The Unadventurous Traveller

The Unadventurous Traveller  Life ticked along pretty well in France, I worked, whilst Dale had plenty of projects to get along with. The children made many friends at school and had so much space to play, bounce (on the trampoline), hide (and seek) and keep chickens. Summer and all the fun and farming that brought gave way to autumn, with beautiful walks along the riverbank, in the woodlands, and discovering new seemingly ‘undiscovered’ treasures of places nearby. Autumn also meant we had to start thinking seriously about the approaching winter, which to me meant getting wood ready (Dale had been preparing for this since spring it was only me that started to think about it!). Our friend Francis, the farmer just up the road, had given to us a small coppice with about 15-20 mature ash trees back in the spring, if Dale could cut down the trees, we could have them. This was perfect as we wanted the wood and Dale had a chainsaw etc to do the work. So he set about cutting the trees down...

The Unadventurous Traveller Doing up the house was an ongoing project which took many years and there was always something else that needed doing!  We had two very large barns as part of our property and another tumbledown house on one side of the main house, of which only half now remained standing. A woodshed was attached to one barn and there was also another funny little building which used to be an  outside toilet,  used before they installed the new plumbed toilet inside the house. It must have looked beautiful walking through the French cottage garden with its little privet box hedging to guide you along the path past roses and delicate little flowers. One of the vendors had mentioned this garden that he remembered from his youth. However there was another pressing project which started to burn into Dale’s ‘to do’ list… Planning the Gîte After some time Dale decided to start work on creating a gîte. This type of project is undertaken by many people moving to France...