Author: Doug Riley

Well the weather is not being kind, with freezing temperatures every night for the past 3 weeks & forecast to continue for another week. At the moment no-one is panicking about the time lost, but….
Firstly the “down” part. We’ve been wondering how they were going to block the cave entrance, but have a look at the huge rocks delivered to site & due to be dropped in next week. They should do the job.
And you can’t miss the crane which has now been assembled & used. As you come into the village from St. Antonin it looks to be taller than the church spire. Will try to take that picture on a clear day, but in the meantime here’s a couple of pictures.

At last, looking at the sunset tonight, it looks like it might be about to thaw and we can start again. 2 weeks of snow on the ground is pretty unusual for us, but as we’re at the concreting part with big cement mixer wagons coming & going we still need the night time temperatures to get above freezing.
There’s a saying “Béton en hiver, maison misère”, & clearly we want to avoid that!
Anyway, what a glorious sunset.

Well, in cricket parlance snow stops play in Vaour.
This did once happen in a county game at Buxton at the start of the season, & now it’s happened here. Snow in the evening, sunshine & melting snow & then the same again. The mornings are lovely, but it’s freezing cold.
It’s just as well, as the massive grue/crane on site needs 3 phase electricity & EDF/Enedis are about as efficient as I’m led to believe are BT these days. A week on & we’re still on the roundabout, reporting our story to someone different, each working from home, promising that it’s now sorted & then lo & behold, off we go again. Looking at the forecast we can’t see there being much progress next week either.

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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.