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.
