Still not a bank holiday

...and still a good hot August day. Our neighbours say that thunderstorms are on their way later in the week, but who knows? The grass is now looking distinctly parched.

Marcel the menuisier was back at work today, and the barn doors are now finished off properly with the fixed upper portion in place.



The upper part hadn't had a coat of linseed oil when the picture was taken earlier today, but it has now. I am not sure how much of a good idea it is to be at the top of a tall and rickety stepladder with a saucepan of near-boiling oil, but fortunately this time there were no problems. It needs three more coats though, so there's still plenty of time to do something stupid.

We spent the morning putting up more glassfibre wallpaper (on the chipboard ceiling). One more day and it should be done, and it'll be a good thing as it's a really horrid job, prickly fibres all over everything. Then this afternoon off to the tip with a carload of cardboard, formerly protecting the new wood floor. The tip experience here is quite different from Ashford, where large numbers of surly council workers try to make you feel unwelcome and resolutely ignore you if you're trying to shift something heavy. There's just the one man at the Maurs dechetterie, and he shakes your hand when you arrive, helps you unload the rubbish, and compares (favourably) the ability of the Dutch and the English with that of the French when it comes to sorting out the recyclable stuff before they get there. Of course, I've no idea what he says to his French friends about the repeated visits made by the Dutch and the English.

But he wishes you a polite au revoir and bon continuation as if he genuinely hopes to see you again soon.

The cardboard might in principle have gone into a bonfire. We consulted a neighbour about having one. He considered the pros and cons, yes it is a bit dry, you'd have to be careful, make sure the grass doesn't catch - only mentioning at the end that in dry weather like this it is actually interdit. That's presumably a minor consideration round here.

Not a bank holiday weekend here ......

... so of course the sun has been shining and it's been a lovely day.

Quite a lot has been going on over the last couple of weeks: we've had Jane come to stay, just back from her honeymoon and still married apparently she says. She's helped out a lot and we've gone ahead with some serious work - tiling and grouting the terrace outside the bedroom, painting the large main room, walls and ceiling, putting up fibreblass wallpaper on the ceilings in the upstairs bedrooms and a whole lot more that I have already managed to forget (it'll come back to me, Jane, really it will).

Here's the finished terrace:



After it was done I discovered that I hadn't quite got the fall of the surface right, and if it should ever rain (I had to simulate it with a sprinkler on the garden hose) there'd be a big puddle right outside the door. So I got out the angle grinder and diamond disk, cut out three of the smaller stones and relaid them a centimeter or two lower as a gutter. This has either solved the drainage problem, or at least moved it somewhere else. You can hardly see the joins.

Then at last the menuisier got his men back on site, and we've now got the balcony in place, with two-thirds of the floor planks down. But there's no sign of a railing round it - that has all yet to be ordered, which is about what we should have expected. Still, we'll have plenty of time to decide what it should look like. Monsieur G has promised us a temporary rail, probably scaffold poles and netting - tatty chic maybe?

Here's the balcony in situ:



It was installed using M Vaissiere's nice new farm tractor. The tractor had to come in via the field and M Espeisse's woods, as it was too wide for the public track behind the barn. Fortunately Monsieur V lives opposite Jean-Louis Carriere, who farms the field, and was able to ring him up and ask permission to cut the fence down. This is how it's done, health and safety please look the other way:



Then on Friday Marcel came with young Sebastian and installed the main doors. We immediately had him take them back off again so we could treat them with linseed oil and turps, and - pricked by our conscience - we recruited Sylvain and Aurelian to help us put them back on, feeling it might have been rather a lot for Marcel to manage by himself on Monday morning. Here they are, and the doors too:



The upper, fixed, section should go up on Monday, and then we might have the "barn door" look we've been aiming for. Four years on and it will look like it did before we bought it, an achievement for sure.

Finally, I had to do something to prevent weeds growing in the wall between the new balcony and the main room. The menuisier suggested concrete, but I decided to use a concrete infill (this helps to hold the balcony to the wall - there are great big bolts embedded in it) topped off with a couple of inches of mortar and some more of our tiles. I liked the result:



I was using up what I had left over, so the larger tiles, which are 28 x 28cms, were cut down from 60 x 40cm slabs, and the smaller ones were offcuts from everything else.

I now feel something of an expert on laying heavy stone tiles. If it needs to be hammered with a heavy wooden mallet into a bed of mortar, then I'm your man. Even the grouting is now something I can make work (funny word, grout, more one of Neasden FC's players than part of the English language. The OED says it was originally a word for a coarse porridge, then dregs or mud, and that the modern usage is only possibly derived from that, noting that there's a Fench word "grouter". Well not round here there's not - it's just "joint" in modern France. Possibly Mr Onions never used grout himself, and didn't see the resemblance to porridge before it sets).

hot and back to normal ..... almost

Why do I always feel the need to complain? It's very hot today, and even more humid, with hotter weather forecast. I think it's because I'd like to be getting on with laying those tiles, but it would be just a little too much. My back is pretty well normal again, and the computer is working - though I have lost all the addresses and e-mails in Outlook, so I'll scrabbling round to retrieve these and maybe this time I'll remember to back them up. Or not, of course.

I'd laid a few tiles on Sunday but used up the last of the sand and cement. So today I went and collected another ton of sand and some bags of cement from Maurs. It was shovelling the sand off the trailer into the sandpit that convinced me that it was too hot to work. I'm not entirely sure that I'm doing it right - I've a feeling that tiles bedded on mortar need a minimum thickness of mortar, and maybe I don't have that. And I can't increase it without running the risk of rain washing into the bedroom. It's probably better to have a few tiles coming loose - they can always be re-fixed, than having solidly fixed tiles that are just that lttle bit too high for draining away the rainwater.

So I am trying to relax and swim a little in the pool, and I'm keeping the shutters closed in an attempt to have a bedroom cool enough to sleep in tonight.

and then the computer crashed

As if my back wasn't enough, when I turned on the computer I had the blue screen of death this morning, followed by a corrupted Windows load - well, it didn't load at all. Eventually I reloaded Windows from the disc that had mysteriously arrived at Elm Grove a few months back (thus erasing all my settings, drivers, software, etc, but not the data files luckily), and after several chats with Simon I reinstalled the wireless driver and got back onto the internet.

I haven't yet been able to resurrect Outlook, though.

Still, it's nice warm weather and my back is certainly improving if I don't spend too much time hunched over the PC.

Last night it was Stephanie's (35th) birthday, and I joined about 25 other adults and a dozen children (though I may have been counting the same ones more than once) for drinks and a barbecue. I should have known that if I got there at 7.30 - as Didi suggested - the food wouldn't be served until 10.30, so there was plenty of time to chat. Too much of it spent listening to Jean-Pierre, but not understanding very much - summer problems with the weather I think. The children had a new kitten, which tolerated being carried around by the smaller children remarkably well. But then Leontine's dogs went for it, and it retreated under a car with a great deal of hissing and spitting. And THEN it retreated inside the engine bay, where it defeated everyone's efforts (including its own) at removal, until eventually Didi dismantled part of the engine shielding and got it out. Prior to that it could be seen inside the grille on the front of the car, walking back and forth and mewing loudly, and occasionally sticking its paws out through various small openings. After that it was confined to the house....

It was nice to meet Didi's and Stephanie's parents - the former a lot older than the latter (is Didi a youngest child and Stephanie an oldest one?) - but really the entire neighbourhood was there, so all in all a pleasant way to spend a summer evening.

work suspended

Not the best day yesterday. A lovely morning, clear skies, warm, sunny, as usual (I shouldn't say that), and I got ready to tackle the tiling on the patio. I'd ground down the excess cement round the existing tiles, chased out the gaps between them so I could grout later, and generally had everything ready to start.

Then, just as I got up from kneeling by the edge of the patio, a nasty pain in my back and I find I can't bend. It'll be a few days I'm sure before I can touch my toes again. So I had to force myself to an idle lifestyle, lying down and reading, and enjoying the peace and quiet.

Well, a quiet night (as they all are) with clear skies, and as I woke up about 4am, I went to lie down by the pool to watch the perseid meteor shower ("the Tears of St Lawrence"). It was a good (but not spectacular) show, as the moon was bright and quite close to the radiant. I might try again tonight, but the moon will be much the same: it'll depend on whether I wake early.

This morning feeling very slightly better I went to Calvinet for some painkillers in the car, then off to the supermarket, naturally leaving the shopping list behind. In fact walking about seems to make my back feel less painful, so I plan a short stroll this afternoon.

Getting hot but yes it's August

Hot sun all day today. First thing, though, while it was still cool, I went for a run - just the short loop round by Lestrade de Gales - it was the first time for I'd guess nearly a year. I can't say it was a real pleasure actually out pounding the roads, but it was nice when I'd finished. I'll give it a day or so before going out again.

My first job was to prop up the peach tree. It's now slung from the wall of the barn, using the now redundant electricity barckets. The slings didn't seem quite enough, so I cut a heavy crutch in the woods, and that's also holding it up. It's now just about possible to get in the door without bending impossibly low. Regrettably while coming down the stepladder, a brief wobble led me to speed up my descent, and I cracked my knee on the ladder quite painfully. What have stepladders got against me?

Then I grouted the tiles I'd put in yesterday and afterwards went to have lunch with Tony and Anne. Cheese souffles and nice chilled rose. We commiserated ourselves about the absence of M Goutel and the lack of progress on our respective bits of joinery: T&A are having to put up with some fairly rough temporary handrails on their stairs and balcony. But I think there's a good chance of getting Mr G back and working after the 21st. We'll see.

In the afternoon I shifted the patio tiles off the patio ready for work to start putting them down. It now really looks like a dauntingly large area to cover, but maybe that's just because it's so hot today.

Here are the tiles as they are today.



The picture makes the area to be done look fairly small, but in fact it's about 25 square meters. And ideally it would all be done at the same time (for better cohesion of the mortar bed), so I'll try to get all the preparatory work done, and the sand and cement in place, before starting up the mixer. But when I do the upright ones round the edge I should also be able to do the cut stones by the main door first, as these too need to be glued rather than cemented. That'll give a slightly smaller area to cover.

Monday evening

It's one of those magical evenings. The sun set about half an hour ago, and there's not a cloud in the sky and the colours blend from copper over in the west through progressively lighter then darker blues over to the east. A few lights are twinkiling down in the valley but the first stars are not yet visible. There are almost no sounds to be heard - perhaps a distant donkey, and the occasional voice wafting up from the Piganiols' farm down the hill. No birds singing, no dogs barking, not even a cicada. The air is just cooling down and the first bats are appearing.

Yesterday was a day off - overcast and cool. I went out to lunch with Peter Graham and Charles Barr - a delicious and well-sized duck, followed by Charles' blackberry fool and perhaps rather more wine than was entirely good for me.

Today I took the trailer to Rodez and collected half a ton of paving stones - 30cm square limestone flags. They'll be going onto the patio outside the bedroom, hopefully in the next few days. As the picture shows I split the load between the trailer and the back of the car.



The 120 tiles look suspiciously like quite a small load (it felt heavy enough loading them on at Rodez and then off at Lessal), but each tile weighs a little more than 5kg. I weighed a selection first before deciding to take the trailer.

The triangular gap between the lower and upper paved area has been niggling me for months. If our Moroccan builders had managed to get the end of the paving for the pool at right angles to the wall of the barn it wouldn't be there, but as the main paved area needs to be square there's a long thin fillet of bare concrete that has been asking for the treatment.

And today it got it. Here's before and after:




And the sun came out to show the difference. It's odd how the new tiles look as if they are set crookedly compared to the ones on the left: in fact they are all straight lines. Maybe it'll look better when the grouting is done (maybe that'll be tomorrow if I can find the grout).

By the time I was done it was nearly seven, and as I went for a shower my mobile beeped (this was very unusual in that the phone was switched on and I noticed the message). It was Janey reminding me to look at the Positano webcam where she and Mikey would be waving, slowly, as the webcam refreshes only every five seconds. And after a bit of an exchange of texts I could make out two small white specks (six pixels?) which were them - and it's a lovely evening there too.

Now at ten it's getting dark and the cicadas are chirruping away - so many of them it's a constant blended tone - and the stars are coming out too.

Warm today

I clearly shouldn't have mentioned the rain. It was back to temperatures in the thirties, clear skies, and not even a hint of rain. I was reduced to putting the sprinkler on in the hope that the grass outside the farmhouse hasn't died completely (that's what it looks like, though).

I spent the day doing little things punctuated by frequent cups of tea (there are three kilos of loose lapsang to be got through). So I improved the cover on the sand and gravel store - in time this will be the compost bin, really it will - and cleaned the pool, then swam in it (I had to check that the water was OK), dead-headed the roses - two of them look like they have a fatal disease - and then watered them just the same, cleaned the willow leaves out of the gutters - assisted by Aurelian, who clearly thought that me and ladders were a bad combination - I'd noticed the gutters were blocked when the storm arrived, evicted the redstart and her last remaining chick from the barn (now just outside the window, possibly complaining), thought about propping up the peach tree (there's already a branch broken on the apple from the weight of the fruit), hmm, that doesn't count as something I've done, does it?, read the rest of the appalling "Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer (don't get me started on how bad it is. In fact I wish I hadn't bothered getting started on it myself), and took the wedding beer down to the Piganiols.

Then as twilight arrived and the day just began to cool down, I reheated yesterday's pork stew with home-grown apples (it's always better the second day - maybe it's the wine you have to add?) and - note for the future - just don't try cooking broccoli while writing up the blog. It'll be overcooked.

Back in deepest France

9am on Friday morning, and I've just had breakfast and unpacked the car. While I've been away it has hardly rained at all - the grass is looking very yellow and thin - while overnight and this morning there has been a spectacular thunderstorm with lightning on the hills all round the house, and heavy rain. Now it's daylight the thunder is still rumbling but the lightshow has finished, and we're up in the raincloud with no visibility beyond the nearest hedges.

11 hours driving yesterday and I was hit by that curious evolutionary (?) problem, coming over really sleepy between 2 and 4 in the afternoon - the heat of the day on those African savannahs, and the best time to lie down. Really difficult staying awake, and then it simply passed off entirely and the rest of the drive was so easy.

The wedding went off perfectly (and I'll write about it later) but now it's back to Mourjou and its builders. Three of them promised to work while I was away, but of the three only M Bouquier actually did: so we do have a kitchen, though as the plumber wasn't on site it isn't yet connected up and can't be used. The electrician hasn't shown up at all, while the menuisier, who positively assured me he'd be hard at work on the balcony, also hasn't set foot anywhere near here. But on the plus side, M le Maire has made a really good start in tiling the bathrooms, and he'd made no promises at all. The downstairs shower room is pretty well finihed - the one part he hasn't done is clearly waiting for us to say what we want him to do.

The weather has had a startling effect on the peach tree outside the front door of the barn: the large crop of peaches are twice the size they were before, and the tree is bowed down with the weight making it hard to get in the front door. The peaches are however rock-hard at the present, so it'll be a while before we start enjoying them.

On getting back late last night I knocked on Leontine's door and we had a chat about the wedding and the grandchildren, but didn't stay long as the house needed opening up. Lots of cobwebs (one of those fun jobs for later this morning), and the bats seem to have moved out of the kitchen window and into the attic. Everything else seems absolutely fine, which is distinctly encouraging, and no sign of the flies which can sometimes provide a field sport for the flyswatters.

This morning Jean-Pierre was filling jerricans of water for his cows, which he has moved to a field at Leynhac (not enough grass here), and the field next to our barn is only occupied by his pretty brown-blonde horse and her foal.



This might explain the absence of flies. Jean-Pierre helped me unload the bandsaw from the car, as it is too heavy for me to do by myself. Everything - particularly the grandfather clock - arrived safely and undamaged, and the clock is now ticking away happily in the room next door. It can't yet go into the barn - it will have to wait until the plugpoints are fitted and the walls are painted. Next week? Or next year?

We'll have a bit of extra decorating in the barn as the redstart has raised another brood in the barn, and the signs of occupation can be seen on absolutely every flat surface, but particularly - of course - on the wooden staircase that we sanded down so carefully. The (single) chick seems to be sufficiently large to be evicted, so I'll try to flush her and her mother out, and then make sure the windows stay closed as much as possible.

Jane and Mike's Wedding

After spending the weeks before the wedding helping get the garden ready, and getting the Austin ten not just MOTed but actually ready to drive (and I have the scars to prove it) the most vital task left was to get the beer in. Some very nice (they tell me) Pullman bitter from Hepworth's brewery in Horsham. I hope it had enough time to settle.



Finally Saturday arrived, threatening rain, but it held off till late in the afternoon.

I'd been practising with the Traction - the pedals seemed rather close together - and I was able to get the bride to the church in what I hope was real style. Jane looked lovely, and I felt very proud taking her up the aisle. Will's sermon was - shall we say - idiosyncratic: the first time anyone present had seen the preacher produce a real iron anvil in the pulpit. And by the end of the service Jane and Mikey were well and truly married, and back on out to the Traction.

Luckily Lydia's white umbrellas came in useful, and the guests had a bit of time to enjoy the garden. Mikey's two latest rockets whizzed into a darkening sky, and - I am sure this is a good omen - for the first time ever the retrieve parachute opened and we all saw the controlled descent.



Then into the marquee for drinks, a treasure hunt, goldfish (all safely swimming in the pond now) a good meal, a few short speeches, and The Cake




Followed - eventually - by the Cosmic Sausages, who were even better than we had remembered from Peckham.

A small step for man ....

Today I finished the step down into the barn - one bit of concrete and tiling that I've done entirely myself. As a result it's a bit irregular. The concrete sloped slightly, so the glue for the flagstones had to be quite thick to make up the level. And the last flagstone isn't quite level with the others. But after grouting it all it doesn't look too bad. In fact it looks better than in the photo, and at last the original tiles put in a couple of years ago by our Moroccan team are grouted and cleaned up, and match the others. I'm hoping that the grout will keep the rain out too - it used to get in under the doorframe.

If I had to do it again I'd know how to do it better (getting a flat concrete surface would be a good start). With glue this thick it'll probably take a week or so before it's fully hardened.

This is a very minor part of what's been going on over the last few weeks. The spring weather has kept me away from the blog - hot sunshine for the best part of a month, with just enough rain to keep the grass growing so fast it needs cutting two or three times a week. But the last few days have seen thunderstorms and rain, and have also brought our builders back. Finally, the staircase is in, and Marcel is finishing off the tricky bits. There are missing risers at the top and bottom of each flight, and these are rebated into the stairs on three of their four sides. This makes putting them in an exercise in advanced woodwork. His young assistant Sebastian is fitting the cladding along the sides of the veluxes in the stairwell. The effect is a real transformation. I had almost stopped thinking the work would ever be finished, and this one piece of work has made everything seem possible again.

The owner of the joinery business, M Goutel, has had some difficulty finding workers to the work he's said he'll do. As a result, he's started training us up for it. I've been sawing off plasterboard ready for the upstairs ceilings to go in, and Caro has been taping up and filling the joints in the plasterboard in the kitchen. he's kindly supplied us with brand new stainless steel jointing trowels/spatulas, and even came along with half a tub of the filler. it occurs to me that perhaps he intends paying us the minimum wage, and then invoicing us for the cost of the work we've done (plus his profit margin).

Still, he's promised us the balcony too, later this week, and that the men will stay with us until the work is all finished. That should be most of June taken care of, then.

The tiles for the bathrooms haven't arrived yet, so we have something of a delay their. We're hoping that Raymond will be able to find the couple of days needed to install the walk-in shower, and enclose the downstairs bath (and tile a bit). After that we'll try to get on with the rest ourselves.

End of a week's tiling

Saturday at last, and the last of the tiling to do: just the two bathrooms to finish. The mayor arrived at 8 am as before, and by lunchtime we'd finished it all. I felt very pleased with what we'd achieved together, and even more so when the mayor said he'd be back on Monday to do the grouting. Once that is done the stairs can go in, and maybe the joiner will actually start putting them up on Wednesday as he has said he intends. We'll see.

Better still, we had a good seven square meters of the flagstones left over, which will go onto the patio outside. Making it fit properly is a little tricky though, and I've been scratching my head over it most of the evening.

It was an absolutely beautiful spring day too, a few thin high clouds and hot sunshine. After clearing up it was time to mow the grass that had been shooting up in all the rain last week. So I'm looking forward to a day off tomorrow - it has been hard work this week and I feel I need a break.

Apprentices are getting older

For the last three days I've been helping the mayor to tile the ground floor of the barn. As tiler's labourer I'm allowed to mix the glue - really a special cement - cart the flagstones around, advise on where to put them, and occasionally use the big water cooled saw to cut the flagstones up - and at the time of writing I still have all my fingers.

I've learnt how to lay out a floor like this, and how to make sure that the flagstones go in the right places. I've also learnt that not all these nice limestone flags are quite the same thickness - so we have to use more glue than normal to accomodate this - and that not all of them have been cut to quite the right size.

But the main thing is that I've learnt how hard it is to do all this for seven or eight hours a day, without a break (and remember, this is just my first three days). The glue mixing is what really gets tiring. I'm mixing about 15 kg of glue at a time, in a bucket using a trowel. It has to be mixed so it is only just fluid: a very dry mix indeed, a bit like bread dough in texture, and, like bread mixing, there musn't be any lumps or dry bits in it.

The good news is that we've been getting on very well, with one room completely paved and the other two-thirds done. It's not grouted yet, but even so it's real progress. I've been able to keep the mayor on his knees most of the day, passing him the stones and mixing the glue so he can keep hard at the difficult job of getting them put down straight and level. With our "opus romain" layout this isn't as easy as it would be with tiles all of the same size.the same size and shape (as he said with some feeling).

We've got a surprising quantity of stones left so I am beginning to wonder whether we've over-ordered. It'll be a good thing if we have, as we can use the surplus outside.

I'll post pictures in the next day or two when we've something more finished to show. But with luck we'll be able to tell the joiner to get started on putting the staircase in next week. It's nearly a year since it was delivered and it would be quite something to be able to get rid of the ladder to the upstairs and have a stairwell we can't fall down.

A small step

Went down to the mairie to lodge a request for permission to build a shed in the garden, but discovered from the very helpful secretary there that I didn't have quite as many attachments as Aurillac would like, so it's - literally! - back to the drawing board. They need artistic front and side views.

The mayor was there, and he promised he'd be with us on Monday to start the tiling. So I spent an hour or so this afternoon mixing a bit of concrete to get the step down into the hall the right height. I hope it is now exactly halfway between the doorstep and the floor level. It won't be possible to tile it for a couple of weeks, as the concrete has to cure fully first. But by then, the mayor will have finished the rest and I should know enough about putting the tiles in to do that bit all by myself.

Also today I went up to the tax office in Aurillac to get this years (2008 income) tax return forms. It seems odd that the forms aren't available until the beginning of May (the 5th) and have to be completed and returned no later than the 29th May. Why not have them available from 1 January?

Putting in the windows

In the absence of any paid builders - Francois the plumber apparently still off with his bad knee, and Raymond the tiler running three weeks behind schedule - I decided to get on with work myself. We'd ordered small fixed windows for the few original window openings in the barn - small high-up square holes, which will now be in our bathroom, shower room, etc - just the double-glazed units with no frame.

I cleaned up the openings yesterday and glued the panes in place with mastic, and today I mortared them in, on the inside and the outside. To me most of them look slightly crooked, but I am not sure whether this might be an optical illusion: they seem to be square in the stone opening. I'll check with a spirit level one day, but in the meantime I'll try to think that they add character that way.

The openings did appear to have been cut with a view to putting glass in them, with a flat inner surface that otherwise would have been unnecessary. Though clearly in the 100 years since the barn was built (OK, 99 years) no one had got around to doing it before.

Starting work on this was a little delayed, as a result of a cow incident: Jean-Pierre's cows all escaped and had to be fetched back. This was about a dozen Saler cows, a similar number of calves, and, of course, the bull. Unusually, they had got through the fence into the woods below the field, and had them wandered up past our barn and down the lane. We didn't realise how they had got out until we thought we'd rounded them all up, only to see a lone straggler walking past our pool. Luckily it decided the water was too cold for swimming. The bull was a little frisky, and decided to demolish a large part of one of Leontine's new apple trees. He may just have been scratching his head, but the result was a late and rather heavy pruning. I was astonished to see how little attention Leontine paid to the cows and the bull, walking through them on the lane to get to the bakers van: the cows all have wicked pointed horns, and with their calves around there's always a chance of a misunderstanding.

By the afternoon the weather had actually become hot, and Caro braved the 20 degree water in the pool (twice). I'm waiting for it to be a bit warmer, though I couldn't find enough shade to sit and read later, as the walnut tree is not yet out in full leaf.

Spring sunshine at last

I've had enough of April showers so the fine weather of the last couple of days has been very welcome indeed. I decided to take my first bike ride of the year: a circuit down to the Lot and back. Parts of it were sensible. Other parts included the unmade road down to the Moulin du Clout - a "short cut" to Fournoules, and a brief detour onto the GR (long distance footpath) 6 and 65 where they ran parallel to a busy road. The footpath turned out to be a farm track heavily used by tractors and cows, with ankle-deep mud and ruts full of smelly stuff. When it finally became too steep for the cows/tractors, it was down a 45 degree slope rutted into the hillside with running water and loose rocks.



The route was via Fournoules to St Julien de Pignaniol - I got there just as the church service was starting (10 o'clock), and surprising numbers of people going in to. It took a little while to find the very small road behind the church that goes to St Santin - like the road from Cassaniouze to St Julien, it is the boundary between the Aveyron and the Cantal. At St Santin I stopped to check out the two adjoining churches (both apparently built on the site of the original fortifications). Curiously, neither is dedicated to St Santin: the one on the left in the Cantal is Notre Dame and the one on the right is St Peter. The Cantalian church has a romanesque west door and appears to be older than the Aveyronese church (mostly 19th century?). There's no real explanation for the boundary going where it does, though one suggestion is that it marks a watershed. It's now marked in coloured lights set in the ground between the two churches, and the war memorial sits exactly on the line. One face is engraved "St Santin du Cantal", with a list of names, and on the opposite side the other "St Santin d'Aveyron" with a second list.

From there I went on to La Garenne, and climbed the mound (leaving the bike at the bottom). Disappointingly sparse views from the top as a result of all the trees, and I couldn't make out Lessal with my binoculars either. So on from there to Montredon, and the road down to Ladinhac (which is where I took the GR 6 / 65). Curiously I only met walkers on it (seven or eight) on the one section that was a good metalled road. I should have looked at their boots. Once finally down to the Lot it was a pretty easy ride along to Port D'Agres and then St Parthem, where I stopped for lunch by the river. It looked as if the floods had taken away a lot of the surface of the unmade road down there. I sat right at the edge of the river and ate the apple I'd brought. I'd previously cursed slightly that I was too late for lunch in the restaurant there.

On from there to the bridge over the Lot, and winding road up to Cassaniouze.



At this point I realized I wasn't going to enjoy the six miles uphill, but by the time I reached the top I was grateful I hadn't eaten much. I'd decided when I set out in the morning that I'd photograph the orchids I passed, and the very first ones I saw were on the uphill section. After pausing at the first ones for a picture I then ignored all the rest, as getting started again was ... an uphill struggle. At Cassaniouze I took the road via the Chateau de la Mothe, and discovered that - in the other direction - it really is much more downhill than up. Or was I just totally exhausted by then? I started getting off to walk at the shorter uphill sections, and finally teetered up the road to Lessal at a quarter to four. I found that I was having to walk bandy-legged owing to the amount of chafing - definitely saddle-sore.

Resolution - try to pick a ride that ends with a good downhill section - Marcoles might be a better bet next time (and it's closer). But there's certainly a drawback to living half way up a hill.

The bits I can remember - I'm trying to forget the last hour - were a perfect spring day outing. The cowslips and wild violets are still out, buttercups everywhere, grass knee high, and the trees are all coming into leaf, with a lot of blossom still on the fruit trees, though the oaks and walnuts aren't making much of a show yet. I even passed a small patch of wild bluebells looking quite exotic - we don't see much of them round here.

But it will be an early night I think. Eight o'clock?

Easter Monday 2009

Still raining - so there's the challenge of trying to get a picture that reflects how things really are. I liked this one, and with difficulty managed to upload it to here. Getting it the right size wasn't too difficult. The raindrops show nicely on the blossom, and the camera isn't too tilted either, so the house looks pretty well upright. The muddy tracks from the builders' lorries show regrettably rather well: the latest one was delivering the floor tiles for the downstairs, and he couldn't resist driving up the hill to turn round - and excavate a small trench in doing so.

Here is the new, almost finished concrete slab outside our bedroom window, with all the floor tiles stacked up on pallets on the two older sections. Eventually we hope that when the slab is tiled over it will end up pretty well level with the ground on the uphill side.

April showers - tipping it down....

Back at Lessal with Jane and Mike, but the spring weather is not exactly a joy. We've had two or three days of good warm sunshine, but the rest of the time it's been raining or strong winds or both. Still, Mikey has helped me get the final slab of concrete down by the bedroom door, and Jane has helped Caro with painting the dark red hessian wall in the farmhouse - I was surprised at how much it makes the room look brighter.

The boiler is now at last running, 24 hours a day, and drying out the heated floor. The whole barn is warm, even without the radiators upstairs, but that's hardly surprising as the lower floor is more like a sauna than a house. A rather smoky sauna, though, as the temporary chimney fits rather loosely on the boiler, and a good proportion of the smoke goes into the barn rather than up the chimney. It is giving the barn more of a lived-in character (old wood-smoke, quite a pleasant smell). But except when we've got the fire in the farmhouse going full blast, it means the warmest spot is where we can't actually sit around.

Jean-Louis Aymar and Michel Goutel have got the silo sufficiently finished to be used, and it contains our first load of wood chippings. The rain doesn't seem to be coming into it anywhere, but we'll need to keep our eye on it. It looks a little odd seeing the temporary chimney smoking away at the edge of the silo, and it'll be a few weeks (months?) before the proper chimney is in place. We do have a start date for the tiling too - St George's Day. And I've volunteered to be the tiler's mate. Maybe I'll learn something (if only how to avoid doing my back in).

Today it's a very wet Easter Sunday - but there's a leg of lamb in the over for later (3pm?), and Mikey and I are off out to see about some asparagus (well wrapped up).

Meteo France says it's cloudy today but ...

.... what do they know? It's raining. And I spent yesterday getting the shuttering ready for the next tranche of concrete, and getting a couple of extra trailer-loads of sand and gravel, and now I can't do it. I'd hoped to have just the one last piece to do when Howard is here next week - it's always nice to finish a job - but now that looks unlikely. The forecast is pretty unremitting rain for the next week, but, of course, what do they know? Which I think is where I came in.
So this wet Sunday is likely to be spent indoors (I've got a cold anyway) telling myself that the spring flowers need rain as well as sunshine. Not that very much is out yet - just a few yellow tips on the odd daffodil, appropriately enough for St David's Day. And maybe the grass seeds I've sown on the new ramparts at the end of the garden will germinate.

Last night we went out to the annual dinner of the "Vivre en Chataigneraie". We were the guests of Lucienne who unfortunately wasn't well enough to come herself, and we had a lovely time. The main dish was Civet de Cerf, or venison stew, which was very nice even after Caro said "that means it's cooked in blood". Country dancing at the end to the sound (music?) of an accordeon and a set of bagpipes. Strangely well-matched instruments, with the emphasis on "strangely" .....

(very) Small pleasures of laying concrete

Put down the final layer on the first slab today. The small pleasures in question were:

1. having enough cement, sand and gravel before I started
   
2. having enough time
3. shovelling straight from the piles of sand and gravel into the mixer, and tipping the mixer straight into the shuttering
4. working out how to get the mixer on its stand without a well-muscled helper
5. finishing without getting my gloves wet, as a result of turning on the tap just enough to fill the watering can between mixer-loads (adjusting the tap means wet gloves)
   
6. getting the surface nice and flat
7. finishing before 11.30 (in the morning)

So tomorrow it will be down to Chausson for another couple of loads of material, with a view to getting another slab laid on Sunday before the weather breaks (it's rain forecast for the whole of next week). However, today was bright and very sunny: by the end of the afternoon it was actually hot. I was working in a t-shirt for the first time this year, and our daffodils are just coming out. Spring maybe?