We took a day off from working on renovations. Both tired and a little wrung out from clearing out the houses and the back and forth journey to the local tip. It’s Pasque in France, otherwise known as Easter. Pasque is derived from the Latin word for Passover and the little purple flower bursts into bloom just in time for the celebrations..hence it’s name Pasqueflower.

The French celebrate with the red dyed eggs as we do in Romania, and with chocolate eggs as back in England. Today we dyed our eggs with red onion skins and let them sit for a good few hours to take on a rich ox-blood red. Tomorrow we will eat them with mustard and a small prayer of thanks said. We are not religious but it’s still a good time to set aside a few days to think about how good life can be and say thanks for health, friendship and a good future.

Eggs in progress, we headed off to one of our pretty local town’s, Chambon, just south of our hamlet. A winding road ascends steeply to the town following the river. We had lunch in a small bistro cafe and with a few hours to kill decided to find the local charity salvage market…Dynamo. Strange name but what a great place to find books, kitchen equipment, pots and pans and household goods for next to nothing.

We rummidged for a good three hours, getting dusty, feeling excited about finding items that you honestly can’t buy now, like heavy enamel pans, steel kitchen utensils and a whole sharabang of things we need for our homes…and not a “Made In China” label in sight!

We found two bikes for less than a hundred euros, to be able to peddle to the bakers for the daily French stick loaf run and a whole box of watercolour paintings. I want to decorate the farmhouse bedroom very simply with a pretty striped wallpaper. The room is quite large and airy. The watercolours would give a lovely splash of colour and I loved the subjects, flowers, gardens and country scenes. I have a lot of old picture frames but may just hang them on some pretty coloured cord like washing on a line. Sometimes simple works best.