Pumped up!

Our luck with pumps this year has not been good. On Saturday our pool pump decided to just stop working. We had always been concerned about the strength of the pump, and after discussing it recently with a pool maintenance company, we had decided to order a new one and it is scheduled to be fitted on Tuesday - so scarily spooky that it packed in days before it was to be replaced. So we decided this was a good time to get the pool room tidied up so that when they came it would be a better space for them to work in.

The weather was also a bit cooler today so we thought we would make the most of it and also take up the jet washer to do a bit more power cleaning.

We were pleased to see the stones Brian had replaced and regrouted around the pool seemed to have taken well, unfortunately though, as we are in for a spell of rain, he is not able to finish that job yet. But plenty more to do.

We are really pleased with how it’s looking for now though we were going to focus on giving the pool room a good thorough clean,

Brian started by helping me empty the pool house, then I got to work with the broom and mop. The pool house is where all the technical stuff for the pool is stored, along with the poolside furniture, and a small summer kitchen. When a beautiful red butterfly flew in and needed some help to find his way out Brian was there to lend a hand.

Empty the attic

We do love a rummage around a vide grenier, especially when it takes in a local champagne house. It’s the first one I’ve ever been to where you can get a glass of champagne. This ‘empty the attic’ also ran along the road in Neuville-sur-Seine, a very pretty little village about ten minutes from us. It was a very successful morning, and we came home with some good finds.

The whole lot cost us 15 euros, can’t wait to see how the frame is going to clean up. The little plate stand is Limoge, and the onion jug will look gorgeous with flowers in it.

On the way home, we finally found a boulangerie we had been looking for in Neuville. We’d been looking for it in the village, but it’s on the main road approaching it, which we’d never driven down before. We had always taken a smaller side road, hence we kept missing it. We took the opportunity of stopping for coffee and a pain aux raisins - which was rather delicious.

Le jardin

Last night the sun set slowly behind the vineyards. We had had a busy day gardening and cleaning the pool area and it was nice to sit and enjoy looking at what we had achieved enjoying the sunset.

It’s Saturday today and the plan is to continue tidying up the garden. The lower lawn is covered in tiny little yellow flowers, which look really pretty around the Buddha, but I do need to cut them back today. Some of the roses also need dead-heading so I can get another flourish of flowers. The box trees are a never ending job of trimming and shaping, something really I’d prefer Brian to do as he achieves better results on the shaping than me. But I’ve done these ones and I think they are looking pretty good.

Over the next few days we hope to be able to do a video of the garden, for now though it still needs some attention.

Moving on up

The stonework around the pool needed a few repairs. So after Brian carried a rather heavy bag of grout up there, he got stuck in fixing a few loose stones back into place and filling in any holes between them. We’ll clean them down tomorrow.

I was still on weeding duty.

We both enjoyed a very refreshing swim at the end of the day, washed down with a cool beer, whilst soaking in the view.

Our Meadow

I love a meadow full with wild flowers, they are so delicate in their appearance and yet robust in nature, it makes for a very good combination. Over the last few weeks, we have had quite a lot of unseasonal rain, and we have not therefore got out to cut the slope leading up to our pool. This has had a great result, as through the long grass we have lots of different meadow flowers blossoming.

Our intention today was to cut the grass and trim around the laurels we planted earlier this year. What I suggested though to Brian is that we actually keep some of the slope uncut. The flowers look beautiful and the butterflies and bees are loving them, so we have kept swathes of the slope as meadow-grass.

What I also did was cut a few wild flowers to have in the house, I will arrange these tomorrow.

Good shape

Chatillon-sue-Seine

It’s been a bit of a busy few days and we’ve made a few trips to Chatillon-sur-Seine to get some jobs done. Chatillon is about a 30 minute drive from us in northern Burgundy. Firstly, we needed to see our French accountant to ensure we were on track with everything we needed to set up for the Chambre d’hôte. Looks like we are in good shape.

We have also now met, and registered with, a doctor. This has not been easy, as we live in an area of France that is quite short of GP’s. This is being addressed by the government with funding for more training to bring fresh doctors into the region. Currently though it does mean that it can take some time, and a bit of luck, to locate a doctor able to take you on. Fortunately for us we have a friend who helped us identify, and get registered with, a doctor who was taking on new patients.

Clairvaux

Clairvaux is about a 30 minute drive from us, through the vineyards and forest and some very picturesque villages. It is an important site relating to the Templars – more on that another time. We were heading to Clairvaux to visit a religious themed market, where all the produce is made in various religious sites across France mainly, but I do believe there was some Belgium beer.

We were very impressed with the high quality of the produce, and all very nicely packaged and presented. We bought some marmalade, some olive and tomato pastes, Citeaux cheese (which I’ve wanted to try since reading about their challenges during the pandemic – again, more on that another time) and a beautiful recipe book, ‘Grandma’s recipes’. The book is in French but I thought it will help us with our learning and french cooking.

This is the long drive to the prison entrance, and the old facade. If you look carefully through the top of the gate you can see one of the new watch towers.

As well as being a very important historical monument, which you can visit via a guided tour, it is also a high security prison. So when you join a tour you need to provide ID, give up your phone, and have your photograph taken. Also photography is not permitted. We will go back and do a tour soon, as I’m intrigued.

Cornflowers

We were on our way to the abbey at Clairvaux when I asked Brian to pull over as there was a beautiful field of cornflowers. I’m sure the farmer didn’t think they were that beautiful, but I thought they looked gorgeous. We got out to take some pictures, and realised we had stopped near an old chapel dating back to the 12th century. It was quite serene, nestled in this quiet corner of France. We took some time to have a look around. It had been renovated in 1987, and although there were some bits that could do with some attention, it was all very well cared for, and the delightful thing was they had positioned some seating and a picnic area.

We were able to access the front part of the chapelle through a beautifully restored archway, but the main wooden door was locked. There were two large key holes, which I investigated to see what I could see through them, and tested whether I could take a picture.

Mine didn’t work that well, but Brian had more success. The chapelle had a very plain interior, but looked ethereal with the sunlight shining through the tall narrow carved windows onto the subtle tones of the stone and centuries old wooden pews.

My photos are on the left, Brian’s are on the right.

Plateau de blu

We decided to drive out and find ‘plateau de blu’ today, it’s a view point which a number of local people have recommended to us, but we have never been to see it. So I packed up a flask of coffee and a couple of chasson pommes and off we went to find it and have morning coffee overlooking the beautiful scenery of the vineyards. It was delightful sitting in the shade of the tree from the glare of the morning sun, sipping coffee and enjoying a very fruity and flaky chasson pommes.

There is a good example of a cadole there with a plaque explaining how and why they were made around 200 years ago. I was also pleased to see, there are a number of short walks that can be made from this viewpoint, so we will be revisiting it over the coming weeks to try them out.

Treasure cave

Finishing the atelier has meant that we have been able to start a mass tidy up. When we moved here last year, in the middle of the pandemic, our intention had been to sell some of our UK furniture before we moved, we were also looking to donate a lot to charity. However the charity shops were either closed or full up with donations, and selling items privately was difficult. We did manage to give away our sofas and a rug on a free website, which was really good, but other than that we moved everything with the help of a removal company to France. Our thoughts then were, ‘it will be fine, we will sort things out when we get here.’

So effectively we had two houses becoming one. Our barns became a very useful storage space, but over the last year they had become more and more untidy, and I find once something becomes untidy, it’s more and more difficult to get it back. Finally though the movement to tidy it all up has now started, and it’s having the atelier finished which has meant we can do this. We have needed to make a few trips to the tip to get rid of stuff also, but we are getting there.

This is the main area where we park the car, we have started to clear this out, but still more to do!

This is a before shot of the second barn, used as storage and Brian’s workshop! The photo was taken a week ago.

We took these photos yesterday, it’s effectively the same shot as the one above, but as two pictures. The right picture shows Brian’s workshop, being brought back - it is now his treasure cave. The left picture, again still needs work, but we now have space to store the trailer in here, which is also now empty.

It feels really good to finally feel like we are on top of things, or at least moving in the right direction. The library was another room full of boxes, and although there are still a few in there, we have managed to unpack a lot and can now get out through the french doors. We do have quite a number of books, hence why we will eventually recommission this room as a library. We had it insulated last year, and completing it will be a winter project, after we’ve done the salon, which is another winter project. I think it will be a really enjoyable room to do, as we want to introduce some colour into it.

The Chateau Diaries

Since arriving in France last July we decided not to set up for french TV, mainly because we just don’t sit and watch much TV, but what we do love to watch, and we’ve been watching since it’s inauguration in 2019, is the Chateau Diaries. This is a channel available to watch on YouTube, and is produced and presented by Stephanie Jarvis, who has appeared in Channel 4’s ‘Escape to the Chateau DIY’ series.

She presents two episodes in the week, on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s, normally around 30 minutes long. They describe life in her chateau, which under normal circumstances she runs as a chambre d’hôte, but with the pandemic things have been a bit different. She has an amazing bubbly, upbeat personality, and is a delight to watch. It’s great to see how creative she has been in some very tough times, and how successful. She now has 140,000 subscribers. There are a lot of content producers on YouTube, not all good, but this is worth a watch.

If you feel like tuning in, the link to this weeks episode is here.

First dip

The day had been a bit unsettled weather wise, but it was warm and the cool blue water against the newly cleaned stones looked very inviting.

Jet propelled

Today Brian was keen to test out the jet washer. I’ve always been a bit sceptical on how effective they are, but I have to say this one has made a real impact. Here’s a before and after shot of one of the stones we wanted to clean, which truly demonstrates how well it’s worked.

Brian got stuck in to cleaning around the pool and the pathways, which didn’t take too long. We still have the walls to do, but we will probably need to do some repairs on some of the plaster work first, so we left these for today.

I carried on pulling the weeds out, and between us, it wasn’t long before the pool area was looking sparkling.

I’m looking forward now to my first dip of the year.

New favourite

The stone around the pool was looking a bit blackened and tired. I had thought that maybe a good old scrub could do the trick but Brian suggested that maybe it was time we invested in a jet washer to give it a really good clean. So we decided to go and buy one from our local Weldom store. This morning after breakfast Brian’s first job of the day was to set it up. I’m not sure he realised he had to put the whole thing together. However he soon understood what he needed to do and built the ‘soon to be’ next favourite tool.

Unfortunately though, by the time we’d done a few other jobs that needed doing, loaded up the trailer, visited the tip, collected a couple of new umbrellas we had also purchased from Weldom that didn’t fit in the car, and then returned home, the heavens opened and we couldn’t get out to use it. However we did make it an excuse for an early dinner and a quiet glass of wine. We watched the rain falling onto the flourishing vines and making everywhere look so verdant and lush from the comfort of our kitchen window. As I sat there, taking in the view, I could hear the river below the window sloshing along. I’m sure we will get the stones at the pool cleaned tomorrow.

Popped out

Last night we popped out for dinner at a local restaurant in Essoyes. As we drove through Landreville we passed by a beautiful meadow of bright red poppies. Their delicate petals danced against the pale grey sky. The weather was threatening to rain, but we still decided to risk it and eat outside. It was warm, and it felt good being out. The restaurant has a wonderful setting next to the river, and the ambience is very pleasant. We both had the garlic mussels to start with, which were very yummy. Just as we were finishing our main course, the heavens opened and it chucked it down. We ducked under the umbrella, at which point realised that was not a good idea, as the lightning crashed above us. We ran into the restaurant to shelter from the ran, before deciding that it was probably time to head home.

It was a very beautiful evening.

Two big achievements

It’s been a bit of a project but we have finally finished the atelier. Brian finished laying the floor today, so we can start to move stuff over there and tidy up the barns. It will be so good to get ourselves organised, it’s been a big project - removing the old oil tank, clearing the loft in the barn and removing all the old rotten ceiling and beams, having the shell for the room built, building the staircase, insulating the roof, plaster boarding it out, painting, grouting with lime mortar, building a stud wall and laying the floor. We still need to sort out the banister, but we have an idea how we can make this safe as an interim. Brian still has a few finishing touches which he would like to do, but the main thing is the space is secure, clean and dry, but the great thing is it’s better than either of us ever expected. Tomorrow we will be moving stuff up there.

Another big achievement this week was the Blackbirds fledged. They left their nest, to our dismay, by just tumbling to the ground. I didn’t know that’s what happened, I had a romantic idea they would know how to fly. But, they then spent the next 3-4 days fluttering around the rose bushes on the ground learning how to fly and find their own food. Miraculously, with a little effort on our part also, all three survived and have flown off to establish their own ‘turf’.

We are thinking we will probably see them again next year.

Scorcher

It’s been a scorcher of a week, temperatures reaching 38°C. The water pump, to get water up the slope, was delivered and fitted this week, so finally we were able to get the pool opened. Just need to wait for the chemicals to settle, then we will be able to use it.

We do need to do a few jobs before we take a day out at the pool. I need to clean the pool room and weed around the pool. Brian wants to clean up the stone work. He started by pushing a loose tile back into place.

Another use for the cleaning pole - tile reposition

By hand

Today we needed to go into Troyes to try and sort out our position with CPAM. This relates to the issuance of our Carte Vitales, which will enable us to have any of our medical costs automatically reimbursed. Currently we have temporary social security numbers (SSN). This means you can still be reimbursed for your medical, dental and optician costs but you need to do this by submitting a paper form with the receipts.

We had previously posted, by recorded delivery, copies of our passports etc, and had confirmation of their receipt. Unfortunately though, they wrote to us to tell us these were not suitable. So we thought the best thing was to deliver them ourselves.

The CPAM office in Troyes is a large modern building just on the outskirts of the city, so easy to park. We arrived around 9.30. We joined the queue of four people, and I was soon suitably impressed, as people were promptly invited in by the administration staff to address each individuals needs. It so happened that this was going to be a scorcher of a day, and I was a bit worried about waiting outside in the sun, but surprisingly after about ten minutes we were welcomed in by a young chap who kindly listened to our bad french and read our letter. We presented him with all the necessary documentation which he copied, and he stamped our file complete. Could that be it? Unfortunately not, we now need to wait for the next stage, which should take about 15 days. It is actually submitted to another government body, then our actual SSN will be issued, and we can then go online via the Ameli.fr website to request the production of our Carte Vitales. It still feels like we are a long way off getting them, but we have done all we can for now.

If we were to start at the beginning again I would go straight to the CPAM office and deliver our documents in person.

As we were in Troyes we decided to nip to the outlet shopping centre at MacArthur Glen.

I wanted to buy a couple of non-stick pans to complement the stainless steel ones I had previously bought from Samuel Groves, which I love. However, some things are just better with a non-stick pan, such as white sauces, scrambled eggs, frying fish. I hadn’t really considered Le creuset for non-stick, as I’d always thought of them as the brightly coloured heavy cast iron pans. Which work well on some cookers, and great for slow cooking, but not for induction. Looking in the shop though, we found they do some beautiful, tough, non-stick ranges as well, and being a factory shop offer sensible sized discounts. I came away very pleased with my saucepan and 30cm sauté pan.

It was certainly time for coffee, which we enjoyed in the shade of the umbrellas outside Starbucks. It wasn’t busy so it was nice to take our time. You don’t need to wear a mask whilst seated at your table in a restaurant or café, but you do if you get up to pay. However, we have just heard that from today masks are no longer required in outside spaces except crowded areas such as events or markets. And as from Sunday the curfew has been removed, this is ten days early as the numbers in France are looking good, and the vaccination programme is going well. 30 million people have now had their first vaccination. And the target is to achieve 35 million people to be fully vaccinated by the end of August.

Click-clack

It’s that simple! Well it may be when you know what you are doing, but to start with it’s like being on ‘the Krypton Factor’. I used to love that programme, watching people trying to fathom out how to build something. So easy when you know how. But in this case I think even having the instructions was an interference.

We started off by laying the insulation. This seemed easy enough, it even specified that glue or tape were not necessary, which seems like a positive, however whilst you are trying to line it up and keep it flat it was inclined to slip and slide out of place. Once we laid the first board though it all started to hold better. Brian then brought the second board over to ‘click-clack ‘ into place. All I will say is that at this point there was not much click-clacking!

After some contemplation, Brian returned to the task and approached it slightly differently. This time with more gentle persuasion, which seemed to do the trick.

I left him to it, as I’m not sure I was helping, and I went to do some gardening. A couple of hours later when I returned I was very pleasantly surprised to see it was really coming together. It seemed the first row was the most challenging.

Cut above

Where the stud wall fits along the old oak beam, Brian has had to cut around some supports we’d had put in place when we first bought the house in 2015. It was not a straight easy line to follow.

He has done a pretty exacting job with the cut though, which he achieved by using his new invention, the ‘sharpie level drawing tool’. Genius!

On Monday he wanted to finish the project. Brian had sorted out the latch and clips to hold the access plate in place, and also found a door lock he could use for the door.

I can remember him buying the lock and it not fitting on the gate - that was a learning in what to look for when buying a door lock. He hasn’t done that again.