Subdued

It took an alarm clock to wake us both up this morning,but we hauled ourselves out of bed just after 6.30am and while I went to try out my new exercise circuit courtesy of Virginia (thanks V!), Stuart got his bicycle out of the shed, donned his lycra and set off for the first bike ride he'd done in many months.

I must admit I was a little nervous waving him off - what with there being precious little mobile phone signal in the area, and none at the house, I was worried in case anything happened he couldn't get in touch. Of course, I needn't have worried, and a while later he reappeared at the end of the drive, having tested out a route.

As we both headed back for the house to shower and get ready for the day we were met with wafts of the most wonderful smell of baking bread. Stuart had put a loaf of his bread into the bread maker last night, and set the timer to start baking early in the morning so that it would be ready at around 8am. This was the first loaf he's had a chance to bake since being reunited with the bread machine last weekend - and it looked (and tasted) every bit as good as it smelled:

There are few smells better than freshly baked bread!

Our next challenge on the baking front is to attempt to master a gluten-free loaf - while gluten-free products over here are available, the range is somewhat limited, the bread somewhat rubbish and all of it very expensive!

After breakfast we each headed to work - I had a long day of office work ahead of me, and Stuart headed to the apartment to put on another coat of paint and start removing the old grout from between the tiles in the shower room.

Unfortunately, today was not the best day for awkward, frustrating tasks (each coat of paint flakes off in the same areas due to damp in the walls, and Stuart is deeply offended by the state of the tiling in the bathroom and would ideally like to rip the whole thing out and start again, but we're limited both by finances and by timing - we were forwarded another enquiry about a booking for the apartment this morning, which would only be six weeks away if it comes off), and a big build up of tiredness really took its toll on Stuart today.

In the end he threw the towel in with the apartment and resorted to clearing some space in the woodshed by doing some runs to the communal bins - this means you can now at least move in the woodshed and we can go back to using it as a convenient short cut from the front door to the car (and vice versa), which is particularly handy when unloading lots of shopping.

We eventually ended the day at around 5.30pm sitting on the terrace and feeling rather overwhelmed by everything. No job seems straightforward, there is so very much to do, so little time to do it in (with a deadline for when our first paying guests are due to arrive), and we are mindful of whittling away our finance reserves.

In the apartment there's the problem of the damp in the walls, the bathroom needs re-grouting, the doors are awful and need replacing, the lock definitely needs replacing as it barely works now, the kitchen needs building (when it's delivered), shelves need putting up, furniture needs buying, linens need buying, garden furniture needs buying, a pizza oven/BBQ needs building, the lawn needs tidying, a screen needs putting up to hide the rubble from the old lean-to, and a screen putting up to divide our lawn from guests lawn for privacy. Oh, and we need to get residency sorted, get a new car, get the old one back to the UK, fit fly screens at the other windows in the house, sort out the office room so that it can be used as a bedroom mid-July, and we haven't even STARTED talking about the garden, the tiers, the olives, the solar panels, the heating...

Still, on the bright side, we worked out that we have a walnut tree in the garden:

Yay, walnuts! (If the pine martens don't get to them first).