Down on the Farm - part 2

Despite August being a month of holidays for French workers, work has continued apace down on the farm up until this last week.

The roof has been finished on the farmhouse

and ‘Le Snook’

New floors have been poured, plasterboard fixed and the mezzanine in Le Snook put in place.

Most of the work done has been to a very high standard, just look at this for a work of plumbing art.

Our one concern is the guys making the doors and windows. There are faults with nearly everything they’ve done, including the wrong colour used for the doors, poor fitting, windows forgotten, delayed manufacturing, etc etc.

No other work can now be done until these guys have finished.

This week they are back from their month-long holiday, so hopefully things will get restarted. The week’s pause has given me the chance to get varnishing, with the help of Annick…
with a special app…
called Facebook…

My life passed in front of my eyes. And it was green

You can have too much of a good thing.

After a late night slurping with friends at our regular snooker night get together, we decided to take our house guests (Domitille et al) to one of our favourite nosh-spots in Puycelci.

What better place to eat out than in this hill-top bastide?

With its stunning architecture…

With fois gras to start, followed by steak tartare helped down with a couple of glasses of the local red wine, then a damme blanche ice cream then expresso to finish, how could life get better than this?

Then a gentle stroll around the village in the afternoon scorching heat, then back home to relax by the pool…

That last bit is where it all went wrong.

The heat, the food, the ambience all added together made us somewhat content and relaxed. Too relaxed.

Annick went straight off to sleep leaving me struggling to remain conscious.

On hearing Annick’s cry, I awoke to see my life screaming past me.

And it was green.

We were in fact hammering along at a crazy angle in the ditch at the side of the road. The green was the long grass whipping by us. I thought that the end had come.

We were in luck. No telegraph poles, no trees, no rocks, no people, no vehicles. We came to a smooth stop with no damage except to my ego.

Everyone passing stopped to help. We found a local farmer to tow us out. The car was damage free, the effect of sliding on its side only resulted in the car being cleaner than usual.

Everyone was kind and helpful.

The gentle mocking started later.

The Charente.

Spending a couple of days in the Charente, about an hour north-east of Bordeaux, gave ample opportunity to extract camera from pouch.

Despite the long-unseen fluffy stuff covering the skies, there were opportunities in abundance.

We were there visiting an old college mate Of mine called Dave. Having spent several years at university with him, sometimes in the same house, it is clear to me now where I picked up some of my somewhat dry sense of humour. Dave’s is so dry that he can, to the unwary, come across as a miserable old sod…

That’s him in full laughter mode…

Being something of an ancient mariner, he took us for a trip on his boat on the river Charente

on the banks of which his French property dwells

French departments get their names mostly from the rivers that pass through them. The Charente is large by British standards and, like the rest, flows sleepily and smoothly though the countryside. I bit like the French population really. (That’s not a slur, it’s a compliment.)

We spent a day touring the local sights. Bassac was close by,

with its imposing Abbey.

Enter here all ye sinners…

Having unnecessarily sought redemption, we moved on to Jarnac

the home of Courvoisier Cognac.

Now cleaned up, this beautiful town was once covered in black mould, the ‘Angels Share’ referring to the evaporation of stored cognac that the mould fed on. Signs of it still remain.

This impressive building was where Courvoisier was produced, but manufacturing has moved out of town to even larger premises.

Then back for a bbq in the rain by the Charente once more.

Thanks Dave & Karen for a relaxing couple of days.

Escape to the Mountains

The sun beats down relentlessly on Montauban. With temperatures in the high thirties, low forties, it was time to escape.

The Pyrénées has been used for escaping the rigours of life over many centuries. We (that is Annick and I with Annick’s mum and Evil Lynne) (oops, Evelyn) simply wanted no more than to escape the heat and relax. This time, however, we decided to go on a little adventure. We headed off into Spain, to a village called Canejan. We passed through Saint-Béat, a village all but wiped out two years ago by flash flooding of the Garonne river when it burst its banks.

Almost every business in this riverside village was destroyed.

But work is ongoing to bring it back to life.

Two elderly locals lost their lives.

It is only now regaining some of its vibrancy.

We arrived in Canejan after a somewhat hairy drive up a narrow lane with the usual precipitous drops to the side.

This beautiful hillside village is nestled high up on the side of the Aran Valley, Catalonia, about 40 minutes from our little bolt-hole in the Pyrénées.

Its views are stunning

and vertiginous.

Its buildings perched dangerously

and sometimes colourfully.

There has long been a mountain border trail connecting Canejan with France, used in the Spanish Civil war by those trying to reach the rebel forces, later by those trying to escape Franco’s rule, and then by hundreds escaping Nazi occupation.

All this adventuring caused Maman some degree of tummy troubles, so we paused our return to dine in the hillside French village of Melles

partaking of a drop or two of vin rouge at the same time.

Thus we managed to cool down somewhat, the weather being between ten and twenty degrees cooler and significantly wetter.

The storm over, I had time for my favourite pastime, walking the dogs…

Sunny Sunday Afternoon

Off on the quads again this weekend

Up and over the mountains at the end of our valley

Explored new valleys

 

 

Stopped for a beer in the mountainside village of Melles

Watched an alien encounter in the horse trough

Then back through the woods

To finish off the previous night’s barbecue

Not bad for a (very) hot sunny Sunday afternoon.