
When the going gets tough…
Bonjour (or Bonsoir if you are reading this in the evening)
Another unexpected week here in the Tarn. How unexpected is that! The pool saga continued with multiple trips to pool shops and multiple purchases. Nothing is ever simple. The weather has remained utterly gorgeous, but chilly at night. Very autumnal although no rain for ages so everything is parched. We have roses galore again – in October, and even some courgettes attempting to grow. We should be worried as this is very unusual. However for now we are enjoying the sunshine but looking forward to some rain so we can get on with garden tidying and replanting.

We had a moment of lifestyle envy last week when some friends popped by in their campervan on their way to Spain. They have both managed to semi retire early and go off exploring in their campervan during university term times, returning home for their children in the holidays. I do, however, appreciate that we have a pretty great life here, also living our dream of doing up a house in France. The grass always appears greener doesn’t it?
From 30+°C to about 20°C overnight. Well it is October! It is now beginning to feel a little more like the time of the year. On Friday evening, Max and I had a meal out at the top of Cordes sur Ciel – a lovely, if steep, walk up to the top and then a slightly random choice of supper – waffles! An unusual find for an evening meal anywhere I would think but in Cordes especially. The restaurant has changed hands and is very beautifully set up, with a huge range of wines to choose from, both to drink but also to buy, and some great art on the walls. The menu is gaufres – salés or sucrés – savoury or sweet waffles. A bit off-putting at first but we decided a change would be fun. We sat on their ‘terrasse’ overlooking the valley below – a gorgeous view. The menu arrived and we found a selection of rather interesting sounding ‘gaufres’ – with salmon, with duck, amongst others. The waffles looked like waffles but were very beautifully presented and I have to say rather delicious. The wine we chose, a local vineyard we hadn’t tried, was amazing – definitely a wine-tasting in the offing. The young lady who looked after us was from Argentina and was concerned that the restaurant wasn’t very busy. She thought maybe they needed to extend their offering as it seems waffles are a bit off-putting as the only choice. I have to say I agree as we nearly didn’t eat there because of that. Waffles for main course and pudding was a bit much for me – the savoury ones were the best. In spite of that, it is fun to try something different and unexpected from time to time.


The pool saga ended up consuming the whole week, trying to shift the dirt that had ended up in the pool. We had a few trips to pool shops to buy various bits and pieces – a pool vacuum, the hose to attach to it on the first expedition to both Albi and Gaillac. The pool robot, as I mentioned last week, did his best but just recirculated all the dust that the flocculent product had captured. Long story short, after much vacuuming, which involves some water loss from the pool, a couple of times at an alarming rate, we managed to clean the pool. When vacuuming the pool, water drains away with the dirt in it through the waste pipe, which goes off down the garden from the pool equipment pit. The first time we attempted it we didn’t turn off all the skimmers so the water level went down quite rapidly – we managed 15 minutes of vacuuming before we had to stop. We then turned off two of the three skimmers which worked better. I should mention that at this point we didn’t have a vital piece of the puzzle, a plug type thing that creates a vacuum in the skimmer, so I was holding the hosepipe in place while Max vacuumed! A further trip to the pool shop followed as this was really inefficient and then we also learnt that we should half close the main drain at the bottom of the deep end to slow down the water loss. You live and learn. As an aside, another learning moment, it turns out that if too much water drains from the pool, it finds a watercourse under the garden and ends up in our woodstore, which in turn seeps in to the bottom of the tower staircase as, for some reason, the base of the staircase is located in the woodstore. The pool drainage pipe must end somewhere in the garden, heading downhill towards the house! A whole other set of jobs to attend to! I did, however, eventually manage a long-awaited swim, another kilometre, in a very clean but chilly pool. Hopefully that is not my last swim this year but the pool temperature is not going up anymore so we will see.





Add to the pool cleaning adventure some long overdue log moving and we had quite an energetic and busy time last week. We have stacks of seasoned and seasoning wood so we have tested for dryness, split and stacked many a log, as well as creating lots of extra kindling. We have not, however, stacked any in the woodstore mentioned earlier as it is too damp! We are slowly, and a little later than planned, getting ready for winter fires. Our lovely tree surgeon visited on Saturday to quote on the numerous trees that need attention, which will of course also provide more wood in due course. The quinces are nearly ready, so more preserving awaits. Rain is forecast for this week, so there is a rush to get as many of the logs ready as possible and cover the rest so they don’t get damp, plus working out when to fit in more external door painting. The list goes on, but so too do the ticks against jobs completed or underway. Step-by-step we are moving forward.



Enjoy the week ahead and thank you as always for reading the musings of daily life here in the Tarn.
A bientôt
Ali xxx

