Aching legs!

 We went for a bike ride a few days ago, from Le Moustier we followed the route for Marquay which takes you on a beautiful, but very steep, country road, after a 30 minute ascent it was down hill all the way to Tursac and this was the view just before getting into the village with Chateau Marzac in the distance.

Once in Tursac, many of our guests will have seen the goose farm at the entrance to Tursac, but probably haven't seen the field full of goslings, it's the first time we've seen the young geese so it was nice to see.

Another piece of unknown history that I've been trying to find out about is this tomb which was at the side of the track leading down to Tursac which I couldn't get close to but could see it's to somebody or several people who were killed in the first world war...more research needed unless anybody out there knows more about it?

Anyway, we were out for a good couple of hours which I'm sure has done us a lot of good!

Uses for an old renault van...no 1

We went for a nice long walk this morning, parking in Peyzac we followed the footpath route GR36 to Castel Merle near Sergeac and spotted this very odd contraption in the middle of nowhere, a large funnel mounted on top of a very old renault van and a large tube leading to or coming from the barn roof, what it is i have no idea, a smokery, still, let me know if you have any ideas because there was no one around to ask!

Wash houses.

 In France there are many small buildings usually near rivers or set on water springs called Lavoirs, many villages in our area have restored  them as they were used by the communities for washing clothes etc. They  usually take the form of a covered area with a large stone trough that has fresh water flowing through. The above picture I took on a walk up the valley side through a lovely hamlet called Chaban and this was spotted at the side of a track just outside the village, a small overgrown man made well which I presume is a very old Lavoir. A large recess on the left with a shallow fresh water pool plus a small hole to the right, whatever for I'm not sure, it's a shame it's not looked after but maybe given time it will be restored.

Another pic below of the aftermath of last Tuesdays amazing storm on the track next to the river Vezere, with Les Granges in the distance you can see how much debris was brought down in the woods

It was going to happen sometime!

After 5 weeks of gloriously hot weather, this was the scene that we awoke to yesterday morning after a storm passed through Les Granges at 9.30pm on Tuesday night, 30 minutes of thunder, lightning accompanied by amazingly strong winds left all the chairs and other furniture strewn all over the place, no damage at all to the buildings but the lime tree at the front of the house took a hammering and many large branches fell fortunately missing all our guests (and our) cars. It took all morning to clear everything up so all back to normal now!

A different Swallow for once!

Spotted on the lavender bushes outside the Walnut Store gite, this beautiful Swallowtail butterfly, although its actual swallow tail was not that prominent apart from on the left wing, there have been lots more on the bushes today with all their tails so maybe this is a youngster.
As for the Swallows of the 'winged' variety, all the 2nd brood of young ones have now fledged, so two broods each in two nests have produced a total of at least 18 swallows.
Yesterday was one of our busiest days of the year, a complete turn around of the house plus the gites, 7am we started and finished at 4pm, so you can imagine after us both working 9 hours non stop in 30 degrees of heat, how nice it was in between greeting our new guests a swim in the pool was!