… to finish the day. At knocking-off time, the temperature in the verandah was still at 24°C and the water temperature was at 68°C. That can only mean one thing – a nice hot (water-cooled) shower. and it was gorgeous too.

Follow that up with a good shave and now I’m fit for anything (well, almost).

I had a bad night’s sleep for some reason or other and Marianne put in an appearance too. I’ve been thinking about her a little just recently – it’s almost a year since she passed on – but I never expected her to arrive.

So after breakfast and the website I went outside in the gorgeous windy weather and attacked the garden again. I want to put another raised bed in – that’s my next trick – and it needs to be ready for when I sow the potatoes. But there’s loads of wood all over it from a tree that collapsed a couple of years ago and all of that needs moving.

But to do that, I have to clear out all of the brambles and weeds that have grown all over everything and that’s not easy at all. It’s taking quite a while to shift and there’s still a pile to go, but at least I’m not going to be short of wood this winter. The kindling bin is stacked to overflowing and I’m preparing another, and the pile of small wood has grown to more than what it was at the start of winter. Added to that, the pile of big wood has almost doubled in size, and there’s more still to come.

This afternoon, seeing as it was quite windy, I went round to see the farmer in Le Quartier who is having wind turbine issues. And I didn’t even need to leave Caliburn to see what the problem is.

The installation is a load of rubbish and the company that did it – that one in Montlucon that I showed you a while back and which has now (of course) closed down – should be thoroughly ashamed of itself.

The two houses are in a hollow sheltered from the wind on two sides. On the third side is a large tree at each house – in one case just 25 yards from the turbine, and on the fourth side are all of the farm outbuildings.

So on three sides there is no wind at all and on the fourth side is nothing but turbulence. And as the turbines are only a metre or two above the roof line (instead of a maximum of 12 metres off the ground as allowed by law), the friction of the ground on the wind will slow the wind right down.

Quite frankly, the installation is a disgrace.

To make matters worse, just 200 metres away is the crest of a hill that is on the farmer’s property. A pair of 12-metre masts on there with these wind turbines on top would provide enough power to light up the whole village.

To give you some idea, of the two wind turbines (installed since January 2013) one has produced 12.5 KW of electricity and the other 13.2 KW. And that’s from an installation that has cost €8,000 each.

–

+2

-2