On 24^th January, with great excitement, we trundled off to the mairie with our four dossiers and pack of five supplementals all neatly ensconced in cheapo plastic folders (which actually didn’t look too cheap!)   The lady there checked through the dossier, we assume to ensure we’d filled it in and more importantly signed it.  To her delight/amazement we said she could keep our fancy folders!  Now we are in possession of our Receipt of Deposit and we wait!  If we don’t hear anything in the first month it means we have actually filled it in adequately and they don’t need any further information – so two weeks and counting!

Unfortunately this waiting thing is something Steve is getting worse at!  All he wants to do it chop down trees singing The Lumberjack Song by Monty Python or sit around a campfire singing Kumbayah!  He keeps threatening to buy his chainsaw and air-rifle but so far I have managed to delay him, (although I think our recent visit to the shooting and fishing shop may have put him off slightly – tight git!! Good thing too as I don’t like the idea of him having a gun!)

Once again Alex has managed to show us up as being technically inept in this modern world and in true ’Grand Designs’ fashion he has made us an animation of what the property should look like using some computer game software, if you click on the link below it should take you to YouTube!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHbU3Q5CY2g

As we have so much time on our hands we have spent a couple of afternoons (with a glass or two) creating our preliminary job list which Steve thinks should take us to Easter.  I have a feeling he doesn’t have a clue when Easter is, or perhaps he’s just not telling me which year!

• Move caravan & set up (folding caravan/trailer tent kindly given to us by the current owner – should come in useful for any number of things!)
• Remove tree from front door (my job)
• Remove lean-tos
• Remove all internal stuff (i.e. wheel trims, old bikes etc)
• Allocate storage locations for:
  • Stone
  • Wood
  • Soil
  • Clay etc
• Build workshop
• Stabilise main building with accro-props (Etai metal)
• Remove trees growing under buildings
• Create driveway
• Dig out trench (between building and road)
• Fix big cracks on east and west walls
• Reveal all stone plinths
• Fix all stone plinths and repoint
• Cut down oak and cherry trees and square off
• Remove roof tiles
• Cut down south wall of main building
• Add lintel for new front door
• Dig hole for septic tank
• Make wooden frames
• Create footings between buildings
• Create new stone plinths between buildings
• Make roof.

This is not in any particular order and we can’t do any of the italicized ones until we receive our ‘Permis’ but it looks easy enough!!

We took a trip on Thursday to the big ‘Brico-Depot’ at Plerin (part of the same group as B&Q by the looks of all the Cooke and Lewis and Diall products on sale). He stopped me from looking at lighting, kitchens and soft furnishings as he reckons we need to get the walls and roof sorted first – what a spoilsport.  We were however pleasantly surprised by the price of the Velux windows!

We had also planned to go to the Emmaus shop/depot.  Emmaus is a large charity organisation with two shops in St Brieuc.  We had visited the one closest to the town centre where Steve had bought a book on wood construction (in French). Their other premises were slightly more out of town and, we thought, a bit far to walk!  So we had checked out bus timetables and discovered we could take a bus from Plerin or we could walk it in about half an hour.

Our bus had got us into Plerin around 11 and by the time we had wandered around Brico-Depot , the shooting and fishing shop and a garden centre we thought we should find somewhere for lunch.  Emmaus didn’t open until 2pm so we had ample time.  Eating out is not easy for me now compounded by the fact that Steve is having a break from bread!  Steve’s first suggestion was MacDonalds (quick and easy) but I wasn’t keen so we walked into a ‘boulangerie’ (bakery) and walked out when I couldn’t decide what I wanted – none of the sandwich fillings were appropriate and I was annoyed that Steve wouldn’t get anything in there anyway.  So we thought we might as well try MacDonalds although I was still apprehensive.  We walked in and you had to order on a touch screen (another techno headache – although made easier by the fact that we could read it in English).  Unfortunately I couldn’t guarantee that the mozzarella wrap didn’t have some ham somewhere close by (ham and cheese is very popular over here) and the temperature inside the building was too bloody hot!  So halfway through our perusal of the menu we left that too!  So it was off to E Leclerc for a bag of crisps –I am a cheap date!

As it was coming up to 1.30, and the weather was pretty good – a bit windy but sunny, we decided to walk to Emmaus.  Plerin is on top of a hill (approximately 112m above sea level), St Brieuc is on top of another hill (approximately 80m above sea level) and the Emmaus shop is in the valley in between at about 10m above sea level.  We checked out our route on my phone and set off.  The decline was pretty steep but, for once, didn’t terrify the life out of me.  It must have given me a bit of a worry though as when Steve asked if I would want to cycle down it I said no!  Although to be fair I think that was more the condition of the road – loads of potholes – rather than the steepness of the hill!! Yeah, maybe and perhaps the T-junction at the bottom put me off too!!

We arrived at Emmaus just before two and were surprised to see that a lot of their items were outside – we looked at each other, both thinking the same thing – do they leave them out all the time?  There was quite a lot of ‘stuff’ there, ranging from beds, furniture, electrical goods, crockery and old tat.  Whilst walking around we noticed someone emptying water out of some of the items – answering our question as it hadn’t rained that morning.  It appears that the shop near the town centre gets the better items and everything else ends up here.  After about 10 minutes we had seen enough and decided to head to the bus stop – we had planned to go up to St Brieuc to catch the bus home (I didn’t fancy walking back up to Plerin!).  We arrived at the bus stop to discover that there was a 20 minute wait for the bus.  As the weather was really nice I suggested to Steve that we just get on with it and walk up to St Brieuc.  (We had done this part of the walk once before back in the summer so I knew how hard/easy it was!)  Steve said he didn’t mind waiting for the bus if I didn’t fancy the walk (he really does love me!) but when we checked the timetable for the bus back to St Quay we discovered that we would miss the next one by about 10 minutes and would have to wait around for about an hour so our decision was made – we had 20 minutes to get there!  Amazingly I only had to stop about three times (to catch my breath and remove my coat and pass it to pack-horse Monaghan) and we arrived at the bus stop in good time!  The bus we caught back doesn’t stop at the port so we had another little walk back from Casino (only about 10 minutes and pretty much downhill all the way!) – better than hanging around with nothing to do in St Brieuc!!  By the time we got back to the boat I was regretting my choice of socks – my supposedly soft hiking socks squeezed into my slightly tight trainers with possibly too-long toe-nails was not a good combination and it took a good couple of hours to get some decent circulation back into them!  Another day of shopping without spending money!