Global Climate Change ..... ?

Walking Monday: 3.8km

Cycling Tuesday: 9.2km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.55km (62 lengths, new PB)

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Swimming Thursday: 0.9km

Walking Saturday: 2.6km

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Crossing back to the UK in December before Christmas often means enduring some extreme (at least for us) weather; snow as in 2009 and 2010, rain in 2013 and a force 10 gale in 2012. The 2015 edition of the crossing also provided extreme, albeit in a different way, weather as we sat on the deck of the Pont Aven in the sun watching the Channel Islands slip by. December 18 yet sunny and 15 degrees, not normal.

We've still led a largely charmed life this Autumn as weather system after weather system has slipped by to the north of us and dumped rain on various parts of the U.K. 

But in anticipation that this can't last for ever Gérard and his guys finished the roof on the Grange before we left:

In the increasingly fair city of Newcastle Upon Tyne

Walking Monday: 2.2km

Swimming Monday: 1.3km

Walking Wednesday: 2.3km

Swimming Wednesday: 1.15km

Walking Thursday: 4.9km

Swimming Thursday: 1.00km

Walking Friday: 5.0km (actually running - whose bright idea was that on Christmas Day?)

Walking Saturday: 16.8km (New Forest and into town to watch Saints beat Arsenal)

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It's The Gaumont, Southampton, sometime in 1980. 

Mark Knopfler, frontman to Dire Straits is on stage just at the point when they became successful and moved from playing small theatres like the Gaumont (now rebranded The Mayflower) to their future in playing mega-stadiums.

"Good evening, we're Dire Straits and we are from God's own town, the fair city of Newcastle on Tyne"

I hadn't been to Newcastle then, I've been several times since and I'm back here again, this afternoon on a guided walk around the old quayside area. First time I came here it was a derelict quay area, not somewhere you'd want to be after dark. Today it's a revitalised waterfront area where everyone goes for the nightlife and there are spectacular additions to the waterline including the Gateshead Millenium Bridge and the refurbished Baltic Centre. 

In September we were in the South of France at the Millau viaduct, designed by Foster Architects. Today we saw another Foster design, the magnificent Sage centre in Gateshead. Like all great designs it's simple, reputedly based on a tray of apples wrapped in cling film, and it's transformed the Gateshead area. 

The iconic Tyne Bridge built in 1928 frames the equally iconic Sage Centre built in 2004.

Roofing the Grange

Walking Monday: 3.8km

Cycling Tuesday: 9.2km

Swimming Tuesday: 0.95km

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Cycling Thursday: 9.2km

Walking Friday: 3.8km

Swimming Friday: 1.20km

Moles caught this week: Pip 1

Moles caught this year: Pip 8, Tim 5

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This may be the last major building activity we undertake at La Basse Cour. The stone outbuilding, colloquially called Walnut Grange, is getting a new roof. We repaired, patched and re-pointed the stone walls last year and now Gérard and his team have arrived to rebuild the timbers and put on a new roof. We are having a steel roof in the same grey as the hanger roof and house window frames - RAL7016 colour shade to be precise. The front will be built in with timber cladding and custom built-to-measure wooden doors - I managed to find a wood stain that was available in a RAL7016 tint as well. Next we'll be setting up a RAL 7016 fan club ......

Gérard came round on Sunday to check out the delivery and - in between rushing off to Lauzach to sweep a chimney - cut back a few major overhanging branches on the old walnut. (I once asked Gérard his views on the 35 hour week, "It's OK if people don't want to work very hard"). The trainers on my chainsaw course would have had kittens if they had seen him free climbing the tree with his chainsaw in one hand, no helmet and no protective gear. The result has opened up the tree though:

The neighbours here still talk about the ten days in 2012 that Gérard spent re-roofing our barn in consistent sub-zero temperatures, Gérard, Aurelian and Sébastian arrived back here working at the same furious pace as when we last saw them - although they have two speeds they only seem to be frenetic and even more frenetic. 

First off was the old steel roof on the main building so that the new pannes (purlins) and roof structure could be fitted:

Next the steel panels on the lean-to came off, the whole roof structure here is being replaced as the previous one was a seemingly random collection of bits of rotten timber nailed together:

At the end of the first day the rest of the roof is off and the first new panels are in place:

Confused seasons

Walking Monday: 3.8km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.00km

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Cycling Thursday: 9.2km

Walking Friday: 3.8km

Swimming Friday: 1.20km

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The warm autumn weather has confused some of our plants. So in December we still have perfect roses, this one is "Aloha":

The Autumn leaves haven't been a great show this year (I think it needs a sharper cold spell to develop the colours) but our ornamental cherries are looking bright:

Just next to the pond we have another cherry already in flower: 

This is Prunus Subhirtella Autumnalis - another import we brought over from the UK and the third garden we've grown this variety in. It is the first tree in flower - or maybe as it starts flowering in November it's the last tree to flower - and apart from very cold spells it will flower through until March. 

It also grows next to where we buried Smudge, our 18 year old cat, in 2013. When she was moved to France Smudge got a complete new lease of life in our rural environment. I took Jess, our senior cat of 11 years, to see Ludovic the vet this week for her annual injections, "Nice fur, good teeth. She's in great condition for her age". Must be something to do with the air - or the ready supply of mice.

This week we have been mainly .....

Watching Tennis :o)

Walking Monday: 9.2km (Thames path O2 to Greenwich)

Walking Tuesday: 2.1km (Canary Wharf)

Walking Wednesday: 4.1km (Greenwich Park)

Walking Friday: 3.8km

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We've been in London for three days at the ATP Worldtour Finals at the O2 Arena, North Greenwich, having got day tickets for Tuesday back in August. We'd planned to fly FlyBE from Rennes to the (rather imaginatively named) London Southend airport on Monday, plans changed slightly when the flight time was brought forwards but, when the draw came out the early flight gave us a chance to get to see Andy Murray on Monday afternoon. So, leaving home at 7.30 in the deepest darkest part of France we live and travelling via car, plane, train and tube we got into our seats at the O2 by midday.

The O2 is a spectacular venue, sitting up in the top tier gives a feeling of being right above the play but, despite the size of the venue it is a remarkably intimate arena for tennis:

Having seen Andy Murray through to a workmanlike 6-4, 6-4 win over David Ferrer we returned on Tuesday afternoon for Berdych/ Nishikori and - what a bargain for the £19 we paid for the seats - Djokovic/ Federer in the evening. The afternoon match was a tight three-set affair, we got a great seat upgrade given to us in the stadium to just behind the baseline:

Tennis at it's most competitive is a gladiatorial type sport, fuelled by the perverse scoring system which sometimes lets players get back from almost impossible positions. The presentation at the O2 builds on this (think loud rock music, light shows, lasers and "Strictly" style floor projection systems) and could not in any way be more different to the genteel atmosphere at the SW19 tournament.

The bars in the O2 had been full of Swiss supporters all day preparing for Roger's evening game. We went into the fan zone before the evening session and saw Richard Gasquet, the reserve player having finished 9th in the rankings, warming up Roger. Significantly for what happened later the last session had Gasquet serving from the service line and Federer practicing his trademark "sabre" slice service return.

Sky were broadcasting live from the fan zone with their team of Marcus Buckland, Annabel Croft plus Greg Rusedski and Peter Fleming:

Barbara got in on the act although I'm told that it didn't get out on the live feed ..... !

So to the Fed/Novak match. The stadium was packed and rocking, the noise from the Swiss fans proved they hadn't wasted their afternoon in the bars and the Gladiator analogy was never more appropriate. In the projected show before the start Novak's 2015 record was won 73, lost 5 - but 2 of those defeats were to Federer. The first set began at a furious pace, sharp intakes of breath could be heard all around our seats as one topspin drive was countered with another even more spectacular one, 125 mph serves came back faster and shot after shot landed inches from the line. 

Eventually one of the two had to crack and, unexpectedly, it was Djokoviic 5-7, 2-6. The main difference was. the variety of play from Federer to such a degree that Djokovic ended the match hitting four successive balls out of court. 

We had seen Roger's secret though. On the practice court before the match Richard Gasquet, the ninth ranked player who was in town as the injury reserve, was hitting serves from the service court line to Roger for him to practice his "sabre" shot, the chopped serve return taken impossibly early. We were two of only about 100 people who saw this - and none of us told Novak.

Walnut Harvest

This post was written before the tragic and terrible events in Paris on Friday November 13th. In the light of what happened, writing about our mundane life here somehow seems irrelevant. Yet maybe it is by continuing with just the mundane things in life that we can best stand up to the perpetrators of the massacre in Paris. Gérard said to me this morning that we are reaping what we have sown in the Middle East over the last 75 years, he's right of course but looking back doesn't help going forward. 

So, I'll continue to post more ironic and mundane observations on life here. And avoid politics.

And religion.

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Walking Monday: 3.8km

Cycling Tuesday: 9.2km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.25km

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Cycling Thursday: 9.2km

Walking Friday: 3.8km

Swimming Friday: 1.10km

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Moles this week: Pip 0, Tim 1 (a particularly difficult one at last who kept digging under the traps)

Moles Year to Date: Pip 7, Tim 5 

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So, after the great fruit and vegetable glut of 2015 the weather has provided perfect weather for the walnut harvest - another record breaker. Our tree has a huge gash in the bark of the main trunk where a branch split away many years ago and leans over at about 15 degrees but it is huge and still growing well. The walnuts mature during September and fall over a period of about four weeks, over time we've learnt to ignore the first 10-15% of the nuts that fall - the tree naturally sheds the small, damaged and defective ones first. This year we concentrated on collecting only the large ones but still ended up with a huge crop, so for three weeks at every opportunity with warm weather the accumulated crop gets spread out in the sun to dry. 

We haven't weighed the crop but each box contains about 8 kilos and we have 6 boxes so that's around 50 kilos.

After open-air drying we are finishing off this year's crop on the heated floor: 

The crop will need another month or so to fully ripen, conveniently that will be just before Christmas. In the meantime we have about four kilos left from the 2014 crop to finish.

Corbyn and Anglo-Saxon Economics

Cycling Tuesday:  9.2km

Swimming Tuesday:  1.15km

Walking Wednesday:  3.8km

Cycling Thursday: 9.2km

Walking Friday:  3.8km

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I've written before about the Instinctive French distrust of "Anglo-Saxon" (ie: American or British) banking and economic values and the slightly hesitant steps taken by the socialist government here to introduce more elements of free-market operation. The BBC's Emily Maitliss did a good analysis of the French view of life in 2012 as countries slowly began to emerge from the financial crash of 2008. Her thesis was that the French were quite happy with the large size of their state sector, the proof of the value of their system was shown by the comparatively small rise in unemployment during the economic crisis compared to the reckless economies of Great Britain and the USA. 

The problem since then has been that the unemployment rate here has stayed stubbornly elevated as the economy has recovered and government spending has ballooned to 57.5% of GDP - according to The Wall Street Journal it is only in Cuba and the Federated States of Micronesia that the Government spends more as a proportion of GDP than France. The comparable figure for the UK is 42.2%.

But it's not all bad and I have to admit there are a number of advantages to having so much regulated by the state. In 2014 EDF (the state electricity supplier) wanted to increase the price of electricity by 10% but this was over-ruled by the government and the increase was pegged to 3%; prices in the UK went up by about 12% in the same period. Theoretically there is a free market in electricity supply here but 95% of residential properties still stick with EDF and governmental control. 

SNCF (the majority state owned railway) has a terrible reputation amongst some of my friends who commute in Paris but the long-distance services (TGV) are very good in my experience. The line to Brittany is being upgraded which will bring Paris within 2 hours 30 minutes of Vannes and it will be less than 2 hours to cover the 350km from Rennes, the hand-wringing over how to finance new developments like HST2 in the UK isn't a discussion item here (maybe because the EU funds part of the cost as we live in such a backward underdeveloped part of Europe ........ :o)

If you can handle the bureaucracy (well at least it gives people a job) and the errors (latest trial for us is the bureau des impôts (the tax office)) there is a certain attractive simplicity to having the government responsible for so much - and of course complaining about it provides a simple entry to social discussions with neighbours.

Which brings me to Jeremy Corbyn and the term Corbynomics, used by the press at least in the UK as a term of derision for the new Labour Party leader's economic policies. State renationalisation of the railways, a regulated energy sector, more government borrowing to finance capital investment on infrastructure, nuclear disarmament and "people's QE" - policies that haven't been talked about in the UK for years, far less implemented, have suddenly being put on the table as a tangible alternative. If Jeremy survives the media scrutiny - and survives the rift in his party - it will be interesting to see how the electorate views such a different approach to the paradigm presented by the other conventional parties.

Of course, if he was called Jérémie Corbyn the French electorate would find his policies reassuringly familiar ....... 

Summer - in November

Walking today:  3.8km

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The lovely October weather has extended into November at La Basse Cour. It has been over 20C on the 1st and 2nd here and we've had warm sunshine all day.

The garden has had its season prolonged and the cool August and early September followed by the dry and warm October means we've had some confused plants! The blueberries have come into flower again (normally March/April), the climbing French beans have flowered for a second time and produced ripe pods, the roses are in flower and we've got a decent picking of strawberries.

Here are some pictures I took today, 2nd November:

The Morning Glory still in full flower, it's been producing 20-100 flowers a day continuously since June so probably around 5000 blooms in all. 

Geraniums, gazania and daisy in the raised bed by the hanger.

Our Japanese camellias, which do flower normally in the autumn, have produced their best display ever (with some paint spatters on their leaves ....).

Our quintessential red geranium balcony boxes still in full flow.

Dahlias and abelia on the pink bed.

Barbara's brilliant annual dahlias putting on a great show in the barn border.

Ruby chard in the potager.

It can't last of course, although there is rain forecast for later in the week the temperatures show no sign of dropping to the monthly normal anytime soon. In the absence of frost we could keep on with the late flower show until December.

Back to another sunset

We've been in the UK for six days on a working party with Adam and Charlotte. In no particular order between us we:

Moved a piano (great purchase by Charlotte, looks really good, bit out of tune but will be fine)

Had our eyes tested at Specsavers (all fine)

Painted a wall and two fireplaces

Made a pair of curtains

Adjusted two doors after the summer painting

Fitted two curtain rails

Fitted a door to their en-suite bathroom (never had one - strange ....)

Took down two fences and took them to recycling in the trailer 

Built two new fences and fitted a new side gate

Took up some paving and laid gravel

Cut down huge amounts of overhanging branches from the garden, pruned an apple tree and took two trailer loads to recycling 

Cleaned all their windows

Fitted a new washing machine

Unpacked and assembled a new oak table, two sofas, two dressers, six chairs and a chest (another trailer full of cardboard to recycling)

Had a hair cut (Barbara)

Watched Adam play hockey in Havant (lost 2-4 but he played well)

And, we all went to see the English National Ballet's production of Romeo and Juliet at the Mayflower on Thursday night - Barbara organised it as a surprise for my birthday present!

Back on the overnight ferry to St. Malo and, as we got onto the ferry and out of the car we met our nearest English neighbour, Sue, on her way back from Devon.

It was a lovely day when we got back here, sunny and warm - 21 degrees this afternoon - and there was a great sunset again:

Last post on painting - I promise

Walking Friday: 3.8km

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Last blog post about painting - you can have too much of a good thing!

Here's the southern elevation of the house before, during and after refinishing: 

The scaffolding riggers (combined age 122) were in their stride by the end and we knocked down the four full bays in under four hours.

I had a nasty attack of vertigo after we'd put up the scaffolding after so Barbara was responsible for all the painting of the top half of the wall and all the fiddly woodwork right at the top. Odd really as the top platform was only at about 5m, feels high to me but isn't really.

Before and after

Cycling Tuesday: 8.4km

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Cycling Friday: 8.4km

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A couple of pictures before and after the wall painting:

We were quite pleased with that!

Another Sunset ...

Walking Monday: 3.8km

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This post isn't about painting the house.

Back to another of my favourite subjects though, sunsets.

Here's tonight's one with the crescent moon visible:

Painting by numbers

Walking Monday:  3.8km

Cycling Tuesday: 8.7km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.25km

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Cycling Thursday: 8.4km

Walking Friday: 3.8km

Quite a triathlon of a week ...... 

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Progress on the gable end house painting:

High work first coat.

End of day one - first sizing coat on all of the wall.

Start of the top coat:

I had assumed that the wall was originally painted but as we worked our way over it I'm more and more inclined to the view that it has never been painted in sixty years as we found no trace of any previous paint finish. There's a certain grey streaked concrete finish that one can see on houses all over France that might be original unfinished concrete or may be very well weathered old paint - it's hard to tell. Certainly our west facing wall takes all the wind and winter rain and the concrete had become very porous so as soon as the rain came the wall was visibly wet. Now two coats of Dulux Weathershield later it should resist the water and allow the moisture in the wall to evaporate.

Up high

Walking Monday:  3.8km

Walking Tuesday: 3.9km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.5km

Walking Wednesday: 5.2km

Walking Thursday: 6.9km

Walking Friday: 3.8km

Swimming Friday: 1.25km

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Sometimes our work projects extend over quite some time. We started repainting the house in June and finished the North wall but really this was just a warm up for the higher south wall and the much higher gable end. And with the summer weather that's where it ended for a time.

So, with the combination of more than one week without visitors and the promise of a settled spell of weather we decided this week to get the brushes, rollers and paint out again. And, for the first time in two years the scaffolding has come out of storage. In the list of things we expected to be doing as a job after stopping work, being a scaffolding rigger was never one of them. Actually, when Barbara asked what someone who put up scaffolding was called I wasn't sure. A scaffolder, a scaffold erector or a rigger? We agreed on rigger.

Here's the gable end scaffolded:

When Gérard last swept our chimney (it's done by pushing the brush down from the top in France rather than from the fireplace as in the UK) he stood on top of the stack and said he could see the sea. I declined Gérard's kind offer to join him standing on the stack so I could see the sea too, as is well known (particularly to Gérard) I'm not good at heights but the view off the scaffold over the garden is quite good:

Not everything in the garden has grown so well ....

Walking Monday:  3.8km

Walking Tuesday:  3.9km

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I've used several blog posts this year to explain how well most of our fruit and vegetables have performed.

Most is an important word.

Here's a picture of our entire melon harvest for 2015:

As a clue it is on quite a small cutting board ......

A Peach of a Harvest

Walking Monday:   3.8km

Walking Tuesday:   3.9km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.15km

Walking Wednesday:  3.8km

Walking Thursday:  3.9km

Swimming Friday:  1.25km

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I'm not very good at keeping detailed records of our gardening and the crops we grow. Barbara's better at it and we work out our crop rotations from the diagrams she draws each year in the diary and the lists of varieties and sowing dates.

One thing that is clear however is that for most of our crops 2015 has been a record year. During September we had so many courgettes, beans and peaches that we put out a "Help Yourself" table and barrow at the end of the drive. I've not seen this anywhere else in France and it's fair to say that it was initially treated rather suspiciously by passers by, they did get the idea however and we got a couple of thank you notes and positive comments from neighbours.

It's hard to pick out individual highlights from the harvest but for sheer luxury picking perfectly ripe peaches from the old tree takes some considerable beating:

The tree had seen many better days before we took over and was split with a big section of rotten wood at the base of the trunk. It looked so likely not to last long that at one point Gérard suggested taking a graft off the remaining healthy part to replace it when it succumbed to the inevitable. Some frankly trial and error pruning with the help of a book and the need to reshape the tree to open up the view from the barn door didn't bode well but the tree reacted by producing plenty of healthy growth and a good crop of flowers in March. Favourable weather and plenty of insects set the crop well and warm weather followed by a damp August produced a massive crop - easily twice the quantity in any previous year.

Here's a sample of the crop, this is one day's picking:

We've frozen peaches, bottled peaches, made peach chutney, frozen more peaches, eaten a lot, cooked a lot, given many away to neighbours and we have a whole fridge full of fresh peaches slowly ripening. The concensus from neighbours Claudette, Sue and Nicole is that they are very high quality and have a great taste. We agree, of course.

Here's another day's harvest .....

Swallows, Skycamps and Sport

It's not clear to me why the electricity wires outside Monique's house should be a magnet for swallows but, since the end of June, every time we have walked past her house in the morning the number sitting on the lines has increased. First ten, then twenty and thirty, forty by mid July and then more and more until by the end of August we counted over two hundred excitedly chattering together and flying around in small groups.

And then, a day before a storm arrived in early September, they were gone. The wires were empty and the air silent. A week later we spotted a dozen stragglers on the wires looking a bit confused - not sure if they had missed the departure day or if they were on the migration route from somewhere further north. If they were migrating it makes we wonder even more why the wires outside Monique's house are a magnet for swallows - do they have some internal navigation system, maybe it's word of mouth (or rather beak) or perhaps a coincidence. We really understand so little about how migrating birds travel it could be any of these. As the first swallows to swoop over our field in March provide an indicator that Spring is on its way so their disappearance means Autumn is gathering pace.

Although we weather hasn't been great through August, the last week did provide some good clear skies and whilst we had some friends over from the UK held a "Skycamp" with the telescope down the field. Great views of the moon, Saturn and a good selection of clusters and other interesting objects - for people who have never looked through a telescope the moon is always a stunning sight.

On another subject I missed recording in the blog the remarkable achievement by the England women's hockey team in winning the European championship played at Lee Valley in the Olympic centre. The game at international level now bears little resemblance to the sport I started playing competitively forty years ago. In the early eighties I played several times for Camberly against clubs with international players in their team, they were good players, quicker and more skilfull than we were but they didn't seem a race apart. Watching the England ladies team beat old rivals Germany and Holland on the way to the championship Barbara and I were in agreement that, even at the height of our games, we couldn't have competed with these super fit, amazingly skilfull players. Recent rule changes have made the game an attractive TV sport and a great positive message for girls playing sports - it just needs more exposure and coverage.

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I've been a bit lax about recording our activities recently, for my records maybe rather than your interest here's what we've been doing:

Week of 17/8

Monday Walking: 3.8km

Tuesday walking: 3.9km

Tuesday Swimming: 1.15km

Wednesday walking: 3.8km

Thursday walking: 3.9km

Friday walking: 3.8km

Week of 24/8

Monday Walking: 3.8km

Tuesday walking: 3.9km

Tuesday Swimming: 1.25km

Wednesday walking: 3.8km

Thursday walking: 3.9km

Friday walking: 3.8km

Week of 31/8

Monday swimming: 0.12km (in the pool at La Roche, Gennes)

Wednesday walking: 3.6km (Aubrac plateau, Lozère)

Saturday walking: 4.6km (Le Puy en Velay)

Week of 7/9

Tuesday walking: 3.9km

Tuesday Swimming: 1.10km

Wednesday walking: 3.8km

Thursday walking: 3.9km

Friday walking: 3.8km

Friday swimming: 1.25km

Week of 14/9

Monday Walking: 3.8km

Tuesday walking: 3.9km

Tuesday Swimming: 1.4k 

Wednesday walking: 3.8km

Thursday walking: 3.9km