Plumbing - French Style!!!!

The shower and toilet have both seen better days and with 3 of us using the shower by the time it came to the 3rd person getting in it couldn't cope anymore and most of the water ended up over the floor.  In the kitchen there are two sinks side by side which look fairly new and are in a ceramic material.The sinks look  really nice as does the rest of the kitchen, it was one of the things I couldn't remember well from originally viewing the house so it was a relief to know that it was all functioning as it should be!  We will eventually be moving the kitchen into the downstairs of the attached barn but that is on next year's list.  We also knew before making the purchase that the Fosse Septique needed replacing which is going to be a major job and expense and one that now looks like it will need doing sooner rather than later.  We discovered, after washing our red paintbrushes off in the bowl and pouring the water down the right hand sink, that the water then appeared on the bathroom floor, quite how that happens I don't know but something is wrong somewhere with the plumbing!

So... it was off to Mr Bricolage in Guret where we bought a brand new sparkley white toilet and a lovely shower cubicle and did a quick shop at E LeClerc and grabbed a quick buffett lunch before starting back for Bousseresse.  As we pulled out at the top of the hill the van steering suddenly wouldn't work well and on pulling over Phil discovered the fan belt had come off.  For those of you that know us well you will know that a Waters trip is not complete unless something has gone wrong with our transport!  Phil managed to get to a local Quick Fit type of place and with limited French discovered that they couldn't help but they kindly pointed us in the right direction... or so we hoped!  No they couldn't help either and the nearest Mercedes dealer was 10km away which with no fan belt was going to be a difficult trip especially when we discovered it was nearly all up hill.  We set off stopping every couple of kilometers to let the van cool down before crawling off again.  Finally we got to the Mercedes dealer and he couldn't of been more helpful, again no English spoken so the whole experience was a great learning curve for our French and we now know where to go if anything else should happen!

Phil set about the next morning installing the new toilet with sucess but ran out of time for the shower so that will have to be done on the next trip.  I can imagine as we progress through this venture there will be alot of running out of time and waiting till the next trip for a lot of things.  However here is the new loo!!