Getting Lost Deliberately

It was a kind of deliberate getting lost, I might add. We had one of those 'let's go down there' moments when we 'escaped' from the house, late this morning.

Instead of turning right at the bottom of the driveway, we turned left and went up to the top of the hill to see what we could see. I know we were going back the way we had come, two weeks ago, but that didn't matter.

It was a COLD start to the morning with -5C registering on the thermometer although it didn't feel that cold when I stuck my nose outside prior to putting the cat food out. There had been no new snow in the night, but what was there had frozen...solid!
I wondered why the cats wanted me to make a hole in the pond...which I did with the sharp end of a small watering can (plastic)...but only just! as the ice was a good inch thick on that small body of water. I actually don't think I was very successful, because half an hour later that hole had frozen solid again.
See where the ice is all 'choppy' in the foreground? It had frozen over again, so quickly. The cats weren't too impressed with my efforts.

As I went to renew their drinking water, which had stayed outside, but undercover, last night, I had to laugh...it too was frozen solid, with a good inch on the top. I put warm water in this time, but it too was frozen, within an hour. This is the chunk I took off the top of the cat bowl.

Elsa and Alfie(at back) were the first out the door to find a drink.

 Alfie was frustrated at not being able to crack the ice, and I didn't have any tools handy to help out. Im watching from inside, anyway! Brrr...outside.

 The window at the end of the lanai with the decals on, had glorious ice crystals on it.

 The pool was frozen solid. The sun was just coming up, so we were hopeful that it would stick around, today. It did!

 Elsa had trouble getting back up the small slope, from the frozen pool. The rubber surface is slippery when wet at the best of times, but with frost on the surface it was hopeful...almost.

 This is how frosty it was.

 These two don't give up easily. They literally circled the whole of the pool, looking for somewhere to drink. You can see Alfie putting out his paw to try and depress the ice, so water would rise to the top.

 Isnt this lovely? The view of the barn across the main road which is just on the other side of the fence.

 This is the pot I found the rosemary in, for our lamb dinner, last night.

 the time is actually 8.51am. but yes, that has warmed up to -3.9C.

 This cracked me up...Waz drew my attention to Holly sitting on the INSIDE of the fire screen this morning. She usually sits on the side, but obviously the heat was out front, this morning. She even tries to sit in there with the fire going, strange wench!

 The sun coming out was just gorgeous. Blue sky appearing is always welcome.

 We wish it was warm enough to sit outside in the sun, but it wasn't!

 A lot of the snow disappeared yesterday and no new snow on top of that meant that whatever was there just froze. It was VERY crunchy this morning. We had to be very careful when walking on the flagstones, as it was hard to see where the ice was.

 When we go outside and walk around, we always have a kitty entourage. Scruffles is a real character. She is the most active in playing in  the snow. She had fund on the table and through the holes in the chair. Elsa came to join the fun, too.

 Silly cat!:)

 Sorry...overload on this view, but it was so pretty, this morning.

 Elsa STILL trying to get to the water. This was before I discovered that their water bowl was frozen solid. .If only they could talk!

 Scruffy!

 Glorious sunshine. That view is south facing, so it has lost most of the snow.

 I had filled up the seed tubes, and they were almost empty today However, on closer inspection, there was plenty of seed on the ground. Waz redistributed the Suet balls. The birds are clearly enjoying the suet cake I put out there three days ago. We see red breasted Robins and plenty of little finches.

 Bored with sitting around, and having now cleaned the house from top to bottom, we decided to go out, just before lunch. We had an omelet for breakfast, so we didn't need food immediately.
We turned left, as I have said. The road took us up and out of the valley that we are residing in. There was much less snow on the ground up there...as you would expect. We turned off the main road going west, and onto a small side road...I don't think this was even a D road...more like an E-road.

This little village appeared as we came over the top of a hill. You can see that the road is slim.

 It is a village because it has a church in the middle of 'town'.

 Large houses around the town square. Some looked like they needed a lot of maintenance.

 Yes, we passed the Brocante (2nd hand stuff) and went towards the Chateau...well, as you do, right!

 I wonder what the significance of these items on the side of the church, are?

 Look...Dinner on the hoof! Plenty of lambs out there on the high plateau. We are in the Dordogne now. Where we live is in the Haute Vienne (Oat Vee enne), but we also border the Limousin Department.

 From the plateau we looked down to a deep river valley below. There is bound to be a Moulin (moo larng) or Mill at the bottom. There was, but I discovered it too late to photograph...we had already gone past, the road was windy and there was some traffic. The tower in the background turned out to be the ancient chateau.

 Almost for no reason at all, is this wayside shrine. These are common all over France. There is usually a Virgin Mary in residence inside.

 A Crossroads. Left? or straight ahead. I forget which way we took. I do know that we back-tracked a fair amount.

 Skinny roads, but at least they have a little bit of shoulder or passing cars.

 The chateau rather took us by surprise. It is clearly old...perhaps 12th/13th Century? Hard to tell from the road, but it is fairly simple in design.

 The bridge at the bottom of the valley. The Mill was just on the other side of the river, but down a steep hill.

 We got lost in a small Hameau (Hamlet....Ham oh) where we found some very picturesque homes and barns. Love the little well in the foreground.

 We went through Sarlande, (Sar lond) and Angoise  (ong zhwarze). All those other little signposts are for the different Hameau. Some of them have no through road, however...as we found out. We WENT TO Laporte and found there was a dead end at the bottom of that Hameau.

 Rising yet again to the top of the plateau, this glorious view greeted us. I wish I could show you in person. It really looks second rate in this photo. The air was pretty thick with wood smoke, I have to admit. Wood fires being the preferred method of heating the homes.

 There was a warning sign further down the road warning us of logging activities. These logs on either side of the road looked like the firewood we have out back. Lots of it is Silver Birch, which is the prevalent tree in these parts. I love them!

 This is Apple Territory, as I have said previously. The harvest is well over, and all the pickers have gone elsewhere. This caravan may be accommodation for pickers. Then again, it might be the owners Summer holiday accommodation.

Yes, this small lake was frozen solid. We wondered how thick that ice would have to be to ice-skate on it?

 Another hameau, but this one had a church in the middle. With about 12 houses around the outside, we didn't think it would qualify for TOWN status, but what do we know?

 About 1 kilometer out of town was the 'Dead Center' as Waz calls it. The cemetery.

 More apple orchards, and all the way back down the hill...everywhere!

 Warning signs for ICE are everywhere in the Dordogne and other departments in this area. Verglas being ICE.

 All the orchards and rows of apples trees have netting on the top...mostly rolled back now. Some have plastic, interestingly, but they are few and far between.

 A barn full of wooden Apple crates.

So, by now we were entering the town of Saint Yrieix La Perche...(Remember...Eee ree eze la Pairsh) and through the medieval town we went, and out the other side to ...oh dear...the Boulangerie/Patisserie/Chocolatier is open! hmm....we are out of desserts for dinner, so perhaps...maybe ...we should really go and see what they have?
Why not!
Others were getting their sunday lunch and dinner bread, we were looking for fancy stuff, and that's what they had, to our surprise. As Waz said " Too bad we discovered this place going into our last week here", lol. Good thing, is what he really meant!
This Buchette (boo shette) is a log filled with and covered with pastry cream, and on top we have a meringue mushroom...this one is a bit cracked, so we will have to eat it, non? :) We couldn't decide on one, so we bought a Café and a Praline for dessert.

 Then there was dessert for lunch. Lunch was the last of the pumpkin/veg soup...without bread, because we had dessert....we could have just eaten Dessert...but we are civilized folks!:)
Here we have a half a Religieux and a Tarte aux Abricot. The Religieux  (Ray lizhe ee erce) is a pastry bottom filled with whipped cream and crème Patissier (Pastry cream), and the chocolate profiterole on the top is filled with chocolate Crème patissier. The Abricot (Apricot) tarte has custard on the bottom of the pastry, and then the apricots, glazed with apricot jam!  Delish!

 Oh dear...I forgot that there was some chocolate Crème Patissier at the bottom of all that whipped cream.

And so, it is now dinner time! Lamb again...or Deja vu!..or YMCA, if you will. (yesterday's mess cooked again).
Might even pour some wine to go with it.

That was just as good the second time around. Sorry...no photos...refer to yesterday's blog for those:)

As I write there are only two moggies inside. Old boy Jolly, and little girl Holly...the black and white ones. Who knows where the others are, but they will come in before long, no doubt. The fire is cranking out the heat...though not as much as we would like. It is back down to freezing point! I have closed the shutters, which really keep any heat inside, but we now have no view outside.

We have been reviewing our plans for our return in January. There are a couple of places we would like to go, previously not visited, in the north, and we might just do that at the beginning of our time here, on the return.

The UK news is on, and we are getting WORLD NEWS! Such a treat. We don't really get world news in the USA. Here we get everything, and yes, even the USA news. The opinion of his orangeship is interesting. People really don't care about him other than to state that they think he is dangerously crazy! We concur! Nuff said!
Im out of here for today.
Monday tomorrow! A demain!

Welcome to Winter White.

We lay for a long time, watching the tree branches sway, through the Velux (roof window) in our bedroom. It was almost 8.30am, and we didn't want to get out of bed. We decided that it had in fact snowed again during the night, and then probably frozen. That would mean we would have to tread carefully outside on the flagstones.
I dressed hurredly, went downstairs to prepare the cat food, open the shutters and let the light into the house.
This was the sight that greeted me when I poked my nose outside. It was -1.something C, and it sure felt like it. All of the pool water on top of the cover was frozen.

 Walking was treacherous. I didn't have far to go, but later in the morning I ventured across the lawn and out to refill the bird feeders. I was gratified, once I fluffed all the snow off, to watch little finches pecking at the suet on the small bird stand that the cats love to sit under. No sitting cats this morning. I had to laugh when observing Holly, that though she appeared to be sitting, her butt never actually touched the cold ground.

 This is what I was looking at...Holly NOT sitting on the ground. The pond had about a half inch of ice. I poked holes in it for the cats to drink, and then again, later in the morning. It was so cold that the water froze over several times.

 Yes, I have my neon orange hat on this morning. I thought I should show you what I am talking about. I do rather stand out like a sore toe, in public.

 Interestingly the cats still wanted to drink from the swimming pool, but they ended up licking ice. These two sillies were so fun to watch cavorting around.

 Elsa was determined to get a drink.

Cat prints were everywhere on every surface.

 I hope you can see the frozen surface on the pool cover.

 When we were out raking the other day (prior to the first snowfall) I tipped these chairs like this, so that water didn't pool and leaves didn't collect on their seats. They look rather sculptural in the snow.

 Some time during the mid afternoon, there was some blue sky between the grey clouds, and though there were snow flurries, the sun was shining across the road and out into the fields.

 The same sun tried very hard to shine on us, but though the light was brighter, it didn't quite succeed, unfortunately. The temperature only rose to 0.9C today.  We did have to dress warmly when we went outside for any reason.

 I know I have talked about Pain Cereal quite a lot. This is pain Cereal.It is an oval loaf which I like to slice myself. You can buy it ready-cut, but I prefer the intact variety. Lots of seeds inside as well as on top. We toasted it and ate it with the pumpkin/veg soup I made two days ago. Pretty good food!

 Silly Scruffy appeared up here....We hoped she didn't think to jump out at a bird, as it was slippery on top of that beam. She was making that funny noise that cats make when they are watching birds. You know the one?

Yesterday we sought and found a leg of Lamb. At 16 Euros per kg, we thought this was reasonably priced. It should give us three meals at least. I put the lamb in the over at 4pm, as I am going to give it a long time to cook, slowly and hopefully be moist and divine. Olive oil, salt and fresh rosemary from the garden...which hadn't frozen, fortunately! Schmear it all over the roast, cover with foil and place in oven at 200C for half and hour, then reduce to 150C for the rest of the desired time. We like our lamb a little pink, but I took the meat straight out of the fridge, and it will take a little longer than if it had been room temperature. Sorry..no estimates on time.

 Escalots and potatoes with the duck fat from the other night and sprinkled with a little sea salt. I will roast them for 45 mins when I take the lamb out to rest.

I have fresh Brussels (Chou de Bruxelles) Sprouts to go with them.

We started watching a movie, and of course it had 30 minutes to run just when dinner was ready! So, rather than miss the rest of the story, we dragged the dining room table half way across the room so that we could watch.
I finished off the gravy, sprouts and carved the lamb. The potatoes looked divine, in the duck fat. Nothing tasted quite as good....seriously!

 The lamb tasted like...well, lamb! But it tasted better than any we have eaten for a VERY long time. This is local Limousin (department) lamb that we see out in the fields.  It is the perfect size for two complete meals. There is a lovely Rosemary flavor to it, and Im pleased with how tender it is. Having never been frozen, it makes a real difference.

 Voila! Dinner!  It tasted fantastic, and we would have been tempted to go back for seconds, except that we need that food for another night's dinner. We have all our meals planned, so there will be no piggery, thank you!:)

We finished with a cup of tea.

For once, the monsters are mostly outside, still, at 7.30pm. This is unusual, as they had established a nice routine of coming in at night and for the most part, staying.
Not sure what went wrong, but I did feed them half an hour earlier. Perhaps that threw them off THEIR schedule, never mind mine!

Jolly has the ability to claw the cat door open, regardless of it not being open. He just swipes and hooks and voila! Open door! The others haven't developed that skill yet, thank goodness so they rend to stay inside, once inside.

Well, Im off to read a biography. These folks have shelves full of them.
Today has been a bit of a nothing day. We didn't want to go tiki-touring because of the icy surfaces. Tomorrow is supposed to be just as cold, with more snow. Next week is supposed to be rainy, which is good for us leaving here a week today. Better rain than snow and ice, thanks.

Our time here has flown! We feel that we are having a real vacation for a change. We normally charge around like crazy people, always being busy, but we have been very happy to be home bodies this time.

I did a fair bit of cleaning today. I felt I had to do something active, and this is a great activity for me to get off my butt. Im motivated by clean spaces and things, so I don't mind doing it.

Off I go. Hopefully we will get out tomorrow. Sunday, so nothing much will be open!

A bientot.

Early Christmas?

Snow, snow and more snow....and it is snowing still.

We awoke this morning to see snow on the Velux...the skylight window we leave the blind up on in our rooftop bedroom. Talk about exciting! We have been anticipating the snow for a couple of days now, and we were a bit like kids in a candy store when we finally got up and looked out the window.
This is what I saw out the Velux window!

 And upon visiting the bathroom... YES!! Gorgeous!

 Back at ground level, I poked my nose outside...and yes, this time I remembered my neon orange hat. Sorry...no selfie!...yet.

I opened the shutters, wondering if it would make the house colder, but it doesn't seem to have mattered. At least we had bright white light entering the house:)
I should have moved the plants a little futher under cover...the snow was obviously blown in, as you can see by the table which is well under cover.

This is the chaos that starts the day. LET ME OUTTA HERE!! That's scruffy asking to go out. The cat door is open, but for some reason their brains don't register this first thing and I have to literally open the back door to let them out.

 Out they all went, and stopped at the edge of the snow line. Too funny!
Elsa and Alfie were the ones who ran out into the snow, straight for the bird feeder. No birds, but they did what they do every morning...sat underneath and waited. Silly moggies!

Now, I think the vege garden is done for, don't you?

 BUT...the lettuces which I was supposed to harvest yesterday, don't appear to have frost or snow bite, so I will harvest them tomorrow, I think...as long as they are still alive. I checked them carefully, and was suitably impressed to find that the snow was just sitting on top. I guess they might suffer if it freezes hard.

Scruffles on the left danced around, skittered, and charged off in all directions. She had us laughing our heads off. Cocoa was a little more tentative, and came back inside quickly.

 It had snowed, then frozen, overnight. I had to put my shoes on to go outside...vs my warm slippers, which I normally appear in to open the shutters, each morning. The snow definitely crunched under my footfall.
Looking out over the nearby fields...lovely!

 Elsa got into a bit of trouble when she went for a drink from the pool, first thing. She had trouble getting up the slippery pool cover. Eventually she prevailed, and then went back to do it again, after charging off into the snow and skittering around.

 Scruffles patted a hole in the pond ice, and was soon joined by Alfie for a morning drink. I put clean water out in a bowl for them, but they all seem to prefer to drink from the pool or pond.

Late morning we decided that if it was going to snow much more and for longer, we really needed to go to the Supermarket for weekend supplies. That way, if we are snowed in, we can eat! Right...off we go....but, we have to take the recycling to the bins by the Intermarche.
Waz took the photos on the way to Lidl to get some more boxes for the moggies. Again, I had prepared my little French speech to ask for boxes for my cats, lol. No worries, mate...just take the boxes off the shelves where they have run out of product. Waz rather tentatively walked through the checkout line and took them to the car. Nobody looked sideways at him, which was interesting, as I was in the back of the line looking on at all this. Had to giggle to myself!
The Marie/Hotel de Ville was looking gorgeous in her Christmas finery. What a striking building this is. So many of them are.

 And then it started snowing again. I had a brainwave to go down to the lake to take photos, as I thought it would look lovely all snowed down to the waterline. Ack! The temperature had risen to just above freezing, during the morning, and most of the snow had gone from the ground down there...hence no photos! hard to believe that just two weeks ago, we were almost in shirt sleeves, walking the way around the lake in bright sunshine.

 Having successfully found some more supplies and kitty boxes at one end of the town and taken a different way out of the lake area and surprised both of us by my sense of direction back to town, which I  was correct in taking...woohoo~....we were off to the recycling place. It is just a series of bins on a side road off the highway leaving town, and is horribly rutted...a bone rattling experience, for sure.
I got back in the car with snow still on my hood, as you can see. It was cold inside the car too!

 Oh dear...We went next door to the Intermarche...we had our Pain cereal (Grain bread) from Lidl...another reason to have gone there, so we were looking for some specifics from the Intermarche also.
Lamb! We found a small leg of lamb that would give us two to three meals for 14.euros and change, which wasn't too bad. We searched through the cookie aisle and found some for gifts and one in particular for us...see further down!
When we got outside, the snow was coming down faster than ever. This is what it looked like from inside the car.

We had been inside the supermarket for about 20 minutes. It was really busy today being Friday, and full of elderly people taking a long time to choose their list of products.
Waz had to put his window down to show how much snow we had collected on the side mirror, after 20 mins.

 The car opposite! lol.

 Because we would have a large circuitous route to get home, if we went via the main highway, we decided to chance the back farm roads nearby. Not a bad choice, as new gravel had been applied at some time during the day, perhaps for traction.  This farmer's wood supply didn't look so dry, suddenly. Normally you could see the highway from here, on this road, but it is snowing too hard for that, this afternoon.

 Yes, it was just after 1pm and time for some lunch. The driveway had been clear when we left, so this is all new snow! Waz went down to clear the mail box. Good thing these bricks give traction on the slope.

 Cookies....well, I don't know that you would call these cookies, but they sure are something special. Yes, another treat for us. Treat they sure are....wow! Pistachio bombs! YUMMMMMMMM! They are called Little Pleasures...Oh my goodness...how can you eat only one?

I made some butternut soup for lunch and we enjoyed that with some pain cereal, toasted.

On our return I had stuffed rugs into the boxes for the cats and placed them on the chairs where the rugs normally would be. I thought (am I nuts?) that the cats would then hop into the boxes and sleep on the rugs in the box instead.....well, any sane person would think this, wouldn't they?? ha! The best laid plans, and all that. Time will tell, but these moggies are creatures of habit.

The cats went in and outside all day. Sometimes they were all in at once, and then there were none inside. It was so much fun watching them cavorting in the snow.
Daylight waned, the temperature went down below freezing yet again, and the snow came down thicker than ever. Then it stopped. Cats went out again while I cooked some dinner...helped by the fact that I had now fed them!
When we were in Bretagne, the two previous years, we had discovered these lovely young chicken breast fillets. They are marginally more expensive down here...I remember them costing no more than 2.5euros a package, but here they are just over 3euros.
We have drawn up a calendar for the 9 remaining days we are here...yes, didn't THAT go fast!...and so we shopped for the appropriate food. We should make it through next week without having to go food shopping again.
This is such an easy and tasty dish. Lardons (Bacon pieces, basically), eschalotes sliced, browned together, add the chicken Aiguilletes (aye gwee ettes), add half a cup of white wine (good stuff) and simmer, Add courgettes and rough chopped chunky mushrooms, a couple of dollops of crème fraiche and allow to simmer until just tender (the veg.). Reduce the liquid on high heat and serve, after adding a few Herbes de Provence, salt and pepper to taste.

 Dinner, coffee and sweet treats all done, and all the cats are now inside...and all before 8pm. Woot!
I have shut and shuttered the back door, so they are inside for the night now.

I just missed a photo of Elsa hanging upside down off their climbing structure. She looks a bit stunned, to be honest, lol.

 Scruffles insists on sitting right beside my left hand, at the computer, when she is inside and I am here at the computer, of course. I put one of the boxes on the table to entice her inside, hopefully to sleep there instead. Hmm...nice try, Mon! She did investigate, as you can see, and I was feeling very smug and hopeful that she would settle in there. No such luck. She is now back beside me. Sigh!

 Meanwhile, Holly, who usually is found inside the fire cavity in the mornings, is sitting and watching the fire, until it sparked, frightening her and she ran somewhere safer.

 Waz has Alfie on his lap. He (Alfie) aggressively turfed Cocoa off said lap, and claimed it for himself.

How can you NOT be amused and fully occupied by these 6 monsters? They are delightful companions, and we will miss them. Animals give you a reason to get up in the morning, and comfort when you need it. They are so intuitive, and giving when we need it most. Keeping track of so many is a full time job, however. We have all fallen into a routine that works for each of us, and they appear to be thriving.
We find, when we animal sit, that we all find new routines, usually different from the owner's schedules, which is fine. As long as everybody is happy and well cared for, we all adapt.

That's it for tonight, folks. We will see what tomorrow brings. We aren't far from the town of Thiviers, which I badly want to visit...so if the roads are clear tomorrow, we might just venture forth. Decisions will be made on the morrow, obviously. Au Revoir.