Trees, viruses and flowers

Back to France and warm balmy weather, although it had snowed the night before I arrived at Quelebu (traces of snow were still in the garden). 

The computer here had a virus which occupied most of last night and today (on and off) to eradicate. I had to reinstall windows and managed to get stuck in a loop where windows wouldn't let me log on until I'd registered my copy of XP, but I couldn't do this because I needed to log on to get on the internet. When I eventually solved this problem, I spent most the afternoon scanning the hard disks to get rid of the virus which had wrecked my PC.

Today I set to clearing more of the hung-up trees - brought three down and logged them. Also burnt 1 of 5 big piles of branches as well as starting to clear the area between the barn and the new field below which has been full of fallen trees and brambles since I moved here.

Still got these hung-up trees to bring down

Chainsaw problems this afternoon, but as always a damn good clean and some fiddling with the carburettor seems to have it working again.

Flowers are starting to come out - violets, cowslips, hepatica, vetch, lungwort and speedwell.

 Also made a start on the new paddle stair which will serve the attic and other assorted decks - need to get some wood tomorrow so more on that project then.

Another walk to Red Lake

 Allotment dug over and potatoes planted

Another walk to Red Lake today, this time in the reverse direction and with Susie. Strong cold wind and a short hale storm in the afternoon but otherwise a good stomp to blow the spider's webs away. Susie drove both ways, her driving test is getting close!

 Sharp Tor

Susie on the barren moor close to Red Lake

Big oak brackets

Made these to finish off one of the jobs at Cornworthy. I'm currently busy with jobs in France (back there at the end of next week) and an interesting project here in Totnes to remove most of the load bearing walls in a 1970's house and turn it into something with a contemporary, open-plan design...more later.

Birthday

Happy Birthday to me! Susie bought me this lovely watch...I'm very happy as my old Seiko is nearly 20 years old and battered.

Thank-you for all the birthday wishes.

Cleaning the sensor on an Olympus XZ-1

Ever since I bought my second hand Olympus XZ-1 there has been two large bits of dust on the sensor, visible whenever I have a small aperture or use some of the art filters. I have searched the internet far and wide for several months trying to find some instructions on how to clean it yourself. A couple of weeks ago I found a forum where someone described how to take the back off the camera, which I promptly did but the screws holding the sensor were glued in place, so I could only get to the back of it. I vacuumed vigorously but after reassembling there was no change.

Annoyed by more spoiled photos yesterday I starting looking for a new camera, but the price of something decent is scary and I have no money. The cost of Olympus UK cleaning the sensor on the XZ-1 is £90 + postage - this amounts to almost what the camera is worth, so I decided to have another try.

Once the camera was open, I removed the flat shiny plate that wraps around two sides of the sensor (held in place by two screws. It is then possible to lift some of the orange plastic circuit tapes and get a better look at the image stabilizer mounts that carry the sensor (these are the series of sliding frames held on stainless steel rods with tiny springs). This whole assembly and the sensor is held in place by three screws. These need to be carefully undone with the camera lens down (there are tiny loose washers on each screw between the assembly and the rest of the camera), then the whole assembly with the sensor still attached can be carefully lifted away giving access to the sensor and inside of the lens. I gave both a careful wipe with a new lens cloth and after reassembly the camera is as new again!

Whole job took no more than 20 minutes...definitely not a job for the faint hearted, fat handed or clumsy though.

Red Lake

A stomp today from Harford to Red Lake via Piles Hill, Sharp tor, Three Barrows and Quickbeam Hill.
Return by the Erme Valley. About 10 miles or so in balmy temperatures but a steady North wind on the moor.

Red Lake spoil heap plus those two annoying bits of dust on the sensor!

Upper Erme valley

Spent this week building a glass roofed lean-to for a client, weather's been rather nice for change.

Yarner woods

After months of storms some sunshine at last in the UK. Dominic, Bridget, Susie and I profitted from the weather with an afternoon stroll in Yarner woods.

 Tree life

 Wood ants

Tits on the feeder

...and the best of Dominics photos taken with SLR and telephoto lens.

Thick Ear

 A great days skiing at Guzet with Ian today. I felt a bit rusty at first and the snow was very compact and a little icy so you needed to be on yours edges. We soon headed over to Freychet and after a couple of runs on the right-hand side we switched to the left and found some lovely steep skiing hors piste on the steepest part of the slope. I was skiing well and about three fifths of the way down decided to stop. I managed but just lost my balance and skidded onto my bum...and I was off, sliding down the slope! It was close to forty degrees and icy and there was no way to stop. I tried self arrest with my pole, tried turning from skis first to head first but couldn't stop, I knew there was a safe run-out but I was heading for the piste to our right and at top velocity managed to narrowly miss a piste marker pole (1/2" diameter rod) except for my ear which smacked it hard. Eventually stopped about 200m lower down a little shaken but otherwise fine. Only yesterday I was reading about slopes above 35 degrees being "no fall terrain" when skiing on Wildsnow as it's impossible to stop if it's icy.

 The slide

My big red swollen ear.

Close up of my thick ear which feels like a lump of steak grafted onto my head.

It's half term at the moment in this part of France, so Guzet was heaving and it took a couple of hours to get our lunch and the queues at the lifts were long and slow, but today was about soaking up the sun (which is forecast to shine here for the next 10 - 14 days) and chewing the fat with my old friend Ian.

Early morning alpenglow

Gonna be a blue bird ski day  : )  : )  : )

Windy Night

Strong winds overnight which disturbed my sleep. Wind always sounds much worse than it actually is here because I'm surrounded by woodland. Today it's decidedly colder.

A trip to see Ian and Nina this morning, it was good to catch up and hopefully we'll go skiing on Thursday when the good weather returns. In the afternoon I cleared and logged another of the hung up trees, this time a tall cherry.

Ah weather!

Snow over night and most the morning until all was white! Then out came the sun and all the snow melted, so I headed outside and cleared away the big oak which brought down the electricity lines in November and was felled by the EDF. Then huge winds and back to some more snow!

Stripped my camera down trying to remove the big bit of dust on the sensor with some serious vacuuming inside (it's visible at small apertures - see photo in last post) ....but alas after re-assembly no change : (

Ah...sun!

I'd forgotten what it feels like.

Snow continued all night and most the morning. Had to restock with firewood first thing, then I sorted out the lighting in the kitchen - added some extra lights and ditched some "cheap as chips" Ikea lights that had already developed a fault.

the blue has been rendered strangely by my camera

When the snow stopped and the sun came out I went for a walk down into the woods. Lots of damage from the early snows and some more from some very strong winds here a couple of weeks back. Lots of clearing up to do just to unblock well established paths through the woods. Below "Le Sarrach" I startled 6 boar sleeping under a tree - they sped off into the woods before I could turn the camera on.

Snow

A few minutes of sun when I arrived in Toulouse, then a blast of hail and a wind that threatened to uproot the nearby road signs. The rain turned to snow by the time I was in St Girons and here it's gentle blizzard. Fires burning and house warming up slowly.

Followed by storms

Back to France on Friday, but it's looking like after months of great weather there, I'm arriving just as a week long rain storm arrives. Is the shit weather following me around?

It's forecast to turn to snow over the weekend, so there's a chance of some good skiing as long as the fresh snow isn't too wet.

Amsterdam and Istanbul

At last we have taken our much delayed honeymoon and we headed off on Thursday for Istanbul via Amsterdam. The weather alas was decidedly Devonian, but it was great to travel somewhere new.

Flight times had made a brief overnight stay in Amsterdam convenient and as luck would have it we also managed to pick up tickets to see Nederlands Dance Theatre who were performing in Amsterdam. We saw an early piece by Jiri Kylian, a premiere of new work by Geoke (which neither of us much liked) and a premiere of a new piece by Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon, which I liked and Susie loved! She even managed to talk briefly to the choreographers who happened to be at the performance and sitting near us.

In the morning it was off to Istanbul. We'd booked the lovely Sultania Hotel, close to the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace. We unashamedly did all the tourist sites and pampered ourselves.

The Hagia Sophia is immense and all the more impressive as it was built in 537AD.

The Blue Mosque is simply beautiful.

The Grand Bazaar was as you'd expect with lots of vendors hassling us for trade and the goods being a mishmash of quality items and nasty junk.

 We also visited the Spice Market (though there's not so many spice traders these days).

The Topkapi Palace is sumptuous and gives an insight into the luxurious life of the Sultans.

We walked across the Bosporus into Asia, though strangely the Asian side is very European whilst the European side is has many mosques and markets and the Sultan's Palace.

One evening we watched the religious ceremony of the Whirling Dervishes - who spun for 35 minutes in perfect synchronisation with each other (but not the beat of the music) despite having their eyes closed. In their religious trance they never became giddy - quite extraordinary.

We swam, had saunas, hammam and turkish massages at the Hotel, as well as dining on delicious turkish cuisine for breakfast and in the roof top restaurant with panoramic views of the city.

A long flight home and although a lovely sunset from the plane, is was the usual rain, wind and a very hairy landing at Bristol.

More stormy weather

Last few weeks have been a mixture of kitchen refurbishments, roof works and new architecture projects for me, all of which has kept me fairly busy through more appalling weather. Problems with materials deliveries has delayed my trip home to France which will probably have to wait until after our forthcoming trip to turkey in a couple of weeks.

The unrelenting series of storms over the past 2 1/2 months have resulted in the rail link from Devon and Cornwall to the rest of England being washed away by the sea and most of Somerset being underwater.

Today we went for walk on Dartmoor in between the storms, though there were still some snow, hail and rain showers and at times a bitter South West wind.

 Quite a few trees have been toppled by the storms

  

Susie and ruby pretend they are on the bow of the Titanic