In the beginning

I'm not quite sure how to start this blog. It is 9 months since we opened and an awful lot of water has passed under the bridge in that time. As I write this now I realize that most potential readers of this missive will not know us from Adam (or Eve), so a little background info may be useful.We are Marek & Shirley Woznica, previous residents of Sutton Veny, a small village in the south-west of England. In the summer of 2004 we were holidaying in France, not seriously looking for a holiday home but we did have a few savings that could be used if the right thing came along. Well, we discovered Léran in the department of Ariege (09)! A small village of 600 inhabitants, very close to a beautiful lake, in some of the most stunning scenery imaginable, 45 minutes from the nearest ski resort, an area steeped in history and pre-history, the list goes on. The village boasted a boulangerie (bakery), épicerie (grocer), hairdresser, restaurant, post-office and bar; and a house for sale which perfectly met our needs - so of course we bought it!!! In the photos below it is No. 5 Ruelle de la Tannerie.After several wonderful holidays here over the following 3 years we arrived one Friday evening in August 2007, settled down with some friends at the Marché Gourmand (much more about this phenomenon in later blogs) and learned to our horror that the bar was closing! Well, my first thought was "Ooh s**t, a village with no bar" and my second thought was "Ooh s**t! I'm going to have to buy it!" At the same time I sent a text message to my very good friend Bob Payne (it was with Bob and his lovely wife Lynne that Shirley & I had originally holidayed here in 2004) saying "the bar is for sale - what do you think?" Bob's answer?............... "Go for it!"At this point I hadn't said anything about my thoughts to Shirley and I didn't for several days until I had persuaded myself that this was not just a pipe dream. When I did raise the subject of the bar being for sale and before I could suggest that we buy it Shirley asked me if I had been thinking what she had been thinking! This was the starting point of a long agonizing process of soul searching, researching, calculating, debating, rejecting, re-assessing, and all the other ..ings you could mention.You know the final outcome because we are here now and if we are any good at this blogging business we may well bore you with some of the detail in future. For now we will leave you with a few photos of our house, Léran and the bar and in future blogs will give you an insight into how things have turned out in our first year.
A bientot

The bar - not long after opening


No 5 Ruelle de la Tannerie

River Touyre

Cours Saint Jacques