… when I said that today I would be working on the guttering and the water filter system? Well in fact that was what I did this afternoon and you can see the results just here in the photo. We now have full-sized guttering and a full-sized downpipe with a decent-sized sump that is angled down to where the drain is.

The tube down to the settling pipe is 80mm like the rest of the guttering, and from there on, nothing else has changed.

I’ve been trying to fit a covering over the top but I can’t get it to fasten down. In the end I’ll be having to resort to cable ties I reckon. Now where did I put my cable ties then?

I also said that I would be doing some bread baking, but the less said about that the better. Apart from dropping some of my mix on the floor, I ended up with a couple of soggy lumps of I’m not quite sure what – and that after spending I don’t know how long looking for a third shelf for the oven. I reckon that the “best before” date of April 2010 might have something to do with this, and so I’ll have another go with some fresh stuff and see what happens. But I really need a decent flat tray for the oven.

Marianne the local journalist from the newspaper La Montagne rang me up this morning to invite me to Roche D’Agoux for her presentation at the tourism morning. She drove in her car and I went as passenger.

This was not really such a sound move as I get bored with this kind of thing after about half an hour. I’m not really much of a socialite as you all know and 2 hours and more is more than enough for me.

And so after a while I slipped away and went for a little walk around the village. Only a little walk of course because there isn’t too much of a village to see.It’s only a small place.

Centre of every village in France is the church, and generally speaking, they are well-worth seeing. The one here at Roche d’Agoux is no exception and is, for a change, in an exceptionally-good state of preservation for such a small village.

One thing for which Roche d’Agoux is famous (because it has several claims to fame which we shall discuss in early course) is that it has a public 10-pin bowling alley – a jeux de quilles in the open air.

It actually works too, so I was told later, and I would have loved to have had a go. But I think that you have to bring your own bowling balls. But anyway, it’s not what you would expect to find in a village like this.

Back at the tourism exhibition, I discovered that the organisers were the people who organise the vintage fete at St Maurice pres Pionsat where they have all of the old cars. I had a good chat with one of the organisers about the Minerva – so much so that I’ve been invited to exhibit it there on August 14th. I need to get a move on and get it running.

When the do was over, I told Marianne about my little wander around the village and the visit to the church. She told me that the church is quite famous – one of the several things for which Roche d’Agoux is famous – and that we should visit the inside of it.

She went off on a voyage somewhere and came back brandishing the keys to the front door. She knew who held them and had gone off for a little negotiation on my behalf

In the immediate vicinity of Roche d’Agoux in the Middle Ages was a very large leper colony and they were isolated from the general community, as you might have expected in those days.

However, the lepers were obliged to attend Mass just the same as everyone else and so special provisions were made for them in the church. They had their own alcove away from the mainstream congregation and could witness the mass through a special leper window

Another claim to fame for Roche d’Agoux is that the village is built on an bed of quartz that runs for maybe 20 kilometres across the north-western Combrailles.

The village takes its name from one of the most important outcrops of this bed, It is full of quartz and semi-precious stones and has been exploited for its precious stones in the past as well as having been quarried for building material.

Now, it’s a viewpoint for the village and the surrounding area. There are steps around the side and you can climb up to the top for a look.

It’s often been said that the rock that we have just seen is part of a Medieval castle that was situated here in the village but that’s not correct. This was something that was written in a guide book in the 1880s and has simply been copied out liberally without anyone having actually come here to visit the site.

There was indeed a medieval castle chateau fort here in Roche d’Agoux, but that was over there on that eminence – the small hill over there about a quarter of a mile away from the rock.

Unfortunately we cannot go to visit it as it’s on private property and the owner doesn’t encourage tourists which is a shame. But apparently there are quite a few remains that can be seen, according to someone who went there many years ago.

There are some ruins visible here and it doesn’t take much imagination for them to be pictured as remains of the castle or even remains of a wall around the village, but that is pure speculation.

But anyway, all of this area was the fiefdom of Guillaume de Rochedagoux in the mid-13th Century. He was famous for having gone on one of the Crusades to the Holy Land. He passed through the land of the Armenians (you have to remember that back in those days the territory of Armenia was much bigger than it is in modern times), noticed the skilled weavers there, and brought some of them back.

This accounts for the history that this region had as a flax-weaving area in the past, and accounts for names of places in the area (for example the Moulin des Armenièns) and the surname Desarmenièn that you encounter around here.

Anyway the hospitality had been freely flowing at the fete de tourisme, so much so that I had to drive back.

And I still had time, after playing for a while with the rainfall harvesting equipment to go off to Arpheuilles St Priest and the brocante that they were having today.

There weren’t many stalls there – despite the glorious weather – by the time that I arrived and I wasn’t able to go mad. but “spend, spend, spend” it was indeed and I was out by as much as €4:00 by the time that I left.

But the brocante was not my only reason for going to Arpheuilles St Priest. We’ve talked … "at great length" – ed … about the tacot or ligne economique, the narrow-gauge line that meandered through this area of the Allier between Marcillat en Combraille.

It actually passed through (and that’s a rare thing – that the tacot actually passed through anywhere) Arpheuilles St Priest and so I reckoned that I would go and see if I can find any trace of the line.

And having waded through a couple of hedges and a pile of weeds (and someone’s nicely-mown lawn) this is, what I reckon might have been the track-bed of the line. It’s very much like the width that an abandoned railway line might be and it’s heading in the general direction of Commentry

And now that I know what a tacot railway station looks like, having identified the one at Marcillat en Combraille the other day, I could go off and look for a building that corresponds.

And here we are – following my track-bed backwards across the road I ended up peering through the trees at this building, and this is what my money is on. This looks like a tacot railway station to me if ever I saw one.

So wasn’t this a busy day then? It kept me well out of mischief and I learnt a lot too.

And so have you now.

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