Cross-Channel dash

We did a flying visit to the house in early October - it was nearly ten years since we bought the place, and we're still driving to garden.  The only real difference is that now we're doing it with two gardens, in two countries, not just going abroad to do so!

It had clearly been very wet (again) in our absence, but the neighbours told us that the vendange had been wonderful; a late warm, dry, spell had really ripened and sweetened the grapes, and the weather for the harvest was lovely until the last day.  We believe them, but the plant growth and sogginess of the ground says that an awful lot more rain had fallen since our last trip.

I'm not sure if that's why so many spiders were in the house; several people have said the wet is driving the spiders indoors, but we tend to have "indoor" spiders anyway.  I do know that we had an extraordinary number of corpses in the sink...  With one live spider sitting there; I'm guessing it wasn't a freak occurrence that killed them all, but cannibalism?  Either way, the remaining inhabitant was evicted pretty promptly!