The big thaw!

People who have visited us know of the track opposite Les Granges that leads to the river, the above picture shows how high the Vezere was a couple of days ago, very nearly over the river side footpath, after 2 days of snow followed by a warmer day resulting in the river level increasing by 2 meters or more.
You can see on the opposite bank a tractor, after being used to help with tree felling, it had been left perilously close to the edge of the very fast flowing river! Fortunately for whoever left it there, the river level has now dropped before it was on its way toward Bordeaux!

After the snow fall....

The view from the Tobacco Barn top floor bedroom taken a few minutes ago on this beautiful sub zero morning, showing Le Moustier bridge and the rock faces of Le Ruth in the distance, I feel a walk coming on, building renovation permitting!

Renovation starts!

Yesterday we started work on the front of the house, the rendering needed looking at and once the scaffolding was erected it was clear that it was in need of some attention, before it dropped off the wall! So the task of taking off the rendering was started, a time consuming job but as you can see above the beautiful original golden stonework has been revealed.
Anyway, we got up this morning to prepare for another busy day and this is what greeted us, our first snow fall of the year...work now on hold for a while, at least for a couple of days as tomorrow the temperature is forecasted as dropping to -10 degrees! 

....and a happy new year!

So, 2012 has been and gone and what a great year it was, more people visited us than the previous year from many more parts of the world, as the following shows
                 2011     2012
Australia       27      35
Belgium        -          1
Canada        8          2
Denmark      -          2
England       87      133
France         38       19
Germany      25       21
Greece          -          2
Ireland         3          4
Netherlands  12         1
New Zealand 6          5
Philippines     -          5
Poland          6          -
Portugal        -          3
Scotland       4          7
Swiss            -          1
United States 43       25
Wales           2          4

We're now looking forward to 2013 and all that it brings, a big wedding being held here in May, the return of quite a few of our 2012 guests and new ones aswell, much hard work to be done in the meantime which ofcoarse will be reported on the blog, so happy new year to you all, wherever you are!