Crise de l'eau

Unsurprisingly, since we have had no appreciable rain for months, we now we have a hosepipe ban.  We have a spring in our garden, not the babbling brook variety, but a pipe that comes in through the wall of the back garden and is piped through our land into the neighbouring field to fill a water butt for cattle, horses or whatever might be in there.  Actually, it is very rare for there to be any sort of beast in the field, it is mostly used for growing grass for silage.  The water belongs to us and we a have a paper (very important in France) which says so. So we decided to install a water butt, a 300 litre rectangular sectioned container to make use of our free water.  Today I dug some foundations and installed it against the garden wall (see extra pic). I have diverted the incoming spring hose to enter near the top of the water butt and have made a hose outlet near the bottom for us to draw off water.  It took about two hours for the inlet to fill the 300 litres to the top. So we have our own free water to use in the garden.  When we are not drawing water off the butt fills again and a second outlet near the top continues to deliver the excess into the field for the cattle etc.  Whilst I was doing all this, N was busy with household chores and gardening, so we took a nice air-conditioned drive out and ended up in Autoire (main pic).  On the way home we visited our new mega-supermarket in Saint-Céré.  Very impressive M Leclerc.