A few more holiday snaps

Kings of the castle.




Sunflowers in the valley. These are pictures of different fields in the Niccone Valley.







Panoramic view from Cortona.



A few more shots of the ruin.











Beautiful sunset. Taken from the terrace at Casa Vecchia where we stayed this summer.





Gubbio. Beautiful medieval town about 45 minutes from Preggio.











Making important decisions with Tom & Olly.

Putting faces to the names.

Just found a photo of Geoff Flynn, who found the house for us, and is now our project manager (although that doesn't even come close to covering what he's actually done for us and we couldn't have done any of this without him) and Maurizio Urso, our Geometra (who has had to not only design the house but also handle all of the permissions, thermal calculations etc and the authorities). We don't currently have a picture of Gordon Carey who is an English architect who has a house in Umbria and also helped design the house.

Another thing that I love about Italy!

Wine..... Now most of us are partial to a drop of wine at the end of the day especially when we are on holiday. But how about this.......



€1.37 per litre (£1.12) in the local supermarket in Umbertide. Perfectly drinkable.
White, rose and red are all available although I'd have to say that we liked the rose the best. I was quite surprised when we got back to the U.K to see the white wine in Tesco but in a smaller (750ml) carton for £3.99. Who said we get ripped off over here???

Storm

I recorded these on my phone sitting by the pool.
We watched the storm come across the valley and didn't go in doors until we felt the rain. It was quite stunning and the videos don't do it justice. We had blue skies on one side and storm clouds coming at us on the other. Little did we know that a while afterwards the lightening would almost strike the house and knock out the power!!

Just a thought

Things I love about Celle Di Sotto

Walking up the road to our house there were grape vines growing in the olive trees, blackberries growing on the brambles and wild fennel growing by the old ruin. There's a plum tree by the house which I hope we can move and keep, a cherry tree and obviously loads of olive trees.......beautiful.........I feel so lucky and cannot wait for it to be finished

A few more pics

This is where we stayed.

Gubbio

Holiday pictues.

As promised here are some pictures that we took while we were in Preggio for the last couple of weeks.

The weather was very changeable while we were out there and there was one tremendous storm where the house that we were staying in was almost struck by lightening and all of the power was completely knocked out....in fact it ended up being worse than we originally thought, a lot of the dimmer switches in the house and the motor to the electric gates were all burnt out by the lightening and all need to be replaced...note to self 'have a surge protector fitted'. We also sat on the terrace and admired some wonderful sunsets, this one below was particularly special.

Back to the house....I would estimate that 3/4 of the old structure has been demolished and when the builders come back in early September they will clear the rubble to sort the stones to be reused and start preparing to work on the foundations. The larger stones from doorways have been set aside already along with the beams and the roof tiles.

It was quite sad to see the old house knocked down but it would not have been structurally sound had we tried to have it renovated rather than completely rebuilt.

We are going to use as many of the old materials as possible and will be as sympathetic as we can with the interior design to try and keep the house looking traditional.

Here are a couple of pictures that were taken from the position where the house will stand

The well has been positioned above the house, while this is obviously somewhat dictated by the location of the water, it is exactly where we wanted it to be and it will be clad with traditional stone and made into a feature.

When i ve gone through all of the photos I shall upload some more.

Back from holiday!

Just back this week from a lovely 2 week break in Preggio. We actually stayed in the farmhouse that's just below ours on the side of the valley and it was a lovely house. It was great to be able to pop up the hill and wander around the site and look at the materials that have been set aside from the old ruin for use in the build. Although August is generally a shut down month for the builders in Italy there were people on site most days but at the moment the work is more about preparation than actual building. Connections are now ready for electricity and water (from the newly drilled well as there will be no mains water) and the site is waiting to be cleared of the old stones ready for the foundations to be worked on in September.

We took some great photos while we were out there and I shall publish some later when I'm at my pc.