A walk around the 18th Art & Lard festival in La Petit-Pressigny.

It's alive and well at L'Art et Lard the annual autumn arts and local food festival held in the village of Le Petit-Pressigny in the Touraine.

You can visit today,the second day of the festival.

Work of street artist Mickael Busseau.(BuS)

Products and art were on display as usual in front of and in the church,

As well as houses and gardens of local residents.

Above paintings by Gina Bardin.

Above is my favourite piece of the day.

October blues...

Had to stop and snap this photo of a neighbour's garden here in La Guerche - not the first colour you'd associate with autumn but I love it. Don't know what it is called but sure someone out there will know.

 

Spotted visiting Le Grand-Pressigny market.

This cute lady was spotted visiting this morning's market at Le Grand-Pressigny.

 

Monday's walk - around Paulmy.

A great bunch of people...

Image courtesy of Alison.

 A great get-together with friends last night for a special event in Le Petit-Pressigny.

Wet through but all in a good cause.

We joined friends yesterday for the 'October Rose' walk in Le Grand-Pressigny to raise breast cancer awareness and funds for Cancer Research. The forecast had indicated it would be cloudy and when we arrived the sky did not appear too threatning.

Unfortunately as people gathered for the 10 o'clock departure for the 6km walk it started to rain lightly...before becoming a little heavier and accompanying us for the whole walk!

As we were going around we were reminded of the good cause we were walking for.

Our group was fairly well spread out with the leaders well into the distance here.

I was impressed by how these participants had adapted their free pink carrier bags as rainwear.

Would have to say we were all happy to go through the finish arch and be met by the enthusiastic greeters but all agreed it was for a good cause.

We had a wee bit of drama on the last stretch of the walk when a large artic had to negotiate the diversion around the village with corners that proved quite a challenge. With the help of a few of the walkers the driver did amazingly well and avoided any damage by what looked like only inches! 

Rain in Touraine...or lack of it.

 

This was the weir on the river Claise captured last weekend at Abilly - Touraine has faced a record-breaking historic drought throughout 2026, driven by an exceptionally dry spring and repeated summer heatwaves.The dry spell began early, with April experiencing a staggering 89% drop in rainfall and it has continued to be a rare sight over the summer. The rivers will recover but it will take time.

You know we love a coincidence...the ugly house!

 

We were doing a wee bit of reminiscing last Friday night with  friends and we repeated the 'ugly house' story which a few of you have heard. Back in 2002 we were victims of unscrupulous banking tactics which led to us to have to sell our large house (below). 

It meant we had to downsize and start trolling the local estate agents to find a new house/project. In one of their windows we spotted the house (top) with a SOLD sign across it, I said to Pauline "imagine someone buying that,it's a bit ugly,is it not" After a fruitless search we were heading up to Fife to look at a potential new life running a B&B when the phone rang and it was one of the estate agents telling us that a house had come back on the market as the sale had fallen through.I asked him to describe it to us and he did, making it sound interesting. We immediately turned tail and returned to said agent only to be handed the schedule for the 'ugly house'. We decided that as fate would have it,we should at least check it out. So after a visit to Fife where we decided the place was not for us, we did a drive-by of the house on our return and decided to knock on the door and ask for a look around which they agreed to...the rest is history and it became our next project - which after a bit of redesign produced results below.

Property sale history

Imagine our surprise when on Saturday morning Pauline was on Facebook when a post from an estate agent in Kilmarnock was displaying a video of the very house up for sale!! 

We actually love what they have done with it while retaining most the changes we had made up until 2008. The original kitchen I fitted is still there!

Below is how it looked when they bought it!

Previously for sale: November 2021 to May 2022

Really interesting to see its history and quite the coincidence!