House sitting in France 🇫🇷

France wasn't on my list of places to visit despite numerous changes to it. Now that I'm here I ask myself, why not? We are house sitting in the French countryside at a village called Putanges-Pont-Ecrepin in Normandy. They call this area 'Swiss Normandy' due to its fantastic landscape.  

It's so green and spacious and old. Everything is old. There is hardly a modern looking building anywhere except for the odd school. The architecture and landscape is simply awesome. The properties are miles apart and so many are uninhabited, like this castle just sitting and waiting.... 

Putanges-Pont-Ecrepin was established in the 16th century and looks every bit that ancient. And every other town or village we visit looks the same. Grey stone, cobblestone, sandstone and granite. And they pop up every 10klm or so. Here are a few random photos of what I'm talking about. As usual the iPhone can't capture the true beauty that my eyes can see.  

We are acting as caretakers of an estate called la Vallee Corbon.  

And sure I could bang on about how wonderful it is and how lucky we are but just have a look at the website and you will see what I mean http://www.corbon.eu. By the way our lodging is a three story guest house! 

A typical day goes like this; In the morning we feed the cats including a Serval which is a wild leopard looking cat from Africa, and clean the litter trays. Feed the chooks (hanging out with the chooks is my favourite past time) and clean the coup, water the veggie garden and pick the fruit. Which includes all the raspberries one can eat. In the afternoon we feed the dogs (two poodles) and clean the pool. Every other day we do some weeding, mowing or brush cutting.  

We have plenty of time to work on other projects and activities like repairing bikes, going on walks and doing some site seeing. Our hosts are very kind and hospitable and accomodate us beyond our expectations. This is the first of three house sits that will round out the journey and I highly doubt it could get any better than this. Awesome.