The three of us had never skied before so on the advice of a few people decided to first try snowboarding as it is meant to be easier to get started in a short amount of time. Not sure if this was wise but we sure had a lot of fun trying. We had a couple of hours lessons the first day then just kept trying after that. We all provided the ski resort in general with loads of entertainment and laughs as one by one we had major, extremely ungraceful stacks from the ski lifts. Chelsea even had a nice Frenchman say "stylish" when she managed to get tangled up in a chair lift dismount and get wrapped around the supporting post. I often would manage to get going initially on the pull up lifts, only to get a bit of the way up and then get all off balance and have to let go. One time they had to stop the whole thing as I was obstructing it by laying in the path and doing a good impression of a turtle on it's back waving legs in the air! Not embarrassing at all! I think Chelsea just about fell off laughing at me that time.. We did get the hang of it more by the last day although I would take a good while getting down the runs as my legs were so sore that I would have to keep stopping and giving them a rest.
Here are some fun in the snow shots..
This was the ideal place to be on the snow - unfortunately a lot of the time it was more like this;
Paul and I have decided we have to try to go back soon (once all our sore parts have restored back to normal) so we don't lose all our new found skills - although I want to give skiing a try next time and see how that goes!
So a couple of days after Christmas we headed back to Toulouse to put Chelsea on her plane back to Chicago. We won't see her for nearly 6 months so wasn't fun saying goodbye - it never is - but c'est la vie I guess!
Since being back Paul has continued to do some work on the beams for the next floor. We have been finding it hard to source the beams we need to replace a few that are either rotted out or too short to cover the span needed. John came to the rescue with one that Paul initially thought might have been too far gone as it had been outside for a few years, but after lots of wire brushing it cleaned up fine. He found an interesting method yesterday of getting it into place which involved loading one end on the van and backing the van in towards the house - very unconventional and probably dangerous but it did the trick!
I have been sanding back some of the windows that we took out from the second floor. We had been going to replace them with double glazing which I have talked about before but when in the snow we noticed that the chalet had the same old french style single glazing and we were still getting hot at night and having to turn the central heating off so we have decided we are going to try and repair the originals - they look so much better and we would much rather have a more traditional look. Plus with shutters as well as drapes from my research they should be more than adequate. Time will tell I guess - it has taken me a couple of days to get one window ready to putty so will take some time but hopefully will be worth it.
We are going out today to try and find some more reclaimed timber. There are a couple of architectural salvage yards not that far from us which we have been trying to avoid using as they generally pretty expensive compared to buying privately but we feel a bit like we are in limbo waiting for something to come along - so we will see how it goes!
Ok - so update on today. Have hopefully got some timber via the website Leboncoin and the local sawmill and have done the deal on the very old wood fired stove at the salvage yard we have been looking at for a while. So it's back down there tomorrow to pick it up in the van. We had a lovely lunch at an Auberge near the river at Prayssac that had been recommended to us by our friends then on the way from there to the yard we found my next renovation project!
Strangely enough Paul's not that keen!!
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