Help arrives

Today the first of the chateau helper crew have arrived! Yesterday Eduardo and Klaus made their way here from Paris where they have been in isolation for the last couple of months. This will make life easier and hopefully Mark and Michelle will be here tomorrow if their escape from the UK

goes according to plan. So today we took up nearly all of the remaining paved area in the chateau courtyard. We will not relay these blocks because they are original stones from a long ago demolished part of the chateau. We will recycle them back into the chateau by using them to replace old damaged blocks. So for the time being we are storing them in one of the barns. These blocks are so big and heavy and it is not made easier with the hot sun. We stopped work from 12 until 4.30 but even so it was scorching hot in the late afternoon - not that I am complaining after all the rain we had last autumn. 

It was the right idea to take all of these blocks up, there were so many weeds and roots underneath them that we would never have been able to fully get rid of them. So the plan will now be to run some drainage pipes under the soil and then put down a gravelled area.