Les Meubles

We weren't exactly ready as there is nowhere for a lot of it to go, but we needed some things like our bed and sofa and scythes. Kitchen stuff and clothes we were ok for as we brought some from Chamonix but we couldn't pick and chose what was delivered - so the whole lot arrived.

Hope box pile doesn't collapse

Glad to see the bed. It is huge and others are small

It seems bigger in this room than Camden. It will have a huge room to live in eventually (10 years!!)

The v friendly efficient removal men

No this isn't where it lives

Barranède first beer

We have bought some all grain kits but haven't got the cleanliness or time required to make them yet so we put on a concentrate kit initially to get us going.

The pigglies

We went and collected the pigglies a week after we got here after working night and day to build their home. A lot of the effort involved was finding suitable tools and wood. We visited a lot of DIY shops and in the end the wood was not exactly what we wanted and rather more expensive. We still need to find where to buy the right wood really as we are going to need plenty more for our house.
They traveled in a cardboard box in the car and seemed to sleep happily

This picture cannot show the crazed squealing they make while being carried. Then as soon as they are put down they carry on quite happily as if nothing happened. They are chunky little b*****ggers even now so it was pretty difficult carrying them while they squealed and struggled.

While first one was being rehomed the other one went for a little walk and had to be recaptured. He wasn't interested in food (the usual way to persuade them to do what you want, just in digging.

Eventually we got them both in to their new home and they seemed very happy there. The digging seen here was done in about the first half an hour. They are keen diggers and seem to love it.

The pigs don't have names as they are going to be pork and bacon - it is hard not to be attached as they are very appealing, but we keep their purpose in mind all the time as we cannot afford to end up with such expensive pets!

We made a small enclosure with electric fence and found that they had dug this up in a matter of days. Although we knew they were going to dig we didn't expect it to be so fast. We moved them to where the veg patch is going to be and they have been working away there for the last 10 days or so. It is time to move them again soon but not far, just along to the other end of the veg patch.

Moving them was quite funny with both of us running along with buckets of feed and shouting 'piggly piggly piggly' and rattling the bucket madly when one of them wizzed off the wrong way. We had trouble getting the boy pig (he is the digging ring leader) out of the patch Doug has dug for potatoes. We didn't get photos as we were too busy herding. Moving the house was also fun as it was up quite a steep slope and it is quite heavy. The solution we came up with worked but was quite tricky to keep balanced and on track.

Can you guess what it is yet? (Rolf Harris voice)

Just in case you hadn't guessed yet!

The water

Before we arrived we were expecting some kind of water incident as the water comes from a spring and is pumped up to the house and over the winter there were sustained periods of below -10 C (unusually cold).
When we arrived we tried the water in the kitchen tap and were amazed when it worked.
However water refused to come out either the hot tap or the taps in the bathroom and when those taps where turned on there was a worrying rushing noise. We thought that the pipes in the walls must have burst although we couldn't work out where all the water was going as there seemed to be only a dribble coming out the bottom of the wall not the flood we would expect.

After a day spent listening carefully to parts of the walls and eventually smashing through in a couple of places with a hammer (the holes started off v small and exploritary and got bigger as we got more frustrated) we found a joint that was leaking.

Marcus (our v helpful estate agent) found us a plumber who came round and soldered this back together. We were all disappointed when the water still didn't work. After the plumber (our favorite person in the world at the moment) had knocked a few more holes he decided that the issue was that one of the pipes had rusted up so that only a tiny dribble of water could get through (which made a rushing noise like water escaping while he did it. So lovely guy that he is, he hacked out a bit of the pipe and replaced it. Miracle we had water to the toilet. We had been living here over a week by this point so that was quite a relief.

During M. Dabats supposedly final visit to do this pipe replacement the pump decided to stop working. Wonderful M. Dabat diagnosed this as loss of pressure as these pumps need pumping up ever few months to keep them going so he fixed it... or so we thought. As it then turned out some bit of the pump was rusted through also and there was a slow air leak. We managed to keep it limping along while a new one was ordered, finally 3 weeks in the new pump was installed and we had working (cold) water. Such a relief. As an additional excitement the new dishwasher was delivered just in time on the same day AND more excitingly the internet was finally fully installed then too. What a great day!

Super new pump

We kind of have hot water but it takes a lot of fluffing and is something of a deathtrap. So showers aren't quite on the cards yet.

Deathtrap boiler

The shower facilities

There will be more updates on this subject.

The journey from Chamonix

We left Chamonix (Chamonix blog) in the rain at the crack of dawn (7ish) because we wanted to arrive in daylight.

We drove through the montains still in the rain

And then down towards the mediteranean with still some showers but generally improved weather

It felt like we kept having to dodge Lyon as it appeared at many junctions and careful lane shifting was required not to get sidetracked where we didn't want to go

We wizzed past lots of nice looking places with the landscape getting dryer and more vinyard-y as we went

Just in case you are interested (Rob) it was very comfortable driving long distance in the Navara, not as speedy as it might have been (we didn't break the speed limit but drove at it most the way)

We kept on going

and going

until we saw the Pyrénées and signs for Tarbes. We were nearly there!!

Very close now

First view of the house from the drive - still seemed to be standing at least (we were worried as there had been storm force winds here as well as in Chamonix and it was 5 months since we had last seen the place.

Everything was looking very lush and green. SOOOOO much grass. We are going to need to do something about that!

You can see how full the car was (we had removed a lot by this point)

So you can see we arrived safely with all our luggage after a scenic journey. Next exciting thing was to see whether the inside of the house (electricity, water etc) had faired as well as the roof.

Finally we have the internet!!!

Today, on our 3rd week anniversary of arriving here we have finally managed to get the internet.
The plumber also fitted our new pump so things are really exciting here...
I am going to post a number of 'catch up' entries so you can see what we have been up to...