Update

We’ve been a bit busy (what's new?) but here's a general update for the last few weeks.

We had a visit from Jennie and Ian in April, and had a great celebration dinner for his birthday at the Hotel de Bordeaux in Pons - very good indeed.

Our first student of the year came to stay with us for a week. Victor was a really pleasant young man and his English came on really well while he was with us.

Audrey and George, our friends with a house in the Dordogne, moved in and we went over to help them.   Welcome to France, both of you. They came over to visit us a few weeks later, which was very nice as it was warm enough to use the pool. We had a dinner with them and our friends Penny and Adrian:

We bought and installed a new range cooker in the kitchen of the main house, and finished the apartment ready to take visitors. Here is the apartment kitchen ready for use, transformed since we took it on.

The house electricity system has a new GTL (consumer unit) which meets the latest standards, and Rhys now has some more work to do to install or modify circuits around the house to match, but at least its all safe now.

The village Maire came round for a meeting about our electricity supply from the public feed - we need it renewing in a new situation but the process is a bit complicated and we don't know what costs will be involved yet.

Jennie and Dorothy have been over to stay for a few days, as have Samantha, Mike and Elizabeth, who flew home yesterday.

And this week we have another student, Hélène, who is delightful, staying with us and working on her English.

Oradour-sur-Glane

On the way back from Limoges Airport we called in at Oradour as we had received several recommendations to go and visit the village. The village was destroyed by a Waffen-SS unit of the German army on 10th June 1944, a few days after the D-day landings. All the inhabitants - 642 people including 452 women and children - were massacred.  The men were shot just to injure them and prevent escape, in small groups around the village. The women and children were put in the church. Both men and women were burned alive and the village was partially razed. It remains today much as it was at the time immediately afterwards.

When General de Gaulle visited the village after the war he decreed that the village was to be preserved as it was as a memorial so that future generations should not forget. A new village was built next to the site of the old one.

 

When we noticed how close to our route Oradour was we took the opportunity to visit. It made a sombre and saddening occasion, but was extremely interesting and somewhat spooky. We bought a book in the new village's tourist office to better understand what happened there, and were glad we went, despite how uncomfortable it was.

On a happier note, after our visit we went to a bar in the new Oradour and met a very interesting couple, Terry and Jan, and spent a very pleasant hour while waiting for a restaurant to open for dinner. Terry (Terry Ray Martyn, a country and western singer) gave us his card and we looked him up on YouTube, and I haven't been able to get his rendition of Dance the Night Away out of my head ever since!

In the pool!

It's gotten warm enough for a dip in the pool this week. Pool surface temperature made it to 20 deg C and yesterday was hot, so we gave it a go.  Here is Elizabeth, who was first in:

Spring has sprung!

There’s definitely been a change in the season this week. 

We've had some nice warm evenings, though the sun is still fairly low (so created this shadow pattern on the chai wall): Today its 21° C now (1.00pm) and set to be at least 22° later this afternoon.

This week we’ve heard the first cuckoo of spring; the first tiny lizards came out of hiding to bask in the sun:

The first blossom appeared on the fruit trees, though the narcissus are about finished; buds are breaking on the trees we planted and several existing ones; we’ve been eating outside on the patio next to the pool in the sunshine, and it’s warm enough for shorts. We've new lettuce and tomatoes growing in the potager, with the onions sprouting well but the potatoes have yet to show. We planted a lot of fruit bushes (raspberry, blackcurrant, blueberry, gooseberry, redcurrant) and last years strawberries are coming to life.  Here's lunch ready by the pool:

Might even get the sun-loungers out this afternoon, though I don't think we'll try a dip just yet. The pool temperature was 17° C a few minutes ago, so it still has some warming up to do.

Partridges in the garden!

This little chap (?) appeared in the garden this morning with three others. He is, I think, a Red-legged Partridge - not quite the same as the Grey Partridge we're used to in the UK.  They were a bit shy and cautious so didn't get close enough for a really good picture, but nice to see them anyway - lots of interesting wildlife coming into the garden. Er - do you think the grass needs cutting already?

A little excitement

We've had a hectic couple of weeks since we came home from the UK. The weather was very cold while we were over there, so when we got home we found the water pipes all frozen up and as we thawed them out several leaks showed up, including a couple where the ice had burst out of the side of the pipe like a dagger!
So we've been repairing them with new lengths of pipe and some sealing compound - 'epoxy putty' which is OK for some temporary repairs. We just have one final repair to do to replace a putty repair with a new piece of pipe now but all the water is functioning except the water softener, which had to be bypassed. The engineer is coming out to re-commission it this Wednesday.
However, whilst working on the water pipes the electric lights and power went off in the cellier - the outbuilding where the softener is situated. On testing it turned out that we had live mains voltage on both live and neutral wires so there is a short circuit in one of the linked cables. Unfortunately it's in a section of cable without any access and on doing more tests we discovered that the outbuildings are wired up in a somewhat unsafe manner so we've had to strip out all that wiring and make new connections, most of which is now all done. We just have one part where we have to run completely new cables into a section of the house that we've yet to renovate, so its not urgent but there is no light or heat there until we do.
So it's been a couple of weeks of unplanned work, that's set us back a bit from what we planned to do. However it all has to be done sometime so I guess its still progress of a sort.

We took the day off yesterday - Sunday - and had a day out with friends to St Georges de Didonne and a great lunch in Barzan, nearby. A beautiful sunny and reasonably warm day, and a nice break.

Update

Gosh - what a long time since we updated this. Must do better!
We've had a busy few weeks (again!) since the last blog, including:

• A visit to Chateau Thieuley near Bordeaux with our neighbours Joyce & Roger, for a wine tasting and lunch - very nice and we came away with a few boxes of very nice wine.
• Got an electrician started on the work to bring our house up to modern standards
• Had some fruit trees delivered from a local pepiniere - 4 apples, 2 pears, 2 apricots 
• Been to a Christmas carol service at Lorignac. Nine lessons and carols then mince pies and mulled wine in the local bar. Not quite just like home as half the carols' words were in French.
• Been to the UK for just over two weeks over Christmas and New Year - really great to see everyone if a little exhausting, and the sea crossings were rather bumpy
• Bought 87 trees in the UK to bring home with us - they have plant passports nowadays! They're mostly seedling size so they went in the car easily enough. Included a new variety of apple - 'Christmas Pippin' - it will be interesting to see how it does here.
• Went to the village mayor's annual review and got put up to be introduced to the rest of the village - that was a surprise as we had to do a little speech, off the cuff.
• Planted all the trees and also got and planted a lot of shrubs for round the pool and along the southern boundary. (Didn't hug any of the trees, though!)
• Been doing a lot of work on our gite / granny flat. It's now habitable in that the bedroom and bathroom are furnished ready to use. The sitting room is ready to furnish and we're well on with fitting the kitchen. 

Next on the agenda is to finish the flat, make some progress with the electrics, and another brief trip back to the UK for Peter's birthday. In the meantime its been quite cold but mostly dry and sunny.

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!