The unexpected effect of Château DIY

How being on TV has impacted our lives

I press send and the newsletter is gone, disappearing into the ether, making its way to mailboxes all over the world, England, America, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, my words wandering far and wide, telling their readers that our booking calendar for 2025 is open.

Within a few hours our inbox begins to ping, a booking and then another, and then yet another. A steady stream of reservations over that first week, next summer’s calendar slowly beginning to fill up. With each booking I feel a fizz of excitement in my stomach, a little pride and an easing of the tension in my shoulders, a sense of relief and disbelief. Every year I wonder if people will still want to come and stay. Every year I worry that no one will book, that the weeks and nights of the summer won’t fill up and we will be left scrabbling and scraping to make ends meet again, like we had to in those desolate Covid years that I try hard to forget.

I find believing in the success of our business very hard. I expect, always, that one day someone will come here and tell us that it’s all over, that we’ve had our fun and that France is going to reclaim this little patch of itself and send us on our way. I wait for someone to tell us that all of the hard work, long days and weary hours that we put into our business aren’t enough, that we don’t deserve to keep going because the success of it isn’t really ours. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, one that niggles at me often in the early hours of the morning, when I lie in bed worrying in the darkness about what the future might hold.

I ask myself often, where we’d be if we hadn’t decided to let the cameras in? How much harder we might have had to struggle if that message from the producers of Château DIY hadn’t arrived in my Instagram inbox back in January 2018? We considered saying no, worrying that it might be one of those television shows that seeks to show-up hapless Brits trying hard to make a go of something, scared that instead of bringing people to our doors that it might keep them away. But ultimately, we decided that it was an opportunity that we shouldn’t turn down, and that in all likelihood it would help us get our business off the ground. When I hit reply on that message, agreeing to a screen test and taking the next step towards letting the cameras in, I had no idea how that decision would make me feel years later.