Sunday 29 April 2012

Holiday in Saône-et-Loire at my Parents House

I say holiday, but we spent most of it clearing rubble. I did a lot of gardening which I'm quite happy with if most of the plants take that I have planted then it should look quite good in a few years.
We went for a walk along the local randonnée path one day and met these horses, they walked over from the other side of their field to see us. When they got to us they were massive, so friendly though! There is always such interesting animals in France its the only place I have seen Red Squirrels. But the best wildlife we saw were otters in the Canal du Centre whilst we were cycling along the voie verte.

Let me show you the Little bit of France that I staked my claim on the day my parents brought this house. This is my ruin of a barn, it is a small building with three rooms that do not interconnect they all have there own outside doors. We have never know what it was originally built for, and it was never safe enough for use to go inside. So this holiday we decided to take the rest of the roof down and clean it up a bit. We found in one wall evidence that there was a bread oven inside the building.
You see on the floor a stone that has a very straight curve, well the big stone behind it is the same. These were found up high of the wall and next to where they were found is a smaller arched hole in the wall. The 'room' that appears to be a bread oven is filled with dirt or something which is making the walls bulge, so we will probably need to remove one of the wall to empty it out to make it safe.

This room has a stone floor under that dirt. I recon it was a barn for small animals? I hope that one day we will be able to find out what this building was originally for. Construction wise it looks like the bread oven room was first and the other rooms were added on to it. I'm hoping to be able to go back to France this Summer and do some more work towards getting this building habitable, its going to be my holiday home! - one day ;).