The first experience of WWOOFING

We left Orleans the next morning for a couple of days with my Grandparents in the Lot et Garonne. They were most excited to see Tegan (and probably us) and gave us a comfy bed and familiar surroundings for a couple of nights. The weather was amazing - suddenly had to excavate all our summer clothes we had brought just in case. Tegan loved the space (they have half a field as a garden) and discovered apples, hazelnuts and figs to chomp on - a good sign for encouraging harvesting activities at first destination. So we travelled the further 4 hours or so almost to the border of Spain to Sarrancolin in the Haute Pyrenees. Finding the village was pretty easy, and finding the road to the house was pretty simple too, but those 14 bends - they weren't wrong! We turned right out of Sarrancolin town up a steep and bendy road and saw a few houses - looks nice I thought, but we had yet to count a bend. We started counting, and stopped when the road turned into a track which we bumped along in a steadily upwards direction. Were we really going to be staying at the top of a mountain! Well, nearly......we turned the last corner to see a house with a cliff behind it and two adults and two small children hovering about in front of it. These were indeed Paula and Xavier, and their two kids Lucien (4 next week) and Elisse (6). This was an amazing, top of the world feeling - surrounded by space and the most beautiful views. Paradoxically, we felt constrained. It seemed as if our travelling on the open road through France had come to an abrupt halt in an old stone house at the top of a mountain. This was also "it" where we now had to face up to what we were about to actually do. Once we had exchanged pleasantries in a mix of English and bad French we placated Tegan (again pretty tired) with the selection of cars and various other bits of toys that Lucien was playing with in the grainy sand pit in front of the house. We also gave the family some hazelnuts that we had picked at my Grandparents house, which Lucien loved and seemed to be a good ice breaker. We went inside to look at the room which was up a rather rambling set of wooden stairs and contained two futons, two lamps (the main light wasn't working), a ropey chest of drawers and some bits of cardboard box stuck to the ceiling (I'm still not sure what for). The rest of house was similarly rambling, cluttered and unfinished looking. I do remember a slight sinking feeling at this point (even our house felt organised and tidy by comparison!). We were given a tour of the gardens and explained our main WWOOFing duties, which seemed to vary from picking and collecting various items to digging up repairing others - could be interesting. We quickly discovered that the flowers in the garden (and quite a few other things) were not just in fact weeds but got eaten, and that pretty much everything had a purpose. Keeping an open mind I agreed to the idea of eating some of the blue flowers in a salad for dinner! Andy started his first bit of work by picking beans while I looked after Tegan. I was feeling pretty tired by this point and keeping Tegan occupied seemed to be turning into a daunting task. But then we were served some lovely moule paella and flower and leaf salad (not to sure what the leaves were!) with all the family and Tegan on her second round of moules for the week sat in a thoughtfully provided highchair seemed quite at home. We put Tegan to bed and then sat up by the open fire for a bit before hitting the futon at about 9pm - the earliest I have been to bed for a long time!