Saturday morning and only a few small wispy clouds in the sky. Quick breakfast of fruit and yoghurt then straight on to the web for the usual hour and a half of sorting Ski Breezy emails out and the website for the winter. It is definitely autumn now and the mornings are cold so we have started lighting the stove in the mornings as the sun does not reach our little cabin until gone half ten. Once the sun did hit us the mist slowly crept up the valley until it burnt off again.

I started by getting the strimmer out and clearing the slope immediately infront of the main barn which is gradually working it’s way towards the river. Each year the path around the front gets a little narrower as bits of wall tumble. Clive has offered to give us a quote to rebuild the wall next year if we can clear it so that he can see. Next I was on to mixing mortar in buckets and filling some of the larger cracks in the outside of the gable end wall. There were a few holes that were good placements for blocks of oak to screw vine eyes into for the Jasmine so they got fettled at the same time. Breezy set about hand sanding and varnishing the walnut we got from Ian and then moved on to painting the outside of all 3 windows with wood preserver. A couple of years ago someone in the village cleared out a garage or shed and threw out all part tins of paint and preserver which we are gradually working through as needs arrive.

Breezy also went through the dry stock of food working out what we have to use up before we leave and what will keep until next spring. Again time just seems to speed past.

After lunch we both weeded vegetable areas for an hour or so and cleared out a lot of alpine strawberries which seem to spread with abandon. Another bit of salvage from a couple of years ago was Raymond’s old front door; big, blue and very heavy. We have been working round it and shifting it about when in the way, and now we want it on the ground floor so it is another move. Slowly we managed to get it to the stair well and attach it to the chain hoist. I am so pleased we made space for the chain winch as it would be impossible to get it down between the 2 of us without it.

Before showering we armed ourselves with a bucket and trowel each and collected donkey muck and filled the Mucktruck. The Mucktruck of muck was then deposited on the last raised bed, to be dug in another day.

All in all that was a load of ticks off the list which is rapidly diminishing in size.