The French Renovation

On our latest scavenging expedition into the terrifying bowels of cottage #2, we discovered an extremely heavy 'coffee table' under the oil drums and a spilly open vat of oil. It's huge, about six feet long; maybe it's a bed! After struggling with Kevin to extract it, scrambling over heaps of nasty things, navigating the hurty nobbliness of the cobbled floor, then out of the tiny front door, down the wonky stone steps and through knee-high nettles, I think I can attest that a good proportion of its weight is attributable to its oil content. We couldn't avoid close contact with its damp, blackened surfaces. Its pungent oily aroma transferred, inevitably, to our clothes and skin. Eventually, we deposited it on the road surface and set about purging it of its stink using a de-greaser meant for car engines and then, after ten minutes' soaking, the jet washer came into play. I haven't 'been allowed' to use it before. After receiving Kevin's stern war

This is the kitchen we took on... We've kept as much of the original furniture as we could stomach. This is what it looks like now. Still some work to do, but it's certainly a bit fresher!

Sometimes we have to convince ourselves to have a day off. We had two different people to visit in the Argentat area, so that's where we headed. Again.  I took a few snaps of the usual stuff... The rather green river Dordogne Perversely, this poppy reminded me instantly of the ones from the Tower of London... Another arty roundabout! And arty cows... I can't walk past a good wisteria... Spotted etched into a rock on the banks of the Dordogne Fast-flowing, weed-greened Dordogne Our friend at Saulieres bought a very old, abandoned house close to the banks of the River Dordogne. Despite carrying out a frenzy of renovation work, he cannot bring himself to remove these old photographic portraits of the previous owners. It doesn't look like their life there was a happy, carefree one, does it? The ubiquitous rock tiles of Saulieres and Argentat alongside modern peeping technology. Our Saulie