What's this White stuff

The weather here has been unseasonally good according to our french neighbours so it came as a bit of a shock to wake up to a frost! Our thermometer which is on the back of the house and so a bit sheltered from the extremes of the weather only showed a minimum of 0 c for last night but it was a good white frost. However, by lunchtime we were able to sit outside on the verandah. There has not been a cloud in the sky so we are expecting another frost tonight.

It is a bit difficult to get cracking on jobs as we are going in to Cahors every afternoon to the hospital but we did start to try to find an Architect. Of the 3 we contacted today 2 are too busy and not taking more work till Spring next year. Looks like we might have to look further afield! In the meantime we'll concentrate on clearing out the ground floor rooms (the 'caves') and planning the garden.

Yesterday we were going round the house finalising our thoughts on how we wanted the layout of the rooms. This involved going up into the lofts which we plan to make into bedrooms. One of the 2 lofts has access through a little door into the pigeonier. The floor had a good layer of bird droppings and quite a few owl pellets. There was then a small ladder up through a hatch in the ceiling up into the next level. Here, on one wall were the proverbial 'pigeon holes', a bit like a postmans sorting rack. There was also more owl pellets and, as I was shinning my torch up into the roof of the pigeonier the owl flew down and then out of the open stone window which you can see at the top. As he was flying down he made me duck; it seemed like he was coming straight down at me! We fear that he (?) is bound to be disturbed when we have the roofs done etc. but hopefully he will return to the top of the pigeonier later.