I can’t believe I’ve already been here for over a week. Time flies when you’re having fun…
Here’s what happened so far: I arrived Monday last week in the afternoon, at 15.15pm exactly. I was terribly tired – it was a long drive from Stuttgart and that mainly because Google Maps kept sending me down the tiniest little roads. It was of course very nice to cruise through the vineyards of the Bourgogne, up and down the valleys, but also quite exhausting because of all the slow vehicles you are stuck behind while towing a caravan.
After Jill, the estate agent, showed me around and I shed some long overdue tears of joy, I finally got the caravan up and bed ready. It wasn’t easy, as it has to be completely level to be put up and I manoeuvred myself into a tight corner under giant laurel trees. Nice spot, but not even near level. I managed in the end but it took a while. I’ll probably never ever get the caravan out but it was totally worth it.
It’s quiet and peaceful here. Apart from the wildlife and the occasional airplane (I just can’t seem to get rid of those!). At night, you can hear owls, squirrels and other still unknown creatures and in the morning there’s a few woodpeckers knocking away on the nearby trees. You can hear the stream trickling down from the source to the lake and the leaves of the birch trees in the wind. Not much apart from that. Pure heaven.
I’ve had some troubles for the first two days … a water pipe in the house had a leak and I had trouble fixing it and getting electricity to the caravan was another challenge. Who would have known that they have two different plug systems here in France, one grounded the other not grounded, and that I bought the wrong extension cable (the chance of that was 50/50 so yes – I got a bit miffed there!). I kept wasting precious time driving to and from the shops which are thankfully only 20 mins. away but you do get distracted by looking at other stuff you might need in the future so a trip always takes more than a few hours. Thankfully, Barrie showed up on day 3 and sorted me out. Now we have electricity in the caravan and running taps in the house. Hooray – it feels nice being back to civilisation.
So ….. finally some time left to check out the land. Everything is seriously overgrown and wild. Brambles and nettles and waist high grass, dead tree branches overhanging the driveway and what looks like paths. It looks like no one has done anything for the last ten years. Jill says it’s only been two years. Let’s meet in the middle, shall we.
We managed to create a little path down to the lake and the stream and even found a little waterfall hidden under huge amounts of bramble. We took the sickle and secateurs and did a jungle adventure tour through the wood land and to the other side of the lake. There’s mainly birch, chestnut and oak trees, a few banana plants as well (don’t ask me what they do here!) and very old and terribly overgrown fruit trees in the veg plot area. Apples, pears, plums, figs, etc.
There’s lots of wildlife and we got to meet Mr. Coypu in the lake and the basin where the source water collects. Apparently that’s not so great news as coypus are an invasive species and destroy plants and habitat for other animals but he is very cute. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see … observe and hope for the best.
This land is beautiful. It has huge potential. It will be a big project and keep me busy for the rest of my life. I will turn it into a paradise for insects, animals and a few selected humans. Watch this space :-)
(I’ll do another blog on the house in the next few days. We’ve started clearing it out yesterday
