Last Sunday we went to a Christmans market at Ferriere Larcon, our first in France. We were curious to see what it would be like. We'd been to Ferriere Larcon before to look round the church, and part of the draw of the market was that it was held in, and around the church. The church is well worth a visit, Romanesque in style, it was, according to village records, probably built by the Templars. We had a good look round, there was a very nice smellies stand and a chap selling lovely glassware. We bought a pot of rillettes (potted pork) and enjoyed a vin chaud (mulled wine).
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| Christmas Market at Ferriere Larcon |
Yesterday we meant to go to the market at the chateau La Celle Guenand to pick up some Christmas goodies and have an opportunity to look round the chateau as well.
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| Christmas lights in Charnizay |
Events however over took us. For some time we'd been trying to get wood delivered and after a few leads fell through we found a supplier, right here on our doorstep in the village. Murphy's Law I suppose. Anyway on Friday we found out that the wood would be delivered about 10:30 am the next morning, i.e. Saturday. Great! we said. What wood we had was getting very low--we'd 'inherited' an elderly collapsed pile with the purchase of the house.
10:45 a tractor with trailor arrived with our 6 cubic meters of wood neatly cut into 50 cm buches (logs) followed by the usual little white van--containing the support team of 2 chaps and a young lad. 6 cubic meters is a lot of wood! In fact it was a full trailor. We'd worked out where we wanted it and they very neatly dumped it on the right spot. It was cold with a knifing wind but we'd checked the weather reports and meteo France showed rain for Sunday and Monday. So we had to grit our teeth and get the wood sorted into a proper woodpile and covered with a bache(tarp) straight away.
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| woodpiles |
2 1/2 hrs later all the wood was either stacked into a woodpile covered by tarps or in our woodshed. Feeling pretty shattered we tottered into the house for coffee and a de-frost. We just had enough energy to light the woodburner and collapse on the sofa with our mugs of coffee feeling reasonably pleased with ourselves. We never did make it to La Celle Guenand. We'll go next year if they hold one again.
And today? As I write this the sky is largely blue, the sun is shining and it is still cold and windy but no rain.....
PS It started raining about 16:30 so we are feeling glad we made the effort.
PS It started raining about 16:30 so we are feeling glad we made the effort.
2 comments:
Our woodman delivered our last 2 steres when we were out, and neatly stacked it in the garage by himself! I gave him a nice tip when I paid. La Celle-Guenand was absolutely perishing, and not as many stalls as Ferriere-Larcon. The chateau is well worth a visit though.
Oooh Susan how lovely!! Is that the norm here or do you have an ultra-nice woodman?
We rather assumed we'd have to do it ourselves. Certainly when we lived outside York we and got wood from the Escrick Estate for our multi-fuel burner we had to stack it ourselves.
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