10 days in Duras

I think it's about time I wrote an update! I've finally finished my assignment (keep your fingers crossed for my result) and we've left the incredible exploding house today and we're heading to Centre Parcs for four days.

While we've been in Duras, we've been on some great sightseeing trips, enjoyed feeling a little bit like a local in this little country town, spoken lots of French, and even managed to just relax and do nothing for a while. Sound idyllic? It was pretty good!

Our time in Duras started off with warm bright sunshiny days, followed by much cooler evenings, which required us to light the nerve-wracking fire then just wait to see if the house would feel like it was falling in on us again. Thankfully it didn't. Their second repair job seemed to do the trick and in spite of a few breath holding moments, everything has remained structurally sound for the rest of our stay.

The second half of our visit here brought a thick mist which hung in the air until approximately 3.30pm, when it would miraculously clear for the whole hour and a half or so before it got dark. It's only now, as the kilometers of Tarmac build up between us and Duras, and we travel over peaks and through valleys, all the while experiencing dramatic fluctuations in the weather, that we realise that perhaps the mist was just cloud, trapped in a basin where Duras sits. Anyway, it wasn't the sort of weather that encouraged you to venture out and explore your surroundings much, especially with the narrow country roads with sharp bends and deep ditches, frequented by many an elderly French gentleman in a flat cap and a beaten up old white van or 2CV, who would appear from nowhere and drive down the centre of the road to counteract the effect of one too many vers du van rouge at lunchtime.

Duras is a really pretty little town, surrounded by rolling hills covered in row upon uniform row of vines. The region is well known for wine aling with prunes, fois gras and duck amongst other things. Duras has everything I love about a town; a great market on Mondays, which we spent about 45 minutes walking around, and I'm told it's much bigger in the summer. I'm sad that the Christmas market doesn't happen until mid December, because I'm sure it would have been good. It has a reasonable butchers, and a fantastic boulangerie - I'm ashamed to say I can't remember the name of it, but if you ever find yourself visiting, it's the one that's away from the town square, near the war memorial and the town clock with an arch and a road running below it. It was a mere stones throw from the exploding house, so we were regular customers most of the mornings of our stay.

Duras from the top of the Chateau

Duras has a few restaurants and cafes, a reasonable sized supermarket as well as a small independent market and a tourist office. We found a small children's playground, hidden somewhat, near the schools, and not in the most impressive state of repair, but somewhere to swing and slide, non the less. After San Sebastian, where there was a playground every 100 metres or so, I think the littlest hobo was a little bit disappointed though.

It's a great place for English-speaking tourists to visit - I never quite worked out whether the French dialect spoken there is beautifully slow and easy to understand, or whether the locals were just particularly kind natured, but I enjoyed speaking French here, and there is a large British expat community who are eager to interact and help out, should you require. There's a strong feel of community, and a friendly nature to the town too - we felt welcome!

The jewel in Duras crown is the Chateau. It stands on the edge of the main town, an imposing landmark watching over the valley below. We visited with low expectations and were most impressed by what we found. A self-led tour, following the guide card you are given on entry takes you through the depths of the chateau, where the servants would have worked, up through the opulent living space above, to the top of the tower, where we enjoyed a 360 view of the town and the surrounding valleys. There were a couple of surprises along the way, and the littlest hobo really loved the whispering room, where two people stand in opposite corners and can chat away, hearing each other clearly, while anyone else in the room is oblivious to their words.

Shhhhh, it's a secret! What a novel way to get a toddler to practice whispering.

Duras was a great base for visiting Bergerac, the unique and exceptionally picturesque St Emillion, and some of the surrounding Bastide villages, but I think I've bored you enough for now, so those are a story for another day!

Baby, it's cold outside

I'm in the depths of trying to submit a module for my photography course at the moment, so not a lot of time for blogging between that and our sightseeing excursions, but I am saving up lots of exciting things for the coming days. In the meantime, I just wanted to share this with you:

Yesterday afternoon.....

And....

This morning

Brrrrrrr - The thick fog hung throughout Duras right up until about 3pm, when we had bright clear skies but still pretty cold temperatures for about an hour. Thank goodness the heating system was fixed the other day!

Things that go BANG in the night

After our restless final night in the San Se apartment, we all gave a huge sigh of relief when we arrived at our current accommodation - a beautifully renovated house in the small town of Duras in the French countryside.

The house felt immediately welcoming, if not a bit chilly, having been locked up with nobody staying in it for a good few weeks. In the lounge is a log burner, which powers the central heating, so after a quick call to the housekeeper to work out how it all worked, we got everything toasty and cosy, and if anything we felt a bit too warm that night.

We spent Saturday getting to know our new surroundings, doing some washing, visiting a Christmas market, and a couple of friends of the owner of the house dropped by to welcome us. We  found out that the property was very new to the holiday rental market; they had only finished renovating it a couple of months ago, and we were the first people to rent it, which didn't come as a surprise to us.

On Saturday evening, we got the fire booted up again and made the most of the satellite TV, watching x-factor (I know, I know) while doing a bit of research online for our travels over the next year. We were marginally aware that the room was feeling pretty warm, and even went to check the radiators in the rest of the house, which were roasting.

Suddenly, there was a strange noise from the kitchen end of the room - we looked at each other and came to the conclusion it was the ice maker in the fridge. But the noise grew, and within a few seconds the deep rumbling felt like it was shaking through the entire house. There was an explosion in the roof space above the kitchen end of the room, and before our eyes water started pouring from the ceiling, down the walls and even from the fuse box. The whole house was still rumbling, pipes clanging and we weren't sure exactly what was going to happen next.

I ran up the stairs and grabbed the Littlest Hobo out of her bed; a rude awakening from her deep slumber, then raced back down the stairs, just as a second explosion happened in the floor below the cupboard in her bedroom - by this time the water was pouring down in that bedroom too. Then the lights went out in half the house too.

Mr Traveller threw water into the logburner to put the fire out apparently not the done thing, we now know, but he didn't do any damage, and he did stop the fire, which was the main thing), while I took the Littlest Hobo outside and phoned the housekeeper, who showed up a few minutes later with her husband. They were greeted by the sight of Mr Traveller in his bare feet with trousers rolled up to his knees as he mopped up all the water. Amidst fraught calls between plumbers, the owner back in the UK and who knows who else, we managed to clean up and make the house safe, or as safe as we could, given we didn't know where exactly the water had gone to within the walls. The housekeeper offered to take us to her maison d'haute for the night, until the plumber could come in the morning, but we opted to stay in the house, concluding that there'd been enough upheaval already for the Littlest Hobo that night, and apart from the possibility of being a bit cold, it should be fine now that it was all turned off.

The plumber arrived early on Sunday morning to survey the damage. He confirmed that the central heating system had exploded (it didn't actually take a plumber to work that out, once we had established that the world wasn't ending, and the house wasn't falling down). and set about mending it. I was quite impressed - I'd been all set with a second possible house lined up in the town, but he actually dealt with it quite quickly and we all crashed into bed for a lunchtime nap to make up for being up half of the night.

All was well until about 5 tonight, when we lit the fire and checked the radiators every few minutes for the next half hour - nothing. Something wasn't working. We decided to call the housekeeper, who in turn called the plumber. While we were waiting to hear back from them, the rumbling and banging started again. I took the Littlest Hobo outside, and Mr Traveller put the fire out. So now we sit here, slightly chilly, and wait for what tomorrow will bring. I really hope they can fix it - it's such a gorgeous house, I don't really want to move from it - we're supposed to be here another week and the Littlest Hobo is so much more settled with less moves. We're lucky that it's not too cold here yet - 18 or 19 in the day, 8 or 9 at night, but I think it might be too cold to manage the whole time without any heating.

So much for a relaxing couple of weeks - I'm really ready for a  bit less drama now, it's been a rough few months, and I think we're all longing to just relax for a while. We've also been talking about whether the night time call from the man from the water board was an omen - was it a warning that this was going to happen, or is this a second (or third, if you count the Littlest Hobo's adventure into the chest deep sea as one too) warning, or the thing that we were being warned about? Ugh, it's a nerve-racking business, all this!

So, a demain...