A trip to Guzet

After fixing the car's exhaust and finishing the poly tunnel foundations, we took a day off and headed up to Guzet to play in the snow.

Cloud magic today

After the rain

Lots of rain for the last 4 days which has hampered progress, but still managed to concrete some steps, remove the exhaust from the Mitsubishi which sheared off last week and needs to be replaced and do some electrics in the gite.

Today has been clear and so after a trip to St Girons to collect materials and go to the market, we went for a stroll to the Col de Saraille. Lovely views and autumn colours.

First snows of the year.

As forecast, snow showers on the mountains over the weekend and snow flurries here last night and today. It was only this afternoon that I finally finished the slating. Work was interrupted by the delivery of the poly tunnel, though I don't think we'll be erecting it for a week or more yet.

Good chance of snow here at the weekend and during next week - crazy considering the temperatures here for the last month and even today (been topless for much of it). It's now a race against time to try and get the roof slated on the gite!

Pic Rouge de Bassies

Susie's Niece Emily and her boyfriend Edder have been here for 4-5 days, and after helping us with the land and digging new steps to the front door, we all went for a walk Up Pic Rouges de Bassies (2676m). Beautiful clear weather and fantastic views in all directions.

Mont Valier

Pic Rouge de Bassies on the horizon

Meanders and the refuge de Bassies

 

Summit

Montcalm and Pico d'Estats

ice crystals

 
Lovely colours at the Etang de Lhers

8 hours with a mini digger and I have made a platform for the poly tunnel which arrives next week, widened the entry to the field in the front of the house, dug a drain for water which collects in front of the gite and eased the access between the Chemin de Quélebu and the Chemin de Pinsou. 

 A haze of smoke today originating from the forest fires in Northern Spain

Slated

After 4 days graft the longer side of the gite roof is slated, but I don't have enough to do the second side so I'll have to buy some more slates! 

Some rain yesterday evening but the today was balmy and warm.

Roofing

Last week Susie's sister Jen was here and they busied themselves with step building beside the vegetable garden, whilst Jasper and I gathered firewood and laid some more hedges. 

A lovely get together at chez Sheri's with John, Sandrine, Kim, Tim and Judith (who's organic garden we must vidit when she returns from Portugal).

Today Susie and I made a start on slating the gite roof, I continued all afternoon while she planted garlic and onions.

A visit from Dédé Vidale and Jean-Luc Fernandes in the afternoon with some meat from last year's chasse (the hunt starts here next weekend). In the evening l'apero at chez Philippe and Sophie, who are here for the next couple of weeks.

Autumn cometh

Rain all day today - snow above about 2200m. A quick wander in during a break in the weather gave some cep and orange birch bolettes.

 The new bookcase and worktop in the kitchen completed...

 Fields topped after a couple of years of neglect...

Autumn crocii 

Chickens

All go this week...chickens have arrived, the field clearances are being completed, a secondhand mulcher/shredder finally arrived from the UK and extra shelves and vegetable racks are under construction in the kitchen. More photos tomorrow.

Muck

Some cooler weather this weekend after glorious weather all last week, but sunshine returns on Monday.

The garage is now concreted up to the road and on Friday we shifted 6 trailer loads of manure from Galas d'en Haut to the potager. Although only across the valley, it's a 25 minute trip each way. We tried the short cut via Le Sarrach, Moulin d'Aleu and Galassus - which was a bit of an adventure as the track along the river to the Moulin was deep mud...we made it through the but the car was plastered and we decided not to risk it in the uphill direction towing 600kg of manure in the trailer. A couple more loads tomorrow should do it.

Ham

Tucked into the boneless ham I made last winter, it's been air drying for about 9 months - delicious!

Susie been hard at work on the vegetable garden, I've been finishing the chicken run (salvaging old chicken wire and repairing holes) whilst Jasper's started on digging for the last bit of garage concrete slab.

The cats are now happily out and about and using the cat flap and the weather is fabulous.

progress

It's been an upsetting week. On Sunday morning my beautiful sister passed away, I'll travel to the UK next week for the funeral. 

Here I have felled half a dozen acacia's which were mangled by the May snowfall in 2010 to make fence posts and firewood, started building a new chicken run, with susie and Jasper constructed the enclosure for the organic garden and after a few unsucessful mushroom hunts, Susie and I got a super haul this morning which made a fabulous risotto.

Time in the mountains and Quélé-wood

Most things are now unpacked and with some new shelves and use of the attic the house is feeling calmer. Farm machinery has been moved, grass cut and the space for the potager and chicken run provisionally marked out.

On Thursday it was Jasper's birthday, so we headed up for our first stroll into the mountains. Nothing too strenuous after our long journey - so we headed for Pic de Girantes (2088m).

Early autumn sunshine and clear skies made for a pleasant ascent and lunch on the summit.

stress is good for your six-pack :)

After an initial navigation error we soon gained the right path for the interesting descent via the Pas de Roc, which I hadn't done before. This is now marked with yellow markers.

I think we've come the wrong way

Jasper now 20!

Today Phil's son and his associates arrived at Quélébu to film a couple of scenes in a short film he is making. Phil plays someone called William and I was an incidental character called Steven. Filming was very professional and took most of the day with one scene down at the barn/gite fixing my tractor and second in the kitchen back at the house. Hopefully I'll be able to post a link to the finished film at some point in the future.

This evening a short storm and some magical lighting.

Nous sommes arrivé

At last we have arrived! On Saturday in fact but internet/phone problems have put us offline until now.

By lunchtime Friday we were packed and ready to leave the UK. The ferry wasn't until 11.00 p.m. so at 8.00 I hitched the trailer only to discover that the trailer lights had stopped working.

An hour under the car in the twilight with a neighbour holding the torch whilst I rewired the hitch and the trailer lights and all seemed to be working. The trailer must have weighed nearly 3 tonnes, so gingerly we headed for Plymouth. At the check-in someone pointed out one the trailer tyres was almost flat and in the next 10 minutes it was completely flat!

No time to change it so we drove onto the ferry with it flapping. We weren't allowed to change it on the ferry either so it had to wait until we disembarked.

The ferry was huge and comfortable and the sea calm. We had a cabin, so had beds to sleep in but the cats had to stay in their boxes in the car below decks. By 3.00 a.m. the swell had increased and awoken me. I'm not good with boats so got dressed and spent the rest of the night on deck in the breeze. We arrived at Roscoff at 8.00 a.m. French time and got on with changing the tyre. Unfortunately the wheel brace and jack were under the floor of the boot so we had to unpack the rear of the car. The trailer was also exceedingly heavy so we bent the jack handle. Two further problems now presented themselves: Firstly the direction of rotation of the spare suited the right hand side of the trailer but the flat was on the left. The weather was reasonably dry so I ignored this. Secondly, on close inspection I discovered that two other tyres on the trailer had nails embedded in the tyres (we must have run over some nails in the road). They didn't seem to be going down yet, but we had used our spare already so things were looking decidedly dodgy. I didn't share this information with my already stressed passengers.

We stopped a few times at garages trying to find tyres of the right size but without success, so we just pressed on. It was a long way - 14 hours on the road in all! The car did amazingly well pulling the trailer but on some of the long steep long hills we were down to under 40 miles an hour.

At the house after dark we found we had caught a loire in one of our traps but it was now full of maggots and stunk to high-heaven. The cats were super relieved to get out of the boxes and stretch.

Several loires were still at large but after a couple of minutes eyeballing the cats from a beam, they may have departed.

In the morning the mountains showed themselves with fresh dusting of snow.

We have spent the last couple of days unpacking and tidying up after the SMDEA who came and installed the water meter to the barn.

More later!!