October 28th 2011.

It started raining yesterday. The first rain we have had here for about 6 weeks. Thirty hours later and it hasn't stopped yet.

We had only ever seen the house in the sunshine. Every visit over the last 6 months was on a beautifully sunny day that had us imagining the smell of grilled meat on the barbeque, lazy days by the pool, time spent pottering around the garden tending to the herbs and vegetables and cold evening aperos as the sun set. Those days will surely come.

But not today. I pulled up outside the house and stepped out of the car into a river of water running down the road.

The house is on a hill, not at the bottom and not at the top. One hopes the water stays in the drains or runs straight on past but it was doing neither. The drain couldn't cope with the volume so the water was backing up out onto the street and the natural angle of the slope was sending it directly to the front gate, where it splashed down the stone steps into the courtyard, then under the door to the 'cave' where it formed a large lake.

I had been warned that "some water may find it's way into the cave" and had put some defences against the gate to divert water away. It must have rained very heavily at some point because the defences had been washed away by the sheer volume of water and replaced with rocks and grit and mud. In fact the whole village was awash with debris on the streets. My neighbour, the vendor, must have been chuckling away to himself somewhere.

In the attic the tell tale 'drip drip' noise was a clue to a couple of not so watertight spots in the roof tiles. I hastily arranged some buckets to catch the worst.

There was nothing I could do about either problem today but clearly I need to get a man on the roof to do a bit of tile maintenance. The other problem requires a lot more thought, probably a discussion with the Mairie and some major work.

One of the reasons for visiting the house today was to check on the pool. The filters needed emptying but everything was working fine although the pool was virtually overflowing due to the volume of rain.

After checking the pool, unloading the car, padlocking the gate and putting the makeshift water defences back in place I was as wet as anyone could possibly be when fully dressed. It was a soggy and uncomfortable drive back to Carcassonne.