New Year was uneventful. We ordered blinds for the kitchen, discussed renovation of the fairly sordid upstairs shower room and replacement of the seagrass matting in the hall with tiles, all scheduled for late February.Then the day we were due to leave, after a rainy night, I started down to town on my morning trip to the boulangerie and found a good part of the garden wall reduced to a heap of rubble in the ditch, but happily NOT in the road. I didn’t know whose problem it was, and there wasn’t much I could do at the time, so awaited events. It was around 4 weeks before the letter from the Conseil General arrived advising that it was most definitely my problem. Happily our builder came to the rescue and cleared the ditch, promising to rebuild the wall when I had got the trees along the top removed.

Our flight out in January was to be the last for several months as the runway at the airport was scheduled for replacement, simultaneously the railway from Bergerac to Sarlat was being  relaid, it has been so much quieter since. So our transport options on our February return were limited. We decided to drive, a decision supported by our failure to find any tiles we liked locally for the bathroom re-do, and our failure to find anyone in France able to supply the petrol driven hovermower that Peter badly needed for the steeper bits of lawn.

So we left Scotland in mid February with a car laden down with tiles, a hovermower, a number of rugs, also difficult to source in France, a couple of cases of wine, and sundry other items, so laden down indeed that the customs man on the ferry was distinctly suspicious of what we might be transporting!

We left on the edge of a blizzard and drove just ahead of it as far as our first overnight stop on the edge of the Severn, where we skidded gently but without mishap to our hotel. We stopped again in Dorset for a family visit, by which time the snow had eased up a bit, and by the time we reached St Malo, it was just raining. It didn’t last. We met snow again the next morning a few miles inland, but the autoroute at least was clear. Once we left it the roads were driveable almost as far as the house, but not quite. We had to leave the car on the road about 50 meters downhill from our gateway, which is to say 300 meters from our front door, where it remained for the following week.

 

By that time it was dark. We took what we needed for the night and climbed the hill. We had, of course, turned the water off before we left, the taps are in a box sunk into the grass across the drive from the house. Cue too cold and thirsty Scots scrabbling around in the pitch dark sweeping snow and trying to find the lid. It is now marked with a large stake!

It was very pretty.

The tiles, hovermower etc., came up the hill over the following days in wheelbarrow and backpacks! To add to the problem I had ordered some champagne in expectation of summer visitors. The lad who brought it was not prepared to venture beyond the mairie, so we drove back down to collect it from him, and back up to our new roadside parking place. That consignment of champagne was consumed long ago, but if you visit Peter will still show you the picture of how the champagne you are drinking reached the house!

We bought snow chains before we went home.

Work had started on the bathroom when we left. A week later Nick phoned me at work. He had gone out to collect materials, leaving the house locked and shuttered, and got back 2 hours later to find an attempted burglary. Several shutters jemmied and finally one (new) window unit prised out, but nothing taken. We were lucky the building team were there. they boarded up the window and ordered a replacement, reported it to the gendarmerie and our caretakers dealt with the paperwork. We assume the red flashing light of the indoor security camera proved a deterrent. In March we contracted for a monitored burglar alarm and outdoor cameras which we can view on the web, seeing who is at the house and recording number plates on every visiting car.

In March we went to Spain to ski. By then the snow had all but gone, even in the ski resorts, so we have as yet had no need for the snow chains. One unnoticed vestige of the burglary however came to light on our return when, after a day of rain, we discovered that the bedding in one of the upstairs guest rooms was saturated, and, on investigation, that several tiles on the roof had been removed and stacked aside. Peter courageously scrambled up and replaced them, but the duvet, despite repeated attempts by the laundry remains stained.

I retired at the beginning of April and took 3 weeks off before going back to locum my job, joys of the NHS! The roofer started on the sitting room roof, and stopped again, defeated by torrential rain for most of the month. He did his best with tarpaulins and was very good about coming back to adjust them each time I phoned to say water was pouring through the roof. It was June before it was dry enough for him to finish.

The Visiting Club came in April.

 

Not great weather but some brave souls dipped in the pool and the local coach company took us to Sarlat and St Emillion, Monbazillac and a grotte.

We watched the rain fall and looked forward to summer.