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.