The French Renovation

As we approach winter, I'm trying to imagine how it could grow any colder! It's very often warmer outside than it is in cottage #1 at the moment. The metre-thick stone walls keep the chill in, like an ice house of old. Great in the summer months, but challenging once the sun takes its position lower in the sky.  We still have a huge amount of work to do to renovate these ruined old farm buildings. I can't believe that we're still working on cottage #1. We seriously imagined that we'd be finished by this winter and that we'd be enjoying the luxury of a warm comfy base while venturing out to work on the piggery and pottery. We are certainly not on track to be welcoming guests next Spring... We need to pull out all of the stops and get cracking! Starting with some heating. For now, here are some photos to show both the beauty and the beasts of our farm... While searching for a paint roller in the lower section of the top barn, I realised that a bit of ...

This is the broken-off piece of the 'butterfly'.  We've been waiting since the 2nd of November for a replacement part to arrive from Clacton-on-Sea.  Every hour of every day, we checked the post box. Today, it arrived.  Kevin has carefully put it in place, and the car appears to work. Suddenly, we feel alive and free and happy! Our forced isolation on our increasingly icy mountain has been a lesson in understanding the hardships of those who lived up here in the past. We had clean water. We had electricity. We had the internet. We had some food. We had PG Tips tea bags, 300 of them. We were (are) privileged. But... I'm sorry to report that we did, at some points, begin to feel that we were in some way suffering. No, we weren't. What we were missing was cheese. And wine. And not being able to post letters. Neighbours and friends have kindly kept us stocked up with essentials such as milk and eggs, and this morning, friends came and drove us to t...

The restaurants were closed on my birthday, so Kevin decided to take me out for a meal last night. Actually, the main reason was that our major sanding operation had left the kitchen in an unusable state. We showered, and we set off in our new French-registered car into the dark and chilly Autumn evening. We made it about a kilometre down the hill, when the car did something inexcusable. The throttle was suddenly roaring, full on, and smoke was emanating from under the bonnet. We weren't going anywhere. Well, that's not strictly true, as, for some unfathomable* reason, Kevin decided to reverse... at speed... into a ditch. We certainly weren't going anywhere now. We put on the hazard lights and started to walk back up the hill, immersing ourselves into an inky shroud as we turned the corner and left behind the orange winks of the hazards.  After just a minute or so, a car came up the hill and stopped to see if we needed help. We knew it would. They do that in France; there...

A particularly awkward and dirty job has been waiting for us to admit that we can see it waiting. Because we had family visiting in the summer, we pretended the kitchen was ready to use and moved in. But it wasn't, and we've been avoiding eye contact with the ceiling. The plasterboard ceiling had been taped and jointed once, but needed a rubdown and second fill. But worse than that, the exposed beams needed to have the coke scraped off. This morning, we stripped the kitchen of all of its contents, located the goggles and masks, brought in the step ladders, and began. It's unpleasant to work above your head, as everything you dislodge showers onto you and into your clothing. It also hurts your arm muscles after four hours. Sandpaper was effective for the plaster, but didn't touch the cokey beams, so we were able to get a bit more use out of the little angled paint stripping tool. We made a mess, and it's still there now. We're going to go out for dinner....

I don't think it's right to have to do mucky work on your birthday, so we had a day off yesterday. After first establishing that the 'festival' advertised in Tulle was in fact a Day of the Dead procession, and not a knees up, and finding that all of the coffee shops and restaurants were closed due to the National Holiday, we drove to Aubazine to explore the Canal des Moines, or Monks' Canal.  We parked outside the Marie and walked up a very steep footpath, following the signs, and then there it was, a stone-lined channel, about a two feet wide, containing slow-flowing water, parallel to an uneven footpath, meandering lazily upwards into woodland.  We noticed this odd-looking climbing frame in a back garden, wondering between us how a child could comfortably play on it... and then we spotted the plaque- it's a work of art, The Flower! Perhaps it doubles up as a climbing frame for older children...  The monks decided to divert some of the waters o...