Great excitement yesterday!! With the kind assistance of one of our young french neighbours, Fabien, we made a couple of trips to the Mairie's Office to make our request and fill in a number of forms. And lo and behold, just a couple of hours later the local council plumbing engineer turned up with his assistant in a little white van (all french tradesmen have 'a little white van'!) and we were re-connected to mains water in about twenty minutes!!

We discovered that the last time the barn had been connected up was over twenty years ago - which I suppose why sand and other debris had to be scooped out of the access hole in the lane!! Thought you had better see a picture of the water meter just to pove that we do now have the facility!!

We have also discovered who we have to speak to about connecting our property to mains drains, but no doubt that will be a story for another day!!

After all that hard work, I could not just throw the soggy and dirty gloves away!!

So I washed them and hung them to dry for the next time!!

Not everyone hangs up stockings for Santa Claus!!

Do you agree, that this looks better!!

I hope so - it took me ages!!

First thing to do, was pick a space for the finished tidy pieces!! And then work hard for a number of days and see what you can manage!!

So. all the fallen branches, the dead and broken branches we had to cut down and the undergrowth and saplings we pulled out had to be piled up somewhere, for the time being and this made the place look even worse!!!

Here are a couple of views of the other bottom corner of the orchard!! Starting to look better, isn't it?

Just to prove that we are not just sitting about enjoying the view!!

Here are a couple of 'before' and 'after' pictures of an area in the bottom corner of the orchard, which we have liberated from ivy and saplings.

It is Easter Sunday!!
It is 23rd March!!
And this is what happened this morning!!

The first order arriving from the Builders Merchants!!

Not only did we get exactly what we thought we had ordered with the very helpful young lady there in our elementary french, but they said it would arrive at ten o'clock on Monday morning that is EXACTLY when it turned up!!

Most important of all - particularly as far as Gavin is concerned, is the new Boulangerie making all the typical french breads!!



And just a couple of general views.

The large building is the Marie's offices with the primary school using the buildings immediately to the left. The church is mediavel and has one of only a small number of twisted tiled towers (not sure if this is clear enough from the picture!). The wrought iron gateway was built for the beginning of the millenium and the old piece of wall behind is the doorway to the mediavel forge.

Just thought you might like to see from general views of our little village. including La Poste and the village shop.

Gueret is the Administrative Centre for the Creuse part of the Limousin and we went there one day last week to take care of a little 'beaucracy'. Everyone keeps telling us that french beaucracy is a nightmare, but SO FAR everyone has been kind and helpful and managing to deal with my not very good french!!

We managed to register for the french medical services and should get a 'green card' shortly and we managed to change the ownership details for our car. Not bad for a first effort we thought!!

We have been here for just over three weeks now and we have had all kinds of weather!! Snow, wind and rain as well as sunshine, blue skies and fluffy cloudsd!! Today we have the wind and rain type weather!! Pretty grim!! Gavin is still out in the Barn working away, but I have opted to stay inside and update this Diary a bit.

Our nearest town is Dun le Palestel and they have a weekly market there on a Thursday morning. We popped along last week to see what would be about at this time of the year. Thought you might like to see pictures of the fact that spring is just about here - even if not every day!!

Thought I should include a picture of the outside of our little home as well as the inside ones, so popped out and took one!!

As Kass said, it looks as if we have gone back in time in our new 'temporary' home!! She is about right, too!! But being able to rent this little cottage, literally just across the lane from the Barn is going to make all the difference to this whole exercise. We had planned to stay in a little caravan on site - but this will be great. If nothing else we have a fabulous wood burning stove for those colder evenings and plenty of hot water for long soaks at the end of hard working days. And the flag stone floor means we do not have to worry too much about bringing in dirt on the bottoms of our 'wellies'!!!

So, this will be our home for the next nine months - or until we are able to move into at least part of the Barn. So watch this space to check out our progress - and of course, do feel free to make comments - we look forward to reading them!! Even if they are to say you think we are completely barmy!!

FEBRUARY 2008

We are finally here in Naillat - we have retired now and this is our home - it has taken quite a while to get here, but all good things come to those who wait!!

We have already taken quite a lot of 'before' pictures and I will get them downloaded as soon as I can - but the sun is almost shining this morning and I want to get out into the old orchard and do some tidying up work. We are trying to liberate trees from decade old ivy and gather up dead branches and cut down long grass before the new spring growth really gets going.