Excess baggage,Mechanical Failures,Quads and parties!

Hello one and all ! or should that be bonjour !! I feel both honoured and worried that Roz has left me in charge of her blog but excited too. Our children becky and Chloe will write a short piece on Friday before we leave to share there thoughts on there time out here.

We set off from England at 4am on Friday morning with two very excited girls (Chloe - below and Becky), we arrived at Stansted thinking we had been clever and out-foxed those buggers at Ryan air by checking in two hold luggage bags...........20 minutes later and faced with a £300.00 excess baggage charge we quickly purchased another bag and learnt to divide weight extremely quickly!

We arrived in Limoges to 27 degrees and bottles upon bottles of wine ! (and promptly told everyone in the UK).

Since we have been here its as usual been non stop party's, BBQ's and social visits although on friday evening after "Naked whisky drinking" and my partner Mel being in some form of comatosed state holding a GCS of about 8 things have calmed down a little. Becky has been as happy as the preverbial Pig in S*#t as she loves animals and the place is like her own mini farm, hopefully she is learning something as wishes to become a vet on leaving school whilst chloe has been more than happy to practice her drumming skills, sunbathe and splash about in the pool which does not seem to be quite upto my acceptable temperature! (or hers by the look on her face below !)

Chloe on the drums Chloe in the "warm" pool

Becky and chloe were also allowed to ride the Quad around the field which they both thoroughly enjoyed, i then took Becky around "the loop" a circuit around the local woods surrounded by fields farm houses and a small hamlet i then stupidly allowed her to drive the quad around a relatively safe part or so i thought of the loop to which she promptly drove into a fence knocking it over throwing herself off and scaring the life out of me ! fortunately no lasting damage was done and Becky survived.

Saturday was my first day of "unpaid labour" or as neil likes to put it as "learning", so i thought id be helpful and collect all the logs from the bottom of the field and start to chainsaw them ........so becky got on the quad with trailer attatched and pretty much got them all up by herself which was quite an achievement for a 14 year old as i could barely lift some of them myself let alone her. She then did what she loves best and took out one of Nicolines horses - Elles.

Becky on "Elles"

This all went to plan until i saw that the linkage had come off the chainsaw and rendered it useless, i then spotted a petrol strimmer so began to cut down a mass of nettles and trim the edges of the field until what i thought was the string snapping prevented me from doing anymore, Neil returned and was extremely polite when he returned - despite me wrecking his chainsaw, then i pointed out his strimmer had ran out of string........only to be told that it hadnt ran out of string but i had lost the bolt that in fact rendered it useless..........oops! (we managed to fix both) to then suprisingly start drinking again and watched the FA cup final.

Saturday evening was spent at Veronica and Mike's who had kindly invited us last minute to celebrate Veronica's birthday, all the usual suspects were there and it was really good to see everyone again, what started off as a very sophisticated mellow evening of Mikes Carribean pork and chicken ended in a booze fuelled cat fight over a girls V boys game of articulate.........the boys won easily and the Brecon Beacons will remain a secret ;-)

Sunday was another day of "learning" this time i was having lessons in many things ranging from sawing, carrying, fetching, nailing, hammering, drilling and screwing the objective of this combined "learning" was to complete the rafters on the new workshop all went well and i completed my "lesson". Neil was chuffed to little bits that we had managed to complete the rafters and is getting excited at the prospect of getting a roof.

On saturday night we were invited to Keith and margarets for a BBQ and to sample more BB and Rasher, my plan of abstaining from alcohol went very well until we arrived and i was asked "what would you like to drink ?", my answer appeared to be "wine please" another fab evening of great food conversation and Jenga was had and everyone played with there new puppies - Badger and belle.

Monday saw the birth of several chicks which are all doing well, we have transferred both mother and chicks to allow the other nesting hen her time to hatch her chicks. Myself and Mel got started on the top field / orchard which was badly overgrown and had a rickety old fence seperating the top of the garden, we initially thought that it would take us a couple of days to complete this mammouth task but three hours later it was cut mown and treess were removed, both Neil and Rozzy seemed ecstatic at our work and the speed at which we had completed it. I managed to not only find my way into Chalux but find the supermarket, cash point / ATM and collect the feed for the chickens.

It was Chloes turn around the "loop" on the quad and all went well this time without event it was off to Champsac for village fish and chips which was enjoyed by all, most of the pub then followed us back home for more beers. Neil and myself then settled down for more NWD (naked whisky drinking) which this time was broadcast to close friends via skype.

This morning was quite sad as Neil and Roz have now left for the UK leaving us to fend for ourselves (however they have left with us absolutely gorgeous weather) and Neil has left me a sheet of A4 "homework" the blog not been one of them! hopefully ive done ok and kept up with rozzy so id better don hard hat boots and some sort of power tool or my "teacher" may have something to say to me.........