The evolution of écovallée – from holidays to healing

Two days after I decided to close écovallée, I met someone who told me she had been asked to keep an eye out for a venue in France for yoga and meditation retreats. Which planted the seed of an idea that grew quite fast.

This idea is now a seedling strong enough to plant out…

In 2017, écovallée will re-launch as venue for healing retreats, courses and seminars. It is clear that the world needs healing more than holidays – and I can’t think of a better use for this land than as a centre for personal (and global) development.

Here is a short document aimed at those looking for a low-impact place in which to explore the ways in which we can have a positive impact on our planet. Please feel free to retweet and share widely:

the écovallée venue (pdf)

I am leaving this blog online, because it contains some useful information, but this will be my last post. My journey continues and I am travelling light. Thank you for being a reader and I wish you all the best in the years ahead.

With love, Alex.

 

New no-rules booking rule

I’ve had some enquiries in the last couple of days for short(ish) stays in July and August. Now, there’s always been a one-week minimum stay in those months… But… Seeing as it’s écovallée’s last year as a campsite…

There are now no booking rules. In other words, now there’s a new no-rule booking rule. You’ve read it here first. I’ll change the booking.com and airbnb parameters when I get a moment. (The sun’s come out and I’ve got some catching up to do before temperatures hit the 30s on Wednesday.)

Obviously, the longer you stay here, the better for everyone. And, if you’re paying the €20 per person to use the sheets and towels here, it makes sense to stay as long as possible. See you later.

 

Closing-down sale

Facebook Likers already know this year’s HUGE news – that the écovallée yurt camp will be closing at the end of this season. To help it go out in style, I have slashed the prices and extended the season until the end of October.

Here are the new – and final – prices, if you want to come and experience the fruits of our last 10 years’ labour of love.

*This price is if you bring your own sheets and towels. I’m asking for €20 per person to cover the cost of local laundry, because I don’t have time to do it all (see all previous posts for details).

So, why am I closing?

Many reasons. In August, it will be 10 years since we came up with the idea. The full 10-year plan was that we would have a yurt camp and a house at the end of those 10 years. What we failed to include in that plan were two things: (1) the campsite would be a “success” in conventional terms; and (2) we would still be together as a couple and as a family.

Let’s take a closer look at those two things.

The campsite, despite increasing the number of guests and the turnover each year, and despite being one of the most beautiful, lovingly made yurt camps on the face of the planet, cannot be seen as a success on paper. I don’t have the exact figures to hand, but I’d guesstimate that it has cost us well over €170,000 excluding eight years of (wo)man hours, multiplied by two. Last year’s highest-ever turnover (if you’re taking notes) was about €16,000 before tax. This year, business has fallen off a cliff. I have availability every week between now and the end of October. For almost all of those weeks, as of writing, the availability is 100%. I’m not alone in this, although it’s not widely discussed, and you can imagine your own reasons for this collapse in tourism. But you’d have to say, on paper, it has been a disaster. (If I were a bank, in fact, the taxpayer would be bailing me out.)

Fortunately, I am not bound by conventional Western thinking. So, I’ll brief explain why it has been a success.

One of the things I’ve come to realise, this year, is that notions of success and failure are just that – notions. They’re not real. The only thing that’s real is what is going on around you, right now – what you can see, touch, hear, taste and smell. When you start comparing what’s real with notions in your head, you start to get upset – which is utterly pointless! Looking at what we’ve created, écovallée is perfect. It’s a stunningly beautiful campsite, in a tranquil valley, filled with wildlife, in one of the most beautiful and fascinating parts of France. Everything has been done with love – and to our own satisfaction. With our own hands. Using natural materials. When I think of a way that it can be more perfect, I do that, too. It’s all a joy.

So, we did that part of the 10-year plan, in the teeth of astonishing resistance from the authorities (resistance I now understand, don’t agree with, but accept).

Which brings me to that second thing.

I wasn’t happy about The Former Her Outdoors’ decision to leave. I won’t go into detail, but no one was treacherous to anyone. The relationship wasn’t working any more – hadn’t been for some time – and she was able to see it and take action. But, now it’s happened, everyone seems to be happier. She is living in a house, The Daughter and Boy have their own bedrooms for the first time and I live in what many people in the developed world would (notionally) see as paradise. It is paradise – and how could I possibly be upset to live there?

But I’ve struggled to see how I can continue to run a family campsite as a single guy. It seems a bit weird. I knew that écovallée would have to evolve as my Liddle Chillen became Big, but I couldn’t see how it was going to change. The fact that the 10 years of the 10-year plan are up this year makes a nice round number to draw the project to a close.

So, if you’d like to come and stay, this is your last chance.

Coming soon – dramatic changes following my decision to close. (Involves chickens.)

 

More late live blogging

The last few days have been pretty busy. (An excuse you’ll find elsewhere on this blog.)

What led to this busyness was that I had guests booked in Mustardseed (one of the 18-foot yurts in écovallée) on June 11th. Which was great. Except that, on June 10th, it was still full of the other 18-foot yurt (which is called Peaseblossom), plus all the deconstructed beds of both yurts and the new outdoor kitchen roof, recently made by The Former Her Outdoors.

Regular readers will not be surprised that there was also rain on the forecast.

Here’s why I felt the kitchen roof needed replacing (my mate Philippe’s the real star in this shot – thank <Deity Name> he was here to help – I couldn’t have done all this without him):

Here’s me sorting out the bracing on Peaseblossom’s roof wheel, which fell to pieces while it was being put away at the end of last season:

The forecasted rain came early, so we put the frame up fast:

Then the cover:

Before we turned our attention back to the kitchen:

It doesn’t take long to put the cover on, but look how it transforms the space:

After that, I remembered to take a shot of the finished yurt, just for you:

Next, the floor needed scrubbing, mopping and leaving to dry, so the deconstructed beds could be moved in. Then the beds in Mustardseed had to be reconstructed and made. The pots, plates and everything else were washed up and put in place in the kitchen, the solar shower and compost toilet cleaned, plus countless other jobs.

The guests had only booked one night. (They did this through booking.com, which prompted me to look harder at the settings and change the minimum number of nights to three – there’s more to this business than construction, cleaning and looking nonchalant when people arrive.)

Today was relatively easy: Said goodbye to one set of guests, then did a quick changeover for Puck (the 12-foot yurt), after buying all the stuff for the Welcome Picnic – ‘cos they’re staying for the week.

So that’s almost it. Apart from a few more hours of setting up Peaseblossom, écovallée is ready for its last ever season as a campsite.

More on this soon.

 

Let battle commence

When it comes to marketing, the only way to know what really works is… testing. So, I’m listing the three yurts on three well-known websites and will pay close attention to the results. Mustardseed is with booking.com, Peaseblossom is with Airbnb, and Puck is with Canopy & Stars. Of course, I also try and attract direct bookings – so I’m in the competition, too. (It doesn’t matter who you book through, really – you win every time.)

Happy Holiday Games. And may the odds be ever in everyone’s favour.

 

Setting the scene

As promised, here’s the first almost-live blog on getting the yurt camp ready for opening on Thursday.

This year, Philippe came along and helped me put up Mustardseed – one of the two 18-foot yurts in the camp. It all went smoothly. Which was a good thing, as there was some kind of fierce storm due at 5 pm.

If you’re going to try this at home, you will need:

A platform set into the corner of a few acres of mixed woodland. In this case, there’s quite a bit of false acacia (perfect for yurt platform uprights, fence posts, firewood – and lasts in water for 100 years), hornbeam (a personal favourite), hawthorn (which provides the welcome first bit of green in spring), oak (mainly spindly – I need to do some thinning out – but half a dozen beauties), sweet chestnut (which produces a very labour-intensive breakfast toast topping, and isn’t great for firewood; but it got us through a few winters), wild service trees and a whole bunch of other green stuff.

You will also need to carry the frame of your 18-foot, coppiced-chestnut, Kyrgyz-style yurt, by hand, from way over there.

Clean off the edging strips that go round the platform. These ones are 1 cm plywood – it doesn’t need to be marine ply, although that would probably last longer.

That unfeasibly heavy oak door spent the winter leaning against the sink in the outdoor kitchen a few metres away. It must have been carried for miles in the last 10 years. That’s the shower in the background.

Screw in the platform edges, with an unnecessarily intense look of effort. It’s not actually that hard with a machine. (A few years ago, I put some up with a socket set – don’t ask.)

Stand the walls up and try to remember how they fit together. Wonder why you didn’t take a moment to mark them in some helpful way at the end of last year. Or the year before that – even more sensible.

Pause, while Philippe takes a caught-on-CCTreeV shot.

Unwind the tension band.

Raise the roof.

Here’s further proof that marking poles when it matters is worth considering. Although, it does mean the yurts are different every year.

Here’s what Mustardseed looks like for 2016.

If there’s a storm coming, you need to carry the cover over, heave it on and rope up the wall.

Like this.

(The storm didn’t come.)

 

And one for Shakespeare lovers

You will probably know that it’s been 400 years since Shakespeare finally put down his pen. (After writing his Will, perhaps.) To mark this event – and because the yurts in écovallée are named after the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream – I’ve put this final ad together.

 

True Shakespeare fans will be pleased to know that the font used is Arial.

 

I had this other idea today

Well, more of another idea for a headline.

(I think I prefer this, but it depends on the context. The earlier ad has more of a generic headline, but was designed for the wall of a break room – ie, A holiday that’s out of the world of this functional room. But today I met a friend of a friend who came to see écovallée for the first time. He stood at the top corner between the yurt and the kitchen and said: “This is my dream.” And I remembered that, yes, it was my dream – and now, it’s there. Shakespeare lovers will also know why we called the three yurts Mustardseed, Peaseblossom and Puck.)

 

Advertising? Editorial? Social media? What works for you?

 

During the last nine years, I’ve (occasionally) paid to advertise écovallée in relevant newspapers and magazines. But I’ve never been able to attribute a single booking to that activity. When écovallée was listed in The Guardian as one of the top 10 luxury campsites in Europe, it sold out in three days (full disclosure: there was only one yurt available that year). Our 15 minutes of fame on prime-time ITV led to… precisely one booking. Twitter doesn’t lead to much – even when tweets are re-tweeted to thousands. The Facebook page has yet prove itself. And, let’s be honest, who uses Google+? In fact, this blog is responsible for more bookings than everything else put together.

So my question to you – should you choose to answer it – is: What prompts you to book your holiday – advertising, editorial, social media, or something else? When the world changes at ever-increasing broadband speed, it’s hard to keep up.

In the meantime, here’s an ad I put together yesterday, for a friend to put up at work. Even if we’re not sure what’s effective, we have to keep trying…

 

Also the perfect yurt holiday for single-parent families

Me and the kids at the dune de Pyla in 2012. Coming back up was a different story.

Regular readers of this blog will know that écovallée was created by me and (the former) Her Outdoors as the perfect yurt holiday for people with young children. More specifically, Guardian–reading families who are interested in the environment. We’ve had Daily Mail readers – which I’ve found surprising and alarming – and this has taught me that that particular newspaper is very good for lighting fires. (Previously, I thought it had no use whatsoever.)

Now that we are no longer living together as a family, the question is: How does that change écovallée?

Since September, I’ve been wondering how it looks to have a family campsite run by someone who is, essentially, a single parent. I’m not even a single parent all the time, as my kids live with their mum, about 15 minutes away. I’ve imagined that this might put off families who are together.

That it might look a bit odd.

But – in the last day or so – I’ve realised the error in my thinking. I recognise that the worry exists only in my head as a not-very-useful thought. Past guests at écovallée have included people travelling on their own, with a sibling, or with up to three children, and couples who are together – with and without kids – kids they’ve had with each other and with other people… Basically, everyone. And that hasn’t changed.

We all have our own stories and we’re all at different places in those stories. So I’m not going to worry about how it looks any more. (Phew.)

I’ve tweaked the website to reflect this slight change. For example, I’m now calling the “couple’s yurt” a “small yurt” for solo travellers, couples and people with small families. It’s a bit embarrassing that I didn’t spot this before. Sometimes, you can get so focused on your “target audience” (I used to work in advertising – please forgive the jargon), that you exclude other people who may want to come. My previous word choice may have even put off some people travelling on their own. Or people who are single parents (is this even the best expression for this?). If you’re one of them, I apologise.

In fact, écovallée is for everyone who wants to experience living outside, in a beautiful environment, in a beautiful structure, with very low impact facilities. If that sounds like you, come on down/across/up/over. This summer is going to be fantastic. Come and share it with existing friends, make new ones, or just come here on your own.

And bring a good book.

And a head torch.

Head torches are cool.