A wet Sunday afternoon walk...

The next few days we kept coming back to the conversation of 'well I would buy that house now, would you?' There was nothing stopping us, we knew we loved it everytime we saw it, we had worked out that we could renovate the barn on the other side of the lane into a gite, so the problem of the house having all it's garden off to one side became less of an issue. It offered us all of the land we wanted and was in a good location. On Friday we drove up to see some friends in the Vienne region. They had lived in France for 5 years and were established in their community and were working and earning whilst renovating. It was great to see a sort of picture of where we could be in 5 years time and they were loving it. Their two children were naturally bilingual, they had land with chickens running around as well as a bouncy boxer dog called Banjo. We told them all about this house we found only an hour away from them and they said 'so why haven't you put an offer in then?' Why hadn't we? We were procrastinating; we had done our research, met lots of agents, seen lots of houses, done our figures and set a realistic budget and then we had found a house that met all our criteria. The time had come.

We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing (as well as seeing through our last couple of viewings). We enjoyed a lie-in on Sunday morning and then bought a few bits for a roast before all the shops shut at midday. Then we decided to go off for a walk in the woods before we started cooking. The sky was a little cloudy but it was dry so we all set off in our t-shirts planning to get warm as we walked. We turned right at the bottom of the driveway and walked up through the hamlet waving at the local farmer and stroking the lonely horse in his field on our way. Past the Mairie and the old house for sale that we looked at every day and then right off the main road up into the woods, we commented on how dark the sky was getting but carried on anyway. Karen had picked up a long walking stick and was entertaining us by pointing at every bit of flora and fauna possible and describing what it was, where it comes from and how good it would look in our garden. It was fun and added a whole new dimension to just going for a walk. Just as we reached the tree line the heavens opened and we ran into the woods for cover. There were little Christmas Trees everywhere - my idea of heaven! I couldn't resist it, I just had to pick one and try and keep it growing, so I emptied my very expensive camera out of it's case (much to Stu's sheergrin) and gave my Christmas Tree a new little home.

The rain was getting heavier and wasn't going to let up and if we had started walking back, we would have been drenched by the time we reached the gite, so we took a vote and sent Stu back on his own to get the car. We dressed him up in as many items of clothing that we had with us to keep him dry (including my pink Gillette) and off he ran out into the rain. Me, Karen and Brian started collecting fire wood and pine cones to keep us busy while we waited and then eventually I heard a car coming fairly quickly towards us through the trees. He saved us! We stayed relatively dry and had collected a good amount of wood for the fire, Stu on the other had was very wet and had pulled all the muscles in his legs from such an instant sprint back to the gite, but he was our hero, which made his day - so that made up for everything.