We'd returned to England during the period between the compromis and the acte final. While there we bought a trailer and spent a day filling it and the land rover with useless bits and pieces. The return trip at the end of July ended in an overnight dash from somewhere north of Caussade, via Gaillac, Puylaurens, Revel, Carcassonne and on and on till morning. We had to meet the soon-to-be-former owner with the key by noon. Amazingly we made it. We found three bottles of wine as a house-warming gift. All three and two more disappeared over the course of the afternoon/evening. It was at least thirty in the shade so we sweated it all out. Over the next few days we rattled around the place. The house part was not completely separate from the enormous barn and in fact the very well constructed toilet and shower room were in the barn itself. At night getting up to use the toilet was a Hammer Horror experience, as bats were sitting tenants and the whole place creaked as it cooled down from the days heat. We finally bought something useful - a ladder - and had a look up on the first floor. It was only accessible through a hole where the floor had collapsed. The hay and straw for the horses had been stored up there and since they'd been replaced by tractors decades ago there was no need for stairs. However there was still about a tonne of the stuff up there, plus a mummified cat. How we got all that down and out, in the summer heat, is one of those stories where you had to be there to understand the true awfulness. Since then all the floorboards have gone as well - they kept us warm through the winter blazing in the Catalan fireplace.