Last week’s blog hoped that the Hayloft roof work would be completed in the last 7 days so we could start clearing up behind the roofers.
Thankfully, despite last Monday being extremely wet, they managed to finish the roof and dismantle the scaffolding by Wednesday. We are really pleased with the finished result. The slate tiles are much more attractive, and in keeping with the area, they have added some detailing to the front and rear, and we don’t need to worry about leaking for a while!
As I mentioned last week, despite their best efforts, their telehandler had managed to churn the drive up which, if left over the winter, would become a muddy quagmire.
Thankfully, after a bit of raking, re-levelling and a few trailers of 0-20 gravel, it is now one of the better looking areas of the drive!
With the roofers complete and gone, I have planted a number of small hollies we have been collecting for a couple of years on the top of the talus I cleared prior to the roof work. If they get themselves established in the next couple of weeks, which is forecast to be near perfect autumn weather, and I am able to keep on top of the weeds which will inevitably return, we should have a decent hedge in a few years.
Last week’s blog also said that we were waiting for our Charpentier to begin the woodwork for the pool house roof. It seems there is a pattern that French artisans work to as, a bit like our Hayloft roofers, when he arrived, last Thursday, it was for a few hours to erect his scaffolding before disappearing again and not starting the work until Friday!
He did have a productive day – although flagged that the brickie hadn’t built one gable that he was expecting (I mean, it’s not as if they’ve never been on site together or spoken to each other …!!) so both will be here again tomorrow.
Today we woke to beautiful bright weather and we returned to Chateauneuf and the canal walk we did with David’s Dad a couple of weeks ago as, we hoped, that the autumn colours would be at their best. Driving over the Monts D’Arrée we saw an amazing inversion with the bottom of the valley in thick cloud with bright blue sky above.
Our first disappointment was that the canal, which was in the valley, was therefore in that inversion so there was limited visibility when we arrived. The second was that we were too early for the colours to have developed, most of the trees were still very green; and the third, was that the bar on the canal side where we enjoy a post-walk drink was closed for holiday!
However, we had a beautiful walk (any part of the canal there is fabulous) and covered a few kilometres that we hadn’t walked before. We will continue further along another time.
The forecast for the next week is looking great, dry and mild for late autumn, so I should be able to make some good progress on a number of things in the garden – principally more hedging …
Salut.