VADOULOU

Hi Everyone.
Well this is the last post of 2022, with not much to report except that just before Christmas the walls started going up, which is real progress. A couple of photos attached.
The builders are closed this week between Christmas & New Year, but will be cracking on next week.
Bank holidays here (or jours fériés in French) are quite different. They are predetermined by date & are taken on the day they fall. And so this year they fall on Sunday & that’s it. When we first came here Christmas wasn’t celebrated in the same way. It was very low key, with New Year more prominent, but with the dreaded globalisation/Americanisation of the world & the power of supermarkets, it’s now the same here as everywhere else. A few years ago Christmas Eve & Boxing Day were ordinary working days & the builders would have been working this week.
There are some upsides though because if the jour férié falls on a Monday or Friday then it’s a long weekend & if it falls on a Tuesday or Thursday then lots of people “faire le pont” or bridge the gap to make it a really long weekend.
Anyway, hope that you enjoyed your Christmas & we wish you a very happy & very peaceful New Year.
See you in 2023.

For the foundations the architects & builder wanted solid rock & so the JCB/pile driver started. They went to different depths & had about finished when Louise & I turned up on site for our regular visits to find the digger driver somewhat unnerved!
Although we’d had a site survey done before we bought the site & the architects engineers had done a thorough survey again whilst planning the founds, the pile driver had suddenly disappeared into a large fault in the rock which turned out to be the entrance to a natural underground cave.
Vaour is well known for its caves – there are some from the post office next to our old house which went into the park next door & also up to the Commanderie on top of the hill. There’s one from the back of the church which goes down under the gendarmerie etc. But this one was completely unknown to the spéléologues/cavers around here.
Luckily we know a local caver & he turned up over that weekend with a plan of the other caves + a team from Albi & down they went. They mapped it out, measured it & tried to connect up with other caves. There’s fresh air but all the tunnels have been blocked over the years with debris, but they’re sure that they could get through in time. Talk about being excited! Them rather than us!!!!
The whole village has been to admire, laugh & commiserate with us!
It drops about 10 m & then branches out under the house but deep enough not to be a problem. The real problem is what to do with it–no more suggestions thanks, we’ve heard them all.
It’s at the very extreme corner of the garage & the garage is fundamental to the access & flow of the house. It can’t be moved.
We’re getting close to a solution but it’s Christmas & New Year now & the builders & architects are taking this week in between as holiday.
It looks as though we will sink a circular concrete drainage pipe down into the entrance, fill in around it & then cap it so that it can be accessed if necessary. The problem is stabilising this without impacting on the build. The other problem is additional cost, but we have no choice.
We’ve attached some photos of the entrance, some from inside (we really love the formation which looks like ray fins) & some plans. Millions of years evolution here!!!
The cavers are still busy at it before we start the work.

Once we knew that the house sale was completed (Jan 2022) we had the site cleared of it’s completely overgrown hedges etc & gained lots of square metres.
Then in autumn we had a small wall built to close off the corner as you arrive at the site. It’s a very busy little corner during the school terms!
Then the site hut was delivered & the site “secured”.
After that the heavy machinery arrived & the fun started! We had visited all of the neighbours to warn them that we were starting the building & that access beyond us might at times be difficult. It’s a very narrow road going nowhere but to a few houses & the forest. Obviously we already know them & they were fine.
However, we’ve had an incredibly long & hot summer & autumn, with no storms & no rain & of course it started pouring down for days on end. Suddenly the site looked like a scene from the films Warhorse or 1917. The road was a complete mess, & will be for a while more yet, but it’s drier again now.

Hi Everyone.
What at the time we felt was a great play on words for our trip to India (Indoulou) isn’t really appropriate for a new house building blog. And so the title VADOULOU, courtesy of Theo, was born.
The project started some years ago, involving buying some land, which here in Vaour was a real challenge in itself, selling our house, our architect pal Brian designing a new single storey house just before his family significantly expanded, which meant we had to hand over to different architects just as Covid & the war in Ukraine pushed prices through the roof.
Thankfully it’s coincided with me recovered from my heart issues & having a new hip.
Time to start a real adventure. Starting with a view of the site, just behind the school,the village lavoir & close to the church.

Everything went well & we arrived home more or less on schedule. The flight out of London had a short delay but it was heartening to arrive back in Toulouse to warmth & sunshine & a smiling Theo waiting for us. We dumped our bags & made sure that we had hot water etc. & then walked down to Theo & Marietta’s for an apèro & a bite to eat.

We came home & were in bed by 22h30 & both went to sleep straight away. Doug continued in this mode until well into today but I woke up about 1am & had several hours awake. Normally during a long holiday I wake up during the night at least once thinking ‘where am I? but that didn’t happen in the States. However, it happened last night & I had no idea where I was. I remember looking at the bedroom door, thinking how strange that we had gone to sleep leaving a hotel room door open so I carefully shut it. I then struggled to find the bathroom & any light switches & when I did eventually illuminate things was mightily impressed that there was a bidet too! Then I think that I woke up & realised where I was so could open the bedroom door again.

One other bit of excitment today was when I went to hang out some washing, I suspected that we had some bees swarming & settling behind the shutters in the barn. This has happened once before when we have been away.  Luckily this time we caught it early & even luckier was that Bernard the local beekeeper was at home. He came round straight away with a mini hive & all his equipment. Apparently the knack is to recover the queen bee & all the workers will follow. He spent a couple of hours persuading them to enter his hive & then he came back several hours later & is reasonably confident that it has been a successful operation so he has taken them away & is a happy beekeeper with a new swarm.

We are just about unpacked & the washing is done, just the ironing to tackle now. We have no food to speak of but the freezer threw out something tonight to sustain us & tomorrow is a another day. 

It has been a great holiday & once again we are grateful to our travel company, Audley, for their skill & expertise.