In Sapa, Vietnam

In Sapa, Vietnam

About Me

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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.

Sunday 26 July 2015

Chapeau M. Froome

Walking Tuesday: 3.9km
Swimming Tuesday: 1.25km
Walking Wednesday: 3.8km
Walking Thursday: 3.9km
Walking Friday: 3.8km
Swimming Friday: 1.15km

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Maybe it is an omen, or at least a pattern;

2013 and we saw Chris Froome in yellow on the last Breton stage at St. Nicholas de Redon - two weeks later he won Le Tour in Paris


2015 and we saw Chris Froome in yellow on the last Breton stage at Plumelec - 



Today two weeks later, he's just won Le Tour for the second time in Paris



(In 2014 the tour didn't come to Brittany, Chris Froome crashed out on stage 5 with a broken wrist).

It's a magnificent achievement to win the Tour de France once, a truly remarkable achievement to win it twice. Yet this victory and the performance of Sky has produced, admittedly from a tiny minority of spectators on the French stages, a well documented hate campaign, spitting at the yellow jersey wearer being one of the milder reactions. The reaction of some parts of the French press has been one of continual innuendo in the face of a complete lack of any sort of evidence.

I've no doubt that if the Daily Mail had a cycling correspondent this reaction would be put down to three things:

1 He's not French
2 He's successful 
3 He's not even got a French sounding name

The truth is, as always, more complicated. Hugh Schofield, the BBC's long-standing Paris correspondent, put his finger on things I thought when he said on a live radio item this morning that Froome didn't ride with panache (it's funny that in the English language we have to use French words for personality traits, think of panache, élan, sang-froid and many other similar words). Often I feel the French have a romantic love of doing things the "right" way, often not the same as the best way; hence their grudging admiration and, at the same time, instinctive distrust of German or British 
approaches to business, banking ....... and cycling.

Sir Dave Brailsford brought an industrial management approach first to GB cycling and then to Team Sky, famously he used a "Team for small improvements" with GB cycling to find the multiple tiny differences that collectively made GB cyclists the most successful team at the 2008 and 2012,Olympics. Sky is the best organised and most professional UCI team and their detailed approach has borne fruit.

In 2012 the French cycling team, after another defeat at the velodrome, claimed that team GB had an unfair advantage - "something is illegal with their wheels". No facts, evidence or backup but a strong conviction in the face of reality that something wasn't right. 2015, a British rider riding without the beloved panache, performing at a level above his competitors, no Frenchman in sight of the podium and riding at the lead of a British team. It's clear, he must kbe cheating and/or doping. 

The odd thing is that French cycling fans have great respect for "Christopher Froooome" as RTL's radio cycling commentary invariably describes him. I felt his behaviour and speech after winning showed him to be thoughtful and mature.

Just the French press to win over then - and that could take a bit longer.

Sunday 19 July 2015

So, what do you use a juice extractor for?

Walking Tuesday:  3.9km
Walking Wednesday: 3.8km
Swimming Wednesday: 1.20km
Walking Thursday: 3.9km
Cycling Saturday: 7.2km
Cycling Sunday: 9.4km

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Today's quiz question is "What colour is the juice from Whitecurrants?". Answer at the end.


I've written before about our new French juice extractor; put in fruit or berries, apply heat and extract pasteurised fruit juice.


So far we (I use the word in the Royal Manner - in reality all this is Barbara's work and invention) have used it for:

A three layer home-made fruit jelly (blackcurrant/ redcurrant / raspberry)



La Basse Cour Creme de Cassis:




A Sponge pudding (using the spent blackcurrant berries after the juice had been extracted):





The answer to today's quiz question is:


Whitecurrant berries produce juice with a delicate pink blush





Monday 13 July 2015

The Great Berry and Currant Glut

Walking today: 3.9km

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Freezer number 2 is 75% full now.

I took some raspberries up to Nicole and Dominique today. Lucian, Dominique's father, was a master gardener and grew raspberries but Dominique said he'd never seen such large fruit.

So, I thought I'd add a few pictures from our fruit cages and beds.


Our large Tulameen variety of raspberries


Our raspberry "wall".


The Fosse beds on the field growing (left to right):

Rhubarb
Blackcurrants
Whitecurrants
Redcurrants
Gooseberries
Sweetcorn
Courgettes
Pumpkins
Runner Beans
French Beans (regular and climbing)
Peas
Broad Beans
Onions
Shallots


Redcurrants in their protective cage


Our largest yield of raspberries on one day was 4 kg.


L to R: raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, Blackcurrants, whitecurrants

In a cold January there's nothing so nice as picking out a handful of five different fruits from the freezer, gently cooking them with a little sugar and serving them with fromage frais. Summer in a dish!






Sunday 12 July 2015

Le Tour - 2015 Edition

For the second stage of its visit to Brittany this year Le Tour de France did a Team Time Trial from picturesque Vannes to a tiny little town called Plumelec that is a real hotbed of cycling in Brittany. Plumelec has a cycling festival in August but I was amazed to find that Plumelec has been a tour stage finish town three times before, it's barely bigger than our little commune.

The Team Time Trial (TTT) is a bit different to a normal stage (as the man on the PA kept telling us every ten minutes in excruciating detail ....), the riders ride in teams five minutes after the previous team departure. All the team get the time of the fifth rider over the line so it's important to keep the team together, normally that's not a big problem to get five out of nine riders over the line but Plumelec has a surprise at the end; the two kilometre long hill that is the Cote du Cadodal and after 26km of riding at an average speed of 60kph the sudden upturn takes its toll on tired riders, especially if they aren't climbers and especially if they aren't expected to be in the finishing five.

So our position 300m up the hill was a good one to spot riders hitting the "wall"! And the advantage for the spectator in watching a TTT is that, instead of the whole field (plus or minus a breakaway and some stragglers) passing in about 6 seconds there are 22 separate bits of excitement as each team goes past. But even before that there's the publicity "caravan" advertising all manor of mainstream, odd and usually very French brands.

4m high dog and two tyres on wheels anyone?



And, having bagged a prime spot to get the Union Flag out on the barriers, there's quite a lot of waiting around:


with the constant noise of the helicopters from TV coverage for company:




Of course getting five riders fast over the line is much harder if the team has already lost one or even two of the team of nine. Or, in Orica-Greenedge's case if you are three down after a disaster in Flanders. As teams passed we got quite accurate at predicting performance based on the impression the team gave as they passed - "bit ragged" (Astana, Timkoff-Saxo, MTN Qubeca)

MTN Qubeca - the first Afican squad to contest the TdF. The polka dot jersey for King of the Mountains is worn by Daniel Tekelhaimanot, the first Eritrean to ride in the tour.

Astana with 2014 winner Vicenzo Nibali

6 riders from Timkoff-Saxo including past winner Alberto Contador attack the final climb
"Slow" (FDJ, Europcar),


"Going like a train" (Movistar with eight riders still going all out past us)

Movistar attack the climb



Movistar disappear up the hill, number 58's race is run and he'll now tail in slowly after the others


and "Tight group" (BMC, Sky).

The stage turned into a battle between the major teams of Movistar (Spanish), BMC (the Swiss Team Time Trial World Champions) and Sky (British with the race leader Chris Froome in the yellow jersey). Movistar set a great time and were leaders at the line for a long time. BMC and Sky were never more than a second apart at the intermediate timing points and as Sky reached our vantage point the race was on, led by Chris Froome in yellow:


At the line BMC won by 1 second, on electronic timing it was 0.62s - that's less than a bike's length over 28km. Due to the complexities of cycling it didn't affect the overall classification (the yellow jersey race) to any great extent and Chris Froome carries his lead to the Pyrenees after a rest day tomorrow.

Last time the tour was in Brittany we watched Chris Froome in yellow as well, that time he led all the way to the final stage in Paris, wonder if it's an omen?

Friday 10 July 2015

Backs to the wall

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km
Walking Thursday: 3.9km
Walking Friday: 6.8km (on the Sentier des Falaises, St. Gildas de Rhuys)

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Something's changed this year.

Maybe it's because we've finished hectic building work, maybe the weather has been a bit kinder, perhaps our work on improving the soil is beginning to work, it could be the watering from the well. It could be because of any one or maybe all of these things but the quality and volume of produce from our land this year has exceeded all previous years. Just this week we've picked and processed the following:

Redcurrants
Blackcurrants
Peas
Broad Beans
Gooseberries

Each morning it seems there's another crop demanding our attention. At times the kitchen looks like a processing plant:


We brought back a new freezer from the UK to double our storage capacity for the winter, it's already three quarters full.

As well as freezing fruit we make a lot of jam and jellies and our own creme de cassis. We have a new 
weapon in our armoury of preserving methods, an extracteur de jus.


This is a clever item which uses steam generated at the bottom to extract pasteurised fruit juice from the middle of the unit through the tube. Works well! Creme de Cassis here we come ....

Tuesday 7 July 2015

African Queen

Walking Monday: 3.8km
Walking Tuesday: 3.9km
Swimming Tuesday: 1.25km

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Our light soil here, the cool winters and warm summers mean that lots of plants grow well.

Not least lilies - this one is called "African Queen" and its colour and fragrance are making a big impact on our terrace.


Sunday 5 July 2015

Trans-Manche Travellers II

I've posted before about the Venus-Jupiter conjunction in the western sky just after sunset that's visible at present. Closest apparent approach was last Thursday and I managed to get this (slightly shaky) picture with the Needles lighthouse from the Bretagne as we crossed from Portsmouth:


Venus is the bright object in the sky, Jupiter is just above and to the right.

The lighthouse is at the end of the sea.


Trans-Manche Travellers

"Is this French strike going to affect you then?"

I was taking the opportunity to get my hair cut on my last morning in Southampton having spent two days as a removal labourer moving Adam and Charlotte to their new house.

I'd explained to the barber that I was returning that night from Portsmouth, the "French Strike" was another outbreak of chaos in Calais - the barber's geography skills may not have been as good as his hair cutting ones. The problem is that French labour disputes seem to be targeted at transport links that attract attention in foreign countries, the chaos caused by taxi drivers at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport made second item on the BBC evening news. Over the last eight months the Brittany Ferries route from Caen has suffered a series of wildcat strikes by 12 loaders, each time they walk out a ship gets trapped in Ouistreham and operations have to be moved to Cherbourg.

I was on my way to University when Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979, along the way there was a terrible amount of collateral damage done to British Industry and social cohesion but the labour reform laws introduced by her government put an end to the damaging effects of "secondary action". Which is why, I think, the British press are still genuinely amazed when French workers strike and inflict maximum chaos on the innocent public - like the effective blockade of Nantes airport recently by taxi drivers. Unfortunately in the mind of many voters this all gets rolled into wasteful EU bureaucracy, the Greek economic plight, illegal immigrants in Calais and the rocky road ahead for the euro - and there's a UK referendum on leaving the EU coming up in less than two years ...

So, off the ferry on a beautiful morning in Saint Malo and straight to fill up with Diesel at 38p a litre less than in the UK to be met with:


Ten tonnes of manure dumped by protesting farmers. They had also dropped straw bales on the ranks of shopping trolleys, a burning tyre on the top of the trolley shelter and another bale of straw on the fuel pumps. I think the current protest is about the price of pork but it could be milk prices, imports from Poland or the withdrawal of land subsidies.

Something similar happened at LIDL in Questembert three weeks ago, although the material dumped on that occasion seemed to be old fence posts, gravel and concrete. - quicker than going to the déchetterie maybe. The odd thing is that the shop is just 150 metres from the Gendarmerie and, according to the Gendarme quoted in a report in Ouest-France, the incident occurred between 11.15 and 11.30 which is very precise. You might have thought that a couple of tractors in the town late in the evening would have made a lot of noise - not particularly quick getaway vehicles from the scene of the crime either!

In 1979 strikes were Known as the "British Disease", after harsh medicine that threatened the life of the patient at more than one point the patient is much calmer now - and the problem has been exported across the channel.