Premian

So after one hell of a long day following our arrival we sank into our beds, and “we didn’t need any rocking”! - this became Martins saying of the week.
I swear the next day dawned minutes after we’d gone to bed. The discovery that our clock tower seems to strike on the hour every hour did nothing to disturb our sleep.

We knew that although the house was partly furnised we had to do some fairly serious shopping and had deliberately rented a hatchback to transport our cargo! We promised ourselves that due to being in France if we shopped Friday and Saturday we could have Sunday off. How wrong can you be? On the Friday we trudged off down to Beziers to begin purchasing all that we needed, we got home again about 6pm with the car solidly loaded and happily unloaded all our new purchases.

Saturday - yes you’ve guessed it - like true Brits we hurtled off towards Montpellier and Ikea for some flat pack furniture for our bedroom. Sunday - that day of rest was spent busily putting the units together. Still the house was starting to take shape, but if theres one thing I wanted in France it was outside space, often in short supply in the villages, we had our outside space but alas no garden furniture for me to sit on to enjoy my dinner and local wines - that took care of that days shopping, table, chairs, relaxers, parasols. So next morning after breakfast al fresco, off again down the road to Bezier, once again a car packed solid with stuff that you take for granted at home, once again arriving home early evening. The neighbours must have been bemused and wondered where on earth we were putting everything - had our modest home got the internal dimensions of the tardis? But did it all end there? Not quite - no washing machine and I’m certainly not going to continue to hand wash for ever more. Yes you’ve guessed it, the well travelled road to Bezier, granted the route along the N112 is pretty and the towns and villages enchanting but I want to spend the days wandering around them leisurely shopping for knick knacks please!!!

The full week was to continue fairly much in the same way - shortly after our return to the UK it had been planned that my Mum and stepdad Ken were coming out for two weeks so that Ken could watch the tour de france arrive in Carcassonne and then set off from Bezier. Best laid plans had been upskittled though when Ken had to go into hospital and it was still unknown if they’d make it or not, but we wanted to have our little home fully equipped for them hoping they’d make it.

We did manage a little r and r, enough to whet our appetite for our next visit when we could enjoy the fruits of our labour. We briefly visited Olargues (pictured below) and were here when Anna rang from the UK to tell us she’d got her exam results for her first year Masters in HRM - well done Anna! We are keen to revisit Olargues again to take our time, stop for lunch and do some shopping.

As we drove through Roquebrun (pictured below) we promised to ourselves to return as soon as we could. All in all, despite all the hard work we had an excellent week and really enjoyed ourselves, this is just the start of things to come…