22 Feb 2017. Things had been going well. Too well. Something is about to go wrong, I thought as I set off on yet another 450-mile drive from London to Bergerac. However, the road to Portsmouth was clear, and there was no sign of German bombs or mines in the harbour (so on that score…
The word has got around that we’re building a swimming pool underneath the house. Some passers-by asked me about it, and wanted to know why we didn’t put our pool in the garden like everyone else. I tried to explain that the noisy excavations now coming out towards the road were for dry boats rather than wet humans, but they look skeptical. All will become clear in due course, I assure them, dodging the issue.
The new roof structure is mostly up, apart from the cladding panels which are due on site this week. The sequence below shows the progress made over a 16-day period last month, as seen from our neighbours’ house across the road.
It takes a bit of nerve to strip the roof off one’s house in October. I’ve never previously tried it, and would not particularly recommend it as a way of calming the nerves. But in case you are considering it, I can report that it does not feel too bad if you have a Project Manager such as Didier Grandjean in charge of operations.
In order to have adequate boat access to the water, we need to do some fairly radical clearance work on the riverbank. But it’s not that simple. This is not just a Conservation Area, it is also a UNESCO World Heritage site
What have I done? I seem to have acquired a house on the River Dordogne in South West France.
Chez Boileau 