We Survived!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is feeling hopeful and positive about the coming year.

Our trip to France was very successful, not least in the fact that we managed to avoid snow on both the way into and out of the UK on our way to the house. We flew into Heathrow and were picked up by friends who live close by and where we leave our van between visits. Good friends obviously. They cooked up a full English for us while we sat around and chatted and caught up with each other, loaded our van full of kindling and firelighters they had found for us, and saw us on our way to Dover to catch the midday ferry to Boulogne.

Feeling shattered after the overnight flight, we managed to doze for most of the ferry crossing and re-charge our batteries for the next step of the journey, to get south of Paris before stopping for the night.

We have to admit to a certain trepidation about our trip at this point, just how cold and damp and uncomfortable was our little piece of France going to be for a week in December? After an early start on the Monday morning, we set off south, stopped for an hour to pick up some supplies in Leclerc, an electric fire, tools for the fireplace, gas/petrol for the chain saw, wine etc. and we made it to the house around 1pm. You could see your breath on the air and that was inside the house. However, hubby got to work with his chain saw and soon we had the woodburner roaring, electric fires cranked up, bedding hanging around to air and a hot cup of tea to cheer us up.

See how cosy - wouldn't you love to be greeted by this after a 9hr journey?

By the time our son and friend, who drove all the way from Tignes in the Alps (9 hours), arrived around 9pm, the place was very cosy. We cooked up dinner on the barbecue, finished off a few bottles of wine and had a good long chat with him. It was great to see him, he was pleased with his new Christmas/Birthday laptop and to see all his snowboarding gear. Unfortunately due to his and his friend's work schedule, they had to get up early the very next morning and head back to the mountains!

We needed an early start ourselves that morning anyway as the sand blasting was scheduled to start at 9am and we had to clear the room and seal all doors etc.