New years photo update (part 1 - garden)

Here are some before and after pictures - the befores are all 2003.

First the front of the house in 2003 and then yesterday. The garden needs cutting down, but the blue tits love the verbena seedheads, so I'm leaving them till spring, if the wind doesn't knock them down completely first (good excuse).

To the left side, the hangar had just been demolished (you can see the beams being loaded).The side barn is now a habitable space, with a small window in front and a decent door. The big stones in the 2003 photo were used for the corners of the beds in the front garden.

Down the side of the house, where the hangar used to be. We had the end half of the concrete dug up and that is now flowerbeds. We have filled-in the drainage channels, and covered the right-hand part with slate chippings with a flowerbed edge (theres a ditch to the right of the bed). The other side will be a boules court one day - when we don't need it for sand/compost/rubble storage!

Here is Pixel carefully picking his way over what looks like a bomb site. Poor cat, probably wondering what we had brought him to! Note the little apple tree in centre of picture. Todays picture shows the courtyard garden that has replaced the pile of wood on the right in the first picture. The apple tree is considerably bigger now, seen here without leaves. The concrete hardstanding in the forground of the 'now' picture is for the porch we have yet to get around to building (see blog 'More plans for the future'; Oct 22 2006).

The back lawn (just grass really). It did look terrible after the septic tank had been installed. the 2003 summer was so dry that nothing grew for months. The stony surface explains why the grass here doesn't grow too well at the best of times even now, although it is a bit shaggy now as I haven't cut it for quite a while. The recent picture shows the new chicken-proof (?) 'dead hedge' nearing completion - there will be smart gates in the gaps soon!

Finally, for now, some ariel views. The first was taken when we fitted the chimney pot a bit later in summer 2003. The last two are from an upstairs window of the gîte and show the back and front gardens. Things have tidied-up a bit and also grown somewhat. It cheers me up considerably to look back and see how much better it all looks now!

Chants de marin in Binic

Last evening was the first anniversary of the 'chants de marin' sessions we have been going to at Binic, on the north coast. So we had a bit of a do - in fact we had a really smashing evening, with standing room only and sore throats afterwards from all the singing.
Note from the poster for the evening (above) - we are now included as residents/regular singers! Feels really nice to be included - some brave souls are even starting to join in with some choruses in English. Etienne & Etienne (next two pictures below) are two thirds of the group 'Fortunes de Mer' and originally started the session. They always strike me as an unlikely looking combination, but they sound really good together as well as singing individually.
Edwige and her husband Pierre-Jean (next two pictures below) are the couple who first told us about the session back last January. They also took part in the concert we gave last June.

Hervé and Hélène (pic below) kindly invited us to stay over with them last night - saved us an hours drive back in the freezing cold. Hervé is a local Breton, and Hélène is from Quebec, and speaks French with the most outrageous accent possible! What I struggle to understand at the best of times becomes practically impossible!
Hélène took along her dancing dolls which are traditional to Quebec. They are the same dancing dolls that are common in the northwest of the UK, particularly around Liverpool. You support the doll just touching the board, which you 'twang' with your thumb in time to the music, to make the doll dance. It is really very effective!
So if you are coming to visit, plan to be here for the third Thursday of the month (except in august, of course) and make sure you have a sea shanty you can sing or a hornpipe you can play!

doors: real and faux

Got the front door fitted eventually, although the weather has not allowed us to render the in-fill either side. It would melt if I tried it!Here is the door from the inside. What a difference it makes against the wind! We can actually think about heating the downstairs now.
Meanwhile, upstairs, we have insulated and framed-out the capuchine, which used to be the only way into the loft. Since we have excavated the soil away from the back wall, this door leads nowhere, and we are not allowed to have a clear glass window overlooking our neighbor's property....
So, having installed pipes to take further electric cables (that are sure to be required once the space is blocked)....
We have fitted an old french door that came out of the house. Thus we have a 'faux' door, and a triple glazed, non-see-through window.

Insulating the upstairs

Pete helped by a friend of ours, Rhett, putting up battening and insulation in what will be the bedroom over the shop. Just blocking the drafts that were howling through the edges of the eaves has warmed up the upstairs considerably. We had to spend an afternoon the other day cutting down the hydrangeas alongside the shop (by the road), to get to the climbing roses and brambles behind them, that were coming into the roofspace - great thick twining stems growing indoors! Have vigorously pruned the rambling rose, but this just seems to encourage it! Once the insulation is done we can start heating the place and then lay the second half of the upstairs floor-boards (over the particle board you can just see in the picture)

The end wall will be dry-lined. Rendering it will bring too much water into the building again. We have bought a second dehumidifier (second-hand this time) to dry out the downstairs rooms, as the rendering is still a bit wet. As we have started to acquire furniture & beds etc, we need to keep them dry.

photos of work in progress

The old door has been removed and we have had to set up a temporary cover to keep the weather (if not the cats) out. You can see the new door frame and the blocks we have had to use to fill in the extra space. The door is still going to be wider than the average doorway...

We couldn't face blocking in the amazing stone hinge holes, especially the top one, so we left a gap. The blocks will be rendered in the next few days.

This is the doorway from the inside. I have finished rendering around the new blockwork, so it blends seamlessly with the rest of the rendering.

The kitchen is coming on. The gaps are for (from right to left) the dishwasher, sink (in place) fridge, cooker (with tiles behind) and shelves. The work surface will be finished with solid oak parquet, which we will seal with exterior grade polyurethane.

Update on progress

OK, haven't updated for ages - been too busy. As you probably know, we are trying to get the gite ready for spring, so we have been madly building for the last couple of months.

Today, Pete connected-up the electric circuits for power and light in the downstairs 'kitchen' area, so now I will be able to take some photos with decent light. We have nearly finished rendering the kitchen walls, and have got the worktop base in place - we will cover it with (well sealed) solid oak parquet. I have managed to source second-hand cooker, fridge, microwave and dishwasher for the kitchen for very little cost - this lot will go in very soon, so we have room in the downstairs bedroom to put stuff from upstairs while we do the floor. I can carry on with finishing-off downstairs now.

Pete has started to frame-out the second half of the upstairs roof, so we can get it at least insulated, before we lay the rest of the floor, over the shop. Working in there now is a pain, it is so cold...

There is a load of plumbing to get done, which I am trying not to think about - maybe when we can heat the place a bit I can bear to start it. Twiddling with joints and pipes with frozen fingers is not my idea of fun - makes my hands hurt.

Speaking of which, I have been trying an elimination diet to see if it helps my joints. No wheat/barley/oats, sugar, alcohol, eggs, caffeine, tomatoes, chocolate or dairy for 7 days, and now a gradual re-introduction of different foods. Once the three-day headache wore off, I realise that my joints are definitely feeling better for it. Now I only now have one thumb joint that still hurts, and that seems to be improving each day. I have re-introduced beer, sugar, oats and tomatoes so far, with no adverse effects. Watch this space! I suspect red wine and bread may end up as the culprits - hey ho, never mind.

We have safely dispatched this years lambs to the great pasture in the sky. Well, actually to the freezers in our workshop, along with gallons of stock and various soups. So the carnivores among you can safely plan a visit, knowing that lamb will feature strongly on the menu, should you wish...

We have also had a 'ureka' moment, re: building raised beds for growing veggies. The degree of compaction, plus the tons of stones/hardcore in the soil where we want to put the veggie garden mean we have to have raised beds. Using old railway sleepers is not an option at 25 euros per carcinogen-creosoted piece. We will be using corrugated sheeting, of which we have loads that came off the big hangar we had demolished, and which has been sitting quietly in the workshop, waiting for us to find a use for it. Our increased consumption of salads will be satisfied by growing our own next year!

Photos will follow soon.

Bull Barn progress

Heres a rather shaky video of the work we have done recently downstairs in the bull barn.
It is now divided into a kitchen/entrance area, a small room for the water heater and washing machine, then a big bedroom with an en-suite shower room. We are currently rendering the walls in the bedroom - the noise is the dehumidifier drying the place out.

I get to make crêpes for sale!

Yesterday was the Pardon at Saint Lubin, and as tradition dictates (this is what an elderly gentlemen told me) the weather was lovely. After a short défilé to the fontaine at the back of the village, they lit a substantial pile of brushwood soaked in what smelt like diesel and enjoyed a quick bonfire - another tradition.
What was faintly alarming was the proximity of telephone and power lines...
"Its always been here" was the response to our alarm, presumably since before the lines went up, so they must take their chances. Glad they're not our power lines though. That was just the gentle start to a hectic day. The pardon participants returned to the chapelle, outside of which we (members of the comité des fêtes) were serving kir and selling homemede cakes to fund-raise for intermediate-type technologies for communities in Burkino Fasso.

A sad note was that there was a new member of the team of four carrying the Saint. Our neighbour, Raymond Le Goff, who died a few weeks ago, had, for many years, been very proud to be one of the four bearers. So this was a bit of a difficult day for Monique.

After a couple of kirs (obligatory, it seems!) and a quick lunch (more wine), the afternoon activities were got underway. There is a definite (and predictable) male/female split in who does what in these things, so Pete spent most of the afternoon helping Laurent organise the boules tournament. Easier said than done, as the attractions of freshly-made crêpes (more of which later) and two bars within 100 meters meant that competitors tended to drift off if their next round opponents were not immediately to hand. So the four rounds necessary to whittle down from 31 teams to get a winner, on only 8 boules courts ended with the last two teams deciding to split the 200 euro prize money pot because it was getting too dark to play. Keeping the bouncy castle inflated against the depredations of hoards of overexcited kids took up Pete's spare afternoon time.

I spent the afternoon helping to set up eight krampouezh or crêpes-makers - linked in series (strictly interdit!) to only a couple of gas bottles (this photo gives you the idea). Then Laurent's wife, Noëlie let me have a go at making a crêpe. This looks Soooooo easy when done by experts (It should have been one of those awful tasks on the Generation Game, remember that?). The secret, I was told, was to be calm - not to panic. Sounds just the thing for me - you all know I NEVER panic....

So the first one was not too bad - a bit uneven, torn and crisp in parts, but then only Noëlie was watching. About an hour later, when production was warming up, with three people making & selling crêpes, Noëlie called to me - did I want a go? I realised this may well be a now-or-never moment so I said yes. What I didn't expect was that she would immediately vanish and leave me to it. My customers were on the whole extremely tolerant, especially when they realised I was english! The sweet crêpes, made with wheat flour, eggs sugar and milk are relatively easy as they are quite elastic and tear-proof. The blé noir galettes, made from buckwheat, are another matter altogether. The batter is very claggy and stringy, but when cooked becomes much more fragile and likely to tear. When I got an order for three blé noir with cheese & ham it took me a while to understand the order, and then the results were pretty awful. I would like to thank the lady who ordered them for her help and encouragement as I was struggling. Each got worse than the previous, and she kept assuring me that THIS one was for her, so it didn't matter. After that things got a bit easier as I calmed down and stopped panicking. I did notice the queue in front of me was noticeably smaller than the two others, which didn't surprise me. More surprising was that there was any queue at all!

block walls started

This is the start of the downstairs plaster-block walls. We have only seen these in France, big lego-like plaster blocks that you glue together with a special 'colle'. Most off-the-shelf doors/doorframes come with morticed sides and top to fit these blocks, so building a wall with a door is easy.
Bedroom door now in place and more wall built. There will be a utility room (water tank and washing machine) on the left of this door (ie just to the left,behind the existing outside door). It barely looks safe as a wall, but we know from previous experience that these walls are solid.
This picture above shows where this new wall is in relation to the outside door of the barn. We decided to incorporate the tiny window at the back into the bedroom, rather than the kitchen.
Here's a picture of our new (second-hand) table, which will go in front of the fireplace, and give a worksurface in the kitchen. Its solid oak and weighs a ton.

Finally, congratulations to Greg on being awarded a Research Council grant to help him finance both fees and some maintenance for his masters degree.

tidy the fireplace

This is how the fireplace looked in the bull-barn. Once Pete had taken out the manger, the bottom of the wall was a mess, where the big hearth stone had been removed. Luckily the bottom bit of wall is bedrock, so it's safe enough.
We have built up a small wall across the front of the fireplace and cut and waxed a piece of the old walnut manger-edging to top it. So now we have a (not very comfortable) bench-seat rather than a yawning gap.

How about getting the last row of floor tiles to fit exactly up to the end wall? Good planning eh? The building is actually a remarkably accurate rectangle, and despite starting with a row down the centre, we only had to cut tiles down one edge of the space.

below - Hugh is in training to fit Pete's guitar case sometime very soon.

The floor is finished!

At last we have finished tiling the floor of the bull-barn. This has been quite a marathon, but we got there in the end. The job of grouting, which I was dreading, was made ridiculously easy by a bit of advice from our ex-builder friend John (see blog for thursday 7th June). When I was bitterly complaining about how hard it is to clean-off the grout he simply asked if we had any sawdust? "Use dry sawdust and a sponge to clean it up" was his advice.

As you can see from the photo above, it worked amazingly well. We cleaned-off the last 30-or-so square metres in about an hour, with much less fuss and effort than before. Please note as well the magic knee pads John loaned to us - knee savers!
So now the next job is to get the internal walls and doors into place - we are going to use plaster blocks for the downstairs walls, as well as to build the kitchen units. There will be a bedroom/shower room, utility room (hot water tank & washing machine) and a kitchen in this area. The old fireplace will be left showing and used for a decorative feature (unless we decide to put a small woodburner in front of it).

W actually had some nice weather while Jen was staying. I think she suspects us of exaggerating the awfulness of this summer in general. Our neighbour gave a huge sigh of relief and worked 24/24 to get his wheat and barley harvested.The road outside our house was red-hot with tractors pulling hugely overloaded trailers of first grain and then dozens of giant cotton-reel bales of straw. It was all hands to the pumps, with every friend and family member they could pull in to get it done in the few days of sunshine we had. Yvon is now looking a little less harassed.
We went up to Quintin (say it: can-tan) for their fete de tisserands, their linen festival. Good brocante (lots of stuff as no-one has been buying much this year) a parade with lots of music, costumes and huge horses and a nice lunch out. It was really nice to stop building and do some touristy stuff for a change. Jen, you can stay anytime if you bring weather like that!!

The floor tiles get laid..

OK they are getting laid - see above. Takes ages as one mix of mortar does about 18 - 20 tiles which is about all we can manage at once. Pete mixes mortar and and I lay the tiles - restrictive trades practices it used to be called. We call it divison of labour. We have almost half the floor laid by now. Watch this space!


In the meantime we have taken advantage of some fine weather (shhhh it may notice!!!) to clear out the midden behind the workshop building (many thanks to Greg for his help) and to construct the second part of the dead-hedge (see may 22 for part one). The cordon sanitaire against the chickens is getting there! Watch this space for part 3, then the finale of "the gates"

As you can see we have a nice shady space now, behind the workshop. I am hoping to plant azaleas, rhododendron, yew (there is a golden yew already planted now in the corner) and other shade-loving plants there soon. We already have sweet peas and honeysuckle growing up the new dead-hedge. I am hoping to construct pretty gates for pedestrians and vehicules using treated wood, painted green. Pictures will follow.

Somewhere I have climbing solanum cuttings - I put them somewhere safe in the garden, earlier this year, but I havent been out much since and I have forgotten where they are.....

The French 5 Days orienteering

(I think this episode of my blog is really aimed at Fran!)
Here are the maps from the french 5 days orienteering event. At least, the bits that I came across! Click on the maps to see a bigger version. I can send copies to anyone who wants...

The whole area is basically pine forest over sand dunes. Days 1 - 3 had quite a lot of areas with scrub and waist to shoulder-high undergrowth which made things very difficult occasionally. Days 4 & 5 (same map, same start and finish - bit boring really) had much more defined ups and downs and the white areas were really fast if you could manage the hills of soft sand....

Day 1 first.

I didn't make any big mistakes here. This was basically a medium-distance event, to get used to the type of terrain. The open-area start was a bit worrying, but I didnt see much open after that, except 6 which was in shoulder-high pine treelets. I attacked it from the knoll on the vegetation boundary to the east.

Day 2 - it gets harder..

Made two mistakes on this day - note that the contours are 2.5 metres, rather than the usual 5. I mistook the path junctinn to the north of number 3 for the path junction to the east. Ridiculous but true. I lost about 6 minutes here. Then I had a blinding run till number 11. I got distracted by people running D45 who had the same number 10 and headed towards my number 11 - except they went somewhere else and I was left thinking where the XXX am I ?? This leg took me 12.21 minutes. Damn. It was not really difficult, just delicate navigation and no time to get lost and relocate.

Day 3 - bad to worse.

I stood on the start line and thought "I'm never going to find number 1" I completely failed to spot the ride going east to west just south of the control. Doh! So I took the first path to the right and tried to follow the row of knolls going north-east. Fat chance, they barely showed on the ground - so after 11 and a half minutes I stumbled on it by chance. Two and three were slow and at 7 I mistook the first path crossing for the second (getting tired) which wasted a bit. The run-in was awful - about 700metres of just running (staggering) uphill on dry sand, as it effectively started from number 11. Bad planning that.

Day 4 - the best day

Despite getting very tired, this was he best day by far. The dunes were bigger and easier to see on the ground. The first control was like one of the knife-edge ridges in Sunnyhurst woods! I found the path leading into number 5 from the north-east, flew down the sand slope on the ride between 6 & 7 and disturbed someone's lunch going through the campe site from 11 to 12. The run in was pretty awful again - all the rides were soft sand. I was 12th on the day - it was one of those times when everything seems to go right, and to be soooo easy.....

Day 5 - repeat the previous day with added aches.

As I said - same start and finish. Almost the same legs occasionally. H35A actually had the same last two controls as the day before. Not good enough really. The weather eventually turned HOT. We had late starts and I was really tired. In addition, I had pulled a joint in my right instep, so soft sand was even harder than normal. You will note that 6-7 crosses the same open spur as day 4 and the stretch to and from number 7 was too hot for (polite) words. There were no drinks controls for the shorter courses either. Lots of people just went and dived straight into the lake by the finish once they stopped - my brain was too cooked to remember it was there!!! Never mind. I managed to do just about the same time on day 5 as day 4. The scandinavians of course did day 5 faster than the previous day. I came 18th overall the 5 days, and first member of a french club. (and second brit!) so I am well-pleased.
Now I need to do some more training.....

Going on holiday!

and the size of the pile of stuff is starting to make me think 'kitchen sink' (no, the ironing board is staying home)
We have probably got out of roughing it when camping, there are too many necessities. We are going to a tiny site to the north-west of Bordeaux and we are hoping that the weather proves kind. I have memory-scars still from the scottish six-days at Kingussie (Fran & Greg were running M10) in the rain. Still, bordeaux is slightly further south..... warm rain probably.


The floor is now laid in the Bull Barn. Here is the concrete waggon arriving, this is about as close as he could get. The driver was very helpful, and dispensed wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of concrete while Pete & Rhett (a friend) carted it to the furthest recesses of the barn. We got 4 cubic metres which was not quite enough, but 5 would have been far too much. Now for the floor tiles. We will get them once we get back from orienteering.
Thats all for now. Take a look at Genes Reunited - I have put on lots of the family recently (you cant see my tree till I let you via the site, so ask while I'm away and I'll let you in when I get back. Doing this has also got me back in touch with two of my cousins that I ahve lost contact with -Christine Nugent (My aunty Peggy's eldest daughter) and Gus Mackay (my uncle Billly's eldest son) and we have been doing some catching up. When I can get sorted out how to, I will post lots of the old family photos on the genes reunited site.