Category Archives: Les Guis

Tuesday 26th April 2011 – SO NOW …

… that we have the internet up and running again, I can tell you all about today’s little events, such as they are.

We’re back at work again now and I spent the first while working on the computer – carrying on with the Newfoundland web pages.

This is the kind of thing that will go on for ever, I imagine.

Later, I set about the garden. I’ve done more planting, some weeding and hoeing and I’ve also put the two raspberry bushes in – those that I bought two weeks ago.

But I don’t like the look of them. If I get anything at all from them I’ll really be lucky. But they stand more chance in the soil than they do if they aren’t in there, so let them have a go.

Tonorrow I’m going to make a start on building the greenhouse.

That’s the cue for a thunderstorm, isn’t it?

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Monday 25th April 2011 – DID YOU MISS …

… me last night when you were waiting for this entry to come on line?

If you did, you’ll have to improve your aim.

But seriously, we had a thunderstorm yesterday afternoon just as I sat down to read my e-mails. And the first flash of lightning, and that was that.

Rob came round a little later – “has your internet gone too?” It seems that the very first flash of lightning got the village’s internet relay box. How about that for a shot?

Anyway, we had to wait until Tuesday evening for it to come back on line.

Mind you, it isn’t as if you missed anything. With it being a Bank Holiday I had a day off and so I did nothing except read a book or two, watch a film or two, and work on the Newfoundland web pages.

But we had rain, all 4.5mm of it and now there’s about 100 litres of water in the water butts.

I’ve used too much cleaner in there though and so it’s rather more soapy than I would like. But I have 30 litres of clean water that I saved and so I can use that for cooking, and meanwhile keep on drawing off the water in the butt to use for washing, washing up and so on.

I started by drawing 30 litres out and saving it in a different container. That’s reduced the water in the butts of course and so as more rain falls (if it ever does) it has a good start on diluting the cleaner that remains.

It’s all trial and error around here.

I’m quite a trial and there’s error a-plenty!

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Sunday 24th April 2011 – It has finally rained

We had 0.5mm of rain during the last 24 hours. Not a lot, but the first rain of significance for 20 days. The garden was pleased to see it, but the water butts weren’t. With all of the messing and mauling about, the plastic connections on the line that joins the two butts together has worked itself loose and the water leaked off out of the sides.

And so this morning instead of having my day off I had the butts stripped down yet again and sealing all of the plastic joints. And now there don’t seem to be any leaks, but I’m not vert happy with this. So what I’m going to do is to go to Montlucon on Tuesday, buy some more bulkhead fittings and connections, and couple them up with brass fastenings and proper reinforced plastic pipe. I’m also going to put a tap in between the two butts so I can switch off the connection and drain the tanks individually if I need to. That’s much more like it. The plastic joining kits are fine for water butts for  watering plants and so on but for domestic use I need something much more solid.

And so once that was done I came back up here and watched a film – Our Man Flint, one of the films that I bought just recently.

I’ve not been out either. There’s been no footy and so I haven’t had any reason and I may as well stay here and relax for a change. It is a Bank Holiday after all

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Saturday 23rd April 2011 – I haven’t done much more today either…

tacot ligne economique gare durdat larequille puy de dome france… although I have made an important discovery. Acting on information received (from Henri at Radio Tartasse as it happens) I managed to track down the railway station for the ligne economique, otherwise known as the tacot, at Durdat – Larequille about eight or so miles from where I live.

And here it is, with grateful thanks to the owner who gave me permission to photograph it.

For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for all that long, you probably won’t know that back at the turn of the 20th Century the Département of the Allier was honeycombed with railway tracks belong to the Lignes Economiques, a system of metre-gauge railways that ran all over the place.

I say that they “ran all over the place” and that isn’t an exaggeration because they very rarely ran anywhere near the villages that they were supposed to serve and the one here at Durdat is well over a mile from the village. In fact one early commentator described the railway stations as “seeming to have the purpose of just adding decoration to the countryside“. The engines wheezed and coughed and spluttered around the countryside, gaining the nickname Tacot, which is French for an “old banger” or “rattletrap” and by 1950 or so they had been all swept away by road transport.

tacot ligne economique gare durdat larequille puy de dome franceYou can see, if you look carefully, the outline of the railway trackbed just in front of the station building.

The line, which ran from the lime kilns at Marcillat to the steel mill at Commentry, was the first to go – being abandoned in 1932 when the standard gauge line from Montlucon to Gouttieres arrived at Marcillat.

And, ironically, the main line was closed in 1939 due to wartime circumstances and never reopened for passengers, meaning that Marcillat was isolated as far as passengers were concerned long before the rest of the ligne economique system was abandoned.

I’ve found most of the stations and some traces of the line but the station at Durdat-Larequille was always elusive, until Henri told me where it was.


All of this came about because I was in Montlucon shopping today. I’ve stocked up with food and all kinds of things, as well as almost everything to finish the water butts (Brico Depot is hopeless) including the nylon stockings for making my sand filters. Why ever didn’t I think of Noz before?

A swim at Neris on the way back, fit the new tap onto the water butts, and that was me, done. But there I am saying tat Brico Depot is hopeless – here they are after all this time of me harassing them and here they are now stocking BULKHEAD FITTINGS – the hollow threaded tube that you pass through the sides of water tanks. I’ve been nagging them about these for ages and now they finally carry them. This will make my life so much easier.

But in Montlucon I had two interesting encounters. A guy at LIDL stopped me and asked me “is that your van outside?” and so we had a long chat about wind turbines and solar panels and he’s coming to see me next week.

There has been a lot of discussion just recently about advertising and people have different opinions about different things, but for me, having corporate colours and a corporate logo, and having clothes that match the van for the colours and the logo – that seems to work for me.

And then on the Brico Depot car park, Julie and Rob came over for a chat and to tell me that they want me to go over and chat to a friend about solar panels. Having a vehicle that is a distinctive shape, a distinctive size and a distinctive colour – that seems to work too.

People can see me coming a long way off, and at the very least it gives them plenty of time to hide.

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Friday 22nd April 2011 – I haven’t done a tap today.

Well, it’s Easter (Good Friday to be precise) and I don’t work on Bank Holidays, as you know. I’m entitled to some time off anyway.

And so a lie-in until 10:00, a leisurely breakfast, watching a couple of films, working on my voyage around Newfoundland (I’ve arrived at Cape Race just now) and that’s my lot. I’ve not even cooked tea tonight and I’m off to bed in a minute.

We’ve not had any rain today either – that shower we were promised never arrived. And so I’m off to Montlucon tomorrow to buy the bits to redo these water butts. I may as well make the most of this good weather.

But there’s no footy this weekend – nowhere in fact. Whatever am I going to do?

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Thursday 21st April 2011 – I’ve dealt with the question of the water butts today.

rainwater harvesting water butts guttering les guis virlet puy de dome france>But it isn’t how I want it, and I’m going to have to do it again.

I took down the guttering on the verandah, scrubbed it all out because it was filthy, reset the supports and then rehung it all, nice and clean. I then ripped out the old piping to the butts to deal with all of that.

You’ll notice that I’ve put back the sump – just in front of the verandah window. That was my first idea and I replaced it because the first of the grey bulges in the pipework, that is in fact a sump, and the idea was that every few months I’d dismantle the filters, empty and clean them, and put them back. But that never happened and there was all kinds of stuff in there. And so the sump went back in. Just unscrewing the blanking plug at the end will empty that out.

Next task was to clean out the water butts. Using all of the 4 kettles, a saucepan and two 25-litre containers, I managed to save all of the water. There wasn’t much in it. But the water containers are out of the way in the dark to keep them fresh and I’ll be drawing on them for now. The butts needed cleaning as you might expect – it’s been a couple of years since they were last done – but the home-made puzzolane filter (the second grey bulge) is surprisingly effective. You can tell that by looking at the inside of the pipe in (a muddy brown) and the inside of the pipe out (a dusty light grey) and I’m glad that it works fine. But one major surprise is that the IKEA “stainless steel” mesh from an old strainer – it isn’t stainless at all and all the mesh filters that I made from that have rusted. That’s a disappointment.

From here on in it was just a list of problems. I can’t find the bits that I put on one side to make the replacement sump and the replacement filter. I searched as much as I could but no luck – not that it is surprising around here of course. I can’t find anything. And so I’ve had to put the old ones back.

But at least I can get to them. The new tap that I was going to fit in the butt to replace the broken plastic one – that isn’t going to work. And after ages of scratching around I’ve found an old one and some bulkhead fitting that might do the job. The hole needed to be filled after all. I’ll have to organise another tap at the weekend and hope that it isn’t too late.

I say too late because now that everything is clean and proper and ready, all I need is a torrential rainstorm. And I hope that it comes soon.

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Wednesday 20th April 2011 – I’m blogging early tonight …

… because I’m thoroughly whacked and I’m going to bed in a minute.

base of greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve been working hard on the site for the greenhouse and now I have all of the breeze blocks in place. But it wasn’t half a maul, digging up tree roots, tree stumps and all that kind of thing. It took me ages.

It’s hard work, all of this manual labouring in the garden. And tomorrow I need to start on building the framework for the greenhouse. That is going be exciting too.

This morning though I carried on with my Newfoundland pages and I’ve now arrived at the Avalon Peninsula. There’s still a long way to go though and it’s going to take me quite a while to finish this lot off.

And this afternoon I took some time off from digging the trenches. Now I know that I said that I don’t have much water left but notwithstanding, I did another load of washing and now all of that is up to date. But there’s a reason for this. I haven’t cleaned out the water butts for well over a year and there’s some sediment at the bottom of the tanks. Added to that, the tap has broken and so it needs to be replaced and for once I actually have handy a tap that would do the job

It makes sense therefore to empty the water butts (I have 2×203-litre tanks) while the water is low, putting the rest of the water into some clean containers, and then giving the tanks a good scrub and clean out and then replacing the tap, before the weather breaks (which is supposed to be Friday, so we are told). I can change the puzzolane filter too and also fit a sand filter if I can find someone who has an old pair of tights. I need to reorganise this water system a little.

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Tuesday 19th April 2011 – I’ve been in the garden again this afternoon.

This time though it’s the heavy engineering stuff.

You may remember that between the greenhouse and the mega-cloche was a patch of land covered by a tarpaulin – where I was going to erect the aluminium greenhouse. But following a donation by Simon of the old windows from his workshop, I changed my plans.

I promised the aluminium greenhouse to Liz and Terry and I was planning to build a balloon-framed structure that I could fit the windows into.

digging base for greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnyway, to cut a long story short, this afternoon I cleaned up all of the rubbish that had accumulated there, removed the bits of aluminium greenhouse, rolled up the tarp and set to digging out a square trench.

With the land sloping downhill quite steeply there, I’ve had to dig out so that the square trench is more-or-less level, and I’m setting a row of breeze blocks into the soil there – the purpose of those being to make some kind of horizontal level and keep the wooden frame of the greenhouse out of the damp soil.

Once I’ve finished the breeze blocks I can make a start on building the framework for the greenhouse. The back wall will be covered in the cheap tongue and grooving that is on sale at Brico Depot – I’ve tons of that. The roof will be plastic corrugated sheeting like the verandah, although I’ll invent a system of roof openings to allow the air to circulate, and I’ll build a door for the uphill side. Everything else will be Simon’s windows.

This morning though Liz and I were in the recording studio at Radio Tartasse doing our programmes for the month of May. And Henri, the old guy who helps out there, had a chat with me about the Tacot – the old narrow-gauge railway that used to run from the lime kilns at Marcillat to the steelworks at Commentry. He showed me on the map the traces of the old line, and said that next month he would bring me all of the paperwork that he has on it, including a book on the subject.

Won’t that be exciting?

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Monday 18th April 2011 – I’ve been gardening today.

Well, after all it is the full moon. Before lunch I planted all of the main crop potatoes – I put 64 into two of the raised beds – the last two that I installed the other week. I’ve had to be careful how I planted them because the baby lettuce that I bought the other week – they are in one of those beds and I’ve had to fit the spuds all around them.

After lunch I planted this week’s seeds – things like cauliflowers, broccoli, carrots, courgettes, beans, peas and so on – they all went outside and into place. In the smaller cloche I planted into small pots some more peppers, chilis, cucumber and gherkins. And there are already some of those sprouting up from a fortnight ago. I’ve also weeded out the strawberry patch in the mega-cloche. That’s doing really well in there and it’s a mass of flowers, looking like there might be a bumper crop, and quite early too. But then again, this magnificent spring has a lot to do with that.

But there is a down-side to this magnificent spring. When I finished weeding and planting, I gave everything a thorough watering. And with no rain for 14 days, all of the casual water, that in buckets and bins and tubs about the place, that’s all gone. All that’s left is my rainwater for household use and there’s just about 150 litres or so of that remaining. I’m drying up and this could make things difficult here. I shall have to start a rain dance if it carries on like this.

But there’s still some water for a shower and at 36.5°C I had one as well. And then off to St Eloy and the Anglo-French Group where I set everyone an exercise – I’d found some old notes that I had made, with useful French phrases that are used in everyday life. And so I set everyone to translate them from French to English, to keep them out of mischief.

And so apart from working on the Newfoundland web pages this morning, that was my lot. Tomorrow we are in the studio at Radio Tartasse again. Don’t the months come round quickly?

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Sunday 17th April 2011 – The full moon tonight …

full moon rutland WG901 wind turbine les guis virlet puy de dome france… was really beautiful. As I was cooking my pizza I had half an eye on it slowly moving around. Later when I was doing the washing up it was just appearing above a rare scattered cloud and it had the little Rutland WG901 wind turbine in a perfect silhouette. I couldn’t resist it.

But rare indeed are the clouds these days. I’m going to be tempting fate by saying that apart from two days where there has been a minimum amount of rain, the odd drop or two, there’s been no rain here at all for 14 days. Now that’s guaranteed to produce a thunderstorm, isn’t it?

And talking of full moons, I reckon I should be spending tomorrow planting, rather like Neil Young’s mates in Thrasher I’ll be hiding behind hay bales and planting in the full moon tomorrow. There are the spuds to put out for a start, as well as a few other things. And there’s definitely more than a few signs of life in the cloche now.

It was Sunday today and so a day of rest. But not really – I was up and about before 10:00 and I did some tidying up in here first as well as doing some research into my Newfoundland pages. But the weather was so gorgeous that I went outside and did some tidying up and general nonsense.

After lunch the water in the home-made immersion heater was at 50-odd degrees, what with the blue cloudless sky and all that, so that was the cue for a load of washing, especially as it was a blowy kind of day. While that was doing itself I went down to Pionsat to watch the 1st XI play St Bonnet. They were a loud-mouthed lippy team when I saw them at home, giving the referee all kinds of grief. Today, the official referee didn’t turn up so Damien ended up refereeing.

That was the cue for all kinds of histrionics.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire st bonnet puy de dome ligue football league franceAnd just how stupid are some footballers?

It was 1-1 and one of the St Bonnet defenders had already been given a yellow card for dissent. He actually scores a goal a few minutes later to put his team in the lead and to celebrate, goes up to Damien and says “how about that then, you **** **** ****?”

So he’s sent to the dressing room as you might expect, St Bonnet are down to 10 men, the missing player being a defender of course, and Pionsat win 3-2 accordingly

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire st bonnet puy de dome ligue football league franceAt least, there can’t be any disputes about any of Pionsat’s goals – they are all excellent well-taken efforts especially the second one, which was a peach and worth the price of admission on its own.

But somehow St Bonnet still moan and groan all the way through the final 30 minutes of the match, and carry on long after the final whistle has been blown, but of course it isn’t going to do them any good and I don’t know why they bother.
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So now, with the football being over, it’s back home to finish the washing and while that was doing, I did some more tidying up but this time in the little roon underneath the barn. There’s tons of stuff in there and it all needs to be sorted out.

So tomorrow I have the website to work on for a couple of hours, and then planting my stuff for the second half of April. Tomorrow night is Anglo-Francais night at St Eloy as well – it’s a busy day tomorrow.

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Saturday 16th April 2011 – One thing you have always wondered …

… is “what happens to the shop-soiled and damaged goods that LIDL can’t sell?” I can answer that for here in France – it all goes to “Les Bonnes Affaires” in Commentry. One of my favourite “end of series” shops – it’s had a major makeover and a huge pile of the junk that’s been in there for years has all gone. It’s now packed full of LIDL special offers in damaged, damp or torn packages.

The lady who runs it doesnt have a clue about pricing. Some of the stuff is 3 times as dear as it was when LIDL sold it. But other stuff is for nothing, like the battery-operated LED motion detectors at €2:99 and the 12 Volt LED lights with MR16 fittings (the ones that I use here) at just €2:00 each – I cleaned out the stock of them, I can tell you.

It was a really profitable half hour in there, I can tell you.

So this morning I did some tidying up in here and threw away a load of stuff that I no longer need. And then moved the Sankey trailer and dumped it in the lane (and now watch someone want to come past for the first time in a hundred years)  before going off to Commentry for the shopping. Apart from the usual, I bought 6 tomato plants for €2.30 and 3 aubergine plants for €1:90. I hope that I will have better luck with the aubergines and tomatoes than I have had previously. And the LIDL in Commentry has been enlarged – and about time too – it was far too small.

Swimming at Neris was next on the agenda. The water was lovely and a good warm shower finished that off nicely. Back home I gave Lieneke some of my mint cuttings (anyone else want any? I’ve a load)  and at 20:00 went to watch Marcillat’s 2nd XI play, seeing as there was no footy at Pionsat this evening.

Franck, the Pionsat team coach, was playing central defence but he couldn’t save them from a right spannering – 6-0 thay went down and they were lucky to get nil as well. They really are awful. Within the opening 30 minutes Marcillat had had to use one of their substitutes and he was booked twice and back in the dressing room. An astonishing performance.

But there’s footy tomorrow afternoon at Pionsat – the 1st XI are playing St Bonnet. Pionsat beat them 4-0 down there and they really do need to run up a cricket score tomorrow to keep their promotion hopes alive. We shall see.

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Friday 15th April 2011 – I’m going to bed in a minute.

Yes, I dunno what’s the matter with me just recently – I can’t seem to last the pace any more.

And it isn’t as if I’ve done anything particular either. This morning I spent a couple of hours writing up my notes on Newfoundland, and then spent a while photocopying some documents that I need, and making the odd telephone or two.

Then apart from that I’ve been tidying up. The front of the house has been weeded in some kind of fashion and then I put down some plastic sheeting and put some pallets on top, and there I have my dustbins – all 4 of them. I’ve also cleared a pile of stones from in front of the house too – the big ones to the rockpile and the smaller ones to the paths between the new raised beds, and it’s in place of the stones that I put the pallets and the garden furniture that was up on top on the old potager. I’ve also rearranged the herb beds and the trees that I’ve been keeping in buckets until I can clear the orchard.

This evening I was invited to the annual general meeting of the Virlet Cultural and Historical Society and it seems that I’ve been talked into doing a presentation of my trip to Labrador sometime at the end of the year.

Lieneke is back again too and so I went round for a chat. She’s taken me by surprise as I had put the Sankey trailer across the door of her barn not expecting her to be here until the beginning of May as usual. I’ll have to shift that tomorrow.

And that’s been my day. Hardly tiring, is it? So I don’t know what’s up with me right now.

And in other news, I have gherkins and cucumber rearing their ugly heads in the cloche, and potatoes in the early potato bed.

Things are slowly coming to life here.

I wish that I was.

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Thursday 14th April 2011 – I’ve finished …

… my Viking pages and you can now see them on line – or, at least, you will when my server comes back on line, whenever that might be. I mamaged to get myself rather carried away this morning and when the battery on the laptop ran out, I charged it up and continued.

So thats all done, and now I can carry on with the drive around Newfoundland. This might take a while to come on line, though. It was fun driving around Newfoundland but nowhere near as exciting or as challenging as it was in Labrador, so I dunno if I will have the same enthusiasm. We shall see.

I then had to do sone quick printing and signing of documents for a project or two that I have on the go. And much to my surprise the printer started to work again. I still can’t manage to change the black cartridge but I’ve found an option that allows me to print using a mix of the colours that will create a black. That won’t last long, I suppose, but I dunno what else to do at the moment about it.

Anyway one of the documents needed a witness and so I nipped down to Marianne’s – and I ended up staying there for a couple of hours. She’d been to the Departmental Archives and had found a pile of interesting documents relating to Pionsat, including the plans for the construction of the Pionsat abbatoir, one of the places I had to photograph for her the other day.

She’s also made quite a startling discovery – so startling that it is astonishing, but I can’t say any more about that at the moment.

Back here I’ve been carrying on tidying up outside, although you would never guess. I don’t seem to be making any progress at all. I suppose I shall just have to keep on going.

And in other news, do you remember my exciting news that I hinted at the other day? Well, like most things that are too good to be true, they are in fact too good to be true and this one might be running into the buffers soon. But I’m still going to put a lot of effort and a lot of time into it because I never know my luck and I’m not writing it off just yet as long as I am in the chair. If it does come off, it will be a major coup and so it’s well worth persevering. Nothing any good was ever achieved easily.

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Wednesday 13th April 2011 – I’m having a change of plan here.

Well, not a strategic plan, but more of a tactical plan. I’ve finished my Labrador pages and I’ve been making a start on the Newfoundland pages of my mega-voyage to Canada.

However one thing always leads to another and once you make a start you’ll be surprised just how many other things that there are. I now seem to be writing a mega-opus about the Viking exploration of North America. Ahhh well.

So that took me to midday and then I went outside and made more progress planting seeds – more of those that I planted two weeks ago. And to my surprise I now have some baby leeks sprouting – the first of the seeds to come up. I wish the others would get a move on.

Those of you with long memories will recall that ages ago I built a heat exchanger that was basically the radiator out of an air-conditioning unit. I put a 70°C thermostat in it – to switch on a water pump when the temperature reached that figure – but that was far too high. It only ran 4 times that summer. After that I stuck it on one side and forgot about it. I bought some 50°C thermostats a couple of years ago and so this afternoon I rebuilt it, and I’ve sited it next to the solar shower unit. The aim is to run some electricity to there, plug the pump in and wire it to the thermostat so that when the temperature inside the heat exchanger reaches 50°C it will start to pump water through the heat exchanger so that the water will heat up.

Once that was fixed up (but not wired in yet) I took down the old heat exchanger and demolished the old beichstuhl. That was another link with Liz that has now gone, but it was redundant since I’ve had the dry composting toilets and apart from being an eyesore, it was in the way and I’m in a vague tidying-up mode as you know. Still in gardening mode I dug a small patch out at the end of the raised beds, just under where the apple trees are, and then planted the 2 blackcurrant and 1 blueberry shrubs. I’ll be in jam-making mode later this year I hope.

To finish off, I gave everything a thorough watering. About 100 litres of water has gone onto the plants and seeds this evening and they needed it, that’s for sure. There’s been no rain of any substance since a week last Monday.

Now it’s back up here with the Vikings. I’m enjoying writing this.

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Tuesday 12th April 2011 – There’s going to be a row …

… in the Post Office at Pionsat very very soon. On the 30th of March I sent four letters, by handing them in over the counter. Two of them Involve money, and the other two had a dependant time limit. And by today, not a single one of them has been received. I need to post another letter quite soon, so when I take that one to the Post Office I shall have a little discussion with the clerk about my missing four letters.

And so after finishing work on the computer this morning, I had to spend an hour or so catching up on this work that was lost, the most important of the four letters, and sending it and all the attachments by e-mail. And at least I know that that has been received as I asked for an acknowledgement. But it isn’t half getting on my wick, all of this.

For a pleasant afternoon I went round to Bill’s and changed a driveshaft on his Rover for him. I’ve never done that on a Rover before and so it was a case of learning as I went along. And it brings back all kinds of happy memories about me being on my back underneath a car with a spanner in my hand. I can’t wait to set up my workshop here.

For tea though I had a really nice and pleasant change. I bought a cauliflower at the weekend – special offer reduced to 99 centimes, and I cooked it, put half in the fridge, and ate the other half with some spuds, peas carrots and some white sauce flavoured with a huge handful of my vegan cheese. And it was delicious. Furthermore, I have the other half to eat tomorrow. I’ll be looking forward to that.

Tomorrow I might even manage a day at home all alone and on my own. I need to catch up with the gardening. Nothing at all of the seeds that I planted the other week is rearing its ugly head at the moment. 

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