Finally we have a kitchen...

It was a very exciting moment at the end of last week when we succeeded in tiling the kitchen floor and aquiring a an ikea kitchen, all in 5 days! After a while moving around a half rennovated house feels tedious, but now I really feel I'm sitting in a real live kitchen for the first time. The circle of spots looks cool on the ceiling and our origional wooden table that was left in the house fits in well. Must admit I'm not a big fan of grouting floor tiles though, must buy knee pads.

So what about the climbing? Well I have a little project on our village crag which is 5-10 mins walk from the house. It's around 7c+ we think but haven't been able to track down a topo to the place as yet. It's around 25m and overhangs by about 4-5m. It's great when in the shade, just have to balance the diy with the climbing time in the right conditions. John onsighted a more overhanging one, not far from a bees nest - they seem tame though. Yesterday at Genat crag a French climber gave me a lizard, which was pretty tame and by far the best climber there. There is a fantastic 7b+ called Crossroads which is highly recommended if you go there. Now John is back it's much easier to get out climbing. I met a local, Patrick, at the crag the other day so he could be someone else to climb with. We have been resisting the temptations of 'the cave' (Sabart) - the very long 30+ metre roof - in the hope that we can get fitter first. 'Ganage' is core body strengh, so I discovered from Laurance G Haston. Actually I think it would be best to just get on it because the moves are so wierd and funky and the strengths needed more akin to repeatedly doing front levers.

And would you believe it - in Ikea in Toulouse we met Paul Reilly and his wife Lisa. Hadn't seen him for years, he was from Bristol and now has a house in St Antonin Noble Val. An incredible coincidence. Robyn Erbesfield also has a place there and can be seen teaching large hoards of American kiddies there from time to time. Well that's it for now. Back off to England for a couple of days - will post some pics of the climbing around here soon.

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Comes the grim reaper!

With all this work on the house, interspersed of course with plenty of cragging action, we returned one day to realise that the garden out the back had been having a bit of a grow. Quite a lot of one really, the grass was above our knees and some of the weeds were nearly head height.
Off to buy a petrol strimmer (it's a big garden!), which promptly broke within five minutes use. But wait! What's this lurking beneath the ivy in one of the outbuildings? It was a scythe, and a big and very sharp one at that.
Now my only experience of scythes came from pictures of the grim reaper and from a classic line in Blackadder, but I couldn't help getting excited at the idea of going all agricultural, so out I went one fine morning.
Three hours later I had aches in places I didn't know I had muscles and I had sunstroke. But I'd scythed my way through what seemed like acres of rampant undergrowth and I could collapse in an armchair knowing that a)I could feel smug about goung all manual and traditional, and b) it would be much easier next time when I'd been back to the shop and replaced the strimmer!

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