It is a very long day’s travel from the BVI to Sainte-Foy-La-Grande, made longer by the need to pick up some supplies for the house en route from Bordeaux airport.  However, we pulled into Place de la Marie at lunch time and, rather than going straight to the house, stopped off at our “local”, Le Globetrotter, for a much-appreciated pression or two.  It is nice to be welcomed “home” with welcoming bissous and handshakes, and that is the warm greeting that we received from Alain & Aline.

It’s a bit of a good thing that we did, as the improvement that the beer lent our sense of humour was needed – the house looked as if someone had exploded a plaster-dust bomb in it, and that was after the builders had clearly tried doing some pre-arrival cleaning up.  The welcome that we received at our own front door was markedly less enthusiastic than the greeting at Le Globetrotter.

Still, we set to cleaning up the 2nd floor so that it was habitable and, by the time the beers had chilled in the fridge, there was some semblance of order!

There is now some sort of routine to our days – get up early, work hard, and quit for supper at an astonishingly late hour!  However, progress is tangible and our being on site seems to have given the builders a sense of urgency that had been missing in our absence.  Today we will sit the builder down and thrash out details and set deadlines (ha ha).