Timpe's in France

As many of you know, this past summer I got really into hiking. I didn't have many things I felt I needed to do while in France, (we may not even see Paris!) but one thing I knew I wanted to do was hike. On one side of France are the Alps, which conjure up images of tall snow-capped peaks and winter sports. On the other side of France are the Pyrenees, which is currently where I find myself. Before coming here, the Pyrenees didn't conjure up anything in my head because I'm not so sure I'd ever heard of it. That has forever changed. Now I'll think of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage - a walk that has been travelled since 812 AD, the Tour de France - the course goes by the house we're staying at, our lovely stay here, and the amazing landscape. Let's talk more about the landscape shall we? Over the span of 6 days I went on 4 hikes and now I'm pooped, but I have my next hike planned unless snow screws it up. I'll talk you through each hike. ...

Hi all. Life has been good. I’ve gone on 3 hikes in the past 4 days, totaling about 18 miles and a bunch of elevation gain. As soon as I move all the photos I took from our camera to our iPad I’ll try to get a picture filled post of my hiking adventures. Unfortunately, Tawnie hasn’t been able to join me on any hikes yet because she’s been catching up on homework, or, like today, she is trying to fight off a migraine that has kind of taken her down today. Luckily, she was good enough to make it to the weekly market in town today. Simon bought us breakfast at a nice little cafe/bakery. Then this afternoon we were tasked with making ourselves invisible because a prospective buyer is visiting the house and our hosts don’t want anyone to know they need extra help to keep the place looking the way it is. I’m unsure why we can’t just pretend we’re vacationing, but whatever. Anyways, I’d like to use this post to discuss the work we do here. I typically do outdoor work. The first few day...

Well, on the last post I said that the next day I would write about my hosts. As usual I didn't keep my promise and waited about 3 days before writing. In this case that is a good thing though, because my first impressions have changed over the last couple days. First things first, I'm no longer sick. I took lots of decongestant, drank lots of hot honey water, and made tons of disgusting noises to expel the mucus out of my face. Sorry, Tawnie. Anyways, our hosts. I'll begin with Suzanne. She is around 60 years old but is always go, go, going and is in great shape. She is a competitive dog agility handler, and competes with her border collies, Quinn and Tilley. Her and Quinn have even competed in Nationals, yet she says Tilley is younger and shows more potential. Outside of dog agility competitions, Suzanne keeps 31 other animals: 2 cats, 2 ducks, 1 goose, and 26 chickens. Aside from taking care of the animals she also runs most of the communication side of their accommo...

Bonjour ! With heavy hearts Denis dropped us off in  downtown Saint Antonin Noble Val. His buddy Pierre met us and drove us to Toulouse. I was sad, but excited to see Toulouse and the pink bricks that are often talked about among the French. Unfortunately, to us the bricks looked pretty standard. The city felt a bit dirty and on the way to being broken down and dilapidated looking. However, only once did we feel a little unsafe, and that mostly had to do with the fact that we had our packs with all our stuff with us. But, we were fine. After 4 hours of walking around and eating at a bakery we met a blablacar that took us to Lourdes. The driver was an 18 year old that was in school to be a chef. He wasn't a great driver, but managed to get us to Lourdes where the views were beginning to become magnificent. In the Carrefour grocery store parking lot he dropped us off in, we had a view of this cliff face very nearby: Shortly afterwards, our host Simon came and picked us up, ...

Sorry it has been so long since my last post! We fell into a routine and blogging just wasn't a part of it. The first few days of our trip were so crazy that writing content was easy to come by. Lately things have calmed down - which we enjoy, but isn't as entertaining as running away from hosts and all that madness. Work has been enjoyable. I finished mudding and sanding the walls in one room. After that Tawnie and I have been chipping paint off a door frame in the mornings for a couple hours, then lunch, then chainsawing and chopping wood in the afternoons for a couple hours. Denis and Perrine are appreciative of the work, but really they're more excited about the cultural exchange that takes place over meals. Lunch and dinner typically lasts about 2 hours. All topics under the sun are discussed and even though I don't speak French, Tawnie does a great job translating things quickly, and I've enjoyed the conversations with Denis through Tawnie. One night two...

Hi all. Over the next 2 weeks I’ll probably blog a bit less as things are finally settling down and there aren’t crazy things happening from day to day. A routine feels great after a couple weeks of always being on the move and not knowing what tomorrow will bring. I hope you enjoy this post, detailing what a typical day looks like for us while we stay here at Moulin Saleth. Tawnie and I wake up to my phone alarm at 7:45. We throw on our work clothes and stumble downstairs to make coffee and breakfast which usually consists of some combination of apples, bananas, bread, jam, cake, and grapes. We enjoy our meal outside overlooking the river to the tune of songbirds. We usually eat pretty slow and have a nice conversation - anything other than that would be very un-french of us. After eating we chuck the last little bit of coffee into the river, and drop off any compostables in the compost. We rinse our dishes and set them out to dry to reuse the next day. Then we head up to work. I ...

The property we are staying at is called Moulin Saleth. Saleth I believe is just a name, Moulin is French for mill. The popular Moulin rouge is a windmill. In this case however, Moulin Saleth is named for a water mill, as we are on the Aveyron River and on the property is indeed an old water wheel. I don’t know a ton about the property as the language barrier with my hosts is tough, but I can still relay a few things. Denis and Perrine have only lived here about a year and a half, and are in the process of renovating basically all of it. In total there are 3 buildings. The smallest building is the water mill. I’m guessing that’s the oldest thing built on the property, dating back to around 1792. I’m unsure if it’s still operational, but water is still diverted through it, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be. There are a number of moulin’s on the river and at each of them you have little dam like structures in the river, which I covered in my kayak blog post. Through the water mi...

This weekend was a disappointment. I wanted to write a post about the house I’m staying in, but life had other plans. Denis and Perrine had their theatre group over all weekend, so the house was full of people which made things difficult for us as none of them really spoke English. We also wanted to take a time lapse video of all the rooms, but there are people staying in them. To top it off, the WiFi has been down all weekend. We have felt slightly like prisoners, as we’re both a bit shy and opted to stay in our room, rather than sit amongst conversations we can’t understand. Well, I can’t understand, Tawnie can if she tries hard, but that requires a lot of effort and she was feeling some language fatigue. Even in the US I prefer small groups of people to large groups, and here there were probably 30 or so people. There were also many kids who ran wild and were up late making a ton of noise. The walls were literally shaking and this house is so old that I was worried about the damage...

A popular activity here is to kayak the river. Denis and Perrine have a friend that works at one of the rental places just up river of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, so they took us there and dropped us off. The family friend helped us and spoke enough English to get by. We both got single kayaks instead of a double because the river is very shallow in some spots and we would have been riding lower in a double and less maneuverable. The kayaks didn’t have a dry storage compartment in them, but instead they put a big jug on the back that they strapped onto the kayak. The start was a blast, as you sit down in the kayak still about 30 feet from the water and they push you down a ramp into the river. Right away the front of the kayak dips under the water and soaks you. It was a hot day and of course we didn’t have hats or sunscreen, so we were thankful to get splashed and paddled down the shady side of the river. The river started out wide, slow, and deep, which gave us some time to get use...

I’ve been trying to come up with how to write this post for some time now. Typically, when describing people, you have a little more to go off of when you speak the same language. I’ve been living with Denis and Perrine for 3 or 4 days now and I’ve only communicated a sentence or two a day to Perrine in English. The rest is completely in French, which I mostly do not speak nor understand. Luckily, Tawnie is doing very well and building on her french language foundation quickly. Our hosts are also patient with her, and take the time to make eye contact to see that she’s understanding (or not understanding), speak loudly, and annunciate clearly. Their patience and enthusiasm to share their language and way of life with us is spectacular. I’ll start with Perrine. She abounds with life. She’s wears her emotions on her sleeve. When there is any disagreement between her and Denis, she speaks passionately, often using her whole body as a fine tuned instrument of getting her way. Her thea...