C'est tres froid, encore!!

Not sure if the title makes any sense but you probably get the picture - It's cold again today and not just a little bit - enough to turn the heater back on at lunchtime. And this is after we have had a week or so of lovely warm sun - no rain much and it finally looked like it was going to warm up towards summer. Oh well - the forecast has it getting warmer again in a few days so I will just have to get the winter clothes out of the barn again! We had some weird thunderstormy weather last week - I got this picture of the clouds brewing over Jouanicou. Pretty specky.

We had a lovely day on Sunday - we took Paul's little BMW motorbike for a bit of a long run with our neighbor and his girlfriend on his big Honda. We went to watch an Endurance horse race at Beaumont du Perigord. The weather was perfect for it and with all the spring flowers and crops looking amazing it was very nice. It was interesting to watch the Endurance goings on too - would love to do one but I don't think my chunky boy would make the 20km distance let alone 90ks! Here is Paul in the square at Beaumont.

In other news life has just been speeding along as it does - I am sure when you have deadlines the weeks just disappear into the ether. We have come to the conclusion that no, the spare bedroom and bathroom will not be ready when Gabbi arrives at the end of next week and possibly unlikely to have it all done when our friends from Aus are due at the end of next month. It should be nice weather for camping by then anyway ha. It's not like we aren't busy or working on it - we are - it's just that everything seems to take longer then expected and we often have delays with sourcing materials that can hold things up. Paul has pretty much completed all the plasterboard, plumbing, electrics etc etc on the second floor. We have a plasterer coming in next week to finish the joints and make it look pretty. This past week we have been working on the ground floors walls which are coming along nicely. Paul has had to raise some lintels and we have decided to knock through the back window to make it into a door so we have some access to the back of the house. Actually Paul really didn't want to do this but I have finally convinced him it will be short term pain for long term gain. It will be one of those things that we will regret not doing down the track if we don't do it I think.

I have been having some fun with my horses. Tolsan was initially brilliant with no problems at all but he has formed a bond with Ambre that is very strong and they really don't like to be apart at all. So much for me getting Ambre so he had some company. I still believe he needs it but it has made life a little difficult in the short term. He has also developed a big problem with the bit and I have had lots of trouble with bridling him - to the point that I was using just the halter and lead rope to ride him. The first time there was no problems at all but the next time he noticed that I had given Ambre her breakfast before we left and he decided he wasn't going anywhere! We pretty much had a rodeo going on in our front yard - the neighbors must have been having a good laugh but it freaked me out a little as I am not a fan of rearing as having a big fat horse fall back on you is not something you want to experience. So long story short I have had his trainer out today but in the meantime I have spent hours with him doing some ground work and getting him better at taking the bit. And today the trainer worked with him and me for a couple of hours and hopefully it looks like he will get over his big issue of leaving his little girl friend. It doesn't help when as soon as she can't see him she starts whinnying and making a huge fuss. Thankfully when the trainer came today he didn't turn into the perfect horse when she rode him although it wasn't quite as dramatic due largely I think to having a bit in. The trainer is a French girl but she can speak some English so we do a lot of Franglaise and always seem to understand each other in the end. I was able to ride him out for quite a while at the end of today's session without too many incidents and it was an awful day for it as it was blowing a gale. If he can go around our valley with that wind he should be able to cope with anything. Anyway in other news I am really looking forward to next week as I am taking the train from Gourdon up to Paris to meet Gabs. A couple of girlie days in Paris will be lovely. She has been flat out getting her life sorted out as she has got a two year working visa for the UK so has had to organise all her possessions - get her apartment ready to rent out etc etc - anyway she had entered a hair dressing competition and was freaking out because it was on the night before she had to vacate the apartment - but the big news is she ended up winning it! She has won a trip to NY and possibly even more importantly her look is going on the front cover of a national hair dressing magazine. Should help with the London job prospects! Well I think that is about it. The days are so long here already - sun is up by 6ish and doesn't go down until about 9.30 - means lots of hours for working which is good but we are both pretty tired at the minute. I do a French conversation class on a Tuesday evening but the last two weeks I have been pretty hopeless mainly because I am too tired to make any sense in English let alone French! Will have to start trying to go to bed a little earlier...good luck with that..

Quoi??Deux chevaux??

Well finally - I can do my blog again. I have been waiting until I had some news about my horse but for the past four or five weeks it has rained pretty much every day!! And not only that but been very cold.. is all a bit much now as there still is not an end to it in sight although it has been a bit warmer and only raining lightly for the past few days. Anyway - this has slowed down the whole process of getting my horse here as I wanted to go on a "ballade" with his trainer prior to getting him here (basically riding him out in the exterior) so I knew what to expect once I had him home. Unfortunately this kept getting put off due to it peeing down constantly. But - finally on Wednesday it was only drizzling in the afternoon so I got to go. And he was fine - very calm - perhaps a little too calm ha but nevertheless he certainly showed that I shouldn't have much to worry about when riding him around here (other then the hunters wandering around the forest with guns - but that's ok - the hunting season is over for now!) So today was the day. But I have a surprise - I haven't got just one - I also got a young mare - she is only 20 months old and has a lovely looking mum and dad - she is a purebred Minorquin - which is a rare Spanish breed. I kind of got her in a 'two for one deal' well - that's what I told Paul anyway - hahaa. No - I was always going to get him a mate as it's not nice for them to be on their own. However Paul keeps mumbling things about donkeys which I feel is very unfair - but to be honest I chose her from the 5 or 6 that I had to choose from because she is very shy and soft in character and hopefully the good looks will come later. It doesn't help that she has had all her mane chopped completely off so it can grow back much fuller in time. Anyway here are some pics of them;;

Seven year old "hongre" Tolsan.. Nice and clean on arrival - already been flat out rolling and trying to dirty himself up again!

Baby girl "Ambre" She looks a bit beaten up - she has been in a pretty large herd of youngsters - after pictures in a few months hopefully!

Here they are saying hello through the fence. They have a temporary fence between them for a few days. They look like they are going to be great mates as there has been no agro ears or kicks from either of them. Will see how they go next week. Tolsan needs to be worked everyday as he is a bit overweight and our lush grass that we have at the minute won't help. In French he is called a 'gourmand' which basically means a bit of a piggy haha. Will fit in well with us two ha. He certainly doesn't mind a carrot or two. I will be going for a short ride tomorrow to see how his feet are. They were a bit tender the other day as he has been worked a bit and doesn't have shoes on at the minute. Will more then likely need to get the farrier in soon by the looks of it. Will try to stick to some soft tracks for now and see how he goes. Any way - enough about horses. We have been doing some other stuff - well Paul has anyway! He has been working very hard - often late into the night - doing two of his least favourite jobs - putting in insulation and gyprocking. But he is getting very close to finishing off the whole second floor - only really the ceiling on the ground floor to go. It is looking good - still lots to do but it is definitely getting there.

Looking out of our bedroom towards the door - note the placo lifter we bought to make life a little easier for Paul when he is trying to hold the sheets above his head!

Our ensuite coming together.

The second bedroom. The garden and all our new plants have been knocked about by the amount of rain and the couple of frosts we have had. Although Pauls new espaliered fruit trees all look fine and are covered in new growth. Hopefully the lavender and the new trees we put in will start to grow once we get some warmer weather. The weeds are certainly getting going though!

Paul with his very professional looking trellis for his espaliered fruit trees. Ok - well that's about all of our news. We had our friend Kathleen's fourtieth birthday party this week - she had it at the Auberge in Degagnac - was a lovely afternoon - a bit like the united nations there which is always good fun! Afterwards I went to a French conversation evening which was nice but a little stressful - not a huge fan of public speaking when I can speak in English let alone French - luckily there is only a half a dozen people there so not too excruciating - all this in the hope that all the lessons etc will eventually click and I will be able to converse without giving myself a brain strain!! A bientot!!

Le Cheval!!

I have some exciting news this week. I have finally found a horse! He is black and pure bred Spanish - I have bought him from a local breeder which is helpful as I have a guarantee that if we end up not getting along I can take him back for a refund or exchange. Having bought a few dodgy horses in my time that you end up being stuck with this is a great advantage. He isn't here yet as they are still doing the full vet checks and working with him to make sure he is ready for me. He has been trained using natural horsemanship which I have some knowledge of and think is fantastic - I rode him yesterday in just a halter and he was lovely so it all seems quite positive at the minute. Hopefully next blog I will have some photos of him. We need to get the fence finished off and electrified as well as sorting out the water too. Also madly searching for saddlery etc. Unfortunately our weather has gone back to being decidedly wintery again - I had actually put the column heater away but we got it out again a couple of days ago. We have rain as well which is nice as it was getting very dry after a couple of weeks of almost summery weather. The trees are starting to green up too so the forest is starting to fill in a bit. Here is a pic of our plum tree with all its blossoms. The cherry tree was also loaded with flowers but we had some heavy rain which looks to have knocked alot off - hopefully we will get some fruit still.

As far as jobs go we have been going pretty well. Paul has finished raising the doorway in the 'snug' from midget size to well - Paul size! This was a tricky job as he was very concerned as to the amount of weight being held up by the lintels he was moving - lots of messing about with acro props.

Now that job has been done we just need some warmer weather so we can high pressure clean some walls in the snug that need doing before we can get the final underfloor heating in and the top slurry done. Then the downstairs walls can also be done although that is also another warmer weather job as working with concrete in this weather is not too pleasant. We did try to find a gap in the weather today to go and get some more plasterboard but it was a bit of a fail as rain kept on threatening and we didn't want to risk getting it wet. We put it on the roof of the van normally which is helpful at the moment as we can then load it direct through the second floor windows. Paul built a frame to rest them on in the window so he lifts and pushes whilst I steady them and line them up.

The second floor is coming along nicely too. Paul has got most of the electrical and plumbing work done ready to do the walling. Starting to look like a real house now!

Paul has also been practising his stone masonry skills and I must say he did an awesome job. He replaced some of the large stones that are surrounding the windows on the second floor where the shutters had broken out of which happens if they are left to swing in the wind. He broke out the old stones and made new ones to go in their place by carving them from stone. Once they get some weather on them you won't be able to tell the difference.

We also had a bit of a play around with the door on our citern - Paul made a new door for it and I painted it with the colour we have chosen to use on our shutters when they have been fixed up down the track.

Well next time maybe there will be some pictures of the newest family member 'Tolsan' who Paul has decided to call Tonsil - he amuses himself quite easily I do think!

Tres chaud!

Spring has sprung here - well actually you could be forgiven for thinking summer has arrived even - we had rain last week when I was away which was convenient - this means everything is bursting out of the ground and you can just about see the grass growing before your eyes. It has been about 22 degrees plus every day for quite a while and looks like it's staying around for a few more days to come - yay for us..

Well I think it has been nearly three weeks since I have last blogged. I know I have been getting very slack on it but we have my mum and dad here still and don't have any internet in the barn where we are back ensconced in, so that's my excuse and I am sticking with it. I promise to not be so late next time. The first week they arrived we had them out putting up the horse fence. And stripping our new front door. They spent a good day on one smaller one with the scrapers before we found that the heat gun worked a treat so they had the other larger one done pretty quickly.

Dad has done two of the horse paddocks but the last one has been put on hold as one of the boundaries is a little bit under dispute. We need to get our farmer neighbor to come over and have a chat as where the boundry is - where it looks to be on the map is about 4 metres out to where he has been mowing to. The mairie (town mayor) suggested we get the surveyor in but we aren't that worried about it yet.

After a week or so I went with them on a bus tour of Switzerland via a day in Paris. This meant a very quick tour of the Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Champs Elysees and of course the Eiffel Tower. I still love Paris - it is easily my favourite city - can't wait to be there with Gabby in May! Switzerland was lovely - luckily for this time of the year it wasn't completely covered in snow - lots of beautiful lakes and mountain scenery. It is super expensive though. Most of the places I felt like our little group looked majorly scruffy compared to the locals who all looked like they had just stepped off the pages of Vogue. Surprisingly the other people on the bus weren't all out on day passes from their nursing homes like I had expected. Odd but not old haha. Not my preferred way to see a country but I have to admit having commentary on the bus trip meant we found out a lot more about the place then if we had just driven through. Here are some lovely pics I took of the place - including one of Mum and Dad enjoying the sights on the Glacier Express train through the mountains ha.

Whilst we were gone Paul missed us terribly. Well he would have if he was actually ever at home. I think everyone thinks he is incapable of making a meal for himself as of the 8 days we were away I think he was home for a total of 2 evenings! He had a great time. He also went to his first French language school class - which is also his last for a while as he quickly discovered he was a little more behind in the text book then he could cope with. So he is having some remedial private classes from now on and I am going to go tomorrow for my first class. Will be good to do something constructive about our awful French. Paul is still off to the museum each week and loving it. He is meeting more people every week and I am sure it will be helping with his language skills. He even went to the AGM for it on Sunday - the meeting was half an hour long and the meal went for four hours ha - got to love France! He amazingly got quite a bit of work done as well - this is the second floor with lots of wall framing done.

Since we have been back we have been getting stuck into making a garden area - I did a stone wall around and Mum has made a lovely path to make it easy to get to it to water etc.

Dad has been digging in the trench for the horse paddock water. All I need now is a horse! I am working on that although I don't want to rush in and get something I am not happy with. Here is Dad getting our old wheelbarrow back into shape.

We took them for a walk to L'Abbaye on Saturday - last time Paul and I went we got lost - however I think the right way home was still about the same amount of walking - three hours later we made it back. I think we all slept pretty well that night!
Tomorrow is Mum and Dads last day - I am off to my French lesson in Gourdon - a menu du jour somewhere I think will be on the cards for lunch. Thursday we are taking them down to their flight in Toulouse - I am sure they are looking forward to getting home and having a rest!
Paul and I, with the weather warming up can get stuck into doing some of the jobs that you couldn't do in the cold like the walls in the living room and kitchen. It freaked us out a little last week when we realised we have some other friends coming to stay in about 10 weeks. We had hoped to have the lion share of the reno done in the house by then - looks a little bit unlikely at this stage. Oh well we know of plenty of local friendly B&B owners :)

Printemps c'est ici??

Yes I am very late with my blog. My apologies to my two readers ha. It is late for several reasons. One, we have actually had a bit of a life lately and been out and about to some social events meeting some locals. Admittedly mostly expats of one form or another but still it has been nice. The weather last week was amazingly good. If you're not a farmer anyway. It was clear skies and positively balmy with several days getting up to 18 and 19 degrees. The area needs rain though so luckily this week we have had a little. It has been back to pretty normal chilly days again now. Makes you happy that spring is on it's way though. I have some bulbs sprouting in my garden that look like they grow a couple of centimetres every day - and my wisteria has shoots on it. Everyone seems to be planting new fruit trees and the vegie patches are all getting worked on so we think it might be the right time to get some more fruit trees and start a little orchard going.

We have also been doing quite a few journeys in our now trusty van. One involved carting some outside pavers for our friends that we worked out to weigh quite a bit over a tonne - Paul was like wheel standing down the road and it was a very cautious
slow trip home. We did have a little hickup a week or so ago when Paul had disconnected the alternator and forgot to reconnect it before we left and so when we stopped in for supplies at our local Lidl it wouldn't restart. It wasn't embarrassing at all push starting it down a quite busy street in Gourdon!! Lucky for me Paul could manage to get it to roll without me getting out so I just sat (or hid) in the front seat and laughed at him.. good times.
We have got some cool stuff for the house from our trips out and about. Including these lovely old doors.

We got them from about 2 hours North of us - a couple of days apart from private sellers. I had seen them online so off we chugged for hours in the van. Lucky they are worth the hassle. The couple we bought some new front doors from were very lovely and wanted us to come and have a coffee with them but it was getting late and Paul finds the language barrier a little scary. He has found a new hobby or interest here that may help with that though as he met some English people who spend their Thursdays volunteering at a local tractor museum - fixing tractors. There are lots of French guys doing it too so hopefully he will start to pick up some lingo from spending time doing something that interests him. They all eat together and have a wonderful very French meal that has been prepared by the president of the museum. Him and his friend Yves went and checked it out last week - didn't do any work but had the cheap lunch and had a great time. He is off early tomorrow so it might turn into a regular thing by the sounds of it as he is very much into that sort of thing.

We also went to another vide grenier or brocante market looking for stuff for the house last Sunday. Lucky we had our French speaking Belgian friend Kathleen with us to help do the bargaining. Although I did lose out on a particularly amazing item because a. I was too tight and b. I was too slow. It was this fantastic antique clock that would have looked great on our kitchen wall but after the seller had told me how much he wanted (150 euros) I panicked a little and went to find Kathleen
so she could help negotiate but when we got back someone else was buying it - for 100 euros! Damn it. Oh well - I could say we'll find another one but I have never seen anything like it before and don't think I will again. Lesson learned..
We did get quite a few other things though.

I am writing this from the familiar comfort of the une petit lit in our caravane. My parents are currently here from Australia so we have made them stay in the attic as we didn't think they would cope too well with the cold French weather - understandable since they have come from extremely hot weather at home. Mind you it is very cosy here in the van with a heater going well it would be if we didn't have a pair of cats coming in and out all night! Mum and dad are well and truly earning their bed as they have been flat out helping out around the place. Dad has been helping Paul finish off the sub floor on the second floor ready to start putting up wall framing. Here is the floor pretty much finished and ready for the next stage.

We did do some touristy things today and I took them to Domme and Beynac castle - the menu du jour at lunch nearly did them in though - four courses can do that sometimes. Dad had a goose stew which was a bit heavy for him - I hadn't tasted goose before and it wasn't bad actually. Lucky we had a pretty hard core up hill walk after lunch up to the castle.

I have finally succumbed and admitted that my jeans aren't just a little bit tighter then when we got here - they are now unwearable! So hence - no more yummy stuff for a while. Not fun when we have vistors but it has to be done. I am also going with mum and dad on a coach tour for a week in Switzerland next week - good luck with staying with the regime then..

Retour en France..

So we can finally say we have been at our house during a snow fall. We arrived home last Sunday night to a reasonably chilly minus 8. This is after three weeks in Western Australia where is was over 35 degrees for most of the time we were there so just a little bit of a difference! Mind you it seems we have managed to miss the worst of the wintery weather here as the neighbors had a minus 19 on their car temperature gauge while we were away. We thought we had drained our pipes of water before we left but no unfortunately we had only turned the water off and should have spent a bit of time making sure it was all drained out. Consequently we got home to pipes that had frozen solid. Not just the pipes mind you - both toilets bowls and cisterns had frozen and I went to get my hot water bottle from my bedside table and it was also frozen - hard for us to even comprehend how cold it must have been here. So no water for a few days and we had to spend many hours with all sorts of techniques trying to get the pipes to clear. This included pumping with a bicycle pump - warming with heat guns - and other more radical methods such as just unhooking the original pipes and bypassing them with new ones. This ended up being how we got it to work again with the old pipes only defrosting and clearing today five days later..

From this on the Friday night at a beach in Perth - about 30 degrees with daughter Gabs.. to this two long days later!;

Lucky our friends had come over and put the heaters on in the attic so we could sleep in our own bed - who needs water and showers in this weather anyway hey??

This is a pic of Paul with the offending pipes - if you look close enough you can see the core of ice coming out.

Will, having a run around in the snow after spending a few weeks at a cattery. They both have put on weight from sitting around eating all day but they haven't wasted any time catching up on the mousing since coming home - I am a bit over them bringing in both live and dead mice through the cat door at all hours to show off their bounty - gross...

So most of this week has been taken up with the plumbing issues but yesterday we went down to Prayssac to the salvage yard to get some more 'fer cornier' or angle iron that Paul is using to make brackets for the floor. We asked about some doors they had there too but from what I could understand they ended up being a bit out of our price range - they also needed a lot of work to be usable too so will keep looking. Here is Paul today working on the floor in what will be our bedroom and ensuite.

Only a couple of weeks until my mum and dad arrive for a visit from Australia - hopefully the weather keeps warming up for them. We are trying to get back to the snow at some point before then too. Not sure if it will happen though - the days just keep rushing on by... and we do still have a little bit to do to the house...eek..

Le 18 Janvier

All packed up and ready to go - we are off on the train to Paris this afternoon for our flight tomorrow headed towards Australia - with a pit stop in Bali to break up the flight and have some r & r.. we really are not looking forward to the 13 hour flight but oh well it will be over soon enough. Haven't seen our daughter Gabi for 6 months so looking forward to catching up with her and the rest of our family in Aus.
We have had a busy couple of weeks with some small but important achievements. We finally found the oak beams we needed which Paul has now installed. We went to a reclamation yard near us and bought and loaded the huge beams in the pouring rain with Paul and the owner wrangling them onto the trailer.

We have also bought and got home a lovely old wood stove that will be perfect in our massive fireplace in the kitchen. This is very heavy and we had a few scary moments unloading it from the van but didn't end up with any breakages to anything or anyone so all good.

Paul has nearly got the floor ready to have boarding put down on the second floor. And the weather has actually been fine for about a week after what feels like months of rainy days. We have been very lucky as far as winter goes though as it has been very mild and we haven't found it too bad at all. It was minus 4 a couple of nights ago but it's pretty toasty in the attic as long as you have a few layers on!
Last week we went to a birthday lunch for our friend Yves - they are lucky enough to have a very nice friend and near neighbor who owns an awesome traditional bread oven that he has renovated and since the weather was so lovely it was great to be able to eat alfresco in the middle of winter. It was a very multi-cultural occasion with some French, Belgian, us Aussies, a couple of English people and even a Dutchy there - three languages being spoken at one point or another. It definitely helps with your French being in situations like this! Both Paul and I are in total awe of Yves and Kathleen who are pretty much fluent in all three languages - I would like to just be able to converse in two thanks!
Here are some pics of the oven and hut and the lunch..

We were lucky enough to get invited back this week by the owner for a traditional regional lunch he and his friend had prepared in the oven - ie Confit de Canard - Foie Gras etc yummo... Again the weather was great so work can wait ha.
Anyway - will be a few weeks before we are back so no blogs for a while.
Hopefully then there will be some quick progress on the house as our first visitors arrive in March! The caravan may be getting some use again perhaps..although I don't think I could do that to my mum and dad!

Here is the house as of today - doesn't look much different from when we first got here from the outside - hopefully it will start getting a face lift in the next few months..