Sunday 23rd March 2014 – IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE …

… that last Sunday at Menetrol, at half-time during the footy, we were all lounging around on the grass sunbathing. If I had been to the football today, we would have spent half-time shovelling the snow off the pitch and building snowmen … "snowPERSONS" – ed.

Coming back from Liz at Terry’s tonight, it was snowing like crazy and the road between St Gervais and Gouttières, and over the Font Nanaud, was becoming difficult. Yes, I changed Caliburn’s snow tyres for his summer tyres the other day, didn’t I?

So with an early(ish) night last night I was wide awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 09:20 and so even with it being Sunday, I had an early breakfast. But the morning was so depressing – rain, hail, sleet, and probably plagues of locusts and the like too. Pionsat were playing the Chimps at Villosanges but
1) kick-off was at 13:00
2) the weather was positively atrocious
3) it’s a 90-km round trip
4) I wouldn’t be back til after 16:00, I was expected at Liz’s at 17:30 and I still had wome work to do on the radio stuff.
For those reasons I stayed behind and carried on working.

But the weather really is dreadful and (apparently) it’s going to be like this for all of next week. And we have a lot of travelling to do with the radio programmes tomorrow.

BRRRRRR!

-5

Saturday 22nd March 2014 – YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE IT …

… but I’ve been outside working this morning!

I nearly didn’t though. After a night of driving rain that stopped me sleeping properly, and waking up before the alarm clock because I needed a gypsy’s, I wasn’t in much of a mood for it.

After an early breakfast, I did a couple more hours on the web site but by 11:00 it had stopped raining and there was a little glimmer of light outside. “Now or never!” I reckoned, and went outside.

I planned to be out there for just an hour and so I finished off the raised bed that I had started. I gave it a really good raking and hoeing, and then added a plie of wood ash, a natural source of potash. It had another good hoeing and raking after that, and then I planted the shallots and garlic. And just as I was about to finish the last row of planting, the heavens opened again.

Never mind, I stayed to finish it, even though I was soaked to the skin. And that was when I noticed that it was 13:00 and I’d been out two hours. Still, it’s all finished now and I’m glad that I did it.

I went shopping in St Eloy but there was nothing exciting, and this afternoon I carried on in a desultory fashion with the web pages.

No footy this evening at Pionsat so I went to Marcillat, who were playing in the Cup against St Remy En Rollat, a club from the suburbs of Vichy. St Remy was the better side on the whole but lost 2-1 in something of a controversial match.

But there was no controversy about Marcillat’s first goal. The centre-forward did well to shrug off a couple of hefty challenges that pushed him over to the right of the goal. He managed to squeeze off a shot from about 15 yards that swerved round and behind the keeper at the near post. That cannoned off the inside of an upright and came soaring out of the goal at about head height, right into the path of a Marcillat player running in. No mistake about that one.

The other two goals were from free kicks, both rather dubious in my opinion but in one of them I would have awarded a free kick – but in the opposite direction. Lots of contested decisions in the match, and I do have a little sympathy for the players. But the Marcillat linesman was clearly quite incensed with some of them, and the referee had words with him on several occasions. He was lucky to have stayed on the field in my opinion.

The temperature was plummeting while we were there ad we are going to have a cold night. Only natural, seeing as how I’ve done all of this planting. I’ve had to cover my raised beds with black plastic to keep the frost off.

-4

Friday 21st March 2014 – LAST NIGHT WAS THE FIRST NIGHT …

… that I had left the fridge running right through the night.

Consequently today was the first day for fifteen days that we had heavy overcast skies and rain. It’s par for the course, isn’t it?

And normal service resumed with a vengeance too. I can’t remember what it was that I was doing – it was certainly nothing of any importance – but I happened to glance at the clock and it was after 03:00. Sleep issues are back again.

I can’t think why, though. I should have been exhausted after what I was up to during the night.

I’d been away from home for a while and when I returned my partner told me that she had bought a house down in the South-West of France to let as a holiday home. Even though it was late Saturday afternoon we got into the car and drove off to see it. The house next door to it was really two units but they shared a very big kitchen. There was work going on in there and I asked the owner about it – whether he was going to divide up the kitchen and make two bathrooms so that these two units would be self-contained but he didn’t give a coherent answer

My partner asked me what I thought of her house and I told her that she had done exactly the right thing. Investing money in property was never wasted if one took the long-term view.

We went out for a walk around the town in the evening and there was the wreck of an LDV minibus at the side of the road so we had a good look at it. But back at our hotel I had a memory stick and this kept on flashing to say that it was receiving mesages – and an icon of a man was flashing on it. So I plugged the memory stick into the computer and it showed me a couple of Youtube films sent to me unsolicited, one of which was looking down the slope from the town centre of where we wee to the cross on the edge of the town and the other showing the accident that had involved this LDV minibus- It had overtaken someone on the inside by going over the verge and on the grass.

We went outside to check on all of this but it was clear from the light and the position of the shadows that the action in the film had taken place a few hours earlier than the current time.

On the way back to our hotel we were stopped by the passengers of yet another LDV minibus – a couple of adults and a load of children all dressed in a bizarre but uniform way – jackets with red white and blue tassels that kind of thing – and they were looking for a camp of some kind. I had an idea where it might be – an old abandoned hotel where things went on in the grounds – but wasn’t sure so I told them to go to out hotel, because I knew that it was still open – and ask. The hotel was called the Lion d’Or of course. “Round to the left on the Rocade, rejoin the main road and it’s there on the left”. They repeated the directions a few times, with plenty of hand movements, to make sure.

Some way further on we passed a huge hotel on the right. Someone with a Landrover crew cab and dog cage on the back was leaving and they were lowering thos huge dog – a St Bernard – from their hotel window on the 7th floor by means of a rope and harness. They had cats on leads, several other dogs and I remember saying that I was glad I wasn’t going to have that hotel room after them.

This was another one of those occasions where the dream was so absorbing that although I had to get up in the middle of all this to go for a gypsy’s, I got back into bed and stepped right back into the dream more-or-less where I had left off.

After breakfast and the traditional couple of hours on the website I started work. And such exciting jobs that I had around here – I emptied the composting toilet. Lovely, isn’t it?

having cleared a bed for the onions yesterday, I planted out the onion bulbs into the bed. 75 went in – probably about 3 will come out if I’m lucky. And after that, I planted some courgette seeds into pots. For some reason that no-one knows, courgettes grow like stink here and everyone always has far too many. That means of course that I shan’t get a one this year now, having said that.

After lunch, I went off to Cécile’s to let this other estate agent view her house. This one didn’t stay long and didn’t seem to be half as professional as the one from the other day.

Back here I tidied out some (but not much) of the veranda so that I can create a space on the shelving to put my courgette pots, and finished off the day by attacking another raised bed – one that will take the shallots, garlic and leeks. That’s not finished yet – it needs abother hour or two so I’m sorely tempted to have a go at it tomorrow.

Always provided that it soesn’t snow, of course.

-5

Thursday 20th March 2014 – IT WAS 19:20 …

… when I knocked off work today. I know I’m on summer hours but –
1) I was rather carried away
2) it was still light enough to work outside at 19:20 this evening.

Mind you, it was my own fault. I’d crashed out for half an hour this afternoon.

Through the night though, I’d been busy again. I was back at work in Brussels and I can’t remember where I’d been but I returned with a car loaded with all kinds of things. I stopped at the petrol station in the rue de Luxembourg to fuel up when I received a message that I had to go to Luxembourg to pick up a director. And so off I set and arrived at a hotel there and I didn’t know which director I was to pick up and at which hotel he was staying. I hadn’t made enquiries at Brussels because I was so confident that it would be alright on the night.

That sounds about par for the course, doesn’t it?

So after breakfast (and I was up early for a change) I was on the website for a couple of hours. Summer Hours as I said.

I had some jobs to do at Pascal’s apartment this afternoon and so loaded up Caliburn and set off. On the way I called at LIDL as there was something that I wanted in the special offers. Of course it had gone but I still managed to spend €51:50 there. Lots of plants and things were on offer and I needed some seeds.

But we also had a pile of fun there too – a couple of us were watching an old woman trying to reverse her car into a parking space. No other car for miles around but after a while we lost interest and drifted away. She hadn’t managed to park it by then either.

Back here I had lunch eve though it was 16:00 and that was when I crashed out. But by 17:30 I was back outside and now I have a nice bed for the onions tomorrow. But I’m not sure when tomorrow – I have to meet someone else at Cécile’s house.

But I’ll have to get a move on. Incredible though it might seem after a day of 28.2°C, apparently snow is forecast next week. And I’ve just changed Caliburn’s tyres over too.

-6

Wednesday 19th March 2014 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… good day today.

And not only was I awake before the alarm went off, I was up and out of bed like a lark too. Such are the benefits of being in bed before midnight (just for a change).

After a spell with the computer I was off the Cécile’s for this visitor. Cécile had asked someone from an Estate Agency to come round and look at her house and Yours Truky has a set of keys. This visit took ages too – the person was certainly thorough.

Cécile was on the phone this afternoon for a progress report and we had a lengthy chat. Pascal, Marianne’s son, also rang up. He needs some help in his apartment in St Eloy so I won’t be doing much on my house and garden tomorrow.

You’ll notice how I’m including the “garden” in the descriptive too. I did actually manage to have a couple of hours out there late this afternoon. The bed that I was digging over and weeding yesterday – that’s now finished, potash has been added, it’s been hoed and raked over a couple of times, and now the cabbage that I bought at the weekend has been planted there. We’ll see how that lot goes on.

I started a third raised bed too – I’ll be putting the onions in there. And the soil in that one is beautiful, nice, dry and crumbly. It’s a shame that the rest of the soil isn’t like that.

-5

Tuesday 18th March 2014 – AN EVEN EARLIER NIGHT

Yes, in bed by 02:30. That’s early for just recently but still quite late compared to when I was away. But then I was walking miles and climbing thousands of feet then.

And awake before the alarm too, which was quite surprising seeing the distance that I’ travelled during the night.

I was on my way back from Austria last night and after a while the road signs and the names of towns started to change into French. I thought to myself that this can’t be right – I should be in a much more Germanic area still. And so I turned to the north and up there the names and street signs reverted to German and so I thought that this was better.

But I found myself wandering in a maze of corridors of a very large and very expensive hotel. But this maze of corridors was probably the service area as the walls and doors were of a very inferior nature. But then I found the foyer, a huge glass and steel area. In the distance below was a large industrial town and the tps of the hills in this town had been flattened to make sports pitches.

There was a row of three of them and what looked like football matches were being played there. I wandered over to have a look. The first was indeed a football match but it was women and children playing. So I went to the second, but this was a handball match between two mens , teams. And then I was in a quandary – do I waste time going to see what was going on on the third pitch or do I go back to the match on the first pitch? after all, surely it must be nearly full time and if the third match isn’t a football match I would have wasted all of this time for no good purpose and wouldn’t have seen any football.

So after breakfast we had a couple of hours on the computer and then outside

And here we have it – the first gardening photo of 2014.

I’ve finished weeding and digging over that first raised bed. It took hours but there it is. It’s had potash added and that has been well-hoed and well-raked in. And ow it has the 11 (not 10) baby lettuce plants added. They’ll do well there.

It might even have some potatoes too – I’ve pulled dozens out from there, all of them germinating, and I’m not pretending that I’ve got them all about.

I’ve started on the second bed now? The bean frames have been dismantled and i’ve made a start digging it over. It might not be finished tomorrow though – I have to show someone around Cécile’ house for her.

-5

Monday 17th March 2014 – I HAD AN EARLIER NIGHT …

…than last night. In fact I was in bed by all of 04:00 would you believe? Carried awy again by some work that I was doing.

Even more surprisingly, having set the alarm for 07:30 this morning (we’re back at wrok as of today), I was awake – and wide awake too – before it even went off. I’ll probably pay for that later today but never mind.

I was quite busy during the night too. It was the week of beating the bounds in Wales where everyone has to walk – or run – around the borders of the country to satisfy themselves of the correct location of the markers. You could start at any time of the day that you liked, and I remember always starting at 10:20.

Sometime during the night I ended up in broad daylight in Birmingham (a city that I detest) with Zero. I on’t know why we had gone there but I was carrying a geren folder with all of her mother’s bankruptcy documents in there, as well as two rather large kitchen knives. Zero wanted an ice cream and a cake so we went into a cafe and while I was sorting her out, one of the serving staff picked up the folder and started to read the papers within. She then came over and asked us to leave
“Why on earth should we do that?” I asked
“Well, I’m afraid that you might use our premises to solicit donations from the large number of customers (there were about 4 in the cafe) who use or premises”.
She was surprisingly insistent, and even more surprisingly, made no reference to the two very large knives, and they were certainly large enough to frighten anyone.
I made a remark something along the lines of “the trouble with most people in Britain these days is that they are totally paranoid and immediately see things in a situation that simply aren’t there” but that cut no ice with her.

So now that I’m on summer hours, after breakfast I attacked the computer and restarted work on the website. That went on until midday when I knocked off the computer and ent outside to work.

I’ve promised 2 half-days on the garden each week and so I made a start on one of the raised beds, digging it over and weeding it, but I didn’t get far as I had to go to Cécile’s as there was a man due to come to check the septic tank. Accordingly I had a shower in the verandah (and we are talking about nothing to do with the Open University Students Association by the way) and then rounded up all of the washing from my holiday.

Once he had gone I came back via the Intermarche where I bumped into Jean Lauvergne and his wife and then when I was back here I had a couple more jobs to do on Caliburn. Firstly to change the passenger-side mirror. It was cracked quite a while ago but I caught in on something at Rennes-le-Chateau and that finished it off.

After that, I changed his tyres and he now has his summer tyres on. That took much longer than it should have – one of the wheels was rusted onto the hub and on another wheel the jack couldn’t find a good purchase. But anyway that’s sorted out and now Caliburn is ready for the summer.

I went back into the garden after and promptly broke the handle on the fork. It’s not my day is it.

But I did notice that some of the more sheltered trees and bushes are now budding. That’s early this year. It can only spell doom as I’m not quite convinced that winter is quite over yet, even if we did have over 25°C.

We also had 170 amp-hours of surplus electrical energy today. That might sound a lot but it isn’t as much as yesterday’s 205 amp-hours, which is about a record as far as I can tell. But there’s a reason for this. Now that the days are lengthening dramatically and the sun is much higher in the sky, I’ve started disconnecting the lights of the house in daytime and plugging the fridge in there instead. That way it runs through the day and the current doesn’t pass down the overcharge circuit, which is still running too hot for my liking.

I’ll have to do something about that.

Anyway now I’m off to bed. A nice clean me and nice clean bedding too. Luxury!

-8

Sunday 16th March 2014 – THAT’S THE LAST TIME …

… that I shall ever have a cup of coffee made by Matthieu. Here I was, at 05:00 this morning, and still not tired enough to go to bed. Good job that I didn’t put any sugar in it – I would have bent the spoon trying to stir it. Yes, just a little strong.

And during the night (or maybe I ought to say “morning”) was back on the buses again and this time on my particular school run I had the daughter of the ruler of the world as a passenger. “This is my big chance to do myself some good!”

Instead, I woke up and contented myself with spending the morning editing a pile of photos that I had left outstanding since last August.

I had a nice drive down to Ménétrol through the gorgeous weather this afternoon, as Pionsat’s 1st XI were playing the local side.
Menetrol were a big, powerful side who a couple of seasons ago were playing two or three divisions higher up the pyramid, and they showed a lot of skill on the ball today.

They ran out quite comfortable victors 4-1, but that really only tells you half a story of the match – and probably not even that.

As usual, Pionsat were short-handed. No goalkeeper of course with Matthieu still being out injured and François having retired, but Michael Bucaud does his best and I’ve seen many worse than him, make no mistake about that.

And I counted at least seven regular first-teamers still with the club who were not out there today. Just one substitute, young Vincent.

Here’s Michael making an excellent reflex save from a Ménétrol forward, having initially dived the wrong way.

But Michael’s match ended shortly after this. he was injured making another save and although he carried on at first, 5 minutes later he limped off the field and blond Frederic took over.

He’s no goalkeeper either but you have to do what you can with what you’ve got. And while he let in two goals, there wasn’t really all that much than any regular keeper could have done to stop them. As I said, Ménétrol are a good side.

But by this time Pionsat were down to 10 men. The other Michael had been injured just before half-time and he didn’t make a reappearance for the second half. So it was always going to be tough.

Pionsat pull a goal back right at the end of the match. One of the Pionsat forwards, on a strong run through Ménétrol’s defence, goes down under a heavy challenge. The referee awards a penalty, which is very strongly contested by the home team as
it wasn’t a foul
it was outside the area
but the referee is the man with the whistle and he says that it is. Cedric makes no mistake from the spot, sending the keeper the wrong way

Back home, I cleaned Caliburn’s windows and checked the oil and water. And there’s a headlight out too. Of course, it’s the one that’s hard to get at so I spent about three quarters of an hour looking at the easy one seeing if I could work out how to change it.

Then of course the light goes on inside the brain and 30 seconds later the bad bulb is changed and all is working happily just like it should.

Yes, two torx-drive bolts are all that hold the headlight in on a new Ford Transit, and once you undo them, the rest is, as they say, easy.

And remember yesterday when I said that I thought that the ref had blown for full-time 10 minutes early.I’m not alone in that thought. Several people I talked to today said the same.

-4

Saturday 15th March 2014 – ONLY THIS MORNING I WAS PONDERING …

… about how I’m going to extract all of this dust and the like from the house as it is getting on my nerves. And I was still pondering when I entered LIDL this afternoon.

But not now, anyway. In LIDL today they were selling some 500-watt fireplace cleaners. I had a good look at one and from what I saw, with a few small modifications here and there, it will make quite a useful cylinder vacuum cleaner.

And 500 watts will run fine off my system for 10 minutes here and there, you know. So at just €26:00 it had to be worth a gamble.

Thatwasn’t all the exciting stuff in the shops at St Eloy this afternoon. Carrefour had something of a plant sale. Most of the stuff was rubbish but I managed to make up a tray of lettuce and a tray of green cabbage. I need to put the potager into order and this will hopefully help me make a start. I did nothing last year as you know and baby lettuce plants seem to do fine here.

This morning I dashed off 2500 words for Radio Anglais. It started off on something about the communes of France but it now seems to be something of a geography/history/politics lesson, and there’s plenty more to come as well. A real pot-boiler you might say.

At the football tonight … well … I was going to say that I’m speechless but I’ve seen this happen so many times that I ought to be used to it by now.

Pionsat had only 10 players out there tonight but of those 10, 4 of them were 1st Xi players and another one or two had featured for the 1st XI too.

By half-time that had a comfortable 2-0 lead and looked like they were getting ready to run out of sight. I’d lost count of the number of shots on goal that they had had. But then they simply switched off.

St Angel pulled one back out of a defensive error from nothing, something that took me by no surprise at all given the previous 10 minutes, and I had this uneasy feeling running down the back of my spine that I’ve had so many times before.

However Jerome, who I haven’t seen for ages at the club, roared back up the field and scored a third goal before anyone had drawn breath so it was ok, I suppose. But then, the whole team went back to sleep.

And in two ridiculous moments of madness the team gave away two of the silliest goals that I have ever seen. I couldn’t believe it, and neither did anyone else.

But if that’s not bad enough, just as the team galvanised itself into action and laid siege to the St Angel goal, the referee blew for full time – by my reckoning a good 10 minutes short. Yes, we kicked off at 20:00 on the dot, played 45 minutes of fist half (plus stoppages), had a 15 minute break at half-time, and then played another 45 minutes (plus stoppages) and I was back in Caliburn at 21:38 on the clock. No, that doesn’t add up at all.

But then it shouldn’t really have mattered. Pionsat should have been down the road and out of sight, having fielded the strongest side that they’ll ever field for a hundred years.

-4

Friday 15th March 2014 – I HAD A NICE AFTERNOON …

…out today. Terry rang up to say that he was going to Brico Depot and did I fancy a ride?

Not that I was doing very much else at the time and so I thought “why not?”. A nice summer day (because it really was) in pleasant company. And we didn’t get back until 19:00 either.

Just for a change this week, I was up at … errr … 09:20 which is early for me just now. And after breakfast I attacked the website again and updated a few more pages and added one or two more.

The boulangère came round this morning and we had a little chat, and that, dear reader, was the sum total of my day.

But not quite.

I was on my travels again during the night and I remember at one point thinking to myself “God, this is boring. I won’t bother remembering this”. And when I woke up, all that I could remember of the night’s activity was that comment and nothing else.

It does rather remind me of the famous Tommy Cooper joke –
“I knew a man who dreamt that he was awake. And when he woke up, he was!”

-4

Thursday 13th March 2014 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER DAY …

… where I’ve not been in too much of a hurry to leave my bed.

I put that down to still being awake at 03:45 this morning, and so getting up at … errr … 10:20 is not too unreasonable.

I’ve hardly done any work either – well – not that kind of work anyway. The house remains practically untouched. But noticing when I went downstairs that the batteries were aleady fully-charged, and at 12:30 there was 50.5 amps going into the dump load and the wires were pretty warm, that called for action. I plugged an extension cable into the overcharge circuit and wired the 12-volt fridge in. That calmed everything down a little. The water still got hot (68°C) but the wires stayed cool-ish and the fridge worked.

I’ll leave it like that until I fix up the new batteries that will replace the existing creaky ones and then I’ll wire in the fridge into the permanent circuit for the summer.

I threw out some food and veg peelings that I had forgotten to deal with before I left here (some of them could have walked to the compost bin on their own) and then unloaded part of Caliburn. For lunch I went to fetch the bread – to find that the boulanger had forgotten to come on Tuesday, and that was really the only reason why I had rushed home.

I had to go down the road to the Intermarché at Pionsat to buy a baguette.

GRRRR!

This afternoon I updated the Trois Rivieres pages of my Canada website

. I took a pile more photos of the town when I was there last year and so they needed to be added on and the commentary written. I’ve also reviewed a few subsequent pages of my drive down the Chemin du Roy

and that has spawned a couple of new pages too.

So I’ve not been idle.

But I do realise now why I try not to work on the computer between 19:00 and 21:00. I get so carried away with what I’m doing that I forget to make tea and I end up going hungry.

And it’s 5 years since my dear friend Liz departed. I can’t believe that it’s been so long. I hope that she is sleeping peacefully. My abiding memory is just before she went for her operation, she was making out a list of names.
“Are these the people that I need to contact to let them know your news?” I asked.
“Ohh no” she replied. “If it all goes wrong, this is a list of the people I’m going to come back to haunt”.

-4

Wednesday 12th March 2014 – NO PHOTOS TODAY, PEOPLE.

Yes, you can tell that I’m back home. And nothing exciting ever seems to happen around here and I never seem to do anything worth recording, especially as, having disconnected all of the alarms today, it was … errr … 12:20 when I crawled out of bed.And if it weren’t for the fact that I needed to visit the beichstuhl I would probably still be in bed right now.

It usually takes me a day or so to recover from a journey such as yesterday’s (I’m not as young as I used to be) and so a day of rest isn’t such a surprise really. And there was such a lot going on through the night (and the morning) that most of it slipped through my fingers. But I do recall running some kind of detective agency such as that of Hercule Poirot, and I had three girls working for me. The youngest was telling all of us about a superb proposition that had come her way and how it was going to make her a fortune, but it was the kind of proposition that had “SCAM” written right across it in illuminated capital letters and I really thought that, having worked for me for three years, she would know better than to fall for something like this.

I didn’t quite do nothing though. With over 160 amp-hours of surplus electricity by 15:00, water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater off the gauge and temperature of 34°C in the verandah, I treated myself to the second electrically-heated shower of the year.

And not only that, there was enough hot water left for a shave too and for the washing up as well. And there was enough of that seeing as how I made a mega-lentil-and-green-pepper curry. On the gas stove too. The temperature up here in the attic topped 20°C today – a waste of time lighting the woodstove – I’d be burnt out of the room before the stove was hot enough to cook on

And do you remember the charge controller that packed up last year and mysteriously started up the other week? Well, it’s just as mysteriously stopped again..

-3

Tuesday 11th March 2014 – I’M BACK HOME NOW.

Pulled in at 21:10 tonight after a long drive back from the Pyrenees.

I can’t leave Rennes les Bains though without showing you my digs for thr last few days. That’s it over there in the background, the building there with the red shutters. And my very comfortable room was the one wiht the open window.

I told the owner that I might be back later on and he gave me a card. “Give us a ring to let us know”.
Absolutely – and then they will have time to arrange a quick holiday, or to close for redecoration or the like.

But this photo will give you an idea of what Rennes les Bains is really like.
“The smoking of anything other than tobacco is strictly prohibited on the terrace”.

Rennes-les-Bains is one of these places that, for no reason at all (because house prices are not cheap like the Combrailles) seems to have attracted a huge “New-Age” community. It would do my head in after a while if I had to live here.

I followed the Lady Who Lives In The Sat-Nav as far as Castres and then followed the signs to Albi. And then I turned off the recommended route as I wanted to make a deviation.
Ever since 2004 when it opened, I’ve been trying to get to the Millau Viaduct and I’ve never actually managed it. Something has always cropped up.

But today in Albi I picked up the signs and even though this meant a late return home, well, here I am. Driving across the aforementioned.

And doesn’t Strawberry Moose take a good photo?

Anyone who knows the southern slopes of the Massif Centrale will know of Millau. There’s a major Route Nationale that runs from Bordeaux and the Biscay coast over the Lyon and Switzerland along the valley of the River Tarn, and there’s a major Route Nationale that runs north-south over the mountains between Paris and the Western Mediterranean coast of south-west France and Nothern Spain.

These two roads collide at a little roundabout in Millau and it is no joke to say that people have sat here without moving a wheel for five hours as the traffic snarls itself up well and truly.

The first time I came here I didn’t know about this. I gave up and went for a coffee. Ever since then, I’ve come at night.

All that changed in 2004.

Plans had been proposed on several occasions for a way of dealing with the traffic but ultimately they bit the bullet and set to work to build what at the time was the tallest road bridge in the world. Opened in December 2004, it turned Millau into something of a tranquil backwater, much to the relief of the residents.

It’s a magnificent structure, a maximum height of 343 metres above ground at its highest point, and one of the pillars, at a height of 245 metres, is the tallest pillar in the world.

And, incredible as it might seem, once it opened there was an outcry from certain local businesses that their takings had dropped since the building of the viaduct.

There’s no pleasing some people.

Travelling north on the A75, I stopped off to visit another iconic viaduct along the way. This time, it’s a railway viaduct, the magnificent Viaduc de Garabit, situated in Ruynes-en-Margeride in the Cantal.

And there’s not another viaduct in the world like this. It is magnificent.

Everywhere you go in this country, you only have to look at ametal structure and someone will tell you that Gustave Eiffel (he of the Tower fame) built it.

In this case they would be right for once – at least, in the general scheme of things. Inspired by the engineer Leon Boyer, it was Eiffel’s company that built it and it took four years, from 1880 to 1884 although, rather perversely, the viaduct was finished before the railway line.

It is still open for traffic too, which is quite astonishing seeing how much of France’s railway heritage has closed down, and even this was closed for a short spell a couple of years ago.

I had quite a chat with an old woman who told me that her grandfather had helped build it as a boy. She reckoned that in 5 years time the trains will have gone from here “just 3 or 4 passengers on each train – 50 years ago we had 3 or 4 hundred”. Now, there are just two passenger trains and one goods train each day in each direction.

It will be a shame if it does close down though. While you digest the view from the aforementioned lady’s back garden (with grateful thanks), I can tell you that it’s 122 metres above the base of the river and is almost 565 metres long.

And in case you are wondering (which I’m sure that you are), there are 678,768 rivets in the construction.

Since 1965 it’s a Monument Historique.

That’s not all though. The valley underneath, that of the River Truyère, was dammed by the Barrage de Grandval in 1959, for hydro-electric purposes.

But someone has pulled out the plug as you can see, much to the dismay of the boat owners and the guy who owns the water sports concession.

Not for me though. We can see the original road beidge that was drowned as the valley was flooded. I bet it’s not every day that this has seen the light.

-2

Monday 10th March 2014 – THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE MOST FAMOUS …

… view of Rennes-le-Chateau. It features in almost every book and article written about the place, and many people, including Yours Truly, have always thought that it was an aerial photograph.

But not any longer, because I can now tell you exactly how it was done and being airborne plays absolutely no part whatever in the procedure

Probably about 7 or 8 miles from here as the crow flies (those buildings at the bottom centre of the shot, just below Cardou, are the Thermal Spa buildings here at Rennes les Bains) but a heck of a lot further away by road, that’s for sure, is a very high rocky crag.

On this crag are situated the ruins of the Chateau de Le Bezu, and it is from right up here on the top, overlooking the sheer drop of several hundred metres, that the photograph of Rennes-le-Chateau has been taken.

But before you begin to set off here in droves, let me give you a couple of words of warning. There is not one single signpost to the Chateau from anywhere. There is no approved rounte and no marked pathway.

Even the Lady Who Lives In The Satnav tells me that there’s no road that goes anywhere near it. I found my way by tapping in the co-ordinates of Longitude and Latitude and following a series of cart tracks by trial end error until I could go no further.

Here, I was able just about to make out some stone blocks interwoven between the limestone outcrops (good job I had some binoculars) and so I reckoned that I could well be onto something here.

While I was reflecting over how I was going to reach the top I was joined by another van-driver. I fell in with him and we immediately started talking solar panels as his van was fitted out exactly as Caliburn, even down to the solar panel on the roof and the control boxes.

He’s a local yokel (and a very vocal local yokel too) and he’s been up here beffore and so knows the way. And very kindly, he offered to accompany me to the top so that I wouldn’t lose myself in the shrubbery.

Fortune really does smile on the brave!

Now, I’m not going to tell you anything much about the Chateau as this is yet another place that has been the subect of so much nonsense. I’ve even seen two completely different and contradictory “official histories” of the chateau.

You can do your own research from that point of view, and good luck to you too.

Let me just tell you this, though.
There is a best-selling “conspiracy theory” book that speaks about the Castle in great detail, and the authors express total bewilderment as to why a castle should be built here on this site when there were several others doing the same job in the immediate vicinity.

Anyway, I have an answer to that too

While you look at the peak of Mount Bugarach, where the world was supposed to end in 2012 if you remember correctly, you’ll notice to the extreme left another peak in the far distance.

Just beyond that peak is the Mediterranean and the port of Narbonne, and Narbonne has until very modern times been the leading port of Southern France and Northern Spain (remember until the late 15th Century the Muslems were in possession of much of the Spanish coast).

I counted three mountain passes coming this way from Narbonne, one heading off to the interior and two heading south towards the Pyrenees and Spain. Just think of all the trade goods that would be coming by these passes into this area for onward passage avoiding the Moorish galleys, and what would be the value of these goods?

Any nobleman bent on increasing his wealth (and many of these noblemen were as bent as they come) would stick a castle right on this promontory so that he could intercept the pack trains coming through the passes and demand his toll.

And the reason why the castle wasn’t immediately destroyed once it had been captured during the many times that it changed hands was because the new owner wanted it intact for exactly that purpose.

I went to Axat later to find the grave of the enigmatic Abbé Henri Boudet, one of Saunière’s closest confidants.

Here it is, and this is another so-called riddle for which there is a simple explanation.

So with him being priest at Rennes les Bains and with his mother and sister being buried there, how come he wasn’t?

The answer to that is that his mother and sister predeceased him and so he was alone. And we saw yesterday that e relinquished his living in 1914 and here on the grave, it has him dying in (March) 1915. It seems, from what I have been able to find out, that he was dying of cancer and it was probably that which caused him to abandon his post. Of course, he had no-one to care for him there but at Axat, his brother’s widowed wife was still alive and quite young too, so it is very likely that he moved to Axat so that she might care for him.

And so he died at Axat (it says that on the flat headstone) and having seen the road between Axat and Rennes-les-Bains today (and it’s more than double the 15kms that a modern best-selling author tells us) and what it is like to travel along it in certain places, I shudder to think of what it might have been like 100 years ago. No wonder they left him here at Axat.

Just a couple more things to do.

We are told that there is a statue of Jesus on a mountain top near Antugnac gazing over to his burial place at Cardou. No co-ordinates were given for this statue so it took some locating but eventually I discovered it.

Today though, he’s looking over at a brand-new villa because they have built a housing estate around him. And he couldn’t have seen Cardou anyway as there is an outlying ridge in the way that just about obscures the perspective.

A lot has been made about the two figure eights in the date on the cross – how they are formed of two small, letter ‘o’s. Clearly the propagators of this particular theory have never seen the Visigoth column in the Church of Mary Magdelene at Rennes le Chateau that we saw the other day. On there, the figure eight in the “Mission 1891” is exactly the same and they made no theory about that. It is in fact standard mason practice and you see it everywhere. It’s just that some masons are better than others.

As an aside – who says that the statue is of Jesus anyway? There’s no identification at all on the statue.

Sauniere was for a while the priest of Antugnac and so I went for a quick look at the church there.

Not much to see as it has escaped the enlargement processes so common elsewhere, but you can see at least three different styles of stonework in its construction, two of them being quite low down. The earliest stonework looks quite primitive but I wouldn’t like to hazard a date or period.

Still five minutes before dark, so a quick nip up to Montazels which was where Sauniere was born.

But here’s another conspiracy theory that everuone else has missed. High on the hills overlooking the town is an old weather-worn cross. And that is lined up absolutely and plumb-perpendicularly (I’m glad that I brought my home-made groma with me – that course in Roman surveying was magnificent) with Rennes-le-Chateau.

So what’s the reason for this please. Answers on a postcard to …

And I also found the world’s most astonishing vegetarian pizza while I was passing through Couiza. What can I say?

And we had another sales enquiry today. It’s all happening, isn’t it? Signwriting Caliburn pays dividends in spades.

-5

Sunday 9th March 2014 – WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY …

… and I’ve been taking full advantage of it. Not least in the Thermal Spa. And today’s verdict?

The Mudbath – same as yesterday (the mud had worn off during the night)
The Circular Shower – can’t see what this did that three friends with hosepipes couldn’t do (I, of course, don’t have three friends)
The Penetrating Shower – I was worried about this and when she said “lie face-down on the bed”, that did nothing to allay my fears. However it’s a horizontal bar of five or six very fine but high-pressure shower heads all aimed at your back.
In the jacuzzi, a rather large woman jumped in and landed right on my foot.
“I’m so sorry – was that your foot?”
“Yes it was” I replied “but don’t worry – I still have one left”.
I finished it off with a massage today. I was hoping for a young blond nymphette – I ended up with a retired former Soviet discus-thrower.
“I’ll massage your clavicles, shall I?”
“Not while I have my strength you won’t”.

Apart from that, I’ve been out and about again. This is the Chateau of Arques, about 15kms awy from here.

It dates from the aftermath of the Crusade against the Cathars and is said to control an important route used by transhumance farmers as they pass up and down to and from the higher slopes, but looking at its position here and how easily it is overlooked, it’s good that the transhumance farmers didn’t possess any cannon. A few bits of ordnance on the surrounding hills and the castle wouldn’t last long.

As it happens, it was a ruin up until about 120 or so years ago but has since had quite a decent renovation.

From there I went up to the village of Peyrolles. This is another place that features in all of these stories but there was nothing of interest to me.

That is except a plot of land (that wasn’t for sale, unfortunately) that had one of the best views that I have seen for a while – right up the Vallée du Salz past Cardou (on the left) and the ruins of the Chateau de Blanchefort (on the right) almost all the way to Rennes-les-Bains.

The modern road to Rennes-les-Bains is not the original road by any means, as I mentioned the other day.

The original road runs from Serres and goes over the river by this absolutely magnificent packhorse bridge, passing right by the foot of Cardou and then through the village of Montferrand to its final destination.

Now, does this road remind you of anything? It ought to do, because you have seen something similar before.

Do you remember when I wrote my magnum opus about Riccarton Junction back in 2007/2008? We found the road that went down there too and there were not half some striking similarities. It made me feel quite at home, I tell you

But as for Cardou itself, it’s a magnificent, awe-inspiring mountain and you can see why it’s featured so much in the folklore of many of these legends.

Despite the fact that there are dozens of other mountains around, one or two of which are higher that Cardou, it’s nevertheless the dominant feature all the way around here – see it from miles around.

But one or two of the legends of Cardou are not quite so wholesome and healthy. At least two writers have insisted that Jesus is buried somewhere up there in a tunnel and that the rockfall that you see there was engineered to cover the traces of the excavation.

Mind you, neither of these two authors explained in any kind of detail how this rockfall was engineered in the days before controlled explosive. The usual historical way of doing this, by piling the rock on a large wooden platform and then burning the platform, would not have been sufficient to have produced this fall.

But no matter what method they chose, it must surely have been an interesting experience for the watchers at the foot of Cardou.

Now if any place is ever likely to push Rennes-le-Chateau off the top of the pile of places about which more rubbish has been talked than anywhere else on the planet, then it has to be this place.

This is a lieu-dit (or hamlet called) Les Pontils on the road between Serres and Arques and it has a quite eerie claim to fame.

It may not look like much but on that flat platform over there was until 1988 a tomb that has been said by so many people to be the inspiration behind the painting Les Bergers d’Arcadie – “The Shepherds of Arcadia” – by Nicolas Poussin.

If this is so, then it’s a magnificent feat by Poussin seeing as how he painted his oeuvre in the 1630s, and yet all of the evidence available places the building of the tomb to … errr … 1903.

Someone did reply that there was an earlier, identical tomb here that was destroyed on royal orders later in the 17th Century but that begs the questions “how did they know that it was identical?” and “how did they know that this was the spot?” We’re dealing with a period before photography and GPS recording. And no-one as far as I am aware, has produced any kind of evidence to support this story of a royal order.

It’s connected with a phrase “Et In Arcadia Ego” which may people claim is bad Latin (there’s no verb) and hides an anagram or a coded message, but Latin is one of those languages where there is no pronoun (the verb is declined in order to reflect the doer of the action) but Ego is a pronoun and is used for emphasis or else in certain cases when there is no verb. And in that case it is put at the end of the sentence so the phrase would be something like “And I, in Arcadia”. That’s perfectly acceptable to say that in English and the construction is also good Latin.

But if you want a real mystery, one that no-one has picked up, go to the cemetery in Rennes les Bains. We have four main actors in this conspiracy – Saunière of course, his two friends Boudet and Gélis, and his servant girl Denarnaud.

And what do they all have in common? The answer to that is that each one of their families has a tomb in the cemetery at Rennes-les-Bains, although not one of the actors is buried in it.

You could make up a decent conspiracy theory about this too.

But that’s not all that’s exciting in the cemetery either. What about this?

This is a grave belonging to someone called Jean Vié and I bet he’s glad that he’s here because he must have been called some rotten names at school. His name is a phonetic expression of the pronunciation of the name of the month – janvier – January.

Not only that, the way that the date is expressed – 7 bre – is quite common masons’ shorthand for the month of September, but couple that with the emphasis of the date 1 (as in first), you could make up a date of 17 January – and that was a day upon which a lot of things happened during this mystery.

That would make a good conspiracy theory too – totally overlooked by everyone so far.

Our January man is said to be the predecessor to the Abbé Boudet and it is also said that Boudet officiated over his interment – which if he did, his appointment to the church here must have been extremely rapid.

And one thing that should be mentioned is that the January man is buried in the plot right next door to Boudet’s family plot.

Coincidence or what?

-5

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality