The barn welcomed its first independent visitor just before New Year; independent, that is, in the sense that we were not there to welcome him ourselves.
It's a very good thing that he is a good friend of very long standing, as he is not just visitor #1 (family doesn't count), but guinea pig #1. As luck would have it, it has fallen to him to test the heating for the first time, and let's just say it has not been a walk in the park.
Fortunately, for heating commissioning purposes, the daytime temperatures have been very low this last week - it was -6 yesterday morning - yet friend C has been sweltering in tropical, clothes-optional heat, with doors and windows flung open to enhance the sauna effect. You see, the thermostat seems to be ineffective, or the pump, or, oh, who cares? - the bottom line is that the boiler is massively powerful and needs to be reigned in a little. A lottle.
I guess it's better than feeble heating, huh?
So C has been liaising valiantly between us and Benoit the plumber, keeping notes and delivering heating bulletins, all the time enslaved by the pellet-hungry boiler which has yet to learn who's boss.
In between saunas, he has managed to find time to go for long walks, cycle to the village, and even drive to Objat (the car started for him!). He has also managed to take some rather lovely photos, so, without further ado, feast your eyes on these images of the Barn in Winter:
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| Freezing fog |
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| Frozen rain chains |
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| Local spiders have mastered the art of slow - very, very slow - crochet |
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| Brunch |
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| View from upstairs |
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| Lakes of mist at dawn |
We are squirming that C has had to pioneer his way through his visit. G is particularly frustrated to be so far away while all this pipes/valves/thermostat blahblah is going on: he'd like to be commissioning it himself. Me? I just want it to work at the touch of a button. Please hide all those dials and manifolds from my tender gaze.
Tom has been in to tweak the rain chains (hands up all who noticed the double lengths of chain in the photo above - that's OK, I did not expect a forest of hands; truly, I am not disappointed at all) and bury an electrical conduit to the dépendance to replace the original one, which was somehow, er, lost during driveway construction...There's been a lot of head scratching about that, I can tell you.
Our next visit will be at the end of February, which coincides neatly with the sixth anniversary of our first sight of La Fromagerie in Feb 2011. This time, we are planning to do Absolutely Nothing, but we shall see. One thing written in indelible ink in the diary is 'Collect daughter C from Limoges'... :)
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