The demolishing of the steel shed begins in earnest

The steel panels are stacked ready to go to the tip

The builders are all on deck to prepare the formwork for the concrete slab

Plenty of reinforcing steel in the slab - enough for four storeys!

Everything is ready for tomorrow's concrete delivery

And then the rain arrives. A very heavy shower leaves large puddles all over the plastic

The concrete truck arrives simultaneously with the blue sky, how lucky can you be

Silhouette of Willy and Fred waiting for the pump to start

The concrete controller at the back of the truck

The concrete is pumped into all the corners

All done and dusted in no more than 15 minutes

One hour later we're on the train to Aix-en-Provence via Paris

The 'infamous' rosè, we're blaming on the mishaps of later that day

A familiar TGV station, but sadly not the right one

Finally we make it to Aix-en-Provence - a beautiful old clock tower outside L'Hotel d'Ville

The lost and now locked Samsung Tablet is nowhere to be found

A memorable travel day

Jun 8–11 in France ⋅ ☀️ 29 °C

The old woodshed was ably demolished on Monday morning with the help of a huge angle grinder. It looks amazing and there's one final lot of firewood to chainsaw up then 'voila', the job will be done. Johnny, Emma Lou's husband is unaware of all the woodshed activity so we are all excited to see his face when they arrive in a couple of weeks.

Tuesday was a day of cleaning up, packing a bag for our 5 day trip to Aix-en-Provence, and watching the builders get everything set up for the slab pouring on Wednesday morning. Of course we woke to a very heavy rain shower that left huge puddles in the plastic waterproofing for the slab so Willy announced 'le beton is off' - no concrete today. Surprise, surprise, one hour later and the concrete truck arrives and the skies are a brilliant bright blue. Go figure! So we are able to witness the slab pour, a 15 minute process, before locking up la maison and heading to Gare Surgeres where we park our car and catch the TGV to Paris.

We easily navigate the Montparnesse tunnel, and catch the line 6 metro to Bercy station. A young french girl, from Poitiers is also travelling to Aix-en-Provence and seeks our advise on walking to the station - we either looked lost, like her or full of confidence and wisdom, due to our age! None the less we invited her to join us and together google maps led us straight to platform 23, where our train departed shortly afterwards, right on time.

Our confidence continued, and after a couple of hours, we thought we should set the scene for our food and wine weekend, with a Provence rosè at Le Bar TGV. We were just returning to our seat when an announcement was made that, the train was approaching A.........
TGV station. People were lining up to exit the train and not really taking much note of the time but knowing there was only one station before the end of the line in Marseilles, we grabbed our backpacks and jumped of the train.

This was the first error, which we discovered when we went looking for the A bus into the centre of Aix-en-Provence. And suddenly there was a bit of familiarity about the TGV station. We'd been here back in 2009 and arrived at Avignon TGV to collect our rental car. LOL, well we did at the end of the day, because what else could we do. To guarantee the 20 minute journey one more stop to Aix-en-Provence TGV, we purchased a couple of simple one time tickets, and waited for the next train which luckily arrived about 30 minutes later.

Error no two arose, while waiting for train no two, when I realised in our haste, that I had left my Samsung tablet in the back of seat pocket on train no one! I spoke to the train staff, Thomas, who spoke excellent English and even tried to call Marseille St Charles station to see if it had been found, but to no avail. I've reported it missing and it will be interesting to see if we ever see it again. Luckily, its not a critical piece of communication kit, apart from watching SBS on demand when we need some on screen entertainment. Perhaps we just got a bit too confident and with the help of the rosè, forgot to carry out all the usual pre departure checks.

Not having our spirits dampened by one minor hiccup, we checked into our hipster 'art hotel', and then headed to the nearest bar to commiserate over a GnT with some very average tapas. Cest la vie! Tomorrow is another day!Read more