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!!  

All out now!

The last brood of swallows have just left the nest this afternoon in the main barn, the above 2 haven't got very far yet, about 6 feet away from the nest but at least they are now free.
It's been the busiest year we've had with swallow nests, 2 in the boiler room with a total of 11 young and 4 nests in the main barn with at least 16 fledged, should have been more but unfortunately all of the young in one of the nests died mid way through the rearing.
Only a few weeks remain now for all the young to get up to speed before the mass exodus to Africa starts!

Deer spotting!

Just as I was on the phone to my mum in England earlier today I spotted these 3 Roe Deer in the field opposite Les Granges, get the camera quick I thought and as usual couldn't find it so I did think they would have moved on by the time I'd found it!
Quite unusual to see them considering it was late morning with quite a few visitors now in the area using the footpaths along the river side, after very quickly informing our guests  it turns out that one family had already seen them on their morning walk to and from the boulangerie, so they must have been in the area for some time!

Terrasson, a link! .

We had a trip out last week with daughter and son in law Charlotte & Dave to Les Jardins de l'Imaginaire, a place we'd heard about from our customers but as usual somewhere we'd never made time to visit, a large area with different areas of various themes of plants plus some very spectacular views, especially over the old town.
The above view had some information in the walk guide which caught my eye as there was a link between the Terrasson Abbey and Le Manoir des Granges. The Abbey, which sits magnificently on the cliff edge over looking the Vezere valley was restored "like new" by an architect monk who also restored the famous Abbey of Mont St Michel and here's the link, it was restored in 1889, exactly the same year that Le Manoir was built, I'm pretty sure there was no monk working on our property when it was built!