Saturday 14 April 2012

There's A Moose Aboot The.....

We've had an interesting and relieving few days recently. The weather continues Spring-like, with odd snow flurries that fall but fail to settle in any meaningful way. Most of the garden is now clear, save for odd patches and many of the fields around us are also clearing nicely. This morning it was minus five at 07:00 when I got up to let Jack and Charlie out for a wander.  With the sun beaming down and the promise of a speedy rise to zero, I got dressed and stayed up! Unheard for me on a Sunday - any day, truth be told!

Each day, we have plus temps now and often it's warm enough to sit outside in the sun with a cuppa and a book.  We also have light from about 05:00 through to 20:30 or thereabouts, so it feels good.

Rocky and Charlie seem to be enjoying themselves. Charlie clearly sees Rocky as a playmate now and leads him off out, waiting for him to catch-up and generally behaving in a kittenish way - something he never did as a kitten. Every now and again, he asserts his authority as local, boss cat and whacks Rocky. Just to show him who's boss, I'm sure.

We've managed to sell the Spanish house, it seems: the price is way below decent, but we want to move on and everyone's trapped in the crappy nonsense these days, so we said yes: at least we don't have a bank/mortgage to bother about!  I pity those unfortunate enough to be caught in that circle these days.

In addition, we've had some Germans looking round our place here in Sweden and it looks likely that they'll be making us an offer on that too. So, an interesting few days, indeed!  We've decided to head back to France, the Charente or Poitou Charente regions again and look for a place to buy with our proceeds. There's no shortage of stuff on the market and we think we should get a decent deal in current circumstances. So it's all swings and roundabouts really.  I'm off to Spain latertoday for a week or so to sort things out.

I was still in favour of returning to Scotland and the Hebrides in particular - maybe even Orkney - but J is not so keen. For some reason she's more interested in the French climate, wine, culture and food. We'll just have to make do then.

We went off to get some wine a couple of days back and en-route we came across these girls:






These were a pair of female Moose, large gangly critters. We saw one ahead of us on the verge and then about ten metres further on another came out of the forest,c rossed the road and cantered away. Always a pleasure to see them.

And here's the garden now:



And the table for those cosy cuppas:




When we got to the small nearby town of Ramsele, where the nearest state-run booze store is located about 25 Kms form home, we also met this lovely lad or lassie:



These, they claim hereabouts, are Icelandic cows. To me they look like Highland cattle and I'm sticking with that!

We crossed this gorgeous river, now free of ice for the most part, on the way home. One of the BIG local rivers:





4 comments:

  1. Itchy feet again Iain? Sounds wonderful to me!

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  2. We had Springlike with odd snow flurries too, yesterday (near Abergavenny)!- but with temperatures rather higher than yours!!

    On the move again!!

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  3. Congratulations on the house sale, shame about the price but it's difficult trying to sell anything at the moment and hopefully will mean what you end up buying will be cheaper.

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  4. Wow!What amazing choices you have to make! Not easy but I'm keen to hear more!

    Sft x

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