A September to Remember

The summer weather has been really good here - it was dry and sunny through most of June and July, August was disappointing but September has been fantastic. We have had no rain since 30th August, the days have been sunny and the evenings remain warm and light.

The sunrises and sunsets have been remarkable - our morning walk last Tuesday was enhanced by an flypast of the International Space Station (ISS) which came over our shoulders from the west and flew into the brilliant sunrise. (See ISS to find out when to see the ISS next where you are).

We are blessed with dark skies here and last night the new moon formed a brilliant sight in the last of the evening sunset.

Peachy Girl and Onion Johnnie

The old peach tree that has appeared to be on the way out since we bought La Basse Cour (the trunk has a huge hole nearly right through it) failed to produce any peaches last year. This year it has surpassed itself and we've been eating the most wonderful peaches for the last four weeks. Hopefully our cold store will enable us to enjoy fresh peaches for another couple of weeks and then there will be frozen and, the greatest gift to a cold winter evening, peach chutney.

The shops and markets are full of "Oignons de Bretagne" and "Oignons Rose de Roscoff" at the moment. I think I can just remember, when I was about 5, seeing one of the "Onion Johnnies" who travelled over to the UK (in the days before cold storage, lorry shipments and supermarkets) with strings of onions for sale. We're storing ours in the traditional way this year:

923 Days

Here's how we normally describe to people how we ended up at La Basse Cour:

"We knew we wanted to move to this part of France, we'd been to the Morbihan many times before and we did lots of research. We saw 14 properties in 6 days and this was the last of the 14. It had the best aspect and most potential of everything we saw."

We usually also add, slightly ruefully: "we were looking for a project - maybe not this big a project."

With a fair bit of experience of renovating houses in the UK we set up a budget based on what we knew, what we extracted from "knowledgeable" artisans, experience from our whirlwind renovation of the house attached to the barn, some research and a fair bit of guessing.

Timescales are always a difficult thing to estimate - when did you ever hear someone say their project came in 6 months early? So, in the words of a former colleague at work, our schedule was "perhaps more of a wish than a plan". I thought it would be 18 months, Barbara 15 - allowing for a few weeks off work for UK visits, one holiday in three years and a new hip we took 27 months.

923 days of our life.

Budget was close to our first projection thanks to Barbara's wide-ranging procurement and tight accounting, doing the work on a self-build basis meant we came in below the architect's projection.

And how has it turned out? You be the judge - here are some before and after pictures:

The Barn in July 2010

And the same view four years later in July 2014

The eastern end of the Barn - September 2011

Eastern end of the Barn July 2014

Another view of the staircase and kitchen

North-east end of the Barn - September 2011

Same view in July 2014

Looking towards the west end of the Barn - July 2014

and the same view in July 2014

North wall of the Barn - new windows, roof and pointing

Our oak dining set has returned from storage

Living area furnished by Barbara, John Lewis and Wren Living - July 2014

Staircase up to the mezzanine level

Lean-to with asbestos roof - July 2010

 In July 2014 it has become the utility room 

923 Days