Selling / moving ....?

My barn and gite for sale

Nic's house for sale

I’m at a crossroads. After 7 years, I’m putting my place on the market, and perhaps moving back to Australia. Or perhaps staying here and downsizing. A little undecided on my next move, but it needs to be a new project and/or a change of place. And to that end, the first thing is to sell up here. If I did go back to Australia, and could take my little barn renovation with me, I would! Or perhaps it’ll be another renovation project here in Bize…. But now that I've made the decision, it kind of feels right. Let’s see …

Nic is also selling up and moving back to Canada. Above are the links to our respective homes in beautiful Bize:

A sausage called Jesus

I hadn’t been to a chestnut festival for a while, so called on Miki who is always good to visit somewhere new (or in this case, re-visit) and headed to the Fete de la Chataigne at St Pons de Thomières in the Black Mountains.  The sausage vendor told us that that sausage is a speciality of Lyon.

Gardiane de taureau is a type of beef stew made from the black bulls of the Camargue - not from those that didn't do well in the bull fights, but in fact from male and female adults who have not participated in bullfighting.

St Pons, just starting to show its autumn colours

Kestrels - long fledged

Back in June, I put up some photos of the baby kestrels on Allyson’s window ledge in Agel. Even though I went back a few times to follow their progress and – I forgot to follow up here. So here’s a few photos of before they flew the nest. Allyson said that even once they took to flight, they came back as a family for nearly a week or so – perhaps to spend the night in relative shelter before facing the world on their own!

They're a bit wet and bedraggled in this photo. We were actually driving back from Montpellier when a short but rather fierce storm came through. We were actually worried that they may have been swept off the ledge. Fortunately all four were still there, but the horizontal rain had certainly got to them.