Friday 21 November 2008

No Regrets Yet

Still loving it here and have not a single regret. We have only had 5 days of rain in TOTAL since we got here, we haven’t yet had a frost, “windy” means that the leaves rustle in the trees, and yes the trees still have leaves on them and it’s almost the end of November! Without heating (it’s not installed just yet – hopefully the end of this month) the house sits at 16 or 17 degrees – Butterwell will be about 8 degrees at the moment without heating and will struggle up to 16/17 with the heating on full!!! Nope, no regrets.

And it’s not just the weather. We went off to Pescheray (an enormous animal park that houses all the species that are or were indigenous to this area) and there was only us and one other couple there. Fantastic autumn day with us all having fun kicking through the crispy leaves, feeding the goats popcorn, and hoping that the wild boars ate apples (we have loads of them from our orchard – more than we need). The boys just loved it and Rowan was really interested in the pre-historic bit where it tells of finds that have been made in this part of France.

We have met some really fine artisans that are now working on our house. Our kitchen is slowly coming together – we now at least have the new sink plumbed in and some cupboards. Hopefully the woodburning cooker – an ESSE -, also acting as the heating system boiler, will be fitted the first week of December. We haven’t needed any heating up to this point but December may be different! We’re having the beams in the sejour (living area) replaced next week and the whole ceiling will have to be pulled down – yikes. So masses of dust so we’re moving out for the week…. And coming up to Scotland J