Our Adventures in the South-West of France
Anyone who knows me will know I’m a bit of a weather nut. So I was delighted today to see the temperature peak in the 40s for the first time. 40.8C to be precise.
Now it’s 9.30pm and were sitting out in a balmy breeze enjoying a beer. What a great life.
With the weather being so nice we decided to take the afternoon off and head up to Saint Robert. This is a very pretty little village just inside the Corrèze with an imposing 12th-century church and a good scattering of historic buildings including some of the ancient gateways to the village. Really it was too hot this afternoon for any serious exploring with the temperature at home pushing 40C, but I still managed to get some pictures. You can read more on the history of the place on the Saint Robert website.
The last couple of days the weather has been lovely with temperatures into the mid-’30s today (34.9C) . However, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag the last couple of weeks and not as warm as you’d expect in the Dordogne in August. Here are a few images to illustrate the mixed weather bag we’ve been experiencing
A week or so ago I had reason to visit the cave only to find one of the hot water pipes was leaking. I can’t remember why I needed to go down there, but it’s a good job I did.
The piping is all copper so there was nothing I could do to fix it. If I’d wanted to do a hatchet job and tape it up I’d have had to go to Brive-La-Gaillarde for supplies and it would have had to wait until the weekend. Now it wasn’t a huge leak, but you wouldn’t want to leave it.
So, a plumber it had to be. A quick search on Google located Bugeaud et Fils, Hautefort in Hautefort as the closest plombier. In spite o my lack of French they were very accommodating and were able to send someone the following morning shortly after 8 am, soon the issue was rectified. We’ve yet to find out how much it cost us. Unlike the UK, where you (have to wait for ages for a plumber) have to pay at the time, in France everything is done with “la facture” (the invoice). We’ll have to wait and see.
That was a couple of weeks ago. This weekend has seen us back at the plumbing again. In the kitchen we’ve two ‘points’ to take water for the washing machine and the dishwasher. When we were here in June both of these worked, but for some reason one of them has blocked up meaning I had to pull out the dishwasher and swap the water pipes between dishwasher and washing machine depending on the demands of the day.
This time we did take a trip to Brico Depot in Brive-la-Gaillarde to get plumbing supplies, a Y splitter, and also a new gas pipe for the hob. Today has seen everything pulled out in the kitchen again and the splitter connected to both the washing machine and dishwasher. So far the washing machine is humming away so we’ve only to test the dishwasher and all should be good.
The other job completed today was replacing the gas pipe between the valve and the hob. We knew this would have to be done from the surveys we had before we bought the house. Managed to replace the pipe today, and glue the valve back onto the wall, so now we have a working hob again which gives us another option for cooking.
In the next village to us is the stunning Chateaux Hautefort. What we see today is mainly from the 16th and 17th centuries the chateaux makes for a fabulous visit.
The bed problem was solved by cutting the beds in half and reassembling them upstairs with pre-drilled metal plates and plenty of screws. Job done!
It’s been a hectic week and a bit. Nine days ago we packed about half our furniture and belongings (including new beds, sofa and chairs) onto a Luton van in North Wales and 48 hours later we were unloading them into our house in Badefols-D’Ans.
The removals went pretty smoothly, thanks in main to the assistance we had both loading and unloading the van. We couldn’t have done it without some muscle. In the end we were able to load everything in an hour and unload in 2 hours. The company we used was European Moving; they were very friendly and efficient and, while these things ain’t cheap, they were reasonably priced for a full 20m3 van load. We were also able to pay them in Euros which suited our circumstances.
Most of the last week has been spent tearing up and down to Brive-la-Gaillarde for everything from a fridge-freezer to a draining board. Of course a new Nespresso machine was one of our first purchases. The white goods should be delivered tomorrow and it’ll be good to have somewhere to keep things cool in again.
Not everything’s been plain sailing. One of our biggest headaches has been the new single beds (2 of) we shipped over from the UK for our guests to sleep on. They proved too big to get up the stairs to the guest room! So our poor guests are currently just sleeping on mattresses (which did go up the stairs) whilst the bed bases wait to be dismantled, taken upstairs and reassembled. Much of the last week has been spent agonizing over doing a “break-fix” on brand new beds.
The beautiful village of Limeuil is situated at the confluence of the Vézère and Dordogne rivers in the south of the department. Les Jardins Panoramiques are located on the site of the old castle and offer lovely views over the village, rivers and country side as well as an excellent themed garden to wander through. Roses abound, both in the garden and surrounding village along with wild flowers, herbs and cultivated beds. Park down by the river and wander up through the village to the gardens, it’s a beautiful place to spend a day.
It’s still more than a month until we’re back in the Dordogne so I’ve been experimenting with digital watercolour using Artrage 5. Here’s a painting of the house painted on a Lenovo X1 tablet with a Wacom Bamboo Smart stylus.
Here are some interior shots of the new house
