A busy week in paradise

We experienced the most amazing weather this week in St Silvain.










From very hot weather to thunderstorms and then rainbows to beautiful sunsets..





This week saw us setting up a stall at Domeyrot (2kms from St Silvain) - very early in the morning.


We had a lot of items to sell.
A great way to meet people and practice our french.


It was extremely hot....lucky we had taken an umbrella and lots of water.

It was a huge brocante with running and walking races and entertainment by African Dancers with a bit of line dancing thrown in.














That night we were invited to an old water mill that had been restored into a restaurant (Moulin de Breuil).


We were all seated at trestle tables outside with a view over the river.

Absolutely wonderful.

There were 2 pigs on a spit that they were cooking roadside and the band was playing right in front of the entrance to the restaurant.

A perfect evening.





We visited the elderly lady 2 doors up who had invited us over for morning tea when we first arrived. She had been into hospital to have a pacemaker fitted and that is why we hadn't seen her around the village the last few weeks. Anyway she is okay and her son and granddaughter were there when we arrived. It was an interesting conversation. Bill drew a map of Australia to show the granddaughter and Madeleine where we had lived in Australia. We stayed for about 45 mins and have since invited her over for morning tea and to show her our garden.

We are now regulars at the Boussac markets.

Cafe du Sports has put sand on the ground outside.

We are told it is for the workers who can't go on holidays but want to feel like they are at the beach during lunchtime.

They don't close off the main street for the markets so there was a commotion last week when 2 huge trucks were trying to pass each other.
After lots of reversing, pointing and moving of other vehicles, success.It seems to be a regular occurrence as we have seen the same thing happen a few times.

Big hay trucks, harvesters all go through the main street, just passing within centimetres of where we are seated.

We were invited to a 60th Birthday party yesterday at Bord St George.

Absolutely delightful day, although the weather was more like Melbourne with all 4 seasons in the one day.

We met some people that had just purchased their 5th apartment in the French Alps and invited us to visit them between Dec and April.

Michael's new neighbours that couldn't attend the party as they were busy moving in surprised him by arriving in the back of a truck complete with accordion, plastic chairs, singing happy birthday in French. He teared up a bit. (No OHS safety issues here).






We visited Toulx St Croix church on the way to the 60th Birthday party yesterday.
Beautiful 11th century church.

It has four sarcophaguses found from the 7th Century.

After searching through various car yards around the area, we finally found ourselves a newer second hand car. (And no it's not the little white van although it probably would have been a very handy vehicle).

The process is quite different here in France.

We bought the car in Gouzon (10kms away) last Thursday but cannot pick it up until 27 August.

They have to change over the registration, service the vehicle, clean etc before it leaves the car yard.

At least we will know have more confidence when driving around France and into other countries.


We had a music festival in our village from Thursday till Sunday.

The tents were set up in a paddock behind our house.

We went to get our free tickets on Thursday thinking all the events would be held in our village.

But they were spread out over a number of villages.

We were told it was going to be jazz music so were quite excited about it, but found out it was all alternative style music which we are not really into. Anyway the village was buzzing with cars and people for a few days.


I have been busy trying out different cooking ideas and recipes.

It's even harder when I am not sure of which pastries to buy to be able to make pasties.

My third attempt seemed to actually look more like a pastie than the first two attempts.











Walking maps now purchased - can't possibly get lost now.

First walk scheduled for next Sunday (weather permitting).

We are still waiting to hear from the OFII - hopefully this week sometime as we want to start making travel plans to head down to Portugal and Spain.

Jusqu'à mon blog suivant

Wendy