Life is better in Brittany and Normandy

We've watched  a load of 'Do Up' TV programmes (who, buying 'here' in Brittany hasn't?) but we have never seen that what we have been up to in Brittany is anything like any of these shows - with or without an audience... But, after a few 'mooching' trips we found this little beauty and paid just £12,000 for it. What many people would have regarded as, pretty much a ruin - perhaps,  but rather than being able to compact our work on the house into just a few months in an intensive way... or a year or two, perhaps more realistically, we have chugged our way through 17 years of ownership meandering through bite sized pieces of renovation with a few intense phases that have involved a few other trades along the way.  In the beginning we were flabbergasted; couldn't believe...that a couple of Brits could, with the greatest luck, just breeze in and pick up an 18th Century farmhouse with three barns a well, a bread oven and the three quarters of a...

Yes... renovation at a snail's pace ...That's how life in Brittany has seemed so far for us. Most enjoyable of course. And all of the peripheral stuff that goes on, the 'time off for good behaviour' when we knock off at 4 O'clock in the afternoon for a drive to the coast for Moules Marinieres or to Lake Guerledan for a woodland walk around the lake; you have to have a sense of balance - so progress can sometimes be painfully slow over time with intense short bursts and, yet tempered by gentle relaxation. We spend around two months of each year there in bite sized (two week) chunks. Infuriating at times because I always feel that we don't have sufficient time 'at the coal-face' to get the required amount of work done each trip. It's a slow burn toward job satisfaction. But first I have to roll out once again... that we have done 6 return trips each year for 16 years now. So that's 192 crossings of La Manche (that's what our French cousi...