The three of us have just returned from our first visit staying at the house. We owe a huge thank you to G and T who ensured that we had electricity and collected us at Carcassonne. The estate agent promised that water would spring forth (albeit through condemned lead pipes) as soon as we opened the water meter within the garage or just outside the front door. We hunted high and low for this meter, but it was getting late and we chose a room to blow up our camping mattresses, knowing we would have to manage until the next day without. T handed Baz an unopened envelope from the estate agent, which he assumed was the purchase ‘attestation’.
The next morning I opened the envelope and found that it was actually an estimate from the water company (495 euros), for pipe replacement at pavement level. I asked the gentleman in the office next door if he knew where our meter was, just so that we could use the loo etc over the weekend, and he very kindly called his friend at the water company, who knew all about us and explained that the water supply along the entire road had been condemned and closed off some years back and a new supply had been installed in its place in the road at the back of the properties. Because our house had been empty for so long it had not been connected. In other words, I had bought a house with no mains water, despite it being on the main road in the centre of a main town, and the estate agent had apparently just been covering this up! Still, the man from the water company could not have been nicer, he is getting us sorted out, and no doubt we will laugh about this in the years to come.
Anyway, we had a great weekend. We got the front door open, found a public tap, chucked buckets of water down the loo and showed some enthusiastic locals around the house. We were grateful to be 5 minutes walk from the outdoor swimming pool, which meant that we could clean up and bask in the 35 degree sun as well. The people of Quillan made us feel incredibly welcome, coped brilliantly with my rusty French, and reassured me that we have done the right thing. It felt as though every time we opened a window or showed someone round was breathing life back into the poor old house. We even had a visit from our lovely Dorset neighbours, R and E, who made a point of ‘passing by’ on Monday to see our project before we returned to the rain and the boring old functional plumbing of the UK.
Poshbird with Passion 
I laughed out loud when I read this although I truly empathize. We have lived on a farm in Scotland where the water was turquoise from a copper deposit (undrinkable), survived the tap water of Cairo which was safe?… when it was actually running and on another property in Scotland that had a septic tank which never worked and often backed up towards the house. You will indeed laugh about this later! Bonne chance avec les rénovations de l’eau. 🙂
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Well, that was an interesting development! & well done for coping with those privations.
Bonne chance with the rest
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