New Cro Magnon visitor centre.

If you look back in my blog archive to 29th September 2012 you'll see I wrote a post about a world heritage site that was tucked away from the main tourist centre of Les Eyzies near to the railway station and a historic hotel pictured below. The Abri de Cro Magnon, the cave that was discovered when they were building the railway station in the the late 1800's, used to be behind a row of rather untidy houses, but now the area (not the hotel) has been bought by the same person who owns Le Roque St Christophe and the row of houses are being converted into a visitor centre (pic above) with car parking. Work is well underway and the new visitor attraction should be open soon for this years main holiday season, I'm really looking forward to going to see it.

Taking a break!

The swallows are back in the big barn again, a different pair this year not sitting on their usual perch, this time making themselves at home in the storage area
There is much nesting activity at the moment, well it is that time of year, 2 pairs of swallows, the above plus a pair in the boiler room, black redstarts, goldfinch, nuthatch, blackbirds, blue, long tailed & great tits, rock sparrows and dunnocks are all setting up home within our property boundary, a little further, the peregrine falcons are in their usual habitat in Le Roque St Christophe and kestrels are also somewhere around but I' m not sure where!

Dripping wisteria!

I thought I'd better take a picture of the wisteria after its major pruning session last autumn, it's in full bloom now and the scent that is coming off it is very strong, after a beautiful hot sunny day today there's stormy weather hitting us possibly early this evening so not quite sure how many of the flowers will survive, at least this is a record of how good it was looking!

Lames de terrasses - fitted!

After a couple of days hard work, the new terrace boards outside Le Roque gite are all fitted. We've still a fair bit to do, new hand rails to fit, a few cosmetic bits to do but the main heavy work is complete. Hooray!

Roque terrace progress.

This last week has been such fantastic weather that we took advantage of the fine spell and we both got stuck into sorting out the Roque gite terrace at the front of our property. All the new timber was delivered on Tuesday, then on Wednesday we stripped off the old floor boards (above) which revealed how much the terrace was in need of refurbishment!

Over the next couple of days we replaced the main joists, followed by adding extra joists between the original ones for extra support (which was the main real problem with the original structure, apart from the rotten wood!).
After a coat of wood protector the terrace base is now ready for the next phase (below), the laying of the terrace floor boards which will have to wait a while as the nice weather has left us for a while. More pictures to follow shortly, we hope!

On display now!

What a week it's been weather wise, everything in the garden has wondered what has hit them, daytime temperatures in the mid twenties has brought the colour out everywhere and the easiest way to demonstrate this is to put on the blog what Philippa collected and arranged using the flowers that are out at the moment.
It's also looking like the major pruning/thinning out of the wisteria on the front of the house has worked , there's hundreds of buds waiting to flower so once they are out I'll post them on the blog also!

Sun lover!

Just found this little fellow in the Haybarn Gite whilst getting it ready for our new guests who are arriving from the UK tomorrow, after being in the gite all night it was a bit too cold so managed to move him or her into the sun. It only took about 15 minutes until it flew off, fully recovered!
It looks like our arrivals are going to have a great week as the temperatures are going to be in the twentys all week, except at night of course!