There is always a moment here when summer feels as though it is packing its bags.

Not dramatically. There is no sudden turning of the leaves, no crisp morning that announces autumn has arrived overnight. The Périgord Noir doesn’t really work like that.

Instead, you notice the small things.

The roads are quieter.

You can find somewhere to park.

Tables appear again on café terraces without somebody hovering hopefully nearby waiting for you to finish your coffee.

The supermarkets become navigable.

And slowly, those of us who live here all year begin to reclaim our villages and towns.

I don’t mean that unkindly. Tourism is part of the lifeblood of this region and summer brings an energy that I love. Our streets fill, restaurant terraces spill out onto pavements, markets heave and languages from half of Europe can be heard beneath the medieval buildings.

But there is something rather lovely about the rentrée.

We recognise one another again.

The person ahead of you at the boulangerie isn’t ordering fourteen croissants while you stand behind them wondering whether moving to another country might be quicker.

The village exhales.

And so do we.

September has always been one of my favourite months in the Dordogne.

It is not quite autumn and, despite what the calendar might say, it is rarely finished with summer either. The light changes before the temperature does. Mornings begin differently. Shadows stretch a little further across old stone walls. There is the faintest suggestion that soon we might want blankets again, candles might be lit before bedtime and cooking something in the oven will cease to feel like an act of self-harm.

Except, apparently, not yet.

Because just as I had begun mentally rearranging the house for autumn – I just took my heating oil delivery yesterday – the weather has decided to turn the thermostat back up.

Again.

Another heatwave.

The summer of 2026 has apparently misplaced its coat and refuses to leave.

https://meteofrance.com/actualites/meteo-la-chaleur-sintensifie-au-fil-de-la-semaine?utm_source=chatgpt.com

And what a summer it has been.

There have been days when the shutters stayed closed from morning until evening. Days organised around what could be accomplished before the heat became ridiculous. Gardens browned at the edges. Old stone houses did what old stone houses have done for centuries and became places of refuge — provided, of course, nobody made the catastrophic mistake of opening a window at three o’clock in the afternoon.

Of course, the fantasy of summer in southwest France generally takes place outside.

Long lunches under trees. Evening drinks on terraces. Open windows. Bare feet. Gardens. That lovely warm air after dark.

The photographs never show the mosquitoes.

They should.

Because while you are sitting beneath the stars imagining yourself in a French lifestyle magazine, approximately forty-seven mosquitoes have identified you as the evening’s all-you-can-eat buffet.

Summer residents of the Dordogne develop their own peculiar choreography.

We wave.

We slap.

We suddenly squat because something has bitten the back of a knee.

We examine ankles.

And eventually we all begin scratching our arms and legs so enthusiastically that from a distance it looks as though the entire village has formed an invisible guitar band.

There are evenings when French country living is considerably less art de vivre and rather more WHERE IS THE SPRAY?

But that, too, is part of living here.

The beautiful version exists. It just occasionally has itchy ankles.

And September brings another change for me.

France famously goes on holiday in July and August. Things don’t stop completely, of course, but the rhythm changes. Decisions wait. People disappear. Emails acquire automatic replies. Buyers are travelling, sellers have family staying, notaires take holidays and everybody collectively agrees that perhaps whatever it is can wait until the rentrée.

Then September arrives.

And the property market wakes up.

For me, this is often one of the busiest windows of the year.

A fresh wave of owners decide that now is the time to put their properties on the market. Buyers become purposeful again too. Summer holidays have been spent imagining another life, conversations have been had, finances considered, plans made.

And some arrive in the Périgord in September and October with a very clear intention: find the house now, so that next year they can be the ones enjoying summer here.

I understand it.

There is something about seeing this place at the end of summer that makes the idea feel possible. The crowds thin but the countryside is still beautiful. Restaurants and markets are still alive. You can actually move around. And houses can be viewed without quite so much of the August holiday haze.

For an estate agent, it means the phone starts ringing differently.

Estimations. New mandates. Viewings. Buyers returning. Sellers who have been thinking about it all summer finally saying, right, let’s do it.

I love that September energy.

I could simply do without it coinciding with the weather banging out another heatwave.

There is nothing quite like enthusiastically marching around a large stone property with buyers while attempting to look professional as every part of your body quietly liquefies.

September is effectively saying GO GO GO while the thermometer is saying absolutely not.

And somewhere amongst all that activity, another part of me starts truffling.

Not the black Périgord variety — although their time will come.

My sort.

Old textiles. Forgotten ceramics. A piece of discontinued cookware spotted underneath three things I don’t want. Something beautiful that somebody else has stopped seeing.

Autumn and winter have always been my favourite seasons for Maison Adorée. Perhaps because they are the seasons when we turn back towards our homes.

A lamp matters more when darkness arrives at six.

A heavy old curtain becomes beautiful and useful.

The casserole that has spent summer in a cupboard suddenly belongs on the stove.

And things with a little age to them seem particularly at home in autumn.

Perhaps that is why I love old houses and old things for much the same reason.

Neither needs to be perfect.

They just need to have something about them that makes you stop.

As an estate agent, I walk through houses other people are preparing to leave. Sometimes they have been loved for decades. Sometimes they have been inherited. Sometimes their next chapter is simply overdue.

Then, somewhere else in my life, I pick up objects somebody else has finished with and think:

No. You’re not done yet.

I hadn’t really noticed the similarity until I started writing this Journal.

Houses.

Things.

Second chances.

Apparently I have a type.

So perhaps September isn’t really the end of anything.

It is more of a changing of the guard.

The visitors begin going home and we reclaim our villages. The property market wakes from its summer slumber. Buyers arrive hoping that by next summer one of these old houses will be theirs. The evenings slowly draw in. The markets change. Walnuts come, then mushrooms and chestnuts, and eventually the truffles that gave my own peculiar form of hunting its name.

Somewhere amongst all of that, another house will find its next person.

Another forgotten thing will come home with me.

And eventually summer will admit defeat.

Just not this week, apparently.

The shutters are staying firmly closed.