Too wet to garden so.....

A handsome chuck at the lockkeepers cottage Our wonderful sunsets

Pots a plenty

Boats and restaurants in Blain

Incredible patterns made by wild mussels

No more leaks

New floor

As we’ve had such wonderful weather, the time seemed right to sort out a leaky roof. We’ve had water coming in between our roof and the barn roof; it’s such a strange configuration as on the roadside the barn roof is higher than ours but lower on the garden side. It was impossible to make it a continuous roofline and every time we have driving rain, there’s a leak. Ian shinned up there with all the grace and agility of a mountain goat (no, I’m not joking) and took down a tile width of slates form our roof, built up a ridge to place soakers against and then retiled to them. He also repointed all around the chimney and on the barn side up against the new ridge. Hopefully that will do the job because if it doesn’t we have no idea where it’s coming from.

On the following Sunday, we didn’t go the Loire valley route after all, instead we found ourselves heading for the coast once more, this time we travelled further west towards the golf de Morbihan, the other side of La Roche Bernard and explored Damgan and St Gildas de Rhuys. Unfortunately we started quite late so it’s definitely an area we shall go back to as Port Navalo is also well worth a visit and we didn’t get that far. I’ve also since been told that there are locks at Damgan, which we somehow managed to miss.

We’ve also been to see a few films in ‘Version Original’ in Redon’s lovely cinema complex, but we’ve learnt not to take what is advertised on their website too seriously. Zodiac was allegedly being shown in English but when we got there, we found it was actually in French. Not wanting to just go home, I searched the timetable for another ‘VO’ film and finding one that I hadn’t noticed on the Anglo info website before we decided to go for it. A lesson learnt – VO could be any original language, the film was in Chinese! At that stage we gave up and threw ourselves at the mercy of the cinema manager who very kindly gave us vouchers to use another time.

As we were feeling lazy, we drove to Blain for a walk along the Nantes Brest canal on the 17th. It’s a lovely place and very close by, we were amused by the lockkeepers garden, he always recycled stuff in his little patch by the canal but this time he appears to have bought a job lot of tiny ceramic plant pots. I have to say, it looked quite amazing, must have taken him hours to string them up in those patterns.

Last Monday Ian started laying down the new floor in the barn and it looks a treat now that it’s finished. Next step is the shower room in the pointy bit, it’s going to take a bit of rejigging as the shower will have to go into that corner as otherwise you’d walk into the shower cubicle wall when entering unlike downstairs where the door is in the middle of the dividing wall. Still it’s nothing that Ian ‘no problem’ can’t sort out. We also had a demolition day, the wall of the barn near the roadside was leaning more and more lately and cracks appeared to be getting bigger so before the hapless postman or some car got crushed, Ian took his life in his hands and took the wall down as far as the doorway. The stones will get recycled into the barn porch and maybe a retaining wall around the flower beds. In the meantime they lie where they fell - on the ground and not on someone's head.

Yesterday we went to the first car boots of the year (for us), we earmarked two to go to but another lesson learnt, even though it’s listed in the Vide Grenier booklet, if it says ‘bourse’ it’s actually a collectors market. So the one in Missilac wasn’t a car boot after all but the one in St Lymphard was. Didn’t find any great treasures or missing masterpieces so wandered down to La Baule for the obligatory stroll along the endless beach. But not before devouring a wonderful concoction of crepe, apples, chocolate and vanilla ice cream first. Diet? What diet? La Baule is a great place on Sundays, really lively and bustling with some shops open in the afternoon and heaving with the French having their post lunch promenade. It’s a sad state of affairs when the only French people who you know and bump into while out, all work in either the local supermarket or DIY stores. We must socialise more.