I am planning to rebuild our site from now until Christmas to give it the look and feel of a holiday information website rather than predominantly a blog.

I know from our daily stats that we have many friends that like to keep up with progress so the blog will remain active and I will continue to post all of the building and disasters as they happen (lol!)

So if you land on the site one day and you see a new home page, do not be put off, it means I have put the blog behind the scenes a bit and the link will be in the sidebar.

I want to start building more information about the region together with attractions and places of interest to visit and I will need to play around a bit until I get it right so please bear with me.

Typepad, who host this site, have added more functions to the pro version of thier blogs so I do hope, if I can get my head round some coding that I can hopefully make thinks look a bit more professional.

A little while back I switched to Availcheck Calendars after Rentcalendar seemed to stop trading.

Unfortunately, Availcheck, the free version anyway, will block calendar access after 78 hits per month which wasn't that cool really because out of the hits we get every day, the calendar seems to be one of the popular places to check out.

I then switched to Google Calendars and I must say that they are really good. However, one very interesting point that is worth a mention is the searchability.

Donna and I are extremely pleased that we have managed to book so many weeks this year. I think we are now up to eleven. This is only our first full season and I am delighted that it is going so well.

What is even more pleasing is the feedback after the guests have left so it was really nice to receive this email last week.

We are now starting to book September so if you are looking to come to France in September of October then now is the time to contact us.

[email protected]

Now that the summer has picked up it looks like many people are looking to get away from the torrential memories of the English summer.

Most of southern Europe has experienced the exact opposite of the British summer and are enduring almost life threatening high temperatures.

We are still wading through jobs both big and small and ticking off our imaginary list.

All the of the barn is completed as far as jointing the walls and plastering is concerned. I now have to make three windows and a door but also in the meantime we still have to source the tiles for the floor.

It has not been as wet as the UK and we do seem to be able to string together a week or so of warm clear weather which is interrupted with a couple of gloomy days. These gloomy days bring their fair share of heavy showers and I am delighted to report that my makeshift gutter has worked and we do not get any water in through the tiles now. We are still awaiting Mr Janouix to bring the estimate for re-roofing which the insurance company has agreed to look at but after nearly six weeks we still wait.

One thing to bear in mind when planning work here in France is the time it takes to get some outfits to do anything. It is all well and good laughing about artisans turning up three weeks late to do a job and how laid back and slow the pace of life is but when it comes to running business' it is hard to justify such a lack of customer care.

Summer seems to have finally arrived!

Late yesterday afternoon, the sky cleared and the sun shone without a single cloud in the sky. This morning we have awoken to the same. Lets hope we are in for a longer spell this time especially as the sunflowers are now in full bloom.

We are completely surrounded this year apart from the small grass field next to our track and it really does look a picture. It is the kind of thing we used to dream about when we came to France on holiday.
Even many of our neighbours seem to be growing Sunflower and when you drive out of our track there are the bright faces flanking on either side with a smile.

I have been doing a little research on the history and origins of sunflowers and uncovered a few facts that are very interesting. I have posted it on Landscape Juice as it seemed more apt.

Do you remember that I posted about Agloco the scheme that it claims will make its members money?

Well they finally got the view bar operational and according to my online referral calculator I will receive 156.00 dollars per month when it starts and I am in the top 37% of referrers.

Hmmmm! I will not believe a thing until I see the colour of the money and will let you know if it works.

In the meantime you can check it out for yourself and because the revenue is accumulated from advertising revenues there is nothing to pay out and absolutely NO risk to you what so ever. All you have to do after signing up is get some friends to sign up and surf the net.

Visit the Agloco site here website here

The previous incarnation which was too popular for its own good paid out $100,000,000 before it was forced to fold. The new model, because it has a sustainable advertising payment model backed by the likes of Google will make this work they say.

The highest ranked referrer has over 64 thousand members and it it works will be an instant millionaire!!

Agloco

thanks to Alex of Podcast Junky for pointing out that I had missed the http:// from the link. Knowing my luck 100,000 people have passed me by:)

I am very pleased to say that the jointing (crepie) has now been completed in the kitchen and I am absolutely ecstatic that I have solved the mystery of the water invasion.

Firstly the water. As originally suspected, the sheer weight of water coming from the large barn which is attached at 90 degrees as I illustrated in the video of the 5th June.

I placed a channel of upside down canal tiles in the gulley that the water was falling from the roof and it has done the trick. It is a temporary measure and when I get time, certainly before the winter, I will put up some oversized galvanised guttering.

As far as the barn is concerned we achieved another milestone. All of the internal walls which were previously mud joints have now been jointed using Renocal (a natural lime product) and building sand.

My next task is to ease all of the right angle joints on the block work which forms the inside skin of the wall before plastering with the Lutece 2000 lime plaster.

We could all be forgiven for thinking that summer is going to by-pass us this year after such a dreadful June.
I have just returned from the UK after a week playing golf in Cornwall and I must say it was very wet for 75% of the time.

St Mellion, the previous home of the Benson and Hedges International Open, was almost un-playable last Sunday and I am sure, if we had not all paid for it we would have turned round and gone elsewhere.

The course is built on clay and many of the fairways are built into valley's and hollows so the water just runs into the low areas.

It was fun though and nice to get away and have a break from the building and blogging.