Our history

We purchased the lakes and created GoGreen Holidays in March 2017. Back then we were a family of 4 (now we are family of 5) with a love for the outdoors, fishing, walking, camping, BBQ-ing and generally spending time together outside in the fresh air and sunshine.

The lakes hadn’t been used much for the previous 15 years or so but we knew they were stocked with lots of fish – Carp, Black Bass, Perch, little pumkin seeds, the odd Pike and Tench. We have also added lots more Carp and Tench to the first 2 lakes.

When the deliveries of fish arrived we took a photo of each fish and weighed them before putting them in the lakes so we can keep an eye on their weight gain and increase in size.

Our next task was to create a parking area and vehicular access to the lakes. We also had to deal with some drainage issues as the run off from our neighbours fields went straight through this area. With some help from our lovely neighbour (who also happens to be the local mayor) and our friend Nick and over 100 tons of hard core and lots of drainage pipes we created a space big enough for all our guests and visitors.

In order to do this we had to clear a few trees that were leaning dangerously over the area. Nick very cleverly suggested why don’t we take them to the local wood yard and get them planked. And we did. What a great idea. We have used the planks to re-clad the GoGreen Cabin, build compost bins, the compostable toilet, a large fish food bin and lots of shelving at home and we still have some left over. The non-planked branches and smaller trunks have been logged to use either in the log burner in the GoGreen Cabin, on the firepit and to heat our home.

At the same time, as we had all the machinery on site, we decided it was a good time to dig a well to supply water to the GoGreen Cabin and GoGreen Roulotte. Nick knew a man who was able to find water sources dowsing with two hazel sticks! It was amazing how he could track down the water and knew exactly how deep down the source was. We were a little bit sceptical. Our major neighbour started digging and sure enough 5 metres down a little trickle of water appeared and we had found the source ! Simon and Nick then put in the Well tunnel, a filtration system and refilled the massive hole. Hey presto we had created a Well. We have then put a pump down into the Well and are able to provide water to the Cabin and Roulotte to be used for washing and showering. It is not drinking water. Guests need to bring their own drinking water.

We were left with lots of small branches and twigs. In France you are only allowed bonfires at certain times of year which wasn’t at the time we were doing all the work. This was OK with us anyway as we didn’t really want to have lots of fires. Instead we decided to make lots of dry hedges. This worked really well as it provides excellent coverage for small animals to nest in and we used it as screening around the car park. You will see that we have done this a lot around the lakes. Once it has been created we assume it will take a couple of years to rot down so each year with fallen branches and maintenance work we can just top up the hedges. It has been a labour of love and is quite time consuming but it is a much preferred options to burning everything.