Well the bedroom is done

In a slightly stop and start fashion it has been a day of finishing things. The decorating of the bedroom is complete. Anika's bike is fixed and draught excluder has been affixed around the utility room door.
In addition mounds of fish and shellfish have been acquired for a St Sylvestre feast tonight and countless other bits of comestible and beverage bought in for New Year's Day.

A 90 minute bike ride in the afternoon seems to confirm the effectivness of the repair to Anika's bike. We cycled past the golf course and saw a number of hardy souls braving the chill sea breeze for the sake of a game.

Er, hmm, I think it's bike but not as we know it....

Any time now we will get started with decorating the bedroom...

Having repaired (I thought) Sheila's bike with a new pedal we set off to Esnandes for the breakfast baked goods and a return trip via Viviers to check on the opening times. Part one went without a hitch, part two was Ok but Viviers is closed until Easter and then the pedal fell off again. So it was 11.00 before we'd finished breakfast and now one more cup of coffee before the decorating begins.

Yesterday was MEDIA day

A whole bunch of things came together to encourage us to move the furniture around in the salon and this led to all the bits of media equipment finding convergence. The end of which mean we have the CD/DVD player set up to play throught the hi-fi as well as the dvd playing the video on the TV. In additon the Freesat TV also plays through the hi-fi as does the ipod. How "media" is that?

It's a long story, but here is the news

We now have TV!
It was a step by step process that started with the idea that in the winter, when it is dark and cold and we are 8kms away from night time entertainment, playing DVDs on the player that M&A gave us would be a nice thing to do. So the plan was formed to relocate the little tele from The Knoll to Nantilly. Step two was the thought that if the Freesat footprint reached the Charente Martime and since the previous owners left a sateliite dish on the house it could be an easy job to point it at Astra 28 and get those channels. (It does and it was) Step three; the government has introduced a TV licence tax that is added to the Taxe D'Habitation and one has to pay it and then persuade the Maire that you don't have a TV, not even a UK one incapable of receiving French tele and only plays DVDs!
Step four, five, six and seven, dish moved, Freesat box bought, tele relocated and last night I watched the ten o'clock news.

A day of and for travelling...

Mon frere and ma belle soeur departed Blackpool on Saturday morning to travel to Beckenham via Bradford to join us on the road to Portsmouth for the 20.15 ferry to St Malo. By the time we decanted onto the ferry they had been on the road for 12 hours with much of it in traffic jams on the M25.

A very good dinner on board was a good end to the day and a very smooth journey this morning down to Marsilly made part two of journey most acceptable. 12.30 and we were settling into the house and enjoying a cup of tea.

Other than a modest walk the rest of the day is spent zen-ing out after a few hectic days up to and across Christmas. It is cold and dry set to stay that way for the rest of the week.

Looking forward to December 27th

We will be taking the overnight ferry to arrive in the Charente Maritime around lunchtime. It is quite daunting to think that we have not been in the house now for the best part of three months. What will we find?

It will give us a chance to examine the house painters work. The invoice has already been paid so let's hope it is all we hoped for.

Also, much to our surprise we are taking a freesat box with us and a small telly to see if we can get the digital channels of freesat. I hope it works, something extra for the long cold nights of winter.

Also we hope to do a bit more decorating - the main bedroom and the upstairs landing and hallway so we will see how we get on. Then there are repairs needed to Sheila's bike before we can use it.

The brother and his wife are planning to join us so this might sideline some of the chores.

New Year in France; this will be the second time as we previously spent this time in Paris with Pat and Frank and let the New Year in in a lovely restaurant. Maybe I will look for some suitable decorations for the house.
Cheers

Hoping for news of the painters

Now when I say we are having the house painted I don't mean that it is having its "portrait" done, that has already been taken care of by the famous water colourist Pat O'Reilly. No I mean that the outside of the house, the render, is to be painted. This is our final bit of work on the house in our first year of ownership.

We have planned a trip after Christmas and we might do a bit more interior decorating but by then we will be in year two. One of us should be able to get across to check the work when its done but first we will have to get news of it being started......

Dehumidifier supplier - Breathing Space

Don't get too excited if you come across this company, once they have your money they don't really seem bothered to make sure you get the goods you ordered.

OK so let's start with the good news - we took delivery of exactly what we ordered from them on Thursday August 28th instead of Friday 22nd as promised.

We waited in all day Friday waiting for the delivery that never came. That is a real waste of a day on holiday. Because we could not contact Breathing Space on the Monday (UK Bank Holiday) we also waited in on the Monday.

By Tuesday Breathing Space customer services promised to get back to us with news of the delivery, we waited, and they did not come back to us.
Getting in touch with hem we forced them to give us the contact details of the actual distributor (EHS) who they had told to dispatch the products to us. From them we learned that they had not been dispatched on Tuesday 19th August (as confirmed by Breathing Space) but had only been collected by the courier company on Friday 22nd.

EHS gave us contact details of the courier and the courier confirmed that the package was then left in their depot across the weekend and Bank Holiday. The UK courier company gave us the contact details of the french courier who would actually deliver the package and they confirmed that it would be on the Thursday.

At this point we felt we could leave the house and enjoy some holiday.

My big gripe is that we were able to discover all this for ourselves, indeed we had to discover this for ourselves because Breathing Space customer service could not be bothered to give any "service" to a "customer". The final promise from Breathing Space was when the manager got back (on September 1st) they would be in touch. Have a guess - have they?

End of the season

We thought it would be nice to end our trip with a visit to Fouras. If we had any lingering doubt about the end of the french holiday season we dispelled it today. Many of the shops and cafes where already closed and the handfull that were open had very few punters. As we walked along the main street we had it more or less to ourselves.

We stayed less time than we thought and came back to Nantilly to go for a bike ride - three hundre metres from home a pedal fell off Anika's bike, the thread stripped and it was unrepairable on the rode. So it turned out to be a 300 m bike ride followed by a 300m bike push. C'est la vie and buying cheap second hand bikes.

Sunday morning breakthrough...

we are fairly sure that we have found the "switch" that controls the immersion heater and so we have turned it off, this could see a big saving on the electricity costs as we have had it switched on since buying the house last December. We willl get the houskeeper to confirm our findings.

Lots to do as it our last day and it may be a while before we ar eback.

Another dehumidifier note

Despite promises from Breathing Space, the company we turned to for our dehumidifier, we have heard nothing from them so my campaign against them gets quietly underway. Step one is to name them, and advise caution. Step two will be another attempt to contact them on Monday.

Saturday August 30th

Another day, another game of golf and my worst score ever even though I played as well as I have all week. Perhaps I was coming out in sympathy with all the europeans failing to make the cut at the Deutsche Bank in Boston - some of whom (eg Casey and Poulter) won't make it into the next round of the FedEx Cup. Surprise surprise Poulter complains that there is something wrong with "the tournament" - yeas mate - your scoring!

Another very good meal on the terrace at Andre's by the old port. As you'd expect the place is alive at this time of year. Holiday makers, street theatre, and journo papparazi actvity around the Socialist Party summer meeting.

Now if you wanted to sit in the yard...

at the table, in the sun you'd be enjoying a temperature of 37.2c or if you prefer the shade then it is 29.4c with humidity down at 20%. Now that is warm for northern Europe!

A bit of excitement in Marsilly; as I cycled back from the boulangerie the gendarmarie were out cordonning of La Poste as crime scene. Nothing on BBC website as yet....

In the early evening we dropped down to the old port in La Rochelle and strolled among the throng. After 18.30 the car park near there becomes non-payant and there seems to be a tidal moment when it is very quiet as people avoid it until the gratuit begins. The streeet markets thrives well on into the evening and the street entertainers abound. We still managed to get a ccomfortable seat at a pavement cafe and watched the world go by while nursing a cool beer. Drink drive limits are very low here and one needs to be very moderate - one drink max.

Whilst "in town" we booked up for a final night dinner at Andre's.

It was just a year ago....

that Anika and her brother made a visit to Nantilly to take a look at this house. The following weekend I flew over for a second look and we made an offer. By mid December (the 14th) I think it was ours and we made a quick visit to "take possesion". We have a Facebook and some of the stories about the place and the work we have done can be found there.

Another go at the golf

It is not the only thing we do you understand; we've taken to cycling around the place as well. Also on another front during this trip we have painted the kitchen walls and the landing and this brings us closer to finishing all the tasks we set for ourselves when we took possession of the house last December.

Anyway back to the golf; a 9.50 tee time seemed more conducive to my play although Anika did not likeher score for the round. For me, at least, I finished every hole and althogh I lost five balls I was pleased with a good number of my strokes, I achieved a par on hole 11. Thus far I have only managed to par three of the holes as opposed to making it to double figures on six of them. Another plus for the round was that none of my scores exceded previous worse scores on any hole!

A round of golf and a discovery

16.20 was tee off time (depart?)for the two of us at Golf de la Pree just 2km down the road. Although the reported temperature touched 27C the breeze from the bay made it very pleasant to play. My own game was a bit hit and miss, literally as well as figurativley, and I faded badly (again) on the back nine - not recording a score for 10, 17, or 18. !8 was a bit annoying as I drove into the huge fairway bunker on the right and it took me three goes to get out and then my "recovery" approach shot ended up in the nightmare greenside bunker and after three more goes of failing to get out I gave it up.

And now for the discovery, in searching for a take out pizza we came across a bar / tex-mex cafe in Nieul sur Mer. we might well give it a try sometime soon. we reckon that it is about 4km from us so we are figuring if it is within reach of our new mode of transport - the bicycles.

Now is the morning of our dehumidifier

I will tell this tale at length quite soon but for now it's sufficient to say we have one.
The saga began during the last visit when we decided that installing a dehumidifier in the house would be a great benefit over the winter months. Local research suggested we would have a better range to chose from in England and so it turned out to be.

Extensive researh identified that most dehumidifiers operate very badly at low temperatures but one variety is effective down to about 5c. We selelcted our model and suppplier and began the process of ordering one - for delivery to France. Our sellected supplier assured us of delivery in three days from dispatch and we agreed that they could and would dispatch on Tuesday 19th August, delivered on the Friday. Anika came over to be here. The supplier confirmed dispatch in an email but nothing turned up. The sort version is that we eventually took delivery on Thursday 29th August almost a week later than promised. We are taking this up with the supplier and depending on their response I might tell more.....