Tag Archives: montaigut-en-combraille

Saturday 19th October 2013 – THERE HAVE BEEN A LOT …

… of changes around here – it’s amazing what cam happen when you’ve been away for as long as I have.

new road junction montaigut quarry puy de dome franceSteaming down the hill past the quarry at Montaigut on my way to the shops at St Eloy this afternoon and I came shuddering to a halt. That’s because a new road, and of course, a new road junction seem, to have miraculously appeared.

I’ve heard a great deal about this proposed new road – it’s something that’s been proposed for quite a while. For years, heavy lorries from the quarry have struggled through the medieval streets of Montaigut, snarling up the traffic and rattling the houses, and all of the local inhabitants are thoroughly fed up of it.

new road junction montaigut quarry puy de dome franceBut not any more. While I was away, a new road has been consrtructed that by-passes the village and goes off to the N144 on the outskirts.

There, the traffic is not obliged to enter into the village at all and that will please everyone.

It will please me greatly too. I often need to take the N144 and then turn off for Montmarault and in order to do that I have to go down some quite narrow windy roads with, more often than not, the sun full in my face at the most inopportune of moments. Now I can just steam on down to here and then hang a left on the new road, and I’m there in no time.

new road junction montaigut quarry puy de dome franceThere’s another part of the road that is in the throes of being built. That part will take you onto the road that leads to Pionsat, and that’s another piece of road that should have been built centuries ago to by-pass the village.

All the traffic on there, if it isn’t going to the village itself (which is highly unlikely as there is nothing in Montaigut tha Pionsat doesn’t have) is going to the motorway at Montmarault and so is being channelled through the village and as anyone will tell you, traffic in Montaigut can sometimes be impossible.

No, when they finish this, it should be a good thing.

However I am getting ahead of myself. This morning I was intending to go to Montlucon but I’d seen some interesting stuff that would do for the radio programme, so I wrote a couple of thousand words on the tax changes that took place in July.

After shopping, I went round to Marianne’s to catch up on all of the latest news, and then to Cecile’s to unload Caliburn of the stuff that Cecile had chosen from the other Marianne.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire nord combrailles puy de dome franceWe had footy this evening too. Pionsat’s 2nd XI were relegated to the fourth Division at the end of last season and are doing fairly well here. Tonight they were playing the Miners of St Eloy but they would only muster a team of 10 and which was not a particularly strong team either, with several faces missing from the squad.

They started off brightly, with the Pionsat n°9 ( a guy called Fred, a new signing) playing a total blinder up front and looking as if he could take on the entire Nord Combraille side on his own.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire nord combrailles puy de dome franceIt didn’t however work out like that as Pionsat couldn’t keep going, being short-handed like that.

The Miners gradually came back into the game and eventually the goal that they had been threatening to score for quite some time went into the back of the net, despite the best efforts of Christophe who seems to have taken over the goalkeeping jersey on a permanent basis, given the illness, injury and retirement of everyone else around the club. There have been quite a few changes over the last two seasons.

Nord Combrailles scored a second goal late in the game to put the issue beyond doubt.
fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire nord combrailles puy de dome franceBut that wasn’t quite the end of the story, because this guy Fred, who had quite impressed me throughout all of the match, was still going at the final whistle.

Here he is bursting through the Miners’ defence right on the final whistle, shrugging off a few strong tackles, and putting a shot across the face of the goal beating the keeper easily. But it hits the post and bounces to safety – about the third or fourth time that he had hit the woodwork. He would have been my man-of-the-match on any day of the week in any team, that’s for sure.

Even more astonishing was the weather. We were all standing on the terraces in shirt sleeves. This was one of the nicest October nights that I can remember.

-9

Wednesday 29th August 2012 – WE HAD OUR FIRST …

… no-show today.

Marianne and I went all the way out to Vergheas this afternoon for our Wednesday walk. Unfortunately no punters showed up, which was rather sad.

Mind you, it was only to be expected, I suppose. There had been the walk here a few weeks ago – the good one that I had been on, and then there was the pélerinage to the statue of the Black Virgin 10 days ago.

I suppose that everyone is simply Vergheased out.

Mind you it was just as well that no-one came because the sky was clouding over rapidly. We didn’t want to hang around too long. But long enough for one thing that I had wanted to do.

Vergheas is an old (and I DO mean old) fortified site – the mound upon which the church is built looks artificial to me, and that’s a good-enough indication.

early medieval stone rampart vergheas puy de dome franceWhat I had wanted to do was to see if there might be any trace of the old walls still remaining. When we had been here before, I’d had a good prowl around and had made a mental note of a couple of places that might be likely.

There was another flattened terrace on a lower level than that upon which the church is situated. This looked artificial to me.

The edges of this terrace were quite steep and in one or two places sloped down considerably towards the stream at the bottom. And sure enough, the side of that was lined with dressed stonework.

On the way back to Pionsat the heavens opened and we had 6mm of rain that fell in minutes. I can’t say that I’m sad about that, because we needed a good torrential downpour.

I was going to carry on working when I arrived home but I went upstairs and crashed out instead. I’d had a long, hard day.

This morning I was up early and met Rosemary at Montaigut en Combraille. She hopped into Caliburn and we went in to Montlucon. She ordered her new window at Lapeyre and I bought a load of stuff from Brico Depot.

I was back home for 13:15 – plenty of time to put the final coat of paint on the new woodwork ready to fit it tomorrow.

And in other news, and a bit of malicious gossip, if the conversation that was reported to me today means what a couple of people think that it might mean, no-one will be surprised if there’s a tiny addition to our little expat community’s population round about the start of the New Year.

-3

Thursday 9th August 2012 – WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY!

And I’m not just talking about the weather either, although that was certainly superb.

This morning was an early start and that found me in Montaigut-en-Combraille with Terry and Rob where we spent a pleasant 90 minutes visiting a semi-derelict building in the town.

We have big plans for this – well, actually we don’t, but the whole purpose of being there this morning was to measure it up and then draw up big plans for it.
Never mind a cunning plan, we will have several cunning plans for this place.

While Terry and Rob went off to chat amongst themselves I went off to the mairie to have a chat with the mayor of Montaigut-en-Combraille about what our intentions are.

Surprisingly (or maybe not, because times are changing in France when there is a question of foreign money being invested in these small semi-abandoned rural towns) she was quite co-operative and gave me loads of help, even introducing me to her deputy who was the kind of person who would really take an interest in this kind of project.

Back home, I started to turf out of the lean-to all of the accumulated breeze blocks, large stones and so on that I won’t be using again up there so that there would be plenty of space for me to move around.

But then the weather intervened – in the sense that by 13:00 the batteries were fully-charged and the water was heating up.

With all of this surplus energy around, out came the big drill and YESSSSSSSSSSS I finally pushed the core drill right through the wall and into the house.

I’ve even managed to feed the plastic pipe through the wall and so now, next time that it’s too wet to work, I’ll be running three sets of cables through the tube – a 230-volt power line, a 12-volt power line and a 12-volt light line, and then starting to wire everything up

This afternoon I was round at Liz and Terry’s doing the rear brakes on her car. Pretty straightforward of course but I was having issues with fitting the springs what with a lime burn on my thumb – how I managed that on Monday after all this time without one is another one of those total mysteries.

So tomorrow I’ll be fitting the woodwork for the windows and painting it all (I still have tons of this excellent LIDL wood treatment stuff), and then sorting out some wood to make a fascia panel across the exposed ends of the roof chevrons to keep the weather out of the ends of the chevrons.

That wood will be painted too.

I’ll measure up for the glass fit what guttering that I have lying around, and then on Saturday I’ll go into Commentry to buy the glass and the rest of the guttering.

Coming on in leaps and bounds now!

-2

Wednesday 25th July 2012 – TODAY STARTED OFF …

… really well. Gorgeous bright blue skies with not a cloud in sight.

I was up … well, not as early as I might have been but still early enough, and while I was breakfasting, I had the fan working, so hot that it was up here.

Terry rang up and so I met him down the lane and we went off to the quarry for some melange and a pile of sand, and I ended up with about half a ton of the stuff – that will keep me out of mischief for a while, rebuilding the lean-to wall.

new potatoes les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter computing for a while I attacked the raised bed where the early spuds were hanging about. Now was the time to dig them up.

But I have to say that I was quite disappointed. There’s not even half a bucket full here. I’ve no idea where they all went to. And after all of the effort that I – and Rosemary – had put into everything too!

But I was so engrossed with digging over the bed that I failed to notice the time – 15:24. I had to be in Pionsat meeting Marianne at 15:30 and there I was, all covered in soil and so on

But never mind. Can’t be helped. I flew into Pionsat just as I was.

That’s hardly a good advert for anything,

caliburn st maigner puy de dome franceAs well as the Sunday expositions that we have been doing, we’ve also been doing the Wednesday walks around the various communes of the Canton of Pionsat, and you’ve already been on quite a few of them with us.

Today, it’s the turn of St Maigner to receive us. That’s out on the road to Espinasse and must be the commune the furthest south in the Canton. And despite the rush that we had had to get here, we were bang on time to start the walk, which can’t be bad

st maigner puy de dome franceSt Maigner is a very exciting place and proudly announces that the population in the comunne has grown by 17.4% in the last 10 years.

Not sure about how they worked that out, though. The 1999 population was 174 and the 2011 population was 197 – that makes a 13.2% increase in my book. And, regrettably, that’s still a far cry from 1836 and the 990 people who lived here.

This population growth is typical of quite a few small villages in the Auvergne, where most of the population growth is due to all of the foreigners who have come to live here.

Rural France has not been slow in pointing out to the Brits and the Dutch living a stressed-out existence in a tiny box-like villa with a postage-stamp garden and neighbours overlooking your hedge that here are wide-open spaces with room to move about, grow your own crops and be totally stress-free.

And all at a price that you would never even imagine back home.

And the Government is grateful too.

st maigner puy de dome franceThink about it.

  • The average foreigner who sells up and comes over here brings with him – say €200,000 – from the sale of his property back home.
  • He buys a ruin (of which there are many) from a local French farmer for €30,000, saving the French farmer from bankruptcy
  • He goes to Brico Depot or Point P or the sawmill for all of his renovation material, creating jobs for the locals
  • His kids go to the local village school, keeping the schools open
  • He uses the village Post Office and the boulangerie, keeping them open for the locals
  • Many of the nouvel arrivants are pensioners – they will be having their foreign pensions paid in France and spending the money over here

Just look at all of this money coming flooding into the rural French economy. And it’s all new money too. Not from anywhere else in France, not from the French treasury, but from abroad.

The French must be laughing their heads off.

I was at one meeting many years ago when Brice Hortefeux, a French Government Minister stood up and said to the audience “you should be grateful that we have all of these foreigners here. It’s thanks to them that you still have your schools, your Post Offices, your boulangerie.”

And he’s dead right.

st maigner puy de dome franceWe saw the church in one of the photos above. It was a dependence of the Abbey of Ebreuil and although the first mention of the village isn’t until the mid 13th Century, the church would seem to be considerably older.

You can tell that by looking at the Roman-style doorway here. Despite all of the renovations that the church has undergone (and we all know what that means) this doorway cannot be anything but original.

I’ve seen many a church doorway in this style, and all available records point to them being well before the 13th Century. I would be very surprised if this doorway were much later than 11th-Century.

fontaine de st loup st maigner puy de dome franceHaving had a good explore around the bourg, we went for a nice long walk out into the countryside, as far as the Fontaine de St Loup.

This is a beautiful, well-restored spring, of which there are many here in the region as you know. But this particular one has a very well-known claim to fame in that during the 7th Century, a very well-attested miracle took place here.

So well-attested and so well known that I can’t remember what it was now. In fact, had I remembered, that would have been a miracle.

villeromain st maigner puy de dome franceRound the back of the Fontaine is the lieu-dit or hamlet of Villeromain.

And this is a very controversial place, if you are a French historian.

Wherever you see a French place-name beginning with ville, it almost certainly (although there are some exceptions in modern times) signifies the site of a Gallo-Roman villa.

I’ve told you before that one is not allowed in France to use the term “Roman” on its own. French history does not accept the principle that the Romans colonised and settled the country.

It insists that the Gauls were already civilised and that the presence of villas and other contemporary buildings were due to the combined efforts of both the Romans and the Gauls.

However, the reason for the controversy about Villeromain is because of the inclusion of the very definite Roman in the name. That would seem to suggest to some people that this settlement was entirely Roman and had no input from the Gauls.

And that opinion does not go down very well with others.

So back home, and the temperature in the solar water heater looked really inviting. This called for a nice, hot shower this evening bearing in mind how dirty I was after today’s gardening session.

And then up here to the furnace. It’s roasting up here and the fan is doing almost nothing.

Summer seems to have arrived – but for how long?

-7

Friday 20th July 2012 – WHAT A SHAMBLES!

And, just for a change, I’m not talking about anything to do with the Open University Students Association.

At 10:00 I needed to be at Radio Tartasse in Marcillat-en-Combraille to record the rock music programme and thanks to a 07:30 start this morning I had everything ready and so I was there on time.

15 minutes it takes to record the programmes – I set up all the music at home and copy them onto a memory stick – but it was blasted flaming well 11:50 before I managed to leave.

It seems that someone has been messing around with the computer there and there’s a file running in a kind of algorithm that is stopping the sound card working correctly.

They had the manager and two technicians trying to fix it and in the end Yours Truly was so fed up that he imposed himself in the office and managed to free off the sound card by disabling the background program via the Task Manager so that we could make a start.

Then, they managed to lose the program that we had recorded and so after they gave up, I searched all of the hard drives for it and it wasn’t there at all, so we went to re-record it, with much GRRRRRRing.

And then the program wouldn’t open as “an instance of this program is already running” – seems that the Manager had entered a file name but had forgotten to save it and had then minimised the window.

No wonder it took so flaming long.

At lunchtime I took Bill to Montaigut-en-Combraille – he had bought a new bed and needed it transporting home and that was not as straightforward as it might have been either, for reasons that I shan’t go into.

But to cut a long story short, it was 15:00 when I finally stopped for lunch and I was dismayed.

lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo having been driven up the wall all this morning it was only natural that I was back on the scaffolding this afternoon.

If you compare this photo with one of the ones from earlier this week you can see how much progress I’ve been making.

But the real proof of progress is the fact that you’ll notice the new-looking breeze block in the wall by the bottom-right of the photo – when I started to repair the lean-to, that breeze block was the first stone that I had to lay.

Everything from and including that breeze block is what I’ve had to put it.

Anyway, after a few hours on that, it was 18:50 when I finished a load of cement and so I called it a day on the wall.

That gave me 10 minutes to sow a row of endives ready for the winter. You can see how organised I’m becoming these days, can’t you?

So back up here to warm up and dry off because today we were back in winter – cold and wet.

Summer has been and gone, and that was your lot.

-1

Friday 13th July 2012 – IF A THING …

… is too good to be true, that’s because it usually is.

And when you see a thing that is too good to be true taking place on Friday 13th, then you can bet your life that it will be too.

And for that reason I didn’t hold out much hope of my little trip to Montlucon bringing home the bacon, but nevertheless you have to go through the motions and do all that you can, because you never know.

And so, up at 06:00, down the end of the lane by 06:25 to meet Terry as he drove past instead of him coming down here, going to Montlucon as quickly as possible, and all to no avail.

Brico Depot had a sale on this morning, and they had some prefabricated car ports at just €199 each. I wanted two, to put on my hard standing to cover up Caliburn and the Minerva, but even though we weren’t there anything like late, they had all been sold.

Or so they said.

At that price, it really was a giveaway anyway so it wasn’t really a surprise. Still, never mind. I did all that I could do, and it would have been a stunning coup had we really pulled it off.

I bought a few more bits and pieces and on the way back we called at the quarry at Montaigut en Combraille. I wanted some sand but we ended up with a huge load of dry mix for concreting – Terry is concreting a patio at his house next week.

And that has given me a little idea too – more of which anon.

So breakfast at 11:00, an event that occurs quite often regularly around here, but never ever AFTER a full morning’s work, including a trip to Montlucon and to the quarry though.

Wrapping my mitt around a warm cup of coffee I went off to do some work on the website but was interrupted by a phone call from Cheze in St Eloy les Mines. Our water butts have finally arrived.

And so I wandered off to St Eloy les Mines to do the shopping (it’s a Bank Holiday here tomorrow) and then off to Rosemary’s to give her her water butt and her guttering that had been lingering around in the back of Caliburn.

I was there until 19:30 as well – gossiping away like a right bunch of old women, we were.

Tomorrow is a Bank Holiday as I said, and it’s my custom to have a day off work on a Bank Holiday. But due to circumstances beyond my control, I’ve yet to have a Bank Holiday off this year, and tomorrow is no exception as I have a few radio scripts to write for next weekend.

It’s all go here. Really, I don’t know how on earth I used to find the time to go to work.

-2

Wednesday 14th March 2012 – WHAT A SHOWER!

Even though it is soon to be the annual conference of an … errrrr … organisation (said he, using the term loosely) that featured quite heavily in these pages at one time or another, it is not to that which I am referring.

Neither am I referring to my visitors either.

And I use the term in the plural because I had more than one today.

First off at 09:00 this morning, the phone rang and it was Désirée, the local estate agent.

And 09:00 too, you might be thinking, but to everyone’s surprise, including Yours Truly’s, I’d been up for hours. And I mean hours as well. I’d been trying to speak to Désirée for a while and at last she was free and so she came round here for a chat.

Amongst the things about which we chatted, and probably the most important, was the building that I own in Montaigut. Long-term readers of these pages will know that I own something like a derelict warehouse there and I use it to keep some cars, namely the Traction, the 2000E and the Mark V Cortina estate.

Above it though is a large space that was formerly six large rooms on two levels, but the dividers, both horizontally and vertically, are long gone. I need to do something about this place and converting the upstairs into two apartments is what I have in mind.

And so I had a good pick of Désirée’s brains – after all, she’s the professional.

Another visitor was Bill, who came round with a radio-cassette player out of an old car. There was a tape stuck in it and being an electronic unit you can’t get the tape out without power.

At least, most people can’t get the tape out but with the aid of three long fine-pointed screwdrivers and a pair of fine long-nosed pliers, I can manage to do it.

All these years of a misspent youth, that’s what I put it all down to.

2012 first GARDEN FIRE BONFIRE les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn between the visits I finally managed to light the fire, the first of the year. And that is busy (even as we speak) disposing of much of the waste wood and the weeds that I have been pulling up this last couple of weeks.

You’ll notice though that it isn’t on the site of where the greenhouse will be. There was far too much stuff to burn, and the trees were overhanging far too much.

But I’ve left some over there – I’ll burn that off tomorrow and that should kill off many of the weeds on the site of where the greenhouse will be.

But back to the shower thing. At 18:00 I noticed that the water in the solar water heater was at 31°C today, and that the water in the dump load was off the scale again. So 5 litres of that water into the solar water heater gave me 38.5°C and I had my first home-grown shower of the year.

Just for a change I actually feel properly clean.

And I was right about the wind as well.

0

Wednesday 4th January 2012 – TODAY DIDN’T WORK …

… out as I had wanted it to do.

Forgetting to switch off one of the alarm clocks didn’t help much, for a start.

But nevertheless it was about 10:00 when I finally surfaced.

As part one of the plan, I watched one of the the films that Marianne had bought for me for Christmas. I’m a big fan of Louis de Funes and have a great many of his films, which I can watch time and time again.

But I’ve had loads of difficulty trying to track down one of his films that, to my mind, is by far and away the best film that he has ever made –  La Folie Des Grandeurs.

It concerns de Funes as a Spanish nobleman who runs foul of the Queen of Spain. Apart from the legendary “towel in the bath” scene, it also contains the immortal lines –
de Funes – “tell me some little flatteries”
Valet – “senor is the greatest Spaniard who ever lived”
de Funes – “that’s not flattery – that’s the truth. Try again!”
Valet – “errr … senor is very very handsome”
de Funes “that’s better!”

Anyway, Marianne tracked down a copy for which I am extremely grateful, and I sat and watched it. and I’ll be watching it again … "and again and again" – ed.

But at lunchtime, Terry rang up. He and Rob were working somewhere and they had run out of concrete. So that involved digging out the Sankey trailer and setting off for the quarry. He just had the sand/stone mix and so we had to go to St Eloy les Mines as well, and that took most of the afternoon.

So much for my plans to tidy up and do some paperwork.

But the tyres on the Sankey are thoroughly perished and they need to be changed before it goes anywhere else. You can’t haul a tonne or two of sand and gravel on tyres like those.

So this evening was quiet – I read a book. And that’s really it.

But going back to Marianne’s I do remember one evening sitting down to watch La Grande Vadrouille, another de Funes film in which he stars with Terry-Thomas. It’s another one of my favourites and Marianne had bought that for me as well.

And as I was getting the film ready to watch, Marianne was idly surfing through the channels and what should be on the TV but La Grande Vadrouille?

Coincidence or what?

-2

Saturday 25th June 2011 – It’s been all go here today

karl hagen chantier communaux lapeyrouse puy de dome franceYes, I crawled out of the heaving pit rather late this morning, at about 10:30 to be precise, and it was off to Karl and Lou’s for their chantier. The girls spent the day painting the front of the house while Jean, Francois and I were building a woodshed at the back of the house.

There was the obligatory pause for lunch of course and I took advantage of the moment to take a photograph of all the attendees

fete des nouveaux arrivants marcillat en combraille allier franceI couldn’t stick around for long though because at 14:30 I had to piddle off to Marcillat en Combraille for this meeting. And now I know why they wanted me – apparently they didn’t have a translator and so Yours Truly was stuck with the task.

But it was well-worth going for I met a Dutch guy there who sells and hires out trailers. I’d talked to him a while back about car transporter trailers but he doesn’t do them, and so I made it clear that I had one that I might hire out if he says the magic words.
“Stop messing about Eric. You’ll be well-paid”
“Ahhh. So you know the magic words then!”

One thing led to another and it turns out that he plays music in a folk group of sorts. I mentioned my previous existence when I played bass guitar in a rock group and he’s going to pass my details on to a friend of his who plays in a folk rock group.

annual village walk virlet puy de dome franceLater this evening we were all round at Virlet where we were going to have our annual evening walk, exploring the highways and, more importantly, the byways of the commune. Just for a change the weather was good this year and the walk was enjoyable even though it was done at the pace of a route march.

This here is the old road into the village, long-since replaced by a more modern route and that down there on the right in the photo is an old well for the village

feu de joie virlet village bonfire puy de dome france Afterwards we had the traditional village bonfire – the feu de joie at the back of the church. There was a picnic too – the village had done us proud in this respect – and there was dancing to music provided by …. our friend with the trailer.

With the backdrop of the firework display at Montaigut en Combraille, it really was a most enjoyable evening and Jean, Elizabeth, Clotilde and Rosemary all certainly enjoyed it.

What with one thing and another it really was a good, enjoyable day and I’m off to bed quite happy for a change.

-4

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 – What was so strange …

… about my posting last night was that the moment I pressed “send” there was a tremendous thunderclap outside and we had a storm – and I didn’t have any idea at all that one was brewing. We ended up with 7mm of rain and that’s about 80 litres of water in the water butts. I’m glad now that I worked on my day off.

And so this morning I needed to print off the papers for the radio programme and some other papers that I needed. Terry needed me to accompany him to the quarry for some intense negotiations, and that was effectively the morning sorted out.

At the radio station, they weren’t expecting us. According to the engineer, SMADC (the Societe Mixte pour l’Amenagedment et Developpement des Combrailles) are now not co-operating with the radio station. Nothing new there – the SMADC ceased to co-operate with us a long time ago – but I suspect some developments in this field in early course.

Back home I crashed out for a couple of hours yet again. I’m going to have to do something about this.

-2

Friday 14th January 2011 – Ouch!

It’s been an expensive day today – and I didn’t go shopping either. GRRRR What did happen was that the postie came by today bearing some major bad news.

Firstly, when the solicitor charged with handling the sale of Reyers was asked to settle all of the outstanding Brussels taxation issues, well, indeed he did. But he did that on the 29th of September, the day that the cheque for the sale was cleared, and of course the property taxes on Expo were due on October 1st. And so I had a red reminder today for €1200 that I had not taken into account in my budget.

Secondly, a couple of years ago I went into the taxation office here and asked that the taxes that I am to pay on Les Guis and on Montaigut should be paid by direct debit instead of by demand. I told the tax office that I travel around a great deal and was afraid of missing a payment or two, and the tax office very kindly helped me to complete the forms.

And when I went into the tax office that time, I was brandishing around a tax d’habitation form. And so you can guess what has happened. Just how many brain cells do you need to have, to work out that if someone tells you that he travels around a great deal and is afraid of missing a payment or two, he means ALL HIS TAXES? And so that was another €733 that bit the dust.

While I was out, I reckoned that I may as well go and buy the plank that I need for making my false beam, the one that the electric cables will be running behind. So to St Gervais and the sawmill. And he will cut me a plank of the required width and thickness, but to a maximum of 4.15 metres. That’s no good. The room is 4.47 metres and the plank of course needs to be in one piece – it will look silly as a beam if it is in two pieces.

And so I shot off through the wilds to Montel-de-Gelat and the huge sawmill there. And I arrived about half an hour before closing time. They have planks in stock – 4.50 metres long by 18mm thick. Absolutely ideal for what I want. But the width – 150mm whereas I want 120mm ideally.
“Can you trim one down for me?”
“No”
“No? Why not?”
“Because this is the week when the cutting mill is closed for machine maintenance.We can do it for you next Friday”.

I’m clearly having no luck at all today.

wood pile lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceI said the other day that I would take a photo of the lean-to with all of the wood. It looked like this in November last year, and all through the following 12 months the pile increased in size as I flung more and more bits of wood in there.At one stage in the summer I couldn’t even get into the place. But anyway, you can see that it’s emptying out quite nicely.

The wall on the left is the eastern wall of the house and the kitchen will be built against this wall. The dark grey cylinder is the large gas bottle that will power the gas cooker. I’ll anchor it to the wall and drill through the wall in order to pass a gas pipe through. The other cylindrical object is an old immersion heater that Claude gave me to play with.

In the bedroom I did some more of the tongue-and-grooving but that came to a dead stop too as I ran out of 20mm insulation. I’ll have to go to Brico Depot tomorrow and buy a load of that so that I can carry on next week. There’s not much else I can be doing until I buy my plank.

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Saturday 14th August 2010 – A good few weeks ago ….

… I went to a talk about the history and one of the items that was discussed was the local railway network. With this area being situated on a coal seam and the existence of coal mines all over the place there was at one time a railway network around here that was much more comprehensive than you would think at first.

And most people immediately think of railways as being standard-gauge – 4’8.5″ with substantial earthworks and the like, and there is a great deal of evidence for that, especially for our famous railway down the hill here that was opened to traffic in 1932 and did’t even last 25 years.

I drive regularly (or I used to when I used to go to Brussels) along a certain road that runs into Montmarault from the Montaigut direction and I’ve been convinced that I’ve seen traces that correspond to what the Ordnance Survey would call “dismantled railway” along the side of the road, although there is nothing on any map that I have ever seen that would confirm anything.

But at this talk one of the items discussed was the railway line that ran from Marcillat en Combraille to Commentry. Now Commentry was a major ironworking centre and Marcillat has the remains of a few huge limekilns and so a line bringing the lime from the fields to the blast furnaces seems like a likely proposition. But the only line here as far as I am aware is the old standard gauge line that used to pass down here and which doesn’t go directly to Commentry.

But further enquiry revealed the existence of the “lignes economiques” – a whole series of narrow-gauge lines that ran on light railway principles with the minimum of earthworks, and the border area between the Allier and the Puy-de-Dome was littered with these lines. Anyone who has seen the the Father Brown film will recall what a “ligne economique” looks like.

The relics that I have seen not too far from Montmarault are in fact part of this light railway system but my attention for the moment has been seized by a narrow-gauge line that used to run from Marcillat to Commentry – and points beyond, as I have discovered. I’ve tracked down a list of the names of stations along the route but a casual look on an Internet satellite viewing program hasn’t come up with anything. That’s a shame – long-time readers will remember that we tracked down a bridge of James Brunlees by spotting it on a satellite viewer.

culvert underneath D2144 RN144 durdat larequille allier franceOne place however has crossed my mind as I have crossed it on many occasions. The railway passed through the village of Durdat Larequille somewhere and not too far from there is what looks like a hollow fold in the ground with what might be a bridge over it. And so on my way back from Neris les Bains I stopped for a look.

I’m right about it being an overbridge but if it’s for a narrow-gauge locomotive and train then it would have to be flaming narrow. I couldn’t stand upright in that tunnel under there

culvert underneath D2144 RN144 durdat larequille allier franceThere’s no evidence to suggest that the bridge has been infilled to any extent, suggesting that at one time it might have been of larger size, and I can’t see what might have been a track bed of a railway running to and fro underneath it.

I’m reluctantly coming to the conclusion that this may well not be a railway bridge after all, and that’s a disappointment – I had high hopes for this.

Yes – I was in Neris today. The weather is becoming colder and colder and there was no chance of a solar shower and so after shopping in Commentry (which was boring, I have to say) I went off there. 29°C in the water and only 20°C in the baths itself – but that’s because some person had for reasons best known to him-or herself decided to open up the side of the pool. It used to be an open-air pool complete with poolside cafe but it’s now covered with a balloon-type of marquee. And who on earth would want to open it up today in this weather?

But now I’m nice and clean so I’m going to change the bedding and have a good night’s sleep. And I need it too. I didn’t have the alarms on this morning and when the phone rang I crawled over to it and answered “ok Terry – see you in a bit” only to hear a French voice on the other end. Yes, I was totally out of it this morning. I’ll have to do better tomorrow.

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Thursday 8th July 2010 – Wahey!

kwikstage scaffolding roofing sheets barn roof les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, I now have a barn roof duly completed, complete with ridge tiles and guttering, all cut nicely to shape.

We started off this morning by bending the ridge tiles to fit before we took them up and in 45 minutes with no worries and no panic they were all fitted. I wouldn’t say “nicely” but they are all on and firmly fixed and cover up the ridge of the roof.

And then the fun began.

We coupled up an inverter to power the jigsaw for cutting the sheets but the inverter burnt out. So after some messing around we went on a tour of the local shops in Youx, Montaigut en Combraille and St Eloy les Mines for a decent heavy-duty metal saw but without luck. We then tried another inverter and the Scorpion saw but that was no better. In the end we had a brainwave – and the Ryobi circular saw came to the rescue. It badgered up the blade well and truly but it did an excellent job.

But then we realised that the roof had been cut too long and the blade was too badly damaged for another cut, so Terry fetched his huge battery-powered saw and as luck would have it the blade off my 650-watt mains saw fitted right on.

kwikstage scaffolding roofing sheets barn roof les guis virlet puy de dome franceAll that remained was to fix the guttering. We did as much of that as we could but we didn’t have an angled joint for the bend, and it was too sharp to wrap the guttering around. I can do that at a later date, or else I’ll have to invent something.

I also need to re-position one of the brackets at the end of the roof but that can be a ladder job too.

solar panels aspire recycled plastic slates house roof les guis virlet puy de dome franceOnce all of that had been done, we needed to take down the scaffolding. No reason to leave that up against the barn when it can be doing other things.

But before we did that I climbed up on the roof to seize the opportunity to take a photo of the house and the solar panels. I haven’t had a good shot of those yet. And it looks as if I’ll have to fix the guttering on the house roof before I’m much older, doesn’t it?

Now the scaffolding is down and Terry has gone and it’s all absolutely superb. I’m really impressed and a major thanks to Terry for giving me so much help and getting me organised.

Krys asked me what I intend to do in the barn when it’s finished. In fact it’s going to be for storage, a workshop for joinery and engineering projects, and a garage workshop for my collection of old cars that I can now go and rescue.

Tomorrow will be a day off as I’m whacked. And I sincerely hope it rains buckets because I’ll go outside and watch it.

And yet another solar shower this evening. I’ve abandoned (for the moment) the LIDL garden shower and am using a hand-held shower head.

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Wednesday 28th April 2010 – Today was busy.

This morning first thing I had to go round to Michael’s. He’d just come back from the UK and bought me 10 kilos of oats. And as he was off again this afternoon I needed to rescue them (and pay him) before he went.

Back home I had time to plant some of the seeds that Clare had given me before leaping aboard Caliburn, my trusty steed, and heading off to St Gervais d’Auvergne to meet Liz and go on to Gerzat to record our radio programme. And of course to meet this photographer guy who wanted not just to photograph us but to interview us too. It seems that in the Combrailles we are becoming major news and our publicity is reaching its height. Yes, we are going to be the feature article in … errrr …. a free advert-type newspaper in the Combrailles with a circulation of about 350.

Not quite Le Monde or Paris Match I know, but we remain confident that one day we will be there. I’m eagerly awaiting the day that we will be asked to open our first brocante or be the guests of honour at a concours de belote.

Back at St Gervais d’Auvergne Liz and I went for a coffee or two and discussed our plans for next week. We are going to hit the Chambre de Metiers et de l’Artisanat in Chamailles and get all our business affairs in order. Neither of us has received our formal inscription of our business registrations despite having had an acknowledgement almost a year ago. High time we did something about it.

Back here I planted all of my early potatoes. And I think I’m going to run out of room for the lates and so I’ll have to invent something about that. And I should have gone to football training this evening but today was the hottest day of the year and it’s still 25 degrees up here even with all of the windows open. That’s not a temperature for someone of my age and my level of fitness to be running around. But the weather is supposed to break tomorrow or Friday morning, with rain (the first since April 9th) and a major drop in temperature. If that holds, then training at the Friday night session is a distinct possibility.

Now where have I put my footy boots????

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Thursday 1st April 2010 – We’re cracking on in the garden!

gardening raised beds les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou can see the seventh raised bed – it’s the one on the extreme right at centre-height in the photo. Having dug over everywhere yesterday I made the raised bed – out of Brico Depot Bargain Basement shuttering board, of which I have a considerable amount as it is very handy stuff to have

The older raised beds were made out of board and were 1.40m square, but this board comes in 3m length so I have done this one 1.40 x 1.60.

Once I organised that, I started on digging over where the 8th raised bed will be – behind bed no7. This took ages to dig over – in fact it’s only had its first digging – on the grounds that there are tree roots everywhere and they all need to be hauled out. Mind you I might have made much more progress had I left my bed this morning long before … errr … 10:40. I dunno what’s happening to me about this.

After breakfast I did a couple of hours up here and I’ve put two of the footy web pages on line – this one and this one. Only another 12 to do.

This evening I went round to Michael’s and we had a bit of a jamming session. Because he’s not been playing guitar long I had to teach him some music theory, which is quite difficult as I don’t know it myself. He’s off to the UK in a couple of days time but we resolved that when he came back we would try to get together maybe once a week and see what we shall see. In the meantime I’ll have a rummage through my record collection and look for some 12-bar blues stuff (some Flying Aces stuff or JJ Cale – that kind of thing) and make up a disk of stuff to have a play with.

And all day we had intermittent showers, hailstorms, heavy rain – you name it, we had it. And last night the temperature dropped below freezing.

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