A day out in the cottage

This is no where near as grand as it sounds, our cottage is a leaky breeze block building we use to store all the stuff we do not currently have a place for in the house. The cottage mainly has a lot of Fleur’s toys and things in it, on one side and building bits from me on the other. It was in a mess after a summer of getting things out and just throwing them back so we were on a mission to clear it all up, and get rid of as much rubbish as possible. We need to do this as the cottage has sprung a couple of leaks in the roof, and it has to last as a store room for a few more months before the new storage area is ready. Then we can demolish cottage to make way for the swimming pool and associated out buildings. It took most of Saturday to get the non building side sorted out as Franca and fleur were going through every photo album which somewhat slowed the progress of tidying but did mean we got rid of lots more rubbish, so worth it in the end and quite a few memories along the way.

Sunday morning I returned to building work with a vengeance, as I found some insulation and a couple of plaster boards I had forgotten about on the building side of the cottage which meant I was able to get and start insulating and boarding the ceiling in the new first floor bathroom we are building. That was the start of tidying up the building side of the cottage, well I got rid of two bales of insulation and 2 of the three plaster boards lurking against a wall.

Progress is pretty slow at the moment as our cash is flowing out faster than is good for us, but it is our expensive time of year, hopefully by November we will be back to positive cash flow again and able to push forward with the refurbishment of the next two rooms for the B&B.

On Sunday afternoon we went to a 60th birthday barbeque, at some friends of ours that Franca first met through her blog. They only live 45 minutes away and it was a nice drive from Sigogne to somewhere near Ruffec. The barbeque was great fun, with good food and drink, great company, and very friendly Belgian hosts Jan and Simonne, a better afternoon you could not wish for, and the weather was fantastic too. I think it may have been made better by the fact that on this occasion I did not have to concentrate hard to understand all the French being spoken, as there was hardly any, for once it was my two languages Dutch and English, probably never to be repeated, so I’d better get on and learn French. See tne blog below for the pictures....

Whilst flying to and from the UK I use the time to study classic car magazines and the market prices of classic cars in preparation for trying to set up a classic car hire business as an add on to the B&B, I am quite pleased with my self so far that I have not gone out and bought a car yet, I’ve seen some absolute gems which would be perfect for the business, and good fun for me if I am honest, however it will probably be yet another year before I can seriously start investing any of our meagre funds in what looks on the face it a somewhat frivolous enterprise. So perhaps I should be reading Practical Builder, or even Swimming Pools monthly as a better use of my ‘air’ time.

Next week I will be driving back to the UK as the Jaguar needs a new MOT and a service, so the BMW estate will be switching places with the Jag for a while, so another opportunity to bring some materials from the UK, I’ve almost run out of emulsion paint again.

Party-time

On Sunday we were invited to Jan's 60st birthday party, (we know Jan and Simonne through Franca's blog, you never know where blogging will take you). Well, the Belgians certainly know how to lay on a party. The bbq tasted fabulous, the company was a meltingpot of all nationalities, Belgians, French, English and Dutch.
What a great (and typically French way) to spend an afternoon, thanks Jan and Simonne!!

Autumn Crocussus in our garden

'College' Girl, see her penny-shoes

Circuit des Remparts - Angouleme 2008

Qualification for The Bugatti Race

















A Lovely old Peugeot

more from the Circuit de Remparts

More From the Bugatti race qualification

Two photos of Jackie Stewarts's Matra Cosworth from the Tyrrell Team 1969
(that is not Jackie Stewart driving)

Some of the cars in the static exhibition

Circuit des Remparts – Angouleme 2008

This year marked the 30th Anniversary of the staging of Circuit des Remparts in Angouleme, a classic/vintage/historic car rally and race our the city walls of Angouleme on a street circuit. I knew it was on around this time every year and last year being our first year here in the Charente we did not realise the significance of the event. This year unless Franca had not read another blog we would have totally missed the event, as it was we missed the Saturday, because we only found out on Saturday afternoon. So Sunday morning we got up early and took the 30 minute drive to Angouleme where we were lucky to find a parking place in the centre of Angouleme not far from the action. Luckily the French do not do early mornings, later in the day Angouleme was basically grid locked, if you pardon the pun...

Being a car nut I was like a little kid in a free sweetshop, I did not know which way to turn, luckily I had a disinterested wife (and I don’t mean that in a bad way, but cars are not her thing), and a 6 year old daughter to keep me under control. There were literally hundreds of historic, classic and vintage cars to look at on static display at various points around the city, Angouleme it appears has several car clubs, we came across the Mini club and the Alfa Romeo club but there are several others.

Then there were the races and demonstrations themselves. I have never been to a motor race before, my reasoning is you pay £100.00 for a ticket to blink and miss cars rushing by, then end up spending loads more money and you still have not seen much of the race and your wallet is a lot poorer for the experience, so I prefer to watch on TV. However for the princely sum of €10.00 you can get up close to the action and because the circuit is so small you can get around most it pretty quickly and most vantage points have more than one view of the track so you can see what is going on. The noise of some the engines is glorious especially the GT1 and GT Plus cars, my daughter loved it too, but sadly this put the wife off even more. The highlight of the event for most people is the vintage Bugatti only race, it is not only unique, but fun as well, the later models being really powerful machines and the early models with less powerful engines that glide around the course with a certain elegance being lapped again and again by their later bigger engined family members. We were also able to get up close (almost too close) to a Jackie Stewart Matra-Tyrell F1 car with a lovely sounding Ford Cosworth engine.

I could go on for ages, hopefully my lovely wife will post a couple of pictures here for me, it was a great break from building work for me, thanks to my wife and daughter for letting this big kid into the sweetshop for a few hours. I'll back next year for lots more...

so I will leave it there for now, next year we hope to have some of the people taking part in the circuit des remparts staying with us, Au Bellefleur would make a great base for this special weekend in Angloueme's calendar.

A Euro A Euro, my kingdom for a Euro

Or Floored by a Euro – or the lack of one

On Friday night I knew the title of this blog, but events over the weekend changed everything. So first on Friday night after I arrived at Bordeaux airport I hot footed it along to the big DIY store in Bordeaux to buy some flooring to get the new bathroom floor started this weekend, only to be foiled by a humble 1 Euro piece, or rather the lack of one. As with all big stores you have to put a coin on the trolley to release it. One of my main objectives of the week before flying is to have as little in the way of coins in my pocket as possible, this week I had done particularly well, by giving Fleur my Euro coins to use at the fair last week, and just having enough English money to buy myself a car magazine at the airport, and hey presto no coins to carry through the x-ray machine. No coins for the DIY shop trolleys either... hey ho, so no floors were laid this weekend, which turned out not to be such a disaster after all, read on, although the way that the blogs are laid out you will have already read what I’m about to call the next instalment already…..

The A-team

Knights with Mucky Armour.....

Franca always says that if things are going to go wrong they always go wrong on a Monday just after I have left the country. Well this started at the weekend but took a turn for the worse on Tuesday when our drains started to play up. In fact with a full B&B suddenly a number of our waste pipes for bathes and the washining machine decided now was the time to completely seize up.

Franca gave a friend of ours, Steve who lives nearby, a call and he came round to have a look and spent a few hours draining down water that had built up in the waste pipes and clearing a block he had discovered ,(luckily not the toilets though), and recommended that we gave all the drains a good jetting. He was star to come straight round and the crisis was averted.

Then low and behold, today Steve arrives on the doorstep unannounced with Bogdan our builder and a big jetting machine to jet out our waste pipes. Better friends you could not ask for, and if you take a look at Franca's blog you can see the guys getting well and truely stuck in.

Being 500 miles away I can't thank them enough, as that was going to be my weekends work, but they cleaned the pipes in a hour or so, Bogdan having managed to borrow the machine from one of his friends. Sitting 500 miles away there are times when you feel completely helpless in this sort of situation, so it is good to know that there is help at hand should we need it. As I said on Franca's blog, who needs the A Team when you've got real friends like Steve & Bogdan, thanks guy I am in your debt....

A busmans holiday

A shortish blog this time, as for me most of this weekend was a busmans holiday sat behind a computer trying to rescue data and kill viruses and spyware. After a day and a half I rescued all our data, but I had to give up on rebuilding the computer, so I am bringing the hard disk back to the UK for a complete wipe and re-install, not my idea of a fun weekend, c’est la vie.

It was also the weekend of the village festival celebrating the vendage, the start of the grape harvest, though I think it will be a few weeks before it really gets going as the vines are still suffering from lack of sun.

We had the demonstration of the pressing of the first grapes, which if harvested in the fields around Sigogne must have been from a very favoured position judging by the sweetness of the juice.

Fleur had plenty to do with a fair in town, she is slowly graduating away from fishing plastic ducks out of a pool to shooting balloons, but the prizes are still the same old junk that 6 year old children find irresistible.

We ate out on Saturday night, (not in the tent as mentioned in the previous blog) though eating out gives it a much grander title that it deserves, we ate in the local bar, which a couple of our guests had tried and found to be OK, however all that was on offer on Saturday night was, sausage & chips, pizza & chips or steak & chips, we though because they were going to be really busy, but it turns out our table of 8 plus two other couples we were about the only guests for the menu rapide.

Eating out was followed by the Sigogne fireworks display, which for a small village is really amazing. It starts with a lantern procession for the children from the centre of the village to the football field where the display takes place each year. Fleur was a bit afraid of the loud bangs from the fireworks at the beginning until she got used to them, then she really enjoyed it, although throughout the display she would not let go of me, so after nearlly half an hour of holding my arms we devoid of all feeling. After the fireworks there was a disco in a tent back in the centre of the village which we went to for about an hour then it was time for bed as the B&B was busy this weekend so we had to be up reasonably early to make breakfast, well Fanca made breakfast I carried on trying to fix the computer.

Well that did not turn out to be very short...

Going home...

14 days of exile have come to an end and I am heading back to France for the weekend, and this is not just any weekend, this is the weekend of the Sigogne vendage festival, a tad early but I guess they do it for the weather, however the forecast does not look that handy.

The B&B is also full this weekend so we will doubtless be running between the festival and the B&B. We are due to do the usual eat in tent on Saturday night with the rest of the village, and luckily we are only providing dinner on Sunday night for some of guests.

Over the last 14 days I have managed to move from Southend back to South East London to the street where we used to live before moving to France. I am looking after the house of some friends of ours who have also moved to France, though nowhere near us. It was handy being in the UK last weekend so that I could get my self sorted out and organised. Living in SE London means I am only on the train for 20 minutes each way so I get 2 hours of my life back, thought most of that time is spend washing, cooking and cleaning, though this is preferable to commuting for an hour and half in each direction. Though I do miss my family when I can’t get back to France for the weekend it is useful sometimes to be able to sort a few things out.

It seems very strange to be back in the same road where we used to live, especially as I am on my own, but very handy. I have already met a couple of our old neighbours, the gossip network had already heralded my arrival, so they were not surprised by my sudden appearance. Most things have not changed a bit in the 18 months I’ve been away, not that I had really expected it to, which was reassuring.

This is my one and only run on Ryanair, in the coming weeks, as I use it to switch from La Rochelle to Bordeaux. The BA flights have already come down to the level where I can afford it and the convenience of the Monday morning flight is wonderful.

Some of my fellow travellers have uncovered a very cheap way to use the Eurostar/TGV to travel back and forth for only €49 each way. The French railways have a certain amount of cheap seats which if you book at the right moment are certainly are good value, and since I like travelling by train I will also look into this as an alternative to flying.

Rentrée

Today is the 'rentrée', back to school for French school children after thier 9 week summer holiday! For Fleur and Franca its an exciting day, as Fleur starts infants school. She's the youngest in her pre-prep. class and together with 15 other children she will continue with learning to write and will do more reading as well.

Some pictures

2 Princessess (Fleur is at the right).
Another pony ride through the vineyards.
Our daughter with our 'neighbours'.

two posts in one day

Well technically its three with this one, I forgot to publish the post from the bank holiday weekend so you are not seeing things they have both been published on the same date, only through my forgetfulness.

My lovely wife may see fit to pop a couple of photos into the blog for me as there seems to be an awful lot of text and no pictures.

Enjoy the read and hopefully a couple of photos, you know what they say, a picture is worth a 1000 words...

A water weekend of the right kind..

Monday morning, well Monday lunch time to be accurate, and I am back at La Rochelle Airport after a relaxing weekend. I was supposed to be putting down the floor between the two new bathrooms we are creating at the moment, but due to the quirkiness of the French holiday system, all the shops in the local area had run out of waterproof chipboard, and since all the factories close until September it will be a couple of weeks before the stores are re-stocked, so there was nothing I could do except enjoy the weather.

We had a water day on Saturday, firstly going off to explore a man made lake just out side Angoulême, which had been recommended to us as an alternative to going to the beach, especially if you were not going to make a day of it. It turned out to be a really good place for small children, not only was there a small beach by the lake, the lake itself had a nice shallow area of water segregated by lane makers depending on how deep it was, so it was nice and safe for the little ones. Being a park with a large lake you got the advantages of the beach, along with the advantages of a park just behind the beach, so there were playgrounds, mini golf, and quite a few other things such as Karting, a restaurant, merry go rounds and plenty of other things to do, so the kids will not get bored very quickly.

We spent Saturday morning in the park, and it was not in the least bit crowded despite it being probably the best August day we have had weatherwise. On Saturday afternoon we had been invited to spend the afternoon with some people who had a swimming pool, which Fleur thought was wonderful, especially when she discovered all the play things in the pool as well. Cathy and Terry and Becky had only just moved into their house, but one of the advantages of having the swimming already there is you can enjoy it from day one. Terry poor chap was slaving away in the UK, so we only met Cathy and Becky (2,5) both of whom were lovely. We also met Steph and Finn, who was just about 2,5 if remember rightly, but not Finn’s dad, Charlie, they too had only just moved to the area, and Steph’s other half was busy doing what I should have been doing, working on the house. No doubt we will meet the other halves at some point before then end of the year, unless it is my turn to be slaving away somewhere.

Sunday was designated a working day, but it was a bit difficult to know what to do to help the project along without materials. In the end I did one of the jobs I was saving for a rainy day, which was to switch the garage around because everything was on the wrong side having put up the floor joists for the storage area above the garage. I had to switch them around because we will need some head height to get onto the mezzanine when I eventually get around to putting up some semi permanent stairs, or maybe we will just use ladders, not sure at the moment. I had my work bench where the stairs/ ladders should go hence the big switch around.

The good news is that just like Friday the Easyjet plane is nice and early, so hopefully we will be away on time, and I will be in the office in time for my first meeting.. no rest for the wicked as they say….

Bank Holiday Weekend

Back at La Rochelle Airport after the English Bank Holiday weekend, so its Tuesday morning and the airport is quite busy, with a Jet2 plane in already, so the challenge will be to get this one off the ground again before my Easyjet plane arrives, not something La Rochelle have a great reputation at doing, so we could end up with a traffic jam of 2 planes.

We had a nice long weekend together, I arrived on the lunchtime Easyjet flight from Gatwick so I was at home by 3:00pm. We were not very full this weekend which means we could do some things together, as I have said I was not going to do too much work. As we had guests coming on Saturday night I declared Saturday the work day of the weekend and got on with putting up the rest of joists we bought last month for the mezzanine floor in the garage. This does not follow my rule of completing one room at a time but I did not want to leave the joists outside for too long in the rain……

Fleur had her helping hat on and so she helped me mix the cement to fix the joists in place and level them up, which took rather longer than anticipated but by 3:00pm everything was in place, just as the guests arrived. So that will be ready for boarding ovcr later in the year. Next weekend it will be back to the granary bathroom to lay the floor so that I can begin insulating the roof and working out the layout of the bathroom so that we can start running the first fix of pipework. Since we have two bathrooms one above the other I must make sure we fix both bathrooms together, to ensure the pipe work ends up in the right place. But that’s me getting ahead of myself once again lets’ get the floor down and insulation in first.

After Saturday it was time for the weekend proper, and even though the weather was not fantastic we played mini golf on Sunday and went boating on the Charente on Monday, and in between played lots games, washed the cars, getting extremely wet in the process and even going out to dinner on Sunday evening, for an excellent curry with our friends and neighbours Steve & Lindsay. Steve made an excellent curry, and Lindsay made a really tasty summer fruit pudding, so we ate really really well. We also discovered a new game which will probably appear on Fleurs birthday or Christmas list soon. It was called Sequence and is allegedly quite addictive. Steve and Lindsay’s choice of music was interesting at times as we were treated to White Christmas and a couple of other unseasonal ditties, but all in all it was a great evening apart from the fact that being the 24^th of August we would expect to be eating outside, but it was so chilly we were forced to eat inside, another sign of the very strange and unseasonal weather we are having.