A Family's French Love Affair: Our house and village in Burgundy

After a long drive up the A6 (the Autoroute de Soliel) from Provence we arrived in Burgundy - Bourgogne, in the freezing cold.

We left Avignon on a day that was forecast to be cold and knew we were coming to cooler weather so we dressed appropriately, then it turned out Avignon was glorious, sunny and warm. So we started peeling off the layers. Our first stop was about half an hour south of Lyon, and we soon started piling the layers back on - it was about 12 degrees! By the time we arrived in our village of Revene - about 29 kms east of Dijon, at about 3.45, it was 5 degrees and snow was in the air.

The house is a stone manor house from the early 1700s. The rooms are large and quite grand. There is a wood heater - thank god - downstairs. Upstairs the two bedrooms are large - the master is enormous with an original fire place and stone mantle about the width of our entire bedroom at home. The home has a gorgeous border collie called Alf as well - great for the kids. We woke up on the second morning to a thick blanket of frost.

The village is interesting. There are a lot of houses, a school, a largish Mairie, a lot of very old lavoirs (original washing and bathing houses) but only 1 boulangerie (bakery) open from 7am - 12.30pm, and no other shops at all - very strange. The next nearest village though has a supermarket and other specialty shops and is about 7 kms away. The area is odd, very rural - large green paddocks interspersed with the kind of chocolate brown soil you find on the NW coast of Tasmania, and then suddenly a village appears from nowhere!

There are lots of rivers and canals - this is real barge territory, and lots of beautiful old bridges, lavoirs, mills and pigioneers.

we have all been out and bought new boots, thermals, hats, gloves, scarves and jackets.