A very happy Christmas to all who are reading this. We hope that you have had a restful time and have managed to take a break from usual routines and spend some time with friends and family.
We have chosen to spend our first Christmas in France on our own. Not that we don’t love our family and friends in the UK but we had been over for a couple of weeks in November for a wedding and decided that we had too much to do here to fit in another trip. We have managed to take some time off though and have been to Mamie’s bar and the Soleil Couchant (English speaking bars nearby) and spent some enjoyable hours with new friends. It has been good to get to know some more people whilst we are closed and start to feel that we are part of the community.
With the village boulangerie open, even on Christmas Day, we have managed to keep up our tradition of bacon croissants for Christmas breakfast and we have made mince pies and Christmas cakes. We gifted a cake to the farmers up the road who had kindly helped Nigel get his Range Rover out of the lake back in June and one to our lovely neighbour. And we have the obligatory tubs of Roses and Heroes that we bought back with us from the UK – Cadbury’s chocolates are not sold routinely in France and this is one thing that Jo misses! There needs to be some serious dieting in the spring now!
We have carried on with our daily walks around the lakes, monitoring the water levels and checking that all is in order. We are trying to keep the cormorants out of the lake but with ten of them flying around some days it is a never ending task. Nigel keeps checking the temperature of the water and throwing some pellets in whilst it is still warm enough and there are signs of fish most days when we walk round. And his romantic side appeared on Christmas Eve when he climbed a tree to pick some mistletoe!
It hasn’t been all rest and relaxation over the last couple of weeks though. As well as sorting Christmas we have also replaced the floor in the Kingfisher chalet and now need to put the bathroom and kitchen back together and go and buy some new lino for it. We have also sorted through all of the kitchen equipment in both chalets and decided what else we need to buy for those – any (reasonable!) ideas welcome.
The weather has improved a lot and we have had some cold frosty mornings but little rain for the last week or so and the water levels are dropping again. We now have all of the big equipment on site ready for Cesar Constructions to continue with the works after their Christmas break. Fingers crossed by this time next week we will be cracking on with the rest of the works.
That is it for this post, hopefully next time we will be updating you about the Lac Lucie netting plans. Until then bonne année et meilleurs vœux pour 2024.