men”

Names can be complicated; Here in Italy Niccolo is a guys name, generally masculine names end in  the vowel ‘o’ and female names end in the vowel ‘a’ hence Antonello and Antonella, Paolo and Paola, but there are exceptions, and if you take into account other languages it becomes very complicated.  In English Nicola is a girls name, but here it Italy it is a guy’s name, I have a good friend called Nicola and he is definately a guy.  Goes against all the rules andconfuses my brain.

What happens if someone other than a gay man turns up here?  Do I send them packing? Do I run round and inform all the other clientelle there is a ‘non gay male’ on the premises?  Do I welcome them with open arms?

Friends of all persuasions tell me that I should re-style Bellaugello as being ‘gay friendly’.  It would certainly get round the problem of language and semantics and why not?  If guys know that Bellaugello is for them, and we market cleverly then will there be objections if heterosexual people or couples or lesbian families arrive here to enjoy th facilities that we offer? Afterall most gay men have loads of girlfriends and strait friends, and we have never had the intention to create a ghetto.

Non male gay clientelle will be aware at the time of booking of what they are coming to and naturally expected to respect the environment we have strived so hard to create.

If you as a gay guy came here to Bellaugello gay country house would you be disturbed to be sharing your holiday with non-gay males?

Would you as a gay male be pleased that you could come to Bellaugello gay guest house and bring your straight friends?

Let me know, I would love to read your comments and do please send me other examples of contrary tautologies.

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My friends from Rome telephoned enroute.  They had fed the GPS co-ordinates for Bellaugello into their iPhone 3GS and followed the given directions.

Why is it that satellite navigation systems have a very different way of navigating to the way we all think of navigating?  I well remember when I lived in Scotland taking the dogs off to choose a new car.  They got to choose the car, I got the choice of accessories…  Of course among other luxuries there had to be a satellite navigation system.  Oh what regrets, she did nothing but argue with me and continually attempted to have me turn round either in a one way street or on a dual carriageway, just because she thought she knew the route better than me. – Shame as I have a very good sense of geography and direction, and 99.9% of the time she was wrong.

Now this is not a sexist thing, yes the navigator had a lovely female voice, the guy’s voice was unappealing, I did have a choice, and I suspect the guy would have given the same nagging instructions.

Anyway the guys called up from Valfabbrica.  Now Valfabbrica is a very pleasant Umbrian town but it is not on the direct route from Rome to Bellaugello, or so I thought… but iPhone navigator said YES IT IS!!

I had to think quickly and navigate for them from Valfabbrica to Valdichiascio.  Quite easy really one simply heads for the ’3Cs’ Casa Castalda, Carbonesca and Colpalombo.  There is a back drive to Bellaugello that connects with Colpalombo, but it has one tricky turn and is longer on white road than the main drive in.  What made matters worse is that the iPhone 3GS navigator had wanted to take the guys to Gualdo Tadino, again another very pleasant Umbrian town, but in no way enroute from Roma!!  I scurried down the ‘strada secondaria’ and met the guys and brought them home here to Bellaugello.

It was a beautiful day and the hills were looking their best, so we lunched and chatted outside on the terrace, had a tour of inspection of the works progress and agreed to rewrite the navigation software, actually no we did not do the latter, that is a thing I could not begin to even contemplate understanding, instead I now know to give clear directions to anybody coming from Roma to ignore the smooth talking navigator and not turn off for Valfabbrica and Ancona but to stay on the E45 until Bosco.

I too have an iPhone and love it, but am a luddite and prefer navigating with a map.

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It seems no time at all since I wrote the website for my gay guest house, www.bellaugello.com and it went online, But it is already time for me to do an update.

As you read in my last post summer has moved to autumn and the copy of the website must reflect that.  We are also beginning to look towards Christmas and the New Year when we are organising housparties, and the text must give all the details of our plans for wonderful parties!

I hate out of date websites, there is little worse, and MUST NOT allow mine to get out of date….  So off to write some more, keep tuned in.

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The house has been real busy this week, guests staying and builders building.

Summer has begun to turn to autumn, there is a chill in the air in the late evenings and the trees are just beginning to turn glorious yellows, golds and reds.  Days are still warm, indeed it was 30 degrees yesterday, and this morning is a perfect cloudless day.

I have good friends coming up from Rome for lunch, so have been busy cooking.  A neighbour brought me a basket of porcini mushrooms, those will do nicely with a bit of rosemary and garlic and our own olive oil over some home-made pasta, followed by a lemon tart made with those wonderful large knobbly untreated Amalfi lemons.

This evening we are off out to a fund-raising concert in aid of Abruzzo in the beautiful restored church of S Pietro in Gubbio.  An orchestra, choir and tenor solo, with works by Faure, Mendelsson and Franck

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Calabrone, known in English as Hornets are not the nicest of insects.  Recently some calabrone had taken up residence in a large cherry tree, ok not really a cherry orchard, vacated this spring by a colony of ants (thanks Marius!).

The calabrone had stung the builders twice, so they had to go.  Emilio the bee-keeper was summoned, he donned his kit and proceeded to smoke them out.

After ten minutes he thought he had done all he could to eradicate the calabrone.  However…..

An urgent cry from the builders had me hurrying outside.  Smoke was exiting from all the branches of the tree.  It seems that the inside of the tree is very hollow, and whilst spectacular to see as smoke exited from many limbs an branches, we still had calabrone and now a fire too!

Hosepipes to the rescue, two of us doused the tree from a safe distance.  It took a good half an hour to quell the smoke, but sadly there are still calabrone flying into the nest,other remedies are being explored.

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We have finally located the right wood for the construction of our Russian style Sauna, and are hoping to start work on the construction very shortly.

The Sauna will be  of the Russian style, that is hotter than a traditional scandinavian sauna.  The stove which will also heat the water for the shower and plunge bath will be fired with wood from our estate.

Despite a large Moldavian and Eastern European population currently there are no russian style saunas in either Gubbio or Perugia areas.  Day visitors will be welcome to use the facility.

The sauna will be sited in the garden to the west of the main house.  The building will be wooden construction with a large wooden decking area, and in accordance with our eco-sustainability policy the insulation material will be natural.

A covered verandah with changing space and showers will lead into the sauna proper.  Benches for lying side by side run across the rear wall, with two levels of seating benches to either side.  Lighting will be by LED

Outside there will be a large deck area with space for reclining loungers, a couple of tables and chairs (need somewhere to drink that chilled beer!!!) and the two old wine vats that will serve as plunge pools, one tepid the other cold water!  The deck will have un-interrupted view down the Chiascio valley and also in the summer will be a perfect place for sunbathing

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Work is progressing well on the Garden Suite.

This suite will be a duplex, entered both from the main terrace and its own private lower terrace.  The upper floor will be taken up with the bedroom and seating area, the two windows facing south down the Chiascio valley.

A Spiral staircase will descend to the lower garden level, with dining room/kitchen corner and bathroom.  Doors will lead out from both the dining room and bathroom onto a private terrace, part of which will be shaded by old olive trees.  There will be an outside shower area on the private south facing terrace.

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Work has begun on the restoration and new chimney for the old brick oven.  The oven is in-between the dining terrace and the dining room, thus perfectly placed for use all year round.

In order to put in a proper flue we have had to build a new front to the oven to support the weight of the wall above (see pics) as the chimney has to clear the roof above the mirror suite.  Luckily the oven itself is sound and the original bricks are all intact, so it will not be long before we are firing the oven up with our own wood and baking pizzas!!

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I have just returned from a brief trip abroad to Morocco in the company of some real nice guys who had done a house exchange.  Through a house-exchange club they had swapped a week in their luxury Rome home for a week in a fabulous beach house in the ancient medina of Asilah.

The weather was fabulous, beaches empty and company superb.

Some years ago when in Marrakech I had thought of buying a house and starting a boutique hotel in the medina, however I am so glad that I did not and instead came to Umbria.

A great and much needed holiday, but it is so good to be home here at Bellaugello where in my absence building work has been cracking on a pace.

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