Build Update

It's been a long time since my last update on the build. It's not that we've been idle - far from it !

What has happened is that the work content has become rather more standard - it's hard to make painting and tiling sound too interesting.

Anyway, here's where we are at present:

Downstairs the utility room is decorated and ready for installation of units and worktop and the cloakroom is finished (hooray!). In the main barn area the slate flooring is finished, the kitchen installed, all the electrics are working, the walls and ceilings painted and the beams (almost) fully finished and brushed off. The main work remaining here is to lay the wooden flooring in the lounge area.

Kitchen Installed

Slate Flooring in the Barn

It's a big room ...

 Upstairs we put a new door in between the house and the barn to allow us to use the final building as either two separate buildings or one big one.

It was a bit like breaking through the Channel Tunnel when Adam and I met each other from the two sides of the wall

New door installed

And nearly finished

All the upstairs rooms are painted and finished, the exposed timbers look good in the roof.

 

We've had some help along the way - Tim Jarrett came out fresh from Best Man duties at Adam's wedding and spent all week tiling for us:

Pip has been helping Barbara with varnishing the wooden doors:

We've lime rendered the end of the utility room (the stones here were very poorly built):

 

And, as of this week, we have two fitted bathrooms:

En-suite shower

En-suite tiled out

The shower in the main bathroom

Main bathroom

 

And we've started to lay the oak flooring upstairs:

Knots in the timber flooring - is it a dog, an Angel or Edvard Munch's scream ???

New member joins the team at La Basse Cour

We have adopted the cat who joined us; really he decided to adopt us as often happens with cats .....

Here is Tenzing (Pip to his friends) with his new French passport:

Dark Skies

One of the major differences about living here compared to our previous home in the UK is that we have clear and very dark skies. One of my "after the build is done" projects is to get a decent telescope.

In the meantime I'm limited to conventional photography - here's a picture of Saturn in yet another wonderfully clear evening sky (we've had lots this year).

Les Anglais qui marchent

"Ah yes, I've seen you in the mornings. Les Anglais qui marchent"

We were at Claudette's summer fete talking to Jerome (or Vincent) - there are two brothers who run the next but one farm to us and although I've met them on two or three occasions I'm never quite sure which is which ,,,,.

Our early morning walks started as preparation for Barbara's operation, continued as recuperation after the op and are now just part of our daily routine. We leave the house at 6.30 and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we turn left and walk 45 minutes to Kervaquer and back; Tuesdays and Thursdays we turn right and walk 35 minutes to Bodrefaux and back. We've seen deer, hares, owls ands lots of other wildlife, found a lost new-born calf and we've been seen by plenty of our neighbours, including Vincent (or Jerome).

I was working in the garden when a delivery driver came down the drive - it was Wednesday and we were expecting our wooden floor to be delivered on Thursday ("The delivery company will call you first") so I was a bit surprised when the driver said he had three large pallets for me. I was more surprised when he asked me if I had a fork lift truck but was pleased I got back quickly with "No, haven't you got a hydraulic arm on your lorry?". Bizarrely it was a huge 44 tonne truck with nothing on but our three pallets hiding at one end.

"Hmmm, perhaps you could ask your neighbour the agriculteur if he has a tractor with forks on". Dominique was away but Yoann, his farm worker, looked a bit dubious when I said each pallet was 600kg but agreed to come over and help. Five minutes later Jerome (or Vincent) arrived with his tractor (Yoann said he wasn't sure his forks were strong enough so he'd called in help) and unloaded all the pallets and drove them down the drive.

 

And last week on one of our early walks a kitten jumped out of the verge and followed us for forty minutes, down the drive and into the house. No-one seems to know anything about him - Monique thought it had probably been thrown out of a car.

   

We don't know if we'll keep him yet, need to make more enquiries but unless we find an owner the gap left by Smudge's death in June may be filled ....

Funny what happens when you go out walking in the morning!

Why the Tour de France is so popular

The Bretagne and Normandie tourist boards couldn't possibly have bought the wonderful coverage they got over the two stages of the Tour de France. The weather was fantastic for "our" stage and the next day the TV coverage couldn't get enough views of the Mont St. Michel in a sparkling sea.

The Tour de France's 20 stages are seen by around 10 million people each year. From the outside it always seems as if everyone wants to get close to the dramatic action; the reality of course is rather different ...

Two hours before the riders depart the Caravane gets going, this is the procession of uniquely French commerces advertising their products and services in imaginative, strange and frankly bizarre ways. The reason many people go to watch Le Tour is to get the free giveaways that are passed, thrown or hurled from the various elaborately modified vehicles in the caravane. I've seen families at the roadside chase all over the pavement for these freebies, collect their spoils into a shopping bag, jump into their cars and head off home before any cyclist is within 30km.

We do go for the cycling but on Tuesday we seemed to have got ourselves in a prime spot for the freebies - either that or our union flag was being used for target practice as several items landed directly on our chairs without us needing to pick up or catch them.

Here's our entire haul:

In no particular order it was:

• A Carrefour King of the Mountains cap
• 2 Skoda sunhats
• A copy of the paper Aujourd'hui (scary title: "Sarkozy revient")
• An ERDF beer bottle cooler
• A packet of Belin tomato and mozzarella snacks
• Festina wine gums
• A packet of madeleines
• Haribo sweets 
• Le Journal de Mickey Mouse
• 2 copies of an Alcatel mobile phone promotion
• A "welcome to Yorkshire" wrist band (the 2014 tour starts in Yorkshire)
• A Moi, Moche et Méchant 2 facemask (it's a film ,,,)
• An Etap hotel inflatable cushion
• A postcard of the French cyclist Thomas Voeckler
• A promotion voucher for Courtepaille restaurants
• A pack of Kléber fridge magnets
• A copy of Ouest France in a matching bag with a matching flag
• A packet of mini dried sausages
• A clothes washing liquid sample
• A Cofidis keyring
• A Luxembourg keyring (no idea ......)
• A sovenir copy of L'Equipe 
• 3 bottles of Vittel water
• A copy of Vittel's "Eau-ficial" newspaper

Le Tour en Bretagne

We went to cheer on Chris Froome in yellow today - got a good spot just on the way out of St. Nicolas de Redon:

Horses - on the Tour de France .... ?

Giant Truck tyre anyone ?

Fortunately this didn't happen when the race was crossing

Here they come .....

There is a corner of a foreign railing that is forever supporting Sky Procycling

The obligatory five man breakaway out front by 4 minutes

Sky leading Chris Froome at the front of the Peloton

Backmarker

Fortunately no-one was in the broom wagon today ....

A sad day

Our little community has suffered a devastating and tragic loss.

Yesterday morning Nicole came round very early in floods of tears to tell us that our neighbour and her father-in-law, Lucien, had been killed the previous afternoon in a road accident. He had been cycling to Questembert to collect his car from the garage when he was hit by a lorry.

Lucien was the first person to come round to welcome us when we moved here, bringing a basket of plums; he was my go-to person for any advice on gardening and he was a pillar of our village. We saw him in his garden nearly every day - even if we didn't have a chat he always looked out for us and waved.

The story behind what happened is just so sad. There is a great bunch of "Vieux gars" who we meet regularly at Claudette's Fete de la Village which took place last Sunday. One of these is Armandin who is 80 and lost his wife last winter; during the fete he was responsible for producing carafes of wine at regular intervals - "I'm not a sommelier, just a caviste" he said when I complemented him on his standard of service. Lucien was 76 and led the team of chefs on the barbeque at the fete; the day afterwards Lucien was going to drive Amandin to Beauvais, near Paris, to stay with his sister for a week. They got as far as Questembert (about 10km away) when Lucien's car developed a problem and they had to leave it at a garage and get a taxi back. Lucien was on his way to get the car to restart the trip when he was killed.

We will miss him enormously.