Sorry it's been a while been too busy working and enjoying the immense heat we've had the last week!

Tuesday 4th August

1st day back at work and Paul set us the task of being reporters! we were to travel to Angouleme for the day (something we'd planned to do on our next days off) and act as tourists then on return write a report for his website. Sounded ok to us so we headed of early and arrived in Angouleme at 8.15 to find nothing was open yet! We were dropped at the Mairie, or hotel de ville which was very pretty and also in the centre. We walked around and got out bearings, looking at all the sights from the outside before all the other toursists swarmed. We found the covered markets which were just opening up and had a quick look around although it seemed to be mainly fresh food and seeing as we had already done the shoppping we left. We also discovered the tourist office and noted its location for future reference and the resistance museum which appeared to be closed down for stock taking!!!!
We soon sat down at a nice little cafe 'le chat noir' and had a typical french start to the day, a read of french 'cosmo' and coffee. Once it hit half nine, which is when most things opened we headed to the tourist office to plan our day. I was very upset to find out here that the chocolate experince was only on wednesdays! We thought we'd do the boring touristy stuff first so headed to Angouleme museum only to find that it was free entry and actually very interesting with 3 floors of archeology in the charente region, art from africa and oceania and fine arts, with a temporary exposition about mammoths and the ice age. Looking at all the bones of animals found locally and at different tyoes of musical instruments used all over the world fascinated all of us and before we knew it we'd spent far too many hours there!
We exited to find we were right next to the cathedral which was beautiful from the outside but just the standard cathedral inside. By this time we were getting peckish and i decided in the way i don that it would be nice to eat by the river. We walked around the ramparts of the town until we could see the river below us, between us and it a very steep slope. We scanned the area for any sign of cafes etc but could not see any! Now tired form walking so far and hungry we turned back towards town to find some food as we didn't want to risk going down to the river then having to climb back up. On the way back to town we found the disney shop and the Faure conservatorium so had a quick peek and photo.
Lunch was quite a mission trying to decide which of the hundereds of tiny cafes and restaurants that filled the now heaving streets of angouleme was the cheapest and nicest. After deciding eventually upon some cafe with a set meal of €9. However upon finishing the meal we realised we had probably made the wrong decision as we had melon for start of which only i liked, then galette which was fine for the others but my smoked salmon was so drenched in lemon that it made me feel ill then crepes for pud, so just the main but sweeter! oh well! it was a nice break to rest our legs and we had laugh about it after. Paul had given us €10 each for lunch anyhow.
After being refreshed we decided to brave the walk down to the river to visit the iother two museums down there the comic strips and the paper mill, both of which are what Angouleme is famous for. The Musee de la bande desinee was a bit deisappointing for me as i didn't understand any of the comics but after realising we'd walked in the back entrance by accident and avoiding paying fior entrance i was quite pleased with myself! The paper mill museum was more interesting with the old mills still standing and a little expedition of all the diffrent types of rizla paper throughout the years, there was even a little quiz which kept us entertined for a a while! such kids!

From here we decided to visit the last few things on our map that we hadn't seen yet namely the tomb of Saint-Cybard, cordeliers chapel and place du minage whatever that was! They seemed relatively near on the map and Angouleme is not that big to walk around anyway so we headed off ins earch of a tomb. After a while with no luck it soon became a running joke that any random bits iof rock were our tomb! We gave up eventually when we reached the chocolaterie, and retired for a beer in the centre. It was here that i studied the map only to have a piece of paper fall out of the booklet that said ' the map is wrong, it should read .....' no wonder we hadn't been able to find anything withour difficulty all day! It was getting late and there was only one train back to chalais so we headed towards the station along the high street and new shopping centres. Eventually finding the station we jumped on the train and headed back, playing the legendary guess what tune i'm humming - always a laugh!

On arriving at Chalais station we were greeted by Paul and Dave who told us that our new arrival Charlotte was expected on the next train from Angouleme. She arrived soon after and we all squished in the car back to he ranch. We had a chilled evening with a BBQ chatting to out new guest before hitting the sack knowing that we had a proper day of work ahead of us!

Wednesday 5th
Up early as it was 36 degrees and we did not want to be working in the heat of the afternoon. I started my work byt sanding down a rafter for one of the rooms, whilst Holly finished the windows. We then set to work on our wall again. Although the wall itself was now built we'd claimed the new corridor/stairway that we'd created as our own project. We made some cement and filled in all the holes around the wall and the room. We then started to perpare the plasterboard for fixing up with glue the next day. This took us most of the morning after quite a few failed attempts and many a 'lets just saw a bit more of the end. ...... oh no look now ots way too small!' amusing to say the least!. We spent the afternoon roasting at the lake although it was far too hot to just lay there so we didn't stay long. After showering and frshening up we then headed to Barbezieux Routier to meet Paul and Christine who had been to Lidls, and the others for dinner. Paul called it truckers, as it is a sevice staion where all the truckers stop. Not the most scenic place in the world but it was cheap good food, so Paul treated us! I had a gd old steak and chips.

Thursday 6th
Another early start and we goton with putting up the plasterboard, now working completely alone, dpoing everything ourselves - we're obviously accomplished trusted builders! We stopped at 10 for a french lesson and then after lunch headed to the lake again, spending most of our time in the water attempting to play volleyball, diving and splashing around like 10 year olds! Jon marinated some chicken for dinner tonight after much discussion but couldn't quite manage the rice for soo many people. First bit of tension builds in the house! I had my first taster of what it would be like to be on big brother - i would be useless as when someone annoys me i cannot hold it in!
Thursday night brought the 2nd concert at the lake with Anais Kael a very talented and amusing musician. She has very explicit rude lyrics which we could only pick out a bit of but we heard enough to relaise that all the stupid english sitting around dancing and loving the music had no clue what she was singing about, an example: my vagina, you love it a lot!

Friday 7th

Suprisingly our last day of work for this week - something tells me we got off quite lightly this week! We spent the day finishing off the plasterboard, filling and filing it down. We then cleared up the upstairs room ready to start work on that next week and had a general tidy of the rest of the building site. Julien came to visit today and we found out that he has hurt a tendon on his arm hence why we hadn't seen him for a while. I made a vegetraian pasta bake for tea and we went down to St Bernards for a drink as Paul, Dave an Tracy had eaten dinner there. Double martini for 2 euros - yes please!

Saturday 8th - the bain of my life!

We had heard that in Chalais there was an international showjumping competition being held with a disco in the eve. Because we didn't want to have to ask for lifts twice in a day the four of us girls (me, holly, jana, and Charlie) decided that to male a day of it we'd cycle, after all it is only 8k to chalais or so we were told!

Luckily it was quite a cloudy day, though a tad on the muggy side and we set off about 11 after a lazy morning. There is one direct main road to Chalais but its quite busy so we thought we'd take the back routes through the woods, which Paul had mentioned before. Unfortunately for us Paul had gone out to work early and so we hadn't seen him. We therefore cycled to Brossac centre and looked at the cycling map there. We worked out the best way and headed off. After 45 minutes of cycling we realised that it was goinna be a bit farther than 8k and that the way back would be a mission as most had been downhill so far. We were on 4 bikes, charlies wheel was not tightened enough and it wobbled side to side when she got ay speed up and mine and janas (brand new bikes) were excrutiatingly painful to sit on after 10 mins. We eventualy arrived amd entered via the competitiors gateway to hide our bikes behind the big lorries as we had no locks.

We watched the horses for a while, which was pretty cool, had some chips, slush puppies and chilled out, but soon the heat got to us and we hadn't stopped sweating since we'd left. We sat in the shade and ate lunch but to no avail. We took a walk into town where it seemed to be cooler but soon worked out that we had better start heading back soon eas it would take us a lot longer to get back and we had the discoteque at 8! After a bit more horsey watching we started what we had all been waiting for the long ride home in the heat!

2.5 hours later we arrived back at La Giraudiere after what i can saftely say was not the highpoint of my stay here. It was horrible, seemingly constant uphill riding round in circles, many stops including the Bardenac restaurant where our fav frenchie 'Raymond' turned up for his daily round of the pubs no doubt, smelling lovely as always.

There's is a nice little of frenchies that we've got to know since being here, mainly cos they're on the committee for Brossac and its events. There's Jean-Michel 1 and his gf Indriana, who loves telling us depressing stories. Albert who likes Christine, and Jean-Michel 2 who likes making Albert jealous by flirting with Christine! Raymond is my personal fav tho who is not actually on the committee but goes to everything just for the drink! He recently decided to buy some new cologne to cover up the smoky, stale alcohol smell which i guess is a good thing, but someone needs to teach him how much to put on cos it's soo over-powering you smell of it for the rest of the day!

Anyway we arrived back safe and sound, even surviving jurassic park, but we were far to knackered to even imagine dancing so we sacked it off and spent the eve eating casserole and chilling.