Easter colour.

After a quick and very cold visit to the UK, we returned to a much warmer climate here at Les Granges. First thing we noticed yesterday morning, was how much everything had grown, the grass in the orchard and field mainly, but more importantly, how much more colour there was, as you can see from these pictures taken this afternoon, spring has definitely arrived....at last!
The return of our favourite birds was also a welcome sight, a few swallows (but not our boiler room babes!) and redstarts have all returned, the blue tits are also building their nest in the nest box next to the Roque Terrace gite, so all is go for this years bird watching, even the peregrine falcons are making their presence heard on the other side of the river!

A very Happy Easter to all of you, don't eat too much chocolate!

Hidden Chateau

Along a small road off the Rouffignac to Thenon road are the remains of the Chateau de l'Herm, originally built at the end of the 15th century, the chateau is now under protection work and is used in the summer for concerts plus it is open to visitors from April onwards, so i'll have to wait to have a wander around its amazing remains.

A quick mention to welcome some new followers to our blog who are looking in from Sweden, glad you enjoy reading the posts and we do look forward to welcoming and meeting you all here at Les Granges at the end of June!

Backstreets of Sarlat

 We had a wander around Sarlat last week and decided to get away from the main tourist areas to explore around the many back passageways and little streets, a lot of the buildings are still empty and ready for renovation but some beautiful old stone work survives dating from many centurys ago. Even what appears to be an old fireplace (below) remains a metre up a wall in a small outer courtyard area that has a wheely bin looking quite bizarre standing against such an old piece of original stone.

There are even old gas lamps in certain areas, still in working order, you can just see 6 old mantles at the top of the lamp in a circle at the centre of the reflective white disk that when lit produce the very bright light. As all our previous guests know and this years are yet to discover, there's always something to see and do in Sarlat!

A post at last!

Apologies to you all for the lack of posts, we've been amazingly busy finishing off several projects, the complete re-decoration of the 3 bedroom Tobacco Barn gite being the main one, is now finished and our first guests of the year, a lovely couple from Canada who have joined us for 4 weeks, are now in there and are enjoying their stay.
We've also been digging up the drive to find where the water supply runs to supply the gites, had a delivery of 5 cubic metres of wood for the fires, all of which had to be moved and stacked into the barn, a big thanks to friend Dave who joined us for a weeks stay but who was a massive help with the later projects!
Philippa's broken arm is getting better, only one week to go now until we go to Perigueux hospital for the removal of her 'pot' and an xray to see if all is well, she's really hoping that will be the end of it, but isn't counting on it just yet.
Whilst sitting out for lunch last week, the bird below was spotted soaring above us, pretty sure it was one of the Perigrine Falcons that reside in Le Roque St Christophe, it was rather high hence the blurred picture!