Sunday

What with this not having to drive to the airport, wait 2 hours, fly, then spend another hour or more to get to our destination; I don’t have to get up early. It’s a really nice change. We should do more drive destinations.

Easy drive and quickly to Biaritz for our first charge; it wasn’t really needed but I needed a pee stop and we didn’t want to leave the car too low before parking it up in a strange city for a few days.

Somewhat confusing arrival at our hotel as to where you stop to get in and enter the parking so I was sent off to find out. We are actually in Spain now and I don’t speak any Spanish but off I go expecting they must speak French as the Basque Country (like the Occitaine) is both French and Spanish. I managed to get the gates opened but Jesus, the parking was beneath the hotel and the path was tiny with walls on either side. I have no idea how he got down, a millimetre on each side.

But Matt is a hero and we’ve arrived. Check in and up to our room. Can’t complain about the view but sadly no mini-fridge which we had expected for the price. Can’t let that get you down though.

So off to go have a closer look at the beach and find a drink, obviously the occasion requires something bubbly.

Ah, sunset, how romantic.

Time to see what we can find and Matt has been having a look at restaurants. Seems we can’t get into the one he found so I booked it for tomorrow and we’ll just try our luck tonight. It seems less ‘Spanish’ than we’re used to. Near home you can’t get in before 7 and before 8 is weird. Here you can’t find anywhere after 9.

Eventually we found a watering hole, and we weren’t disappointed actually. It was pretty good, we got a table outside and we were on holiday. I even pretended to be Greek and smashed a glass in celebration – ok, I accidentally knocked one off the table while gesticulating and was mortified, but same thing.

Time to head back to bed. Or at least I would be in bed if there weren’t a million stairs in the way. The price of a good view.

[4 September 2022]

Monday

Matt’s waited as long as possible for me to have my sleep but it’s time to get up, have a wander about and get him some breakfast. We had a light breakfast in the square downtown beside a very beautiful church.

After breakfast we were off for a wander around the highly acclaimed old town. There were some fantastic details and beautiful tiles. On the way back we also stumbled across a film crew doing some sort of [vintage] thing, right outside the Hotel Londres. I wish I knew what they were filming for. We felt rather sorry for the poor actors stood around, suited and booted in the heat.

Time for a late lunch break. Unfortunately my timing is quite often off as most people like to eat their lunch when I think it’s breakfast time. Choices again were limited but thankfully we found a good little place that did a rather good Mojito. Not as good as Cuba, but they were welcoming and had food so we were sold.

After lunch it was time for a swim and to relax on the beach.

Time to head back home and get ready for dinner while watching the sunset.

Finally off out for the dinner that we booked last night. It was a bit of a treat and it certainly didn’t disappoint.

After dinner I needed a nap, as per normal, so time to head back home and get to bed.

[5 September 2022]

Tuesday

Glad we went to bed reasonably early last night as Matt wants to be up before the heat of the day to do the walk up to the mega-Jesus statue on the top of the big hill in the distance.

Back to our favourite little spot over looking the beach for lunch, and thankfully reasonably close to our lodgings, followed by a walk around town. I absolutely loved this beautiful bandstand.

Back to the room to refresh from our day’s excursion. A few relaxed drinks on the balcony and a bit of research later we had a couple of ideas of where to go in the old town to test out their wold famous anchovies. It was late but not too late, so we got our stuff and headed out to see what we’d find. We found a huge mix of things, from the sublime to the, well pretty awful. We decided to go back to sublime and taste almost all of their menu. It was incredible, and I do love anchovies, even Matt who’s not overly keen – as they normally taste ‘too fishy’ – was a fan by the end of this adventure. He did of course have to try the calamari too.

One of the most incredible things was how they ran the place. The tiny place was packed but they knew who had ordered what and nodded to you when it was your serving. There were almost no tables and certainly no numbers, they just kept a list in their head and then you went to the bar at the end and they totted it all up, perfectly. I have no idea how they did it, and how they didn’t have people leave without paying, it was mad, but so incredible. I’d certainly never leave without paying, if only to ensure that I could go back – I’m sure they’d know years later.

After all the excitement it was time to head home as sadly we leave again tomorrow. A short but sweet trip and definitely somewhere I’d recommend.

[6 September 2022]

Wednesday

Matt had me up earlier than I’d have liked as check out wasn’t till 12. Getting the car out however was going to be an issue. As I said before, the road down to the parking garage is incredibly tight, as in millimeters. I’m very glad that I don’t have to do this as there isn’t a chance I could get it out and not only would it be super expensive but so much so that we’d probably be better off replacing the car. He did get a bit of a scratch as he was coming out but hopefully it will buff out with a bit of T-cut.

We decided that since there was no parking in town that we’d head up to St Jean de Luz and have some lunch there while checking out the town. Unfortunately it was not to be. The main parking area was absolutely packed beyond belief and cars waiting all around. It seems that this is not going to happen. We checked another park and again no joy. We may as well get on our way.

Quick stop in Pau to use the Supercharger and grab some lunch. There was a hotel there with a restaurant and actually the food was surprisingly good. Matt had some tuna dish and I had grilled pork and chips – not as fancy as I was hoping but have to admit that it was tasty. The brand name on the hand-dryers here always make me chuckle – I’m sure the next person in would be quite surprised if you did indeed use it to dry your ‘willy-willy’.

In another 1.5hrs we were home. I quite like this driving thing, excluding the time to have lunch, we were home sooner than we’d have even gotten on a plane let alone gone anywhere. I had to get out to open the gates and so walked around the back. Meow bounced across to see me, only halting briefly when Matt got out the car to decide if she should go to him first but I was closest. This was nothing like Reg back in London who’d have a 2 day strop after we got home about our leaving.

One of the first jobs was to check the garden. There’s been a bit of a failure of a couple of the early season strings which had given way and was a two person job to fix it. Eventually however we had them back up and few more tomatoes to boot.

We also had a delivery of some fancy new cups so had to try out the new metal champagne flutes.

With all these tomatoes I needed to work out what we’d do for dinner. Cressida’s lovely olive oil and the sun-dried home-grown tomatoes made a great pasta. It was delicious if I say so myself.

Today is not the day for work but apparently it is for catching up on cuddles. Not me of course, the cat, I hardly got a look in.

[7 September 2022]

Thursday

Early start to the day as we had to be at the dentist for 9:30. There were no other cars parked up but Matt could hear people talking inside which was a good sign. I think it was the first time that she wasn’t running late which we also greatly appreciated having come back specially, and arrived early. She seems to have done a good job in rebuilding Matt’s tooth, as far as we can tell anyway. She was telling ‘us’ some funny stories about English people who don’t speak French which made me laugh – one was based on a Google Translate discussion that concluded on it being absolutely useless for such things, since it kept asking ‘are you a bad person’. Although maybe they hadn’t seen a dentist for a while and had just had their teeth cleaned, which I can kind of understand after my recent visit, but entirely my own fault for not going in two years.

Picked up a few supplies from Carrefour on the way home, and a couple of paper bags that I can now use to hopefully collect some of my sunflower seeds to use next year. We were then into planning the house action. Matt’s had a response from Laforgue, the builder’s merchants up at Valentine, and it seems that they do have stock of what we need and we can collect this afternoon. That’s a relief as the price at the other builders merchant in Luchon right now is absolutely mad.

In preparation however we’re doing some more work testing out the new insulation system that we’re planning to use in Rooms 1 and 2. Before we can start anything however Matt needs to take off the skirting boards and then I need to chip off the ledge of plaster/filler that was sat over them. While Matt started I was finishing my monthly invoicing, now I have the right info from Lambeth to do it. With his job done he’s off to have some lunch while I get to work with the hammer and chisel, we need the insulation to sit as tight as possible to the walls and try, where we can, to reduce the somewhat wavy finish so the boards go in tight and flat.

With the first corner done the builders merchant is now open, so time to head up and see if they really do have what we’re looking for. The beast was brilliant and Matt’s home-made trailer rack worked perfectly, 60 montants and 20 rails all on their way back to our house. We even saw JC on the way home, well technically we followed their car down the road, but with the beast and trailer we had a mission so couldn’t stop to say hi.

Back at the house and the car is unloaded into the hallway – the classic dumping ground for long things. Then back up to Room 1 to ‘finish’ the insulation of the South wall. It’s not quite finished as we need to do above the windows but I think we’ll need to get the framing up first. This time we’re putting the rigid insulation panels behind the metalwork and it’s all a bit different to what we’ve done before but we can afford to lose a little bit more wall space in rooms 1 & 2 than we can elsewhere so in the interests of time [and I believe energy efficiency] this was the decision. So far I am liking it a lot, it’s much quicker and easier than what we have to do in rooms 3 and 4 where the insulation fits between the metalwork instead of behind it.

The East facing wall in room 1 has a number of challenges. 1) the chimney breast and how we mount the bottom of it. The walls will secure to the floor but we don’t want to/won’t do that on the marble fireplace. 2) under the windows. If we use either of the two current systems then the insulation will come out further than the window ledges, and we’re very unlikely to be able to get the same sort of marble that matches the fireplace to replace it. Good news on item 2 is that we don’t need to solve that for the professionals to put the new dropped ceilings in so it’s a problem for another day. [As actually is the chimney but somewhat sooner.]

The cat however has decided to make her home in the basket of tomatoes that we picked yesterday, because cats are very helpful.

Time for dinner and to plan what we need to do next. Pizza is the order of the day as Matt’s hungry and I can’t be bothered to cook, plus we don’t have a lot in. As you can imagine I’ve already got a long list of things to do tomorrow, although still not sure that they are the same as Matt’s list. Time to relax with some wine.

[8 September 2022]

Friday

Back into Room 1 and before we can put up any more insulation we’re going to have to deal with the electricity board in the corner. It appears to only have one connection to it that is running so should be simple. Of course, ‘should be’ is a much broader description in this house than in most.

I was put in charge of checking if the power was still on, while Matt ran around each floor trying every breaker that he could find. With breakers on each floor, and quite a few of them at that, it took rather longer than planned. We then found that it ‘was’ on the same breaker as Room 4 [which incidentally is running the power for the table saw and SDS drill which we need to complete the work.]

After taking off the old power board and seeing the spider work of wires I thought it best that we double check, before we cut them all off. Good thing too, they weren’t all working. However, Room 4 was working earlier when I tested it while Room 1 was off, and so were the switches in the dining room. And so started the next search.

At the end of the search, following the wires, guessing where they might go and trying almost everything; I nominated myself ‘Queen of Reading’. I found the right fuse, it was labeled ‘Hall, Dining and Salon.’ Seems that we changed that one a while back but didn’t realise that it was also plugged into Room 1. We did however find some VERY old wires while checking downstairs though. I do hope that isn’t attached to anything. Since now nothing is actually using this wiring any more we’re able to totally disconnect it and remove the old fuse board from the bedroom.

Back to insulating Room 1. Matt has also decided now how he is going to do above the fireplace – so that’s one conundrum down – but also means we can move forwards more. The last bits were the bits above the windows. Due to the size of them Matt was about to cut up new boards, I however came up up with an alternative. Measuring Room 2 and seeing if we could use the offcuts. We could, by laying them crosswards we could reduce waste and I could get Matt to do an extra bit of work. It was a bit faffy but we got there.

Matt was done by this point but he’s wanted the car fully valeted before acting as chauffeur to JC. I therefore went to start that and then got him to do a bit more by starting the railings. He could only do the bases as he needs by help for the top ones but I’d got more than expected so was pleased about that, and he helped to do the outside of the car so we both won I guess.

I went to make dinner and was suddenly startled by a rather large spider. Time for Matt to take over while I make a list of things that we need to do on the house.

Time for us to get packed and ready to go tomorrow, it’s going to be early – for me anyway.

[9 September 2022]