Snow and Silence

Hi, I took a drive out to the country today to see how work is progressing on the two small houses on the same largish property in the country that a friend and I are having renovated (more here). Things are moving along relatively smoothly so all's well there.

Having checked the work there wasn't much else to do elsewhere and outside because it has snowed recently and the ground is frozen. So I took a few pictures because the snow looked pretty out there in the fields. Here are three of them.

 This was taken from the terrace of one of the houses. Garden in front of it, veggie garden next, behind the first fence, and there will probably be a couple of donkeys in the field beyond that. It all looked so peaceful and there wasn't a sound to be heard anywhere in the cold thin air....

Here's a view over to the left. The rather ramshackle outhouses (want of a better word?) were chicken coops in the past and there's a lot of clearing up to do both in and around them. One of them shall be welcoming new chickens and fresh eggs when the big move from Lyon comes, towards next summer. There's a field on the far side of the coops, its future use as yet undecided.

As I said earlier, it was quite cold although at -5C it was bearable but still, it was cold enough to freeze the water dripping down off a disused rain gutter. I took this photo because I liked the various shades and qualities of the blacks and whites and greys. The gutter, the bushes, the sky, the snow, the translucent icicle...

I know there are many more colours to be seen during spring, summer and autumn, much more life and energy too, but I appreciate the sort of solitary peace and calm that winter imposes and that nature must wait through patiently while winter does its cold, hard and lonely work of quietly preparing the land to receive each new year's plants and crops.....

Video view from outside my house-to-be in the Savoie

This short video was shot on friday by the friend with whom I am buying and renovating a couple of houses near Saint-Genix-sur-Guiers in the Savoie region.

She tells me that there was quite a nip in the air and I can well see why. Beyond the smaller mountains you see are the Alps, and when the wind and cloud comes down off them in winter you don't see many people in bikinis or shorts I can tell you.

Brrrr....

Towards the quiet life life in the countryside

After fifteen wonderful years spent here in Lyon I have decided to move out to the countryside. I still very much enjoy living here, but as I'm nearing my sixties some aspects of what the city has to offer - bars, clubs, rock concerts etc - have witnessed a steady decline in my presence over the years and I have been spending more and more time in the country at friends' places because I appreciate the serenity of being out of the city.

And so it is that I am buying a house just outside a small village not far from the Alps with a very good friend I have known for many years. In fact it's not really 'a house', but two houses and several outhouses on a fair-sized chunk of land. 5,250m² to be exact. Neither is very big but we will be able to live our own lives whilst both looking after the animals we intend to have as well as tending to the land. There is a lot of renovation to do but we both know enough tradesman to get most of the work done at a reasonable price. Scheduled move-in date is next August.

Here are some photos of it all taken on two separate occasions, starting with a couple of views from the lane outside.

My place, with hers to the left in the background

Both houses under a beautiful cerulean sky

A view of the mountains with the houses behind me

Here they are again, this time taken from within the garden.

Hers, complete with balcony, and..

..his. No balcony this time, but a lot of weed-clearing to do!

The views from the windows are great. There are almost no other houses in sight and the only thing which breaks the silence is the birds chirping away and someone's donkey braying. That is going to make a change from Lyon, where as I type these words I am looking at an apartment block just over the street from my apartment. The road is busy all day long.

Once cleaned up there's going to be a table and chairs in the shade out there

From a bedroom window

This view takes in some of the extent of the land, which goes down to the trees, although there is more to the left with a couple of ponds and a henhouse. It's separated into a garden, then what will be a vegetable garden, and then a field for two ponies and, when needed for grass-cutting purposes, the neighbour's sheep.

Oh, and there's a functioning well too, on the left. That'll need building up

 My place is going to be a three-room affair basically, with a salon-american kitchen and a large walk-in-shower-cum-WC-cum-dressing room downstairs. There may eventually be a bedroom in the loft. It used to be the farmer's abbatoir and as such will need a fair bit of work, but although it looks in a hell of  mess right now the work won't take that long.

Half of the living room

Half of the bathroom

The surrounding area has several nature trails and bicycle tracks. Not surprising really because it is very pretty indeed. Here are a few views from within a two-kilometre radius.

A tributary of the river Rhône, looking upstream...

...and downstream

Looking over the fields towards the nearby village

Finally, I found a lovely wild rose growing on top of a wall where it meets my house during my last visit. I hope to be able to leave it untouched during the renovation work in the hope it will come back next year.

Simple, and beautiful

 Meanwhile, off I pop to get on a crowded metro network for a meeting. Ah well, not for much longer...