Not over til it's over!

Winter that is.

We've had some really warm days and had started to think Spring was on its way. After all we had been promised by that nice French lady we met on our walk that the "grand hiver" was over. OK there would still be frost at night but we could get started in the garden, I could start sowing some seeds - even the grass looked like it needed its first cut

first sighting of cornellian cherry in bloom

then what ..........we turned our backs for just a few days and went on a birthday jolly for TC in Rome ( the plan was to enjoy some nice early Italian sunshine). In Rome it was wetter and cooler than we had hoped but there was worse at home. Le Grand Hiver paid another visit and there was more snow.

When we got home the house was freezing - these stone houses are great in the summer months because they stay cool but its a different story in the winter. The stones act a a heat sink and it has taken a couple of days with every heater we possess on full blast to make it feel habitable again. The cats' food was frozen in the dish - it was lucky they also had biscuits especially as the lady who comes to feed them had broken down on the last day and never arrived.

We also arrived to find we have another problem. I went to let the hens out, including our two recently acquired arrivals, only to find one of them indulging in some very "unhen" type behaviour with one of our older girls. Further investigation plus some exuberant  morning crowing convinced us we did indeed have a cockerel in the henhouse. He will no doubt be a very handsome bird but I keep hens for the eggs alone so he will have to go! Luckily for us the lady who sold him to us is willing to have him back.

The weather is not the only thing that can't make it's mind up. I seem to have been fighting off a chesty cough for months and thought it had really gone before we went away and now it seems to have sneaked back and most unwelcome it is too. My dodgy knee, which had settled down a lot, has also flared up again so much so that I was seriously limping around Rome - maybe because we had enjoyed three nights of dancing in the week before we went but I'm not going to admit to that! Maybe I'll go the doctor when something gets better - can't go about two ailments at once.

In the meantime - that's quite enough of winter. They do say its not over 'til the fat lady sings - you have been warned - today I am going to sing A LOT!!!

bonne annee bonne sante - not yet it aint!

I don't like January - never have done , only one worse month and that's February (but that's not so bad living here as Spring arrives earlier). Yep - looks like I'm having a bumper attack of the January blues.

When we moved here we avoided houses in the river valleys as we had seen during visits to the area the Autumn fogs so it was frustrating to find ourselves this winter shrouded in hill fog day after day for the  first two weeks of the year doing no good at all for the nagging chesty cough which I have been unable to shake off properly. That coupled with the usual post Christmas " down time" plus family worries (as parts of my family take dysfunctionality to a level which would rival an Eastenders Christmas special) I've been feeling a touch sorrier for myself than I have any right to be. Trevor is having a tough time with the current DIY project ( it involves plumbing - say no more) but at least he has his music and as he himself says has "never felt so respected as a musician".

All in all then it was a change for the better when the snows fell. It snowed all night last Tuesday and all day Wednesday leaving us under a blanket of 8 inches of the white stuff. Thursday dawned a beautiful sparkling morning - clear blue skies over a black and white world- great day for a walk and some photos With hindsight ( forever a wonderful thing) perhaps 13 kms was a bit much in the prevailing conditions underfoot - either glassy and slippery or deep snow to wade through. The scenery was beautiful though and it was great to be out and "enjoying" ourselves.

 By the time we got home my back was seriously suffering - a result of walking clinging on to my walking poles - and I felt at least a hundred years old! It was necessary to cite the "cold weather " "I've just done a long walk" ""I even made a fish pie when we got back" and "sod it who cares if its a weekday I need a drink" amendments !!!

OK so enough's enough  - very pretty and all that but I should have been dancing tonight except the roads are impassable and everything is annullé. Want to get on with looking forward to the Spring - I need my garden!

Oh and seriously - bonne annee everyone!

 

Wenceslas never had this trouble.

Last weekend after a mild winter the sudden drop in temperatures had caught us on the hop and we found our stock of logs was getting very low. No problem, we had plenty in reserve at Pavillon our old holiday home just 40 miles away. Snow was forecast later in the day but again no problem, we were ready early and would be there and back inside 2 hours in time to snuggle down in front of a blaze!

How wrong we were! We were about halfway when it started to snow, nothing too bad at first but by the time we arrived it was coming down thick. We didn't dare drive down the steep drive into the garden so kept the car on the roadside and barrowed the logs up through a steadily thickening snowfall.


We didn't hang about and set off hopefully towards home. It soon became clear that the journey would be very slow as despite de-icer the windscreen wipers were freezing constantly and making visibility extremely difficult. We had to keep stopping to break the ice off the wipers, stopping becoming a challenge in itself as the roads were so slippery.

The road along the gorge is at least a reasonable width, and it was looking spectacular with frozen waterfalls and gigantic icicles hanging from the cliffs, but once past St Antonin Noble Val the road towards Caylus is much narrower and very bendy with deep ditches on each side of the road. We negotiated it slowly, all the time aware that this was nothing to the difficulties we had to come! Caylus nestles on the side of a hill in the valley with steep hairpin bends in and out of it - we live on the hills at the top of one said steep hill! We approached Caylus from the south up gentle hills and at our junction we could see the chaos at the foot of the hairpin bends so we took a quick decision to stay as high as we could and continued across country where the road rises but quite gently and is at least straightish. As we drove through Lacapelle we started to feel a little more secure - we have friends there so if we had to give up there was at least shelter.

A little further and we were at St Projet ( the next village to ours ) now we were within our walking distance if all else failed! The hill into St Projet didn't seem like much but it was also on a sharp bend and after several failed attempts we had to give up and drive onwards , once more out into the country. Having walked a lot around the area we knew if we carried onwards we would be able to avoid any steep hills but we were actually now driving further away from home. Eventually we had gone far enough to be able to approach home from the north gently downhill and slid gingerly through the gates of Segala -and there we stayed most of the week.

At least we have had plenty of logs to keep us warm in between unfreezing the water pipes - but that's another story!