Snow!

Back to France with Paul for a short skiing break and then the usual continuation of the house build. A vast quantity of snow has fallen and because the house has been empty and unheated, most of the snow has stayed on the roof! Still a good test.

An afternoon off piste at Guzet to find our ski legs, then a day of low cloud (sent doing some DIY). Next day we were off to do a little ski tour - alas thick breakable crust saw us quickly retreating. Beautiful weather so another day in and around Guzet.

Paul forgot to put on sun cream and got horribly burnt, so much so that we he had to stay indoors the next day to avoid permanent damage!

Ouch!

I discovered a stupid error with the pipework from the hot water header tank which will cost me another day of plumbing works and no doubt a lot of cursing.

Bathroom make over

Now mostly complete

After several days effort the bath/shower installation is complete and looking good.

A lovely St Valentine's day with Susie relaxing in pool, sauna and steam room before a leisurely lunch and a stroll around Dartmouth.

Bigbury

A day with Dommy, Oscar, Jasper and Buffy the dog, exploring along the coast at low tide. There are a succession of beaches/wave cut platforms, each separated by narrow rocky headlands which can crossed either through caves and blow holes or through collapsed arches.Dommy took some great photos with his DSLR, particularly of Buffy in motion.
The geology and physical geography here is all very interesting.

A link to another beach

Fishing net trapped in the rocks

Quartz veins

Ready for grouting.

Bathroom refurbishment well underway

After some more fun and games the car is now fully functional again and this time with a spare key!

Works got underway with the bathroom refurbishment. The bath was 5' 6" long, so I had to remove a full height built-in cupboard to fit the new slightly longer 1700mm bath. The usual problems - breaking the old cast iron bath to get it down the stairs with a hammer caused some ringing in my ears, all the plumbing turned out to be in old imperial sizes, and the walls around the bath were mostly tile adhesive on cardboard, and not square to the bath!

I replaced the cupboard with lower open fronted unit to hold towels (built mostly from the old removed cupboard), have plumbed in the new bath a shower tap and replastered the missing parts of the wall....just wall tiling, the shower screen and redecorating to finish the job.

Back to France soon where the snow has at last started falling - looking forward to some skiing at last!

New smile for the saab

Some minor works to the saab whilst I wait for clarification of the scope of works for the bathroom refurbishment here in Totnes from our landlady.

New wing mirror, classic chrome radiator grill and light surrounds (replacing the horrible black plastic one it had before), spare wheel and tyre, some tinkering with the tick over, new passenger door lining and lastly the ignition which turned into an epic.

The existing ignition key was just a tiny stub as the rest of the key had long since snapped off in the lock. The key frequently falls out as your driving along - most disconcerting. I managed to find a replacement lock cylinder and key in a an old scrapped saab 95 - the key was jammed in the lock making normal cyclinder extraction methods impossible. We managed to disc-cut the dashboard apart and after much cutting on the bench retrieve it in tact. Some oil and gentle persuasion and the the key was removed and the lock working smoothly. It was quite a job to remove the existing cylinder from my our saab but eventually after a few hours struggle out it came. I put the salvaged cylinder in and the key immediately jammed!! It wouldn't budge. Disc cutting was not an option this time and in the end I had to drill out the cylinder. Fortunately, I've retrieved the snapped end of the original key which was still in the lock, so I am hoping that I'll be able to put the original lock cylinder back in and make a complete key.

Very cold here in Devon but not as cold as back in the Pyrenees - thank heavens I drained the central heating. Some snow at last so looking forward to skiing again soon.

Tour of Cirque de Campuls

A glorious day out in the mountains. I had a late start (after a late night finishing the plumbing) but by 10.20 was on the hill heading for the cabane de Campuls. It was icy as climbed into the cirque above the cabane and soon put on my crampons. They stayed on my boots for the whole day.
The Etang d'Ayes was frozen and I continued to climb up to the smaller Etang de Bellonguere where I caught the first of the sun. The icy crystals were sparkling and the combination of warm sun and cold air magnificent.
From here I followed a vague ridge steeply upwards to the east before striking south along the ridge to the corniced summit of Pic de la eyre Blanque (2176m). The snow here was hard as ice and great care was needed as only the tips of my crampon oints could penetrate the snow and give me grip. Good practice of "french crampon technique". After lunch on the summit I contemplated descending to the cabane d'Eycheil where I stayed with Susie, Jasper and Ruby last spring - but the snow here was soft and balling up under my boots. So instead I stayed on the ridge and descended northwards to Tuc de la Seube and then Col de Auedole, before the descent on GR10 back to the car.

My only company the whole day was an Isard.

Moo

Yesterday evening a visit from escaped cows.

A change of tack today to escape plumbing for a short while. Infilling the window openings in the flank of the front dormer (weatherproofing is more important right now and I won't have the time to build the windows for some time), sealing around the frames and a bit of tidying in the fields.

Tomorrow a day in the hills as the weather is set fair.

I f***ing hate pumbing

The never ending torture that is plumbing continues. Three delayed action leaks (24 hours after filling the pipework) all in the same run of pipework and each one occurring about 3 hours after the preceding was one fixed, have driven me to the point of despair. The water dripping from the first woke me at 5am this morning, water everywhere. I'm beginning to wonder if I have a bad batch of solder. In which case the last 3 days work will have to be dismantled and completely redone. The entire trip will have been a waste of time.

I need a day in the mountains as far away from plumbing as is humanly possible.

Windows, walls and tractors

A beautiful day with clear skies, cool air and hot sun. In the morning I added some new mouldings to the windows which had leaked in the storm in December. Then I put silicon between the timber beads and the glass and mastic between the frames and sub-frames. Hopefully that should sort it out!
After a quick lunch I pressed on with finishing the retaining wall and clearing the pile of rubble next to the new entrance. All finished but before i could take a picture John and Nat arrived.

Nat had managed to get his little tractor stuck in one of the fields below Pinsou - the engine wouldn't start and it sounded terminal to me. About 100m of rope and a pulley were required to pull it out with John's landrover. I was middleman relaying commands and retying the rope when required. Once on the road the job wasn't over as we had to get the tractor into the barn. John's landrover couldn't pull it up the muddy track, so I went to get my jimny which did the trick. The last manoeuvre required all our effort as we had to push the thing into the barn manually.

Back to Quelebu

Back to France and a flat battery in the car which was parked at the airport. No idea why as nothing was left on. After several futile attempts at pushing and bump starting the car single-handedly, I remembered that breakdown assistance is included with my french car insurance...what a relief!

Weather here lovely, though I think that may change in next few days. No worries though as I have plenty of indoor work to do on the house extension.

AVIVA insurance "taking the piss"

I've been driving since 1985 and never made an insurance claim, but do you think I can get a UK insurer to recognise this? In France I have 6 years no claims bonus (or a Coefficient de reduction-Majoration of 0.68). Because I haven't had insurance in the UK for more than 2 years, I now have 0 years no claims bonus.

I got an insurance quote and the broker said that the underwriter AVIVA would accept my French CRM provided I got the relevent documents from my insurers and had them translated into English, which I have spent the last 5 days doing. Now it transpires that AVIVA won't accept the statement of CRM, but must have a letter from the french insurer stating the number of years without a claim, they then want this letter translated into English by a certified translator, then the translation of the letter to be printed by the French Insurance Company on their headed paper, then the reprinted translated letter to be sent back to the translator to be officially stamped, then the stamped reprinted translation of the original letter to be sent to AVIVA in the UK for consideration as to whether or not they will accept it. I can guess what the answer will be.

If I had car insurance with AVIVA in the UK and decided to move to Iceland, I wonder if they would agree to translate all my car insurance documents into Icelandic and get them officially certified for me?

Pheasant Casserole

A lovely new recipe. Game is very reasonably priced these days because most people (in the UK at least) don't know what to do with it! A brace of pheasant is cheaper than a single chicken.

I marinated the pheasant in a mixture of olive oil, fresh ginger, orange juice, a little grated orange zest and tarragon leaves for 24 hours before making my traditional slow stew by browning the meat in a pan with some butter and lardons, deglazing the pan with some red wine, then adding some stock, carrots and a bay leaf before slow cooking it for 2 1/2 - 3 hours. An hour before it was ready I added some lightly fried whole shallots. I served it with roast potatoes, curly kale and carrots.

New Car

For the last year or so Dominic has been lending us his car when I was back in the UK and in need. Finally though, we have our own wheels - a 1974 Saab 95! A day of fiddling and it's all in working order except for the heater control (the broken cable for that is on order). Just need to find a passenger door wing mirror and a spare wheel.

Walk on the moor

A reasonably long walk (12.5 miles) on Dartmoor with Susie and Dominic yesterday. Rainy and windy all day with poor visibility but good to stretch the legs nevertheless. The River Dart was in spate and we watched some kayakers tackling the river.

UK again

Back to blighty for Christmas. Whilst Jasper and Ruby were with their dad, Susie and I crept off to explore Salcombe with Anna, lots of swanky clothes shops which the girls loved!

Then a flying visit to see the Hewitts at Shenmore and a very blustery walk up table mountain.

The two days of rain striped away the snow around the house, but walk around Guzet Neige enabled us to have a good trot in the snow and an epic snowball fight lasting most of the day.

The following day the weather was warm and balmy so after a walk upto the airstrip at Joubac to admire the view and sunbath, there still time to squeeze a little bit of retaining wall building back at Quelebu.

Warm

Horray! The central heating is working. It was bloody frustrating as we had to fill and drain the system three times before we found all the leaks - only three leaks which wasn't bad considering the total number soldered joints. I still have a permanent cold water feed and all the hot water to plumb but that can wait. The house is warm and cosy and after the snow and torrential rain of the last few days. We found a xmas tree in the woods and with the Rayburn working we had a lovely pork roast last night. Today off for a bit of snow shoeing!

Susie, Jasper and Ruby arrived on Saturday. As did the snow which made for a nice xmas feel to the start of the holiday. The central heating isn't finished yet but hope to get it done in the next few days. We're keeping warm around the fire until the weather improves. Susie and Ruby added some decoration to the living room and the front door.

Doh!

All the radiators are connected to each other, but removing the old water cylinder today proved problematic.

First of all I couldn't empty it. I'd put a drain tap in the cylinder when I installed it but to connect a hose to the tap required several adapters and with them attached there just wasn't room for the hose without crimping it. Eventually I succeeded but not before several leaks into the kitchen below.

After dismantling all the connections I was ready to remove the cylinder, but then I remembered the cupboard in which it sits needed to be dismantled to get the tank out (I'd forgotten I had to do this when I installed it). Once out, the header tanks (feed and expansion and cold water) had to be separated from the cylinder (it's a combination cylinder but I want to reuse the header tanks). Some careful sawing and voila. Needless to say after a trip to St Girons to get more pipework and fittings, and re-assembling the cupboard there isn't gonna be time to get all the central heating working before Susie, jasper and Ruby arrive on Saturday!

A big clean up tomorrow, some essential small jobs, washing, chopping firewood and shopping. There's snow forecast for Saturday - we'll just have to keep the fire going as I can't light the rayburn until it's plumbed in or I'll damage the back boiler.

Race against time

All morning fetching plumbing supplies then working late into the night plumbing in the radiators. Slow work, but I've started at the difficult end where I have to join into existing network. Hopefully things will go quicker tomorrow.

Getting there

All the radiators hung, lots of little tidying up jobs done...tomorrow pipework!!

Another long day (aren't they all?) and the dining room floor is ready for varnishing.

Flooring

Got the kitchen tiled last night and have now started on the oak flooring. Nail gun problems so have resorted to good old hammer and punch.