If you are the first person there after winter you will have a little extra work to do :-) Mostly this is clean up etc but one important task is to get the water back on.
Inevitably, when you leave the place for 4-6 months over the winter, it will feel neglected when you first arrive. We always find the best thing to do is get the heating on and light the fire and keep them both on for the first day - even if its already warm outside. This warms the whole place up and starts to warm and dry out the thick walls. I often also light the Aga in the summer kitchen area to heat that up as well.
There is a vacuum clean under the stairs in the main room that works well.
There are often small piles of sawdust in the guest room on the bed and floor - there are wood beetles in the beams above which seem to have become addicted to the chemicals we try and kill them with and refuse to go elsewhere.
We usually leave some strips of carpet on the floor in the office room upstairs just in case there have been any slight leaks in the roof over winter - just pile them up out of the way.
Clean sheets for the beds are in the wall closet in the main bedroom and there are usually some on the shelves in the guest bedroom (room on right when you enter main front door)
If there's no water when you turn the taps on then you can assume that the water has been turned off for the winter. You have to turn the water on before you switch the heating on!
Our water supply comes from a large concrete tank above the 'main' road. (If you walk up to the road past the mail box, turn left, it is on the right after about 100m). That tank supplies all the houses in the hamlet of Sambuget and is fed from 2 springs on the hillside above.
The water 'mains' runs from this tank along the road - each house in the hamlet has its own main tap ('vane') which runs from the road down to the house. Ours is pretty much directly above the house in a buried concrete box by the side of the road.
From the house, walk up past our post box to the road above, turn left and about 5m on the right you should be able to see a small concrete manhole covered by a couple of big stones. Remove the stones and reach down to the handle below and open it. Replace the stones and then head back to the kitchen to check the water is on.
Run the taps for a few minutes to clean the pipes out and remove any air. You should also keep an eye out over the next day just in case a pipe has cracked over winter and has started to leak.
If the water still isn't running in the taps then there's a possibility that someone has also switched off the internal taps. This is in the left most cellar (looking down the valley) where the boiler is. As you walk in the door, switch the light on, and directly opposite the door, above the septic tank, running along the ceiling are several water pipes. One of these has a small handle on it - make sure it is open.
If this has been turned off (unusual) then also check the control handles above the hotwater tank/boiler. Just to the left of the cellar door. There are two big handles on the pipes running into/out of the hotwater tank on the wall above. They should both be open - ie pointing up and down the pipes, not across.
Over the winter, some rain usually seeps down the main chimney and into the main fireplace - this isn't a problem but it often looks a bit manky when you first arrive. If the last person to leave didn't close the main vent over the fire then there will probably be some extra debris in/around the fireplace. (Equally if it was closed, when you open it up for the first time, stuff will fall down - stand back:-). Just clean it up and light the fire.