In Sapa, Vietnam

In Sapa, Vietnam

About Me

My photo
Sharing time between Southampton and Noyal-Muzillac in southern Brittany. Sports coach, gardener, hockey player, cyclist and traveller. I studied an MA in Management and Organisational Dynamics at Essex University in 2016-17. Formerly an Operations Manager with NEC Technologies (UK) Ltd.

Thursday 25 June 2015

What a difference a can (and a bit) of paint makes

Walking today: 7.5km

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Before:


After:


As we were in the swing we also painted the lime render wall on the end of the longère using the eye-watering expensive silicate paint system that we had bought in 2013 (it's a natural finish that produces a breathable lime wash type finish in two coats (rather than the 5+ coats a traditional lime wash might take).

Before: 


After:




Tuesday 23 June 2015

At last

Walking Monday: 3.8 km (after 12 hours at Jean and Claudette's fete de la village - should count double')
Walking Tuesday: 3.9km

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When we moved out here in 2010 we brought 30L of Dulux Weathershield to paint the outside of the house. Never quite got around to it with the barn work .....

Finally started today:






Sunday 21 June 2015

Great view in the western sky

Thursday walking: 3.8km
Friday walking: 3.9km
Friday swimming: 1.25km

Moles this week: 
Tim 1 (Year to date 3)
Pip 0 (Year to date 6)

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If you get a clear sky look west just after sunset, there's a remarkable conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter at present. Venus is extremely bright at magnitude -4 and is visible from just after sunset here, I had a good night with the telescope this week and Venus shows as just over half phase in the Skywatcher 150. Good views of Jupiter and Saturn (rings nicely edge on) as well in the sky - only problem is that because it's mid-summer the sky isn't dark enough for decent viewing here until after midnight and it never really gets fully dark now.

This picture credited to Ian Griffin in Dunedin, NZ.



Friday 19 June 2015

A blinding flash .... Addendum

Monday walking: 3.8km
Tuesday walking: 3.9km
Tuesday swimming: 1.00km
Wednesday walking: 3.8km

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In addition to the list of failed electrical equipment in the last post add:

Washing machine: Not working (fortunately the one in the house rather than our main one in the barn)

Could be a tricky one for the insurance company, bought in 2010 in the UK, this model no longer on sale in France, nearest equivalent here over €700. Exact model is on sale in the UK through multiple vendors from £256 (that's about €350). Still can't understand why electrical equipment is so expensive here.

I spoke to Dominique at some length on Tuesday and then he still had several things not working in his henhouse and dairy. He said everything with a connection to the phone lines had failed including the automatic feeding system for the cows (rest assured they are still being fed, just not the exact amount based on their milk output and stage in cycle). He also said he had a 100kV surge protector on the henhouse and the lightning had bypassed that and blown out the ventilation alarm system.

So I think we were lucky ....

Sunday 14 June 2015

A blinding flash .....

Walking Monday:    3.8 km
Walking Tuesday:    3.9 km
Swimming Tuesday: 1.00 km
Walking Wednesday: 3.8 km
Walking Thursday: 3.9 km
Walking Saturday: 3.8 km

Moles caught this week / Year to date
Tim     -     1 / 2
Pip      -     1 / 6

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Speed of Light in air:      300,000,000 metres per second
Speed of Sound in air:   340 metres per second

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Ever since I realised that light travels almost instantly whilst sound is much slower - with sound taking 5 seconds to cover a mile - I've been a compulsive lightning counter - "1001, 1002, 1003, 1004, 1000 and 1 mile ...".

I've seen lightning strike the ground (from the safety of a building) and I've been so close to lightning strikes (from the safety of a building) that the light and sound seem to arrive at the same time.

The storm last Thursday lunchtime didn't seem too serious, thunder had been rumbling around for an hour or so without any visible lightning and even when the dark clouds of a storm cell appeared behind Grand Carné, Patrick the Mayor's farm, I was still counting to 1008 after the lightning flashes.

The double strike caught the corner of my eye above Dominique's farm and the thundercrash was immediate, dramatic and seemed to go on for 20 seconds. I guessed that the power lines had been hit - the 11,000 volt intermediate lines have a big transformer on a pole next to their farmhouse which steps down the voltage to our domestic 220V - and the electricity had gone off immediately. We had been working outside by the Grange, our stone outbuilding, and Pip had been peacefully dozing in an old potato box (uniquely among cats he seemed immune to loud noises and hadn't stirred as the thunder approached). He covered the 4 metres from his box to the top of the kingpin in the roof in approximately the speed of light when the lightning struck.

ERdF (the electrical network provider) initially reacted very fast and had a helicopter flying over the 220,000V pylons, which run 500m from our boundary, within 30 minutes - presumably the backbone network had been struck in one or several places as well. About a hour afterwards we retired indoors for a cup of tea and, as we were sitting indoors there was a big crash from upstairs. It sounded like Jess had emerged from wherever she had fled to but the reality was a bit stranger - one of our lightbulbs had exploded:


The bulb was a compact fluorescent one with a circuit board in the base which had burnt out and was blackened and charred. My guess is that it had received a voltage spike and a capacitor had been quietly cooking away until it failed. This didn't bode well for other damage to our more delicate equipment, the para-foudre (lightning protector) on the main EDF board had dropped out, all the Earth leakage breakers on the barn board had tripped and significantly the only miniature circuit breaker to drop out was on the circuit supplying the modem. Worse I found a text message from Orange warning me to disconnect my Livebox (modem) due to electrical storms - it was from 9.30 in the morning.

Two ERdF blue lorries came down our lane later in the afternoon, a hopeful sign, but they didn't stay for long and the phone operator said that EDF expected to correct the problem by 8pm, later revised to 11.30 pm. Next morning came with no power and the helpful lady on the phone said now it would be midday. I saw Dominique and Patrick the mayor discussing things outside the elevage and went to see what they knew as we passed on our way to go shopping. The farmers are well organised for power losses but it isn't easy for them, Dominique had to keep one of his tractors running all night connected to the ventilation system on his poultry barn to stop the birds suffocating and he has a generator for the milking barn but it reduces capacity so milking takes longer. Patrick said the strike had been on a post near to his barn, he also said he'd been speaking to EDF and France Telecom to get them to test the phone lines (it's useful having the mayor as a near neighbour!). They both laughed at the midday promise though!

On our way to Muzillac we passed an ERdF convoy of three lorries, the first one had a very big shiny transformer on it - looking hopeful.

Power came back on just before midday! As feared our Orange Livebox had been damaged - "brûlée" in French - so I arranged to go to the shop in Vannes to collect a replacement. Sitting in the waiting area we met Nicole, Dominique's wife, with her Livebox under her arm. "Brûlée?" I asked her, "Trés brulée!" ...

Fortunately the equipment in the barn pretty much escaped damage, protected by the Earth leakage breakers we had specified and that were installed by our electrician Steve. The circuits in the house, specified and installed by Yannick our French electrician, don't seem to have been nearly as effective as most of the damage happened in the house and to date our damage report is:

Three lightbulbs failed
One small screen TV not working
A powerless satellite decoder 
At least two of the eight channels on the satellite dish aren't working

But no-one was hurt .... And the electrical items can be easily replaced.

Saturday 6 June 2015

A Crèche at the window

Walking Monday:   3.8km
Walking Tuesday:   3.9km
Swimming Tuesday: 1.25km
Walking Wednesday: 3.8km
Walking Thursday:  3.9km
Walking Friday:       3.8km
Swimming Friday:   1.30km

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"You've had an assassin here"

Gérard is very protective about his work. Although he installed the zinc down pipes on the gutter of the hanger and left me to dig and fit the drains he still feels it necessary to lift the inspection covers in passing to check that my drains are handling his beloved top water properly. Talk of assassins naturally makes us think of the cats, Spring is a cornucopia for them on our land, lairs of mice, voles, lots of moles and, of course, birds' nests. Normally the birds are a step or four ahead of the cats but youngsters leaving the nest lack the knowledge of adult birds .....

Back to Gérard. He had a small wet and long dead bundle of feathers in his hand that he'd recovered from my inspection chamber. I showed him where the Mésonge (Blue Tit) nest had been, "Must have got up on the roof, looked for shelter in the gutter and fallen down the pipe". It partly answered what had happened to the clutch of noisy birds who had hatched in our nest box; we had taken down the box and found two birds who hadn't made it out of the nest, some juvenile feathers on the drive pointed to another one or two that hadn't got far, we'd seen the parents feeding two or possibly three in the oak trees and now this one.

The warm weather this week meant that we have been having breakfast outside on the terrace and this let us observe another remarkable sight also linked to Gérard. On the zinc window sill bavette he had fitted were a family of young swallows:


I managed to get up into our bedroom and catch some pictures of them from inside the glass.



The youngsters looked a bit overawed by the wide space around them but they were expert fliers and after about five minutes on the sill watching us a group of adults flying around the barn roof tempted them off Gérard's sill and into the air.