In September I made my first attempts on the garden, trying to sort the small rockery and border at the end of the top terrace and the adjacent bed under the hornbeam. I continue to struggle with the first two, they are so dry. For the bed under the hornbeam I made some progress, but my first effort of clearing the rubbish and planting tulips for the spring was only partly successful, the deer beheaded every tulip before it had a chance to flower!

We also finally commissioned the pool. We were still using it in October, reducing the cost per swim, as Peter said, well when you spend your childhood swimming off the coast of Scotland(me), or Cornwall(him) what is a mere 14 degrees? Seriously cold, actually. The next issue, of course, was closing the pool for winter, a bit over 400 Euros in the view of the installers. Happily the Estate Agent came to our rescue, having recommended the installers in the first place they were, I think, feeling a bit guilty about the rather slow installation process, a reduced fee was agreed, once we had resolved the apparently critical issue of whether the winter cover was to be blue or green, did I care?!

October also saw the new bathroom painted, and at various times in our absence the house insulated, wells dug, and the geothermie installed. Joe came back with the rest of the furniture, happily with a mate. It needed all 4 of us to get the wardrobe up over the balcony railing into our bedroom.

Peter returned before me in November, I was still a wage slave, and saw the commissioning of the geothermie. Happily he also decided to ensure that the new chaudiere, back up for the geothermie, was working. It was not. Supported by lovely Heidi from the caretaking team, the plumber was summoned, he could not get it to work either. It powered up fine, then shut down again in a matter of minutes. The plumber retired from the scene, and Heidi’s implacable logic, leaving the field to his assistant Antoine, who was prepared to admit there was a problem. he eventually traced the problem to the thermostat, which, in the course of the geothermie installation had been filled with dust. A couple of minutes with a vacuum cleaner and all was well. Which was just as well, as during our absence in early December the geothermie broke down in its turn.

We returned on Hogmanay, a trip in itself not without adventure as our flight from Southampton turned back over northern France due to “a technical fault” but they found another plane, bouncing, I think, some poor souls who were heading to Belfast, and we made it before the shops closed. We were armed with a haggis, intending to treat some French friends to a Hogmanay dinner. They had to call off due to illness. They may have been relieved, rumour has it that the French believe a haggis is not simply contained within a sheep’s pluck(stomach), which is true, unless you buy a plastic wrapped one (not recommended), but that it also contains(not true) the contents of the sheep’s stomach at the moment of its demise.

Everyone was ill that winter. The electrician sent his team to sort the lights in our bedroom, with a switching result so strange that once he had recovered he agreed that the job had to be done all over again, thus delaying our final move to our own room in the pigeonier. The man who was supposed to be tiling round the pool had a bad back, or it was too cold or wet, or…, we finally decided he preferred not to work here in our absence, he did eventually finish in the spring.

New Year over we set about getting the geothermie fixed, and discovered that the company who had installed it had gone out of business. We remain grateful to the macon who had recommended them and managed to find us a contact for an alternative technician, who muttered darkly about the failure rate of new pump designs and promised to return, which he did, in February, with a replacement pump.

We also returned in February and collected our new car, having been relying on hire cars since we took the Golf back to Scotland in November. We celebrated this acquisition with a ski trip to the French Pyrenees. We were visited by the macon on the eve of our departure. I had spent the cold wet nights in Scotland re-designing, the area between house and garage, and having finally decided that the best option was (more) terraces, rising up towards the pool, asked him to quote for the job. He requested a drawing. This proved a useful occupation on our trip. We spent 5 days in the ski resort and skied once, the rest of the time it rained, it was a mild winter!

Still, we visited Lourdes and Tarbes, tasted the local wine, and shopped for minor items such as clocks and mirrors to finish the decoration of our guest rooms in preparation for our first visitors in the spring.

At the outset we weren’t planning on a pool. Too much trouble to maintain. But Peter, rightly, thought otherwise, so a pool was added to the requirement list. Les Terrasses didn’t have one, just a large brown circle on the “lawn” where previous owners had had an above ground version.

The Estate agents recommended a supplier who was happy to take a deposit, at winter prices, before our house purchase was complete, so that we would have our pool for the first summer. The outline was drawn on a frosty April morning, and we waited. Digging commenced in July, and the concrete was poured.

We admired our lovely infinity pool, with a view over the valley. The only thing it lacked was water. Apparently the liner could not be ordered before the digging was complete. It was now the end of July. The French go on holiday In August. Even, as my friend Sandra recently remarked when her pool cover motor broke down, in a seasonal trade like swimming pools, the French go on holiday in August.

We waited.

The liner turned up in late September and we came back to find our pool now filled with water. It must have been filled using a hosepipe, since we also discovered that although a pump had been installed for topping up, it had not actually been connected to the water supply, and the electricity supply to the pool locale was inadequate to run the filtration and overflow pumps at the same time. Caveat emptor, but we were novices in pools in those days, you would think they might have told us before they started! The trench to the garage, dug for the geothermie piping and filled in in July was dug up again, the electrician and the plumber summoned. The tiling around the pool was going to have to wait until spring.

We swam that October. The water temperature was around 15 degrees, but every dip in, as Peter said, reduced the cost per swim, and for those of us used to Scottish coastal waters, 15 degrees isn’t so bad!

All in all a learning experience, but definitely worth it in the end!

We made a brief foray by car in June, laden with curtains and other weighty items. We had now contracted for a new fosse, a new bathroom in the old dressing room adjoining our eventual bedroom in the pigeonnier, a swimming pool, and, finally, a new boiler. This last had been something of a problem. We had yet to learn that estimates do not always arrive promptly in France, and after several unanswered reminders to the so helpful plumber who had saved us from the cold in April, we had finally accepted an estimate from someone else.

There was little sign of progress, save that the fittings for the bathroom had been purchased, and were liberally distributed over the study floor where we were to pick our way around them for the next several weeks.

We were due back in July and had asked the builder to avoid any work on the fosse during our visit, as we had no wish to spend our holiday without sewage or water. It should have come as no surprise, therefore, to receive an e-mail 2 days before our return, advising that work on the fosse had started, but a plumber was required, as plumber number 1, who had contracted for the work, had taken umbrage at our not accepting his quote for the boiler, and would not now do the work on the fosse either. Happily plumber 2 was persuaded to step into the breech. We returned to a building site!

Miraculously we did have water, and a Rolls Royce of a fosse complete with pumps, bells and whistles, apparently a 10 person fosse was required as theoretically the house could sleep that many, no matter that there were only two of us.

The plumber, having got started, decided to replace the boiler as well. Installing the new one was no problem, getting out the ancient monster proved more of a challenge, but they eventually managed, and took it away in a JCB.

The new bathroom was installed. We still couldn’t move into our bedroom. Close inspection had revealed why this small room, just big enough for a double bed and a wardrobe, was equipped with two large radiators, there were large gaps between the bottom of both french windows and the thresholds. Replacement windows were ordered, in the end for most of the house, along with insulation for the roof spaces, as we had jumped at the suggestion of geothermal heating and proper insulation was deemed a necessity. Another idea which did not go entirely to plan, as the initial proposal was that we use our vast amount of land to lay a heat collection mat below the soil. It soon became clear, however that there was hardly any depth of soil, the rock coming close to and in places forming the surface, a problem that arose again as we started on the garden, so wells had to be dug, along with another trench from house to garage where the geothermal kit was to be based.

By the time we left, however, we felt we were making progress. We had a fosse, we had heating (we thought, no need to test it in July), we had a new bathroom which we might use one day, they had even started digging the pool.

We moved in at Easter, early April, still frosty in the mornings. The house had been empty for several weeks and was cold. We turned on the water to get the heating going and sprung a leak, the first of many.

Caroline found us a plumber, who fixed the leak and was persuaded to start up the antique oil fired boiler. A roar of flame, a puff of black smoke, it died. The plumber struggled on. Further oil supplies were procured (happily Good Friday is not a holiday in France), but the boiler remained uncooperative. Whether a leak in the oil pipe running underground from garage to house, or a blockage, we shall never know. The plumber rigged up a Heath-Robinson solution with a large plastic jerry can of oil and some tubing. It was somewhat alarming to have a can of oil sitting alongside the now roaring boiler, but as the oil went down at an alarming rate, and now had to last until Tuesday (Easter Monday is a holiday), we didn’t have it on much.

After that baptism of fire (or rather lack of fire) things quietened down a bit. We acquired some furniture. Had a lucky break with the white goods. Having at first been told that if we anted delivery in less than a week, and despite the cold we did want a fridge, we would have to borrow a van from the store and drive them home ourselves, a round trip of 40 km and a steep turn up our new driveway. We agreed reluctantly, but when we returned to collect as agreed, a previous customer had failed to negotiate the van back intact and it was off the road, the week’s wait became a day.

We met some of our tennants, they are a pleasure to watch and I’d be sad if they left, I just wish they’d stop eating the flowers.

By the time we left late in the month the weather had begun to warm up, and I had made my first efforts at weeding, but there was still a lot to do.

We didn’t mean to buy the house.

Too much land, Peter said.

We heard about it from Caroline, our lovely and understanding Estate Agent. We said “No”, but she persuaded us to take a look as we were driving past. A lovely light and airy house with a great view. Love at first sight. So we bought it, and the 7 acres of land. Not in the best state of repair, as we were to discover, and there must have been a garden once, or possibly a vineyard, in the days before phylloxera, but it hadn’t been tended for years.

So this is what this blog is about. We are slowly re-discovering and recreating a garden, in this “too much land” in SW France, and this is a record of what was there before, and what we have done, and are still doing, with a bit of help from our friends!