A visitor

This kestrel seems to have set up home on the telephone wire above one of our bedroom windows.  He (we think it's a he but it's a bit hard to tell at this distance!) has been there most evenings after dark when its raining so he is obviously enjoying a bit of shelter under the eaves, and doesn't seem at all bothered by our comings and goings, or even having the camera flash at him.
Unfortunately there is a little bit of unwelcome evidence of his visits directly below his perch on the path at the front of the house as a result !

Another nice day - Saintes

We took a trip to Saintes this morning, delighted with the continuing great weather. Here's the River Charente there basking in the warm December sunshine!

Saintes is getting ready for Christmas and the Christmas market is to open tomorrow (OK we went too early!) next to the Arc de Triomphe, or Arc de Germanicus, in the town centre on the river bank.  This Arch is much more ancient, having been built in the year 19AD, than the rather more famous Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which only dates from the early 1800s. Here is is surrounded by Christmas trees.

Saintes is our nearest city, where there are lots of public buildings we've had to visit to get our French health service arranged and to re-register our cars so we have French number plates, etc. Our bank is also there, right next to the cathedral which you can see through the left hand arch in the photo. Saintes was the capital of the ancient province of Saintonge, now swallowed up in Charente Maritime.

Nice weather isn't it

We've been having some really nice days - warm and sunny although it gets a bit chilly at night and we've lit the logburner most evenings. We went off to Royan yesterday mainly to see a tax expert who operates from there, but it was such a nice day - the beach looked inviting but it was not really quite warm enough to dive in. Nearly 20 C though, which is pretty good for November.

After we'd had our consultation we had a good look around the town and caught this sunset over the Atlantic.
Then we headed home via Pons, where we had a delicious meal at the Hotel/Restaurant 'de Bordeaux' and had an enjoyable evening with some interesting new people.
Back to work now though - it's a public holiday here tomorrow so our builders will be away and we'll be doing three days of painting in our annexe.

Visits and Progress

After previous visits to us we had a trip to the UK, staying with David, Lynne and Charlie and then up to Manchester for a few days. We'd have liked longer and to see more people but we crammed as much in as we could, and we're planning to go back again in a month or two. Then we went over to see Samantha, Mike and Elizabeth in Alsace, and had a nice few days with them, away from the stuff going on at the house. Then Peter, Lianne, Jack and Tommy came over to us for a week and we had the swimming pool filled just in time, but the water was too cold even for Jack.
Work has progressed well on the house, with the pool more-or-less completed and the apartment has been transformed. New walls and ceilings up, electrics mostly in, new windows. Nothing quite ready yet but getting close and we'll put some pictures up when its all presentable.
Another milestone today when we've got our cars re-registered here, so they'll have French number plates tomorrow. The procedures were a bit horrendous but we got there in the end.

20 September Update

Our fourth set of visitors this summer left after a good few days, weather-wise, and we enjoyed having them here. The builders have started on the pool - an Ash tree has come down and there's an ever-widening hole growing in the garden. Meanwhile, I managed to catch a fleeting shot of a red squirrel enjoying the fruits of the walnut tree (it's left more than enough for us though!) Here it is running up the fence into the tree very fast, hence the blur.

We've got far too many walnuts to eat so I'm looking at getting a press to extract the oil, which we can use for salads and cooking. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall used one for hemp seeds on his TV programme this week - the same model will do all sorts of nuts and seeds.

Winemaking

Rhys has been having a go at making some wine! We inherited a row of grape vines with the house - about a dozen vines of two or three different varieties, but we don't know what they are. The previous owner said they were eating / table grapes but there are far too many to eat. We picked them this week and there were 69kg of grapes.

As you can probably see they're not all ripe but some were over-ripe and wasps etc. were starting to get at them, so we thought they'd better come off. Also quite a few are rather small so we probably need to prune the bunches while they're growing next year, to get bigger grapes. About two thirds of them are black, the rest white.

We bought some kit to make them into wine (we hope!) and David and Lynne helped us to strip the grapes from their stalks. After mashing the fruit up we put the lot into kegs with their skins so we aim to get red wine but its a lot of trouble keeping the skins below the liquid. Anyway we've now removed the skins and the must is fermenting nicely with the addition of some wine yeast (as well as the natural yeast) and sugar.

Rhys now needs to be patient and leave them to do their thing for a while! The must is now all in one big keg with an airlock, but probably a bit too much headroom at the top.

We'd better get collecting some bottles to decant it into when it's finished - fortunately that's not too hard here with lots of good wine on the table from Bordeaux, the Medoc and Blaye nearby. Good excuse for a bottle or two more as we need the bottles. We'll let you know how ours turns out (unless it all turns into vinegar!)

Two lots of visitors

We've been delighted to have two lots of visitors over the last few weeks. First Jennie, Ian and Dorothy flew in for a few days, but unfortunately the weather wasn't great. However they seemed to enjoy themselves, and here is Jennie on the lawn tractor. Plenty more behind her still to cut though.

Then last week we had David, Lynne and Charlie to stay. They had mostly very good weather - up into the 30's C. We took them out to the beach at St Georges de Didonne one day; here he is with Jean on the sands:

And here are another couple of pictures of Charlie - one concentrating hard on his strawberry ice-cream at the Coq d'Or in Jonzac, and the other at our house.

David and Lynne helped with a few of the jobs including in the garden and stripping the grapes from their stalks ready for making into wine (we hope!) but there are still plenty to go at so we'd better get on with it.

Update on progress & trip away

The house and garden are continuing to make progress and we now have the third bedroom decorated, the new windows installed in the living room that we've created by knocking a wall down, the grass has had another cut or two, the water softener is working for the whole house and we've had the fosse emptied (guess you didn't want to know that!) and we've had a builder looking at some of our plans for further work.

We had a trip away for a few days to the Creuse, to stay with Deni and Doug at Chez Jallot. (The house featured on Grand Designs Abroad as The Creuse House). As usual they were very hospitable and this time we had hot sunny weather for our day out out to Lake Vassiviere nearby - picture:

On the way back we had lunch and a stroll in Jarnac, in the centre of the Cognac producing area. We liked Jarnac much more than Cognac town itself - it's much prettier and generally more pleasant, in our opinions. A number of the big Cognac (brandy) producers have their headquarters there, including Courvoisier, Hine and Delamain, rather than in Cognac town. So we think that's where we'll take guests to who want to do a distillery visit. Here's Jean with our lunches just arrived (braised ham with Madiera sauce):

We had a look around the town, which had a great public garden in the town centre on a big island of the Charente river. We may take a boat trip there next time. The river is very wide and shallow in parts, and children play in it. Here is Jean on one of the bridges:

As you can see we've been having hot sunny weather, with temperatures up to 30 deg C.

Progress - wall down!

In between other jobs we decided to take a hammer to the wall between the two bedrooms that had been made of the original second reception room. It was a partition made of terra-cotta blocks, plastered, but the rooms it created were narrow and not very useful. Fortunately there was no wiring in it and it just went up to a huge beam in the ceiling which is self-supporting. Here it is in pieces all over the floor!

It's now all outside ready to go to the dechetterie and the room looks very much better - big and square so we'll be able to tidy it up and bring it back into use. The window bays have beautiful stonework around them that we'll restore, once we can get off the green and blue paint and various sealants. The wooden floor - the last on the ground floor in the house - has a bit of woodworm so we don't know yet if we'll treat it to keep it, or replace it.

We're here

We've arrived and are busy settling in and starting to get everything as we want it. The removal men left everything for us in the chai and we've been having a fun time finding things and moving them into the house.  Our hibiscus in the back garden is looking magnificent (picture) and we've got some of the grass cut and weeds pulled up, so it looks more lived in now. 

We've had a lovely 'welcome' visit from Penny and Adrian yesterday, and the neighbour across the stream at the bottom of the garden called round this morning. Apparently the old lady of our house (who we keep calling 'granny'), was his aunt. They're all part of a big family in the village so they're all interested in what we're up to.


We've ordered a water softener and supplier came round this morning with his plumber, so we're hopeful this can be done soon. The water is very hard here and after being used to soft Manchester water its taking some getting used to, so we'd rather not. Its not as expensive as we feared.

Progress - more steps

We've now got a removal firm booked to take all our remaining stuff over to the new house so we and all of it will be there in just over a week's time.

And we received an email with several pictures from our builder, Jamie, showing some work he's been doing on the house - straightening out a bit of the roof, new gutters, removing some chimneys, all done. I was looking hard at the pictures to see that everything was satisfactory that he'd done, but Jean was looking at them to spot her potatoes growing in the potager.  You can just see the tops in the picture, at the front on the left side. Bit of a wobbly couple of rows though!
David & Lynne gave me a book for Father's Day called the Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery, full of over 900 pages of interesting things to grow and do. It's a bit American but its incredibly detailed in all sorts of stuff we're planning.
Back to counting the days...

Elizabeth riding Jean's bike

A picture of Elizabeth riding Jean's bike at Easter 2011 at the front of our house - a little bit big for her but she seems to be enjoying it.

EDF success!

Have managed to get EDF to agree to take our meter readings and refund the excess payments for the electricity. Another little step forward!

Easter 2011

We had a great time out in France over Easter, though not without its frustrations.  What went well:

• The weather - most days into the mid 20's C, bright and sunny and a bit breezy
• Samantha and Elizabeth came over to stay with us for almost a week - it was really nice to see them 
• Decorating - got one of the guest bedrooms painted and it looks very good now - very sparkling and comfortable
• Gardening - had the veggie plot rotovated and Jean planted lots of potatoes - we're hoping they will survive without our intervention for a couple of months
• Cutting the grass - we took delivery of our new garden tractor and a brushcutter, cut lots of grass and generally tidied the garden up a lot.
• Sprayed the grapes against mildew - not all that many plants but they're heavy with tiny grapes already
• Met the French neighbours and had several friends come round to visit, including Audrey & George who stayed over in the newly painted guest room 
• Got the phone, broadband/internet and TV working (both UK and French)
• The cherry tree is full of cherries which were just starting to ripen, but they'll all be gone by the time we return, though the walnut tree will take a lot longer for its nuts to ripen
• Lots of good food and wine as usual

What didn't go quite so well:

• It took the TV company two weeks to get our satellite dishes to us - they were put up on our last day!
• It took Orange/France Telecom over a week to get the phone working after the internet line was working - lots of expensive, frustrating phone calls on a mobile with almost no signal
• EDF are charging us on an wildly high estimate of our electricity usage and we can't get them to bring it down to a sensible level until August
• Sam and Elizabeth missed their TGV train home, due to our mixing up the time and some roadworks on the N10, but they got another one which got them home not much later than planned

So the good far outweighed the not-so-good. Can't wait till next time we go out. 

History - 3

8 April 2011

Happy Birthday Claire. 

At last managed to get hold of Orange / France Telecom on the phone to arrange delivery of the phone broadband/TV kit. Apparently they already delivered it to the Intermarché in Pons. Intermarché returned it to them so they're now going to try to deliver it to our house next week.

4 April 2011

Now into April and our next trip is getting near. We spent the weekend in Dorset visiting Rhys' mother and staying again at Kimmeridge Farmhouse - always a great pleasure. One of life's funny coincidences - we noticed that their paintwork is the same pale green colour that we are considering for our shutters in France. We're busy booking appointments for people to go and see (including the bank in Saintes) and people to come to see us (including a French architect).

March 2011

Now that it's getting near we've set up this new website / blog and new email addresses. We've arranged for France Telecom to provide us with a phone service when we go out next time and we hope to have the last of our odd stored items sent out before we get there.

February 2011

We had another trip out over the half term holiday. Took lots of stuff out, got some builders and electricians to look at various aspects of work we need done, and ordered a tractor-lawnmower for delivery at Easter.

History - 2

January 2011

Just spent two weeks at our new house over Christmas. We did a few jobs and met lots of people (and used up a good deal of our firewood). We really enjoyed being there and it was difficult to come back to the UK.

The picture was taken on the morning of Christmas Day 2010. Note the blue sky and sunshine. It was a lovely day.

History - 1

December 2010

We signed the Compromis de Vente for our new house in September 2010 and completed the purchase on 3rd December, in snow - the first time in living memory that the locals had seen snow in December, but it wasn't as bad as the snow back home in the UK - we had a nightmare journey getting down the country to pick up the channel tunnel train.

Welcome

We've decided to try out Blogger for our blog, to get us going and make it easy for us to update it more simply and quickly than writing onto our own main site all the time. Hope you like it. Do get in touch if you've any questions or suggestions (!)