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A fascinating story presented by Val about the renovation work they are doing on their recently acquired house in France. The pictures will tell most of the story So where is the house?  St Gengoux Le National - a village near Cluny and closer to Geneva than Paris. A medieval village established around the 1200's AD The belief is that the house was built in the 1800's. What do we know about the village from Vals presentation - small, very friendly locals, population about 1500, no Michelin star restaurants locally, the bookshop also sells wine and GnT (our kind of bookshop!!) and they have a boulangerie which you can see from their windows where the queues are lengthy every day So how did the project come about? Well Val and Patrick often go away in Autumn/Winter and this time they spent some time with some ex-members of Camberwell Rotary, Mariella and Michael Neumann, who had purchased a property locally. Well, it was on one of these visits that Patrick called Val aside (she thought she was in trouble!) only to tell her he was wanting to buy a place in France as a regular getaway. Long story short - along with their son Michael they ended up buying this property - it had had a number of iterations but most recently had served as a Doctors surgery. It was in a little state of disrepair inside and this has required some serious clean outs. Before During We will have to wait a little while before the After! A little more about the village Surrounded by vineyards  And, we already know the bookshop also sells wine and GnT During the first week in May the village has a parade with floats pipers and marching bands - it is overseen by the Mayor Val and Patrick have spent a lot of time in the local markets finding furnishings and fittings for the house as it continues its work in progress. Val's biggest wish is for the renovation of the bathroom to proceed with haste! Trouble has been finding a reliable plumber, a problem which appears to have been resolved in the last couple of weeks (fingers crossed) There was a lot to share with us on the night and a very interesting presentation by Val with lots of side stories and anecdotes. We are definitely looking forward to further progress reports. In the meantime what work is needed to be done this year? So, Val leaves at the end of the month to join Patrick and continue the work at hand. We wish them both good speed and success
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