A little less isolation!

Finally, after 8 weeks, this afternoon we have just been for a bike ride! Yes, as everyone else (well, most people) after 8 weeks of isolating ourselves as much as possible as per instructions, a 12 kilometre bike ride to Plazac and back felt great and we're very much looking forward to going a bit further next time out!

So during the last 12 weeks we've done loads of gardening including extensive pruning and weeding, a lot of improvements and updating of various things around the property as well as the usual cleaning. Plus, a jigsaw, how many people I wonder, have resorted to this eventually over the weeks and how many as with us, ended up putting all the pieces available in place and finding out, as we did, there's one piece missing!?

Busy (last) week!

So, first week of isolation was house shutter renovation, the second week has been something I've never tackled before, renovate the surround to the house pool crazy paving. Didn't realise how fiddly it was going to be at the start, getting all of the worst parts on an even field took quite a while but have finished the bits I wanted to improve, pretty proud of it really!

Then last Saturday morning, a couple of weeks later than last year, the first of this years swallows returned, made itself at home again in the barn, today they're now 4, always a nice sight to see, a definite sign that summer is just around the corner!!

Job done!

One of the last shutterless pictures of the house taken last Thursday afternoon during an allowed daily taking of exercise walk, we'd just finished the final coat of all 10 shutters, all were looking very much better and ready for putting back up. 

And by Friday lunchtime here they are, back in place, the last time we refurbed the shutters was 8 years ago, they'll be good for another 8 now!!

Time to move on to the next project now.

Time on our hands!

These are certainly strange times all over the world, here in our part of France, as in the rest of the country, we are under orders to stay at home at all times except for trips out for food shopping or medical reasons. So we now have plenty of time for the work on the premises, first up this week, refurbish the shutters on the front of the house.

A total of 10 in total, all of which have now been stripped of loose paint, filler applied if needed to only a couple of small patches of over weathered wood and then sanded in preparation for undercoat and top coat, all of which should be done by the end of this week. As you can see below, the house really doesn't look right without them!

To all our blog followers, we wish you the best of health in the coming weeks and months and hope that this dreadful time comes to an end as soon as possible for everyone, look after yourselves and stay safe.

Back as it should be.

In my opinion, one of the most picturesque, peaceful and beautiful of village churches in France has had its surroundings restored to as it should be following the dismantling of a tourist 'attraction' that stood between the church and river.
This view of Peyzac church was one of the first posts I did on this blog when we bought our property 10 years ago, long may it now remain and allowed to be in its traditional position of peace and tranquillity.

Happy new year!

Where did last year go?! Can't believe my last post was at the end of August but we're still here, Christmas and new year spent in England and now back to it as normal for the winter projects.
So far the weather has been very mixed, fortunately no snow as yet but as you can see above, plenty of rain as well as cold frosty mornings!
Will try and post a little bit more regularly this year, hope you all have a great 2020 and we look forward to greeting all our regular 'returners' and new guests in the coming months.

Bits of stone!

A few small pieces of stone collected by one of our guests nearby to our property and handed over to me on their departure yesterday as a gift turn out to be a little bit more than you'd expect, each piece are hand made Mousterian (a prehistoric period named after our village) tools and are at least 50,000 years old!
The collector, who is dutch and has stayed with us before, say they are worked in the Levallois Technique (much easier to google this rather than me explain!), the pieces are very common to this area and can be found quite easily on the many ancient terraces surrounding us.