Visit to the Moulin d’Eau

This week seems to have been a week of food related incidents and visits to properties for sale, and I was really looking forward to todays visit to an old converted watermill.



Corsica seems to attract interesting people who always have little projects on the go, and S & P are no exception – they like to ‘save’ houses! When they bought the mill it was little more than a shell, but looking at it today it’s hard to believe it’s the same place.



They took me on a tour of the whole place including the mill room which still has most of the original mill machinery. It was fascinating to see how the mill would have worked and follow each step of the process through the building, but for me the greatest discovery was the tiny saint settled into a niche above the mill stones.



Like all trades, the millers in Corsica have their saints, but these differ from region to region - there were at least two in the Wikipedia list Sue sent me afterwards, but then it is Wikipedia! We speculated as to who it could be, but it has been so many years since this mill actually worked, that we doubted there would be anyone left who could tell us for sure.



It was another gorgeous day so we sat on the terrace to eat our home-made leek and potato soup with herbs from the garden and warm seeded bread, but it was over coffee that I learnt how dangerous renovations can be. Apparently one of the old men from the village took a shine to S when they moved in, so when his doctor told him he should get more exercise for his heart, he decided that the walk from his house in the village down to chat to S was just about the right distance for his constitutional. Sadly (for him), the sight of her operating the cement mixer through his binoculars(!) was just too much for him and he popped his clogs, but it sounds like at least he went with a smile on his face!



I’ve seen quite a few converted properties in this area from mills to bergeries and they have all been lovely, but this one is definitely my favourite. What’s nice is that they managed to strike what I think is the perfect balance between restoring the historic features of the building, and adding all the modern home comforts that have turned the mill into my dream home!

Sadly, I don’t have enough pennies in my piggy bank for this one, but should I ever win the lottery...