A little piece of pre-history!

We've been living here for nearly 4 years now and this is the first time I've had my hands on a real pre-historic piece.
Found next to a walking track by one of our guests from Holland who has had an interest in these artefacts for 30 years and has studied and learnt an amazing amount about articles that can be found in this area.
He says this hand axe is thousands of years old, carved out of flint it fits fantastically in the palm of your hand and looks as though it was made yesterday and is still very sharp.
A little hard to believe someone all those years ago sat and made this beautiful piece.

After the ceremony....

 After the wedding ceremony and aperitifs all the guests were asked to proceed to the dining area and after they had all found their places Sara & Mike entered to raptuous cheering and applause from all as Mr & Mrs Diaz.

 In the build up to the sit down waitress served 6 coarse meal, Chef Delmont took 5 minutes out to relax during preparation of the meal, which included a fish starter of Sturgeon with orange sauce, followed by a citron with vodka sorbet, magret de canard with creme de cepe sauce, cheese followed, then by piece montee (pictured below) as the dessert and coffee/tea to finish.

Wedding pics 1 - Sara & Mike

 Where have the last two days gone! At 1pm on Wednesday Sara & Mike had their wedding celebration at Les Granges in front of 65 guests, a beautiful day but not too hot for those in jackets though. After the 35 minute ceremony they were showered with confetti by all the guests before aperitifs were served in front of the house.

Wedding day preparations.

At 9 o'clock this morning the vans, trailers and work men arrived  to put up the marquee ready for Mike & Sara's big day tomorrow. The weather is looking good and all is underway, the difference this year is that the party are having a sit down waiter/waitress served 4 course wedding lunch for 70 guests which entails a local chef who brings 2 vans tomorrow morning, one a fridge and the other kitchen/oven unit, cooks and prepares the feast on site and all ready to be served at 3.30pm. The day after (Thursday), Edwin from the restaurant La Source in Tursac is doing a BBQ in the afternoon so I don't think anyone will be getting hungry. We're really looking forward to the 2 days, oh, so are Mike and Sarah too!

More pics to follow soon.

Night Market.

A couple of nights ago we went with some friends to St Amand de Coly where there was a night market, something else we have never done since moving here! After parking near the village this was the sight that greeted us on entering the village, the enormous 12th century Romanesque fortified church which reportedly has walls that are 4 meters thick in parts, gaps in the walls for archer positions to defend the occupants and several staircases that can be seen inside the church that mislead attackers to enter that eventually led to dead ends, which I take it is exactly what happened to the opposition when entering the passage ways!
Walking through the village we came to a very large area where local produce was being sold and cooked to order if required, a really good evening with live music and plenty of food and drink, something else we will definitely be going to again soon, maybe I'll remember to take some more pictures of the actual market next time!

Ugly bug ball!

Spotted this not so little caterpillar a few weeks ago and so far have drawn a blank trying to find what it will have turned out to be, about 5cms long I think it's possibly going to be a moth as some other moth caterpillars I saw on the internet had the little pointy thing at their rear end.
Anyone else who can spot anything on the internet please let me know!

3 Stars confirmed.

We had an inspection by the Dordogne Tourist Board the other week in order to get our star rating classification, a long story as to why but it is all to do with local taxes/social charges etc, after a thorough inspection of all the gites and house the only urgent recommendation was to have a safety railing fitted to the lounge window in the Haybarn gite which as people who have stayed with us know has an extremely low window ledge.
So that was my job a couple of days ago and fortunately all went smoothly with the fixing of it and we are now officially 3 star accommodation, it could have been 4 star quite easily according to the inspector, but that would have meant more taxes and social charges to pay....so we didn't go for that!!