Days 118-121, 8-11 Oct '14, From Fuengirola in the Costa del Sol to "way out there in the country", South-West France. The hamlet of Les Clotures, closest tiny village Lussac-les-eglises. Closest medium sized village Magnac-Laval. Obviously been a busy few days. Wednesday was pack-wrangling day - the final stuffing of corners, weighing etc. And lucky I did. EasyJet gets a bit nancy about anything over 20kg... and mine weighed 20kg on the button and dropped to 19.5 kg on the airport scales once they had a think about it. Of course my "no weight limit" cabin bag clocked in around 8 kg. Apparently I've bought a few odds in ends over the last 11 odd weeks! Flight was uneventful. By the time I walked from one end of Malaga airport to the other to bag drop and back to security and forward again to the gate, I rather thought I'd walked halfway to Paris. Left Malaga half an hour late but managed to arrive on time, which proves they can when they put their minds to it. Luggage popped out in record time (and as we all know, theoretically, there are only two sorts of luggage in the world... "cabin" & "lost" - so always very happy to see bag come out). So all grand plans of not having a chance of catching the 2.07 pm train and having bought my cheapie ticket on the 4.20 train were in ruins. Really. Couldn't. Face. It. Hanging about CDG for 3 hours. Ended up chucking money at the problem and bought a new ticket on the 2.07 pm. Really starting to learn some tricks about non-exchangeable/non-refundable tickets - as in, if there's any doubt at all, just buy it on the day... cheaper in the long run. The train terminal at Paris's main airport is miraculous. Mind you - I think trains in Europe are generally the bees-knees. Unfortunately got to Poitiers 4 minutes late... which reduced the time to change trains from a paltry 9 minutes to a horrendously tight 5 minutes. Me and 28 kg of luggage up a flight of stairs... checked the big board... Me and 28kg of luggage down a flight of stairs... run to other side of station and, bien sur... up another flight of stairs. Plopped onto a seat and the train closed its doors. Wouldn't have darn near killed myself, but the next local train to depart wasn't for another hour. Then, having been giving the evil eye to coughers, snufflers, splutterers and all manner of Ebola-carriers all day, I proceeded to attempt to cough up a lung on the train. For about 15 minutes. A lovely French woman took pity on me, spoke to me in French and offered me a bottle of water and a cough lolly. Eventually I calmed down enough to thank her profusely and offered to pay... in passable French, which I immediately apologised for and said that I didn't speak much French, I was Australian. And 'lo and behold my lovely French woman turned out to be Libby the Kiwi from Dunedin, New Zealand. Well that passed a swift hour! Karen, for whom I am housesitting, had fortunately received one of my multitudes of messages (email/mobile/home phone answering machine) and was waiting at the station. Which was good. Would have been a frightfully lonely spot for the 3 hours I would have had to wait had she not received any of the messages. Met the boys (Old English Sheepdog "Percy" and Spaniel "Oscar". Also the two resident fur coats - Bunny the Rabbit and Miko the Chinchilla - fortunately they both speak French and probably think "fur-coat 1" and "fur-coat 2" are terms of endearment. Which they are of course as I adore furcoats.) Had a frightfully upset tummy on Friday, blaming the pate from Thursday dinner, made grocery shopping a pain when the thought of food was turning me off. Much better today and now in charge of the household for the next couple of months. Walked the dogs, fed the furcoats, had pasta for lunch, unpacked, explored the pear and apple trees with samplings and also the boysenberries and grape vine. Since I'm a fruit nut I know I'll be happy here and quite possibly will not be able to face grapes for a while. But you never know - they are really nice grapes. Anyway - I wouldn't go expecting much in the way of earth-shattering news over the next wee while. I'm safe & sound in the deep, dark countryside and will probably write on Tuesday after a visit to Magnac for a coffee with a neighbour.