As last week’s blog, this week has been dominated by one thing – progress on Grange. I said that I felt we were within touching distance of finishing and I definitely feel that is the case now as the sawmill, previously on the critical path for completion, received their tool bit and we were able to collect the wood.
This has allowed Lee to start the stair case which will allow access to the first floor – always handy(!) – and to construct the door surrounds for the garage bays which will be enclosed . I had hoped to have all of the scaffolding down by now to reveal Grange in all its glory but, despite having got all of the guttering up (not the downpipes yet) we have not yet removed all the scaffold. We can however see what the building will look like with what we have removed – amazing – and the rest will be down in the next couple of days.
We are also experiencing some absolutely amazing weather at the minute – 2017 is definitely going to be record breaking in terms of lack of rain and high temperatures – which is fantastic for our guests but difficult for 2 hairy energetic spaniels who don’t know when to calm down, especially when our guests also have playmates that Garratt and Brandon can have fun with as they did last week and this! It is also proving challenging keeping all of our new plants alive (not something we have a great track record with but we have now got some of the Kermese plants in the ground at least) but we are using our 250 metres of hose to water from the village lavoir – at least when there aren’t cars or RVs parked on the pipe!
It has allowed us however to justify a lazy afternoon today on the shores of Lac du Drennec where we took a picnic and soaked up the sun while the dogs could be as energetic as they liked and still remain cool by swimming in the lovely warm water. While dogs are not allowed to swim from the beaches of Drennec e have found a fantastic sheltered spot where we can picnic and swim (us and the dogs) undisturbed – which we’ll let you know about if you visit.
As a bit of an aside, some of our current guests who arrived yesterday strengthen the adage of ‘six degrees of separation’. We learned while chatting with them, that they live in a well-known town on the north coast of Cornwall where we have some very good friends who are the parents of someone I had the honour of being best man to when they got married. Turns out, that our guests are also good friends with our friends but the link wasn’t the reason they chose to stay with us. It’s a small world!
Finally, sadly, we did miss Commana’s Fête de la Musique last night – next year … – but we won’t miss Saint Cadou’s Tantad and Fest Noz next week – this is an amazing village!
Salut.