Old dogs and crooked floors

The walk last week was along the Pech de Bize – the escarpment right on the southern edge of Bize. This is where paragliders launch themselves from and catch the thermals coming up from the valley.

We drove to the top and then did a 10 kilometre walk (yes, 10 – the longest one yet) along the top of the ridge and back, where there were some beautiful views of the villages of Montouliers and Argeliers. It was very hot, and a reasonably hilly course.

One of the walkers bought his old hunting dog along for the afternoon. She was a bit long in the tooth, and more than a little out of shape (ouch, that’s a bit close to home ……) and took every chance in the heat to flop into some puddles from the rain a few days previous.

And she wasn’t keen to leave it either. Monsieur said in her heyday she was very good at hunting rabbits and hares.

Oh, and I don’t think I’ve mentioned before about the sloping floors of the upstairs rooms. Not just a little slope – more like a steep incline! And the various bits of furniture need different sizes and types of blocks to get things on an even keel …..

This is a rather large block of wood under the head of one of the beds – which shows there’s a fair difference in floor level in just the length of a bed!

My room isn’t too bad at all, just a gentle slope. But my bed is on castors so rarely do I wake up with the headboard against the wall. The more restless the night, the closer to the middle of the room I end up.

Apparently nothing to worry about – just the beams bending and sagging over the years, although it is a bit alarming when you walk into a room and find yourself walking uphill just to cross the room!

And a wardrobe in another room with a block under one end. It doesn’t show up very well as it’s painted the same colour as the tiles, but it’s about 4 or 5 cm high…

And yet another wardrobe, but this one in a room with hardly any slope at all – but obviously worrying enough for the previous owners to fix with a few centimes under one of the legs ….

As I can’t put any planters out in front of the house (no footpath – just straight onto the road) – I’ve done the next best thing and put a few window boxes on the window sill.