Roof maintenance in the Limousin.

And having filled the barn with firewood we needed to make sure it was watertight.  This is Arjan, a Dutch builder living in a village nearby-ish who had this nifty set of ladders:  on two of them a scaffolding platform fits so that he can stand and take the tiles off.  He cleaned off the moss (which grows on everything here) which looks charming but is the cause of most roof problems as it spreads between and under the tiles and then in winter freezes and expands and finally shifts the tiles out of place.  Then he replaced some battens which were rotten and finally replaced the tiles.  This is just a temporary repair as the whole roof needs to be taken off next year and timbers repaired, replaced or just treated for woodworm.  As they build mostly with oak woodworm isn't regarded as a huge problem as the worm seldom gets deeper than an inch into the huge oak beams.  But one needs to keep a close eye on it and we all have tins of deadly poisonous stuff that we are supposed to paint on any dubious looking wood!