Tag Archives: allier

Monday 5th December 2016 -DRAT AND DOUBLE-DRAT!

The other week, we discussed the problem of burst tyres on the motorway.

And so it should come as no surprise to learn that it was the turn of Yours Truly today.

Not quite on the motorway – in fact about 400 metres after I’d pulled off at Montlucon. But a flat tyre just the same. There’s a nail in it somehow.

Luckily, if there is such a thing that can be called lucky, regular readers will recall from 2012 when I had a blow-out on the M6 near Stoke on Trent, I’d pushed the boat out and bought three really good Hankook tyres. The fourth was a second-hand cheap tyre that I had bought because of the wheel that was attached to it. There was plenty of tread on it but I didn’t expect it to last very long. Anyway, it’s this one that has the puncture.

There’s a spare on Caliburn and that was a second-hand one that I bought for the wheel (it was the time when I was collecting a second set of wheels for the winter tyres). But when I had a look at it … well … I’ve thrown away better tyres than this. A fair amount of tread to be sure, but standing around for as long as it has has done it no favours. But at least I was mobile with not much effort.

selfish parking montlucon allier franceMy new enhanced mobility took me to the LeClerc supermarket where I stocked up with another big supply of food for Belgium. And while I was there, I had another big laugh at the selfishness of other drivers.

The driver of this car parked it up at the supermarket – and pretty badly parked at that – and walked away – and then turned round to come back and parked his car even worse, straddling the white lines.

The selfishness of people is astonishing, isn’t it?

Having done the shopping, I went off in search of some tyres. I’ve ordered two brand-new Hankooks and they will be delivered on Friday. They will be going on the front, the other Hankook that is still on the front will be the spare, and the nasty spare tyre will be going in the bin.

But I’m not thinking very clearly here. What I should have done was to forget about the new tyres, come back home and fitted Caliburn with his winter tyres on the front. And the money situation is going to be important because on the way down from Leuven, I could feel the other wheel bearing start to tighten up and that’s going to have to be looked at. It’s yet more expense that I can do without.

I had a decent sleep last night and the breakfast at the Premiere Class was quite good. And then I hung around there doing stuff until about 11:00. When they threw me out of the hotel I hit the road and drove steadily down to Montlucon

tacot railway station narrow gauge bourbon l'archambault allier franceI cut the corner off down at the end of the road and came back through Bourbon l’Archambault, and this building caught my eye.

You should all know what it is because I’ve taken you to see a few of these. It’s the old railway station of Bourbon l’Archambault and the railway concerned is the tacot, the metre-gauge railway network that covered the Allier during the first half of the 20th Century.

Built far too late to have a decisive influence on the country’s transport policy and built too cheaply, serving the layout of the terrain rather that the needs of the passengers (one commentator described the railway stations as decorating the abandoned landscape), the only surprise was that they lasted aslong as they did before road transport swept them away

There’s a new chain of budget hotels opening in France – called Ace Hotels. One has been built on the edge of Montlucon and so I went for a look around.

ace hotel montlucon allier franceAt just €49:00 per night, it’s excellent. Certainly the best budget hotel in which I’ve ever stayed. The only complaint is that there aren’t enough of them yet.

My view from the window was excellent, right across the motorway and into the Combrailles at the back. That’s where I’ll be heading tomorrow.

So in the meantime, I ordered a pizza and wasn’t that a disappointment? Overpriced, undercooked and crushed up on one side of the box – someone had carried it vertically.

I shan’t be going to that pizza place again.

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Sunday 20th March 2016 – JUST IN CASE ANYONE IS WONDERING …

… the big patch of oil right by where I park Caliburn is due to the fact that I didn’t notice that there was a hole in the filler neck of my oil container when I was topping him up this morning. I seem to have ended up with more oil on the floor than in Caliburn’s engine. But he’s been topped up with water too, windscreen wiper liquid, all kinds of things.

I also washed and scrubbed all of the camping gear too so that that’s all ready. And apart from the coffee, I also seem to have forgotten the matches too. But at least I can buy them en route somewhere, I suppose.

So after a memorable night, memorable in the sense that I don’t remember anything about it, except for somewhere there was a girl of about 4 or 5 and another one, dressed in red and white, aged about 12 in it somewhere, that’s my lot. I was up yet again before the alarm clock and after breakfast, prepared myself, Caliburn and Strawberry Moose for the departure. All of my paperwork is on board as well, and I’ll let the new doctor sort out what he wants from all of this.

And after lunch, which was more home-made mushroom soup (made of real home-made mushrooms of course), we set off into the mist, rather like the boy who took his girlfriend out into the fog and mist.

chateau de puy guillon vernusse allier france. Letting The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav do her work, we followed a merry, mazy ramble through the Auvergne countryside towards the expressway at Montmarault, passing by the Chateau de Puy Guillon at Vernusse, somewhere that I have certainly never seen before.

Impressive it certainly is and well-worth a photo even if the battery in the Nikon D5000 was flat so that I had to use the camera on the phone.

And you can see what I mean about the mist as well.

Once I joined the expressway, the rest of the route was without a problem and everything went according to plan, although having left the SatNav on “shortest distance” rather than changing it to “quickest route” did show me parts of Fontainebleu that I have certainly never seen before. I fuelled up as usual at the cheap fuel station at Melun and then took the Francilienne as far as the N2 where I headed off in the direction of Soissons.

This was where the fun started because, having determined not to stop until I’d passed the rear of Charles de Gaulle airport, I then couldn’t find a hotel, astonishing as it might seem. That’s not quite correct – I drove three times around Villers-Cotterets following signs to hotels that clearly only existed in the minds of the signwriters, and found a place that was nominally a three-star hotel but looked like a chateau and would have been outside my price range.

Soissons wasn’t much better either. I found all of the post hotels, like the Campanile and so on, but nothing in my price range at all but a few miles outside the town, in a place called Crouy, I found a modern type of hotel, the New Access Hotel, advertising rooms at €35:00 plus breakfast €5:00. Full of foreboding, but tired and fed up and in the dark, I went and signed in.

As I feared, it was an old Formule One, clearly sold off by Accor as it needed renovation and wasn’t worth the money spending on it, and now run by an Indian family, as most of these places all over the western world seem to be. We discussed meals and it seemed that there was a pizza delivery service nearby, so I placed my order (there was a microwave so adding my own cheese would be no problem) and went to my room.

Despite half an hour trying, I couldn’t get the heating to work and it was cold. And then the plug was so tight up against the wall that I couldn’t plug in the laptop or the battery charger for the Nikon D5000. And then I realised that I’d been there an hour and my pizza hadn’t come.

So off I trotted downstairs and saw the daughter of the hotel owners. I told her about the pizza, so she asked me if I wanted to call them to remind them. I had a better idea. “You call them and cancel it. I’ll go and find something else” – having passed a kebab and pizza place just down the road.

I passed the pizza delivery driver on the access road but it was too late by then – my tail was up. And I had the last laugh too because it turned out that where I went to was the same place as where the pizza had been ordered from, and there was a free salad included to all take-away customers, and the salad would have made a meal on its own.

So back at Ice-Station Zebra and I refused a shower in the communal facilities. I ate my pizza and salad and with no electricity to charge up the laptop (I should have done that in Caliburn on the way up) I crawled fully-clothed under the covers, kicked out the bed-bugs and settled down for the night.

0

Thursday 3rd December 2015 – WELL, THAT SORTED THEM OUT!

Yes – clearly my discussion with the Accounts department yesterday seems to have worked, and galvanised them into action, because they rang me up this morning to say that the Direct Billing account has now been established and I needn’t worry about the payments.

As if I was worrying about the payments anyway. It’s no concern of mine. As I said yesterday, the hospital could have done all of this on the day that I was admitted.

Anyway, it’s amazing what you can do when you set your minds to doing it, isn’t it, Accounts Department of Centre Hospitalier Montlucon?

Before all of this erupted however, I’d already been on my travels. Down to the depths of the hospital and the domain of the Body-snatc … errr … scanners. It’s like a huge time portal (made by one of my former employers, General Electric) and you pass in and out of it on a cantilever trolley. I did of course ask if I was going to wake up in the 25th Century, but knowing the Auvergne like I do, it’s probably something for bringing people kicking and screaming into the present day.

I had to drink something totally disgusting before I was scanned and to give you an idea of just how unpleasant it was, this is the first place anywhere in any hospital in which I have ever been in mainland Europe where I’ve been offered a cup of coffee afterwards. But that didn’t work and even 15 hours later I can still taste whatever it was.

But there was a moment of light entertainment down there in the bowels of the hospital. In the body-scanner machine you have to wear a kind of helmet and there are different sizes of padding; depending upon the size of your head. Chief Body-Scanner went on a fruitless search to find the right size for me.
Chief Body-Scanner – “but don’t you have a big head?”
Our Hero – “well, there’s quite a lot in it!”.

After that, I was left pretty-much to my own devices and cracked on with my University course on Hadrian’s Wall. A great chance to catch up on the outstanding stuff.

But we did have some kind of interruption. The doctor came to see me “you can go home later on today. You’ll be back tomorrow for a check-up and again in another week”
“I’m not so sure that that’s a good idea” I replied. “I’ll have to disturb someone at work right now to come over 50 kilometres to pick me up, and drive over 50 kilometres back. And then tomorrow, he’ll have to drive me over 50 kilometres to come here and then over 50 kilometres back again. If I can stay until tomorrow afternoon, there will be someone in Montlucon already who can bring me back without the slightest inconvenience to anyone”.

And so common sense has prevailed and I’m here until Liz comes to fetch me tomorrow afternoon.

When Liz turned up later (with some spare undies and a punnet of grapes) I told her the news, and that is indeed the plan. I warned her and Terry to make sure that they had plenty of garlic in and to wear it around their necks when they go to bed just in case I feel thirsty during the night.

And so that was that today. But I didn’t go off to sleep easily. I had borrowed a couple of books from the library and one of them looked quite interesting – namely the story of the discovery of some “treasure” in 1924 in a small village called Glozel, about 60kms from here.

It turned out to be one of the most controversial treasure trove discoveries in the whole of the country because while many of the objects are of a typical early neolithic style, many of them appear to be made in the Medieval period and some even contemporary to the discovery. And this led to all kinds of village feuds, court cases and the like, and the affair rumbles on today.

Anyway, there I was, riveted to this book from start to finish and it was 23:00 when I arrived at the last page. It’s a long time since I’ve been stuck to a book like that.

0

Tuesday 25th February 2014 – I’M NOT HERE

Well, not ALL here anyway. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

viaduc des rochers noirs de la roche taillende lapleau correze franceI’m not there either – although I was earlier this evening. This is the Viaduc de la Roche-Taillende, colloquially known as the Viaduc des Rochers Noirs, and it’s near the town of Lapleau in the Corrèze.

You may not think it looking at that tight curve to enter the viaduct, but I’m actually standing on the bed of a disaffected railway line. It’s another one of these metre-gauge tacots, or “rattletraps”, a narrow-gauge railway line similar to the one that we’ve seen at Marcillat-en-Combraille in the Allier, but this one ran between Ussel and Tulle in the Corrèze.

There was a speed limit of 15kph on the line which is hardly surprising given the tightness of the curve, and also the fact that we have a suspension bridge which is quite a rare type of construction for a railway bridge.

viaduc des rochers noirs de la roche taillende lapleau correze franceJust like chez Liz and Terry, the railway disappears off into a tunnel on the other side of the river, but that is all fenced off.

Until 2006 you could actually drive through there in a car but unfortunately the Conseil Départementale has put a stop to all of that.

I merely contented myself with taking a few pictures – there wasn’t anything more that I could do unfortunately.

viaduc des rochers noirs de la roche taillende lapleau correze franceI did however go for a little bit of a climb and I was glad that I did, because the view from up on a rocky outcrop towering a couple of hundred feet above the viaduct was stunning, to say the least, even if it did wear me out climbing up to here.

This photo does show you the lengths that they had to go in order to build the viaduct and it’s hard to think that this line didn’t open until 1913, by which time it had effectively already outlived its effectiveness with the coming of the motor-bus but nevertheless it struggled on until as recently as 1960, which is quite an achievement for a metre-gauge tacot.

les gorges de la Luzège lapleau correze franceWhile I was up here I took a few photos of the stunning scenery.

The viaduct spans the Gorge de la Luzège at a height of 92 metres, or 126 metres if you count the pylons, so I’m quite high up and the view of the gorge is amazing.

It’s a shame that the weather was so dreadful though – it’s been raining non-stop and I’ve forgotten to bring a raincoat with me.

Serves me right.

plateau de Millevaches memorial 3rd Regiment SAS french resistance france 1944Coming here brought me (via the Pionsat Post Office to post Cécile’s letters) over the Plateau de Millevaches on the border between the Creuze and Corrèze.

Apart from the snow that I encountered, the plateau is famous in that it was effectively a “Free French” area during World War II. There is a great deal of resistance souvenirs in the area, including this plaque to commemorate the parachuting-in of members of the 3rd Regiment SAS who organised the French Resistance in the turbulent times after D-Day.

There are poignant souvenirs too – memorials to victims of the occasional sweeps by the Gestapo and also the town of Tulle itself just a short drive away, where the Das Reich Panzer Division of the SS strung up almost 100 locals from lamp-posts in the centre of the town as a form of reprisal for terrorist attacks.

roman ruins villa temple ruines les cars plateau de millevaches corrèze franceAnd that’s not all either.

I saw a sign that said Ruines les Cars and with Cars being French for the kind of coaches that I drove when I worked for Shearings, I went for a look to see what it was all about, but instead I found myself in the middle of a Roman villa and huge Temple from the 2nd Century AD.

Of course, you are not allowed to say “Roman Remains” here in France. Everything has to be “Gallo-Roman” because the French don’t accept (rightly or wrongly, I dunno) that the French civilisation of the turn of the Common Era was any less inferior than the Roman civilisation, and I’ve seen some healthy fights at some of these archaeological meetings that I sometimes go to.

remains of old car plateau de millevaches corrèze france Talking of ruins of cars, another thing that caught my eye was this. The remains of an old car abandoned in a forest.

No maker’s plate or anything like that on it, so no idea what it might be, but it has a wooden chassis sheathed in steel, and it’s clearly the type of car that had real wings and a lift-off body. With its steel wheels, all of that dates it to the early 1930s I reckon.

If you have any ideas what it might be, let me know. But there isn’t much to go on, I know.

From here I headed off down the hill and towards civilisation. I ended up in the town of Tulle where I planned to find a hotel but was singularly unsuccessful.

And to my own surprise, I didn’t take a single photo of the place and I ought to have done, because Tulle is one of the saddest places in French modern history.

Following the Normandy Landings, the local Resistance troops had risen up and seized control of the town from the Germans. Just as they were preparing to deal with the final German holdouts, the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division Das Reich appeared on the scene on its way north.

The result was that 99 civilians, many of whom had no connection with the armed uprising, were strung up from lamp-posts in the main street and a considerable number of others were brutally tortured

So with no hotel that I could find in Tulle, I’ve moved on to Brive la Gaillard where I’ll be spending the night.. I’ve no idea where I’ll be tomorrow.

-2

Saturday 14th December 2013 – WELL, IT DID RAIN …

… during the night, all 2mm of it. First time for ages too as I said. And when I woke up this morrning there was a hanging cloud to greet me. Consequently I stayed in and read a book, and then reorganised the bookshelves a little and did some housework.

It cleared up this afternoon so I had a quick run to St Eloy-les-Mines and the shops, and spent almost nothing there either. I’m back into my old ways again.

After a late lunch I did some work on the laptop and then wznt to Marcillat-en-Combraille for the last match prior to the winter break. AS Marcillat were playing Vallon, top of the table, and to everyone’s surprise they won 1-0. Once again, they could have had a bagful of goals but couldn’t hit the nether regions of a ruminant animal with a stringed musical instrument. Some of the misses were comical to say the least.

Vallon offered nothing up front although they were the better team. And they can consider themselves unlucky, if now downright cheated, of a good goal. An AS Marcillat defender handled a cross just outside his area but the shot fell to a Vallon attacker who volleyed it home. The referee blew his whistle … for the handball, thus disallowing the goal and the Vallon players were furious. The ref said that he had blown prior to the shot but I am totally and utterly convinced, as was everyone else around the ground, that the goal had been scored before he blew. And why blow anyway. Hasn’t he heard of the advantage rule?

And anyone who says that football is a man’s game is clearly unaware of Marcillat’s n°13 this evening. Only been on the pitch two minutes and he’s booked for having a ‘frank exchange of views’ with the referee. And 30 seconds later, as the Vallon keeper goes to clear a ball out of his hands and upfield, the n°13 goes up and impedes the clearance. A second yellow card, and so into the dressing room, and not been on the pitch 5 minutes either. Two of the most stupid bookings that I have ever seen.

Vallon had a player sent off too right near the end. He was rather too vocal about a bizarre refereeing decision and while one never condones that sort of behaviour, I do have to say that some of the decisions made by the referee were totally bewildering to say the least.

Ahhh well.

-4

Sunday 10th November 2013 – THERE’S ONE THING …

… about owning a bright yellow van, and that is that everyone knows who you are. So at about 12:15 when I was on my way to Villosanges, a red saloon car suddenly sat on my tail and started desperately flashing his lights.

It turned out to be Fabien from the football club. It seeemed that the heavy rain over the last few days has caused the river at Villosanges to burst its banks and seeing as how the footy ground is right at the side of the river, the ground is now under three feet of water. So that was that.

Mind you, listening to the weather this morning, I didn’t feel much like going out. In fact I didn’t feel much like getting out of bed either, but then again it’s Sunday and Day of Rest so there’s no problem with that.

I had a late breakfast and did some desultory cleaning up here – the typical Sunday stuff – and then I went off for the footy. The bakery in Pionsat is open on Sunday mornings and so I went in to pay my respects and restart the bread round that I cancelled when I went off to Brussels. No point in me going every day or every other day to buy my bread when I can have it delivered for less than the cost of the fuel to go and fetch it. And it was shortly after this that I was turned back.

Back here, I made some butties and did a little job of work. I’ve been buying loads of CDs just recently and keen readers of this rubbish will recall that a good while ago I had bought some CDracks from IKEA. I’d put up four of them but now the collection has overflowed, so I installed a fifth one. Just one more left, so I might make a little trip to IKEA in due course to buy a couple more.

After eating my butties I went off to Terjat. I’d heard that the 2nd XI were playing Premilhat at 15:00 and as you know I try to get out and see Turgid whenever there isn’t any local football here.

football club de foot as terjat premilhat allier franceThis was a match that had everything. Torrential rain, sleet, hailstorms, as well as bright sunlight. But the howling wind was pretty much a constant and made play from east to west rather a tricky proposition.

It also had a few other features as well, including a right hook that would have put Joe Frazier to shame and which put the Terjat right-back into the dressing room iwthout any help from any of his colleagues. This led to controversy, as you might expect, for at this level (the basement of football as far as I’m concerned) there are no bookings and no sendings-off. The offending player was taken off by his captain, but a substitute ws sent out and this threatened to bring the game to an unceremonious end.

However, wiser councils prevailed. The referee blew for half-time a minute or so later, and at the start of the second half, it was clear that Premilhat had returned to the field with just 10 men.

football club de foot as terjat premilhat allier francePlaying with the wind in their favour but with 11 against 11, Terjat were only trailing by 3-0 at half-time. But playing against the wind and against one man less, they were completely overwhelmed and let in another 4 goals, to lose by 0-7.

The fact that the score was 0-7 is laregly due to the Terjat goalkeeper who was effectively playing on his own against 5 or 6 Premilhat forwards and made probably 7 or 8 high-quality saves that would not have been out of place at Conference North level, and also due to the Premilhat attackers who missed a penalty, who hit the woodwork four times and who missed a load of sitters. If Premilhat had scored a dozen, no-one from Terjat could have complained.

Worse, though, is that Valentin, one of the heroes of Pionsat 2nd and 3rd XI’s valiant struggles, is now playing for Terjat, in his usual role out on the wing. He was an excellent player for Pionsat’s lesser sides but here he had a match that he would rather, I’m sure, forget completely. Not through any fault of his own, but simply that his colleagues were totally incapable of getting the ball forward to him.

I said to him after the game “what on earth are you doing with a team like this?”, for there’s no doubt that Terjat are the worst team that I have ever seen so far. And here I was – it was less than 8 days ago that i’d been watching a team that is playing in the Europa League.

Back here I lit the fire and made myself a pizza in the oven, and then watched some gridiron before going to bed. Tomorrow is a bank holiday so I’m going to have another lie-in.

-7

Wednesday 27th June 2012 – 28 DEGREES CELSIUS …

… it was this evening at 19:15. So you can see what the weather has been like all day.

After having several days of mediocre weather, cool, wet and windy, too. So you can tell that there was something afoot.

chateau sur cher puy de dome franceAs indeed there was. We had another one of our walks. Bound to be a heatwave (or a torrential downpour) today.

You may remember from a couple of weeks ago that Marianne and I went off to do a recce of Chateau-sur-Cher. In her capacity as approved tourist guide for the area she is doing a programme of walks around rhe various villages.

It’s the kind of thing that interests me deeply as you know, so I’ve gone along as Minder. And here we are today in Chateau-sur-Cher

church chateau sur cher river cher allier creuse puy de dome franceI have said, on many occasions and at great length too, that here in rural France, the situation of many old churches gives reason to believe that they are sited on old historic fortress sites.

The mounds and the sometimes stunning defensive positions of the buildings underlines this – for example, look at the view that you have from the site where the church at Chateau-sur-Cher is situated.

Any nobleman bent on maintaining his power in the region (and many were as bent as they come) would have had a fortress up here in a flash as soon as he were to see the excellent position

church chateau sur cher river cher allier creuse puy de dome franceAnything passing on the road down there would be under his immediate surveillance and he would soon pounce in a twinkling of an eye to launch an attack or to exact a toll.

The valley in the middle is the River Cher, to the left is the département of the Creuse and to the right is the département of the Allier. We ourselves ae in the département of the Puy-de-Dôme.

In the days before the unification of France, these were all independent Provinces and with the only bridge over the River Cher for miles being situated just down there at the foot of the hill, he would be in a magnificent position to control the trade, and his fortress would have been pretty-much impregnible to a surprise attack from another province

church chateau sur cher puy de dome franceHow this would have all come to pass would have been that the nobleman back in the days prior to the arrival of the Romans would have stuck his oppidum up here straight away.

Christianity slowly came to the area and when it took hold, he would have himself been amongst the first to be converted, and he would have provided a little place somewhere in his oppidum for worship to be held.

During the passage of time as the region settled into more peaceful ways (remember we are long before the period of the 100 Years War which devastated this region) the need for a fort grew less and the population expanded.

church chateau sur cher puy de dome franceHence the need for a bigger church, and much less need for a fort. And in the end, the fort would fall into decay.

And that’s exactly what has happened here in Chateau-sur-Cher because during some archaeological excavations in the past, they did actually find some evidence to suggest this was indeed a fortified oppidum occupied by the Gauls.

chateau sur cher puy de dome franceBut the key to the village was the fort. And why the fort was there was because of the key position that the promontory held – over looking the only practical crossing of the River Cher for many miles either upstream or downstream.

A packhorse train of goods or a herd of cattle crossing over the bridge from the Creuse into the Allier or the Puy-de-Dôme and our noble could swoop on it like a hawk and exact an appropriate amount of tribute.

chateau sur cher puy de dome franceThat estaminet there would have been an exciting lively place 150 years ago in the days of pack horses, drovers and horse-drawn waggons, everyone stopping for refreshment after a long arduous travel through the mountains

Today though, the estaminet is long-since closed and the village is pretty-much abandoned. From a heyday of well-over 700 people living here 150 years ago, the number of inhabitants now totals a miserable 78.

The sites of many abandoned buildings that have crumbled away into nothing are quite evident, and many other buildings are lying abandoned, likewise to suffer a similar fate.

The exodus to the urban regions of France from little communities like this is tragic. As you know, on my own property I have the remains of half a dozen houses.

machinery moulin de chambon chateau sur cher puy de dome franceWe ended up going for a walk along the bank of the river heading northwards, because there was something important to see here, at least from my point of view.

There’s a mill – the Moulin de Chambon – down here and although it’s long-since ceased to function and its machinery is all dismantled today, it’s nevertheless quite an interesting place to be

moulin de chambon chateau sur cher puy de dome franceInteresting for several reasons too.

  • the water arrives via a system of weirs and locks, rather than the more usual millrace.
  • it’s a hybrid mill, in that the water powers a system of pulleys and that other machinery – not just a corn-grinding wheel – was operated here. There was even talk of a sawmill in one of the sheds.
  • it’s an undershot wheel ie where the water passes underneath, not an overshot wheel where the water passes over the top

. It’s such a shame that I couldn’t have a better view of it.

moulin de chambon river cher chateau sur cher puy de dome franceIt was a shame that there were so few of us out for our walk today. It was a really beautiful afternoon and this was, from my own point of view, probably the most interesting walk that we have undertaken since we started doing them.

We were ready for a drink after all of this and so Marianne and I headed back to Pionsat and refreshment. Nothing of course available here.

And this was when I noticed the temperature.

I nipped back home quickly where the water in the solar shower was still 36°C, and had a nice warm shower. I needed it too.

This evening, while watching one of the most boring football matches that I have ever seen, I sorted out a pile of paperwork. That’s not like me. I must be feeling the heat.

You’re probably thinking “what an exciting day” but I’ve not told you the half of it yet.

This morning I was up and about long before the alarm went off. Before 08:00 in fact, and that’s not something that happens every day.

I worked for a few hours on my web pages and then went outside for some more tidying up and throwing of stuff down at the dechetterie. That’s all gone now and I can move about comfortably in the barn where the Ebro is.

And it’s been a few years since I’ve been able to do that.

>Tomorrow I need to measure up for the stuff that I need for the next stage of renovations, and to do some washing if the weather stays fine.

I’m also planning some more shelves in the barn now that I have the space to stick them up.

Watch this space.

-3

Sunday 29th January 2012 – IT’S BEEN SUNDAY TODAY …

TERJAT ALLIER marcillat allier virlet puy de dome france… and so I had a nice drive out in the countryside in the freezing (and I do mean “freezing” weather. In fact as far as Terjat, where the home team was playing Target in the Allier League 3rd Division.

It’s a beautiful setting up there at Terjat, and you can see right across the valley to the snow-covered hills in the background. It’s over there somewhere in those hills, at the back of Montaigut where I live.

Another thing about Sunday is that there’s no alarm clock and so with no-one ringing me up at some stupid time of the day, I can lie in until 10:24 without the least pang of guilt, in clean sheets and bedding the bed in its “double-bed” position, back in its old place by the little window.

Luxury!

The temperature in here was 13.2°C and that’s another thing that I like about this new fire that I’ve bought. With the old one, there wasn’t enough residual heat to keep the room warm once the fire went out and the temperature would often drop into single figures overnight.

But this fire keeps warm for ages and it’s maintaining a reasonable heat (up to now, anyway). and first thing that I did, even before breakfast, was to light the fire again. And I’ve been warm all day, which is really impressive and just what the doctor ordered.

In the warmth and comfort of my attic I’m well on the way towards the end of my presentation of the Trans-Labrador Highway – one or two more days and it will be done, I hope.

The football promised to be a real struggle, in the cold (coldest day of the winter so far) and the wind. And with Turgid being 3rd from bottom of the lowest possible league in the Allier, and Target being one place below them, I’m not quite sure what I expected. But it wasn’t much.

But having been overly critical of the football in the Allier, I have to say in fairness that this was a good game. Turgid played quite well, helped by the fact that Target, while they weren’t “bad”, they were rather clueless and ran out of ideas whenever they had the ball.

In the Allier, where there is no official referee, it’s the away side that provides the referee. And so it was a Target referee in the middle today. And he disallowed no fewer than three Terjat goals (two for offside – on one occasion overruling the *home* linesman) and one for pushing in the box.

To be fair I have to say that I was in no position to make any judgement.

But despite the handicap, Turgid scored two more goals that were allowed by the ref, and should have had three or four more. Had those disallowed goals been given and had Turgid won 5-0, it would have been a fair reflection of the match. Third from bottom in the worst league in the area?

Not on this showing they aren’t. I’ll be keeping my eye on the fixture list for whenever Pionsat don’t have a Sunday match, and I’ll wander along here again.

And this evening, with a rip-roaring fire and 24°C on the thermometer in the attic, I carried out what is fast becoming a ritual on Sunday evenings, and cooked pizza and garlic bread and rice pudding in the oven bit of my stove.

At €270 or however much it was, this woodstove is proving to be something of a bargain.

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Sunday 22nd January 2012 – I’VE ALWAYS WANTED …

… to watch a 3rd Division football match in the Allier, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

This is the lowest tier in football in the Allier (the Puy-de-Dôme has four) but having seen matches higher up the pyramid and not been impressed at all, I wondered how bad an Allier 3rd Division match would be.

As luck would have it, with the Puy-de-Dome still being on the trève, or “winter break”, this afternoon Terjat (about 8 miles from here) were entertaining (if that is the right word to use) their near-neighbours Sainte Thérence in a cut-throat local derby down in the basement of the 3rd Division.

Obviously, with nothing better to do (there was no paint drying and no grass growing anywhere in the vicinity) a visit to Terjat was called for.

And I wasn’t disappointed either, for it was predictably awful.

There was only one player on the field who looked reasonably competent (I’m excluding the Sainte Thérence goalkeeper – what on earth was someone like him doing playing in a team as awful as his?) and that was the Terjat centre-half.

It was clear after the first five minutes that nothing was ever going to get past him as long as he was on the pitch, and it didn’t either.

The trainer of Sainte Thérence clearly had the same opinion as me, and the talk that he gave to his team at half-time was just so predictable.

30 seconds after the restart, with the Terjat centre-half taking off after a loose ball down the right flank, two Ste Thérence players came after him and put him firmly, fairly (well, the referee thought that it was fair – others might not) and squarely into the advertising hoardings with a thump that was heard all over the Allier.

That was his match over.

And so was AS Terjat’s, because the result was predictable after that.

Next stop was to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse our radio programmes for the next month and Liz very kindly cooked tea and made cake, some of which found its way in a doggy-bag back to my house, for which I am extremely grateful

So we are recording tomorrow morning, and then I have to crack on with the next outstanding task – my presentation on the Trans-Labrador Highway for the village discussion group.

It’s all go here.

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Saturday 21st January 2012 – AND A QUIET …

… day today.

Which, after the hectic weekend I had last weekend, is no surprise.

For most of the day I was writing the scripts for the next few months-worth of radio programmes.And Liz and I will be spending most of our time talking rubbish.

I know that that’s what we usually do, but this time we mean it.

I was at a loss as to what subject to choose, but then on Tuesday I received my Puy-de-Dôme en Mouvement magazine in which one of the topics was the Departement’s plan to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.

Then on Thursday I received my monthly magazine from the Bank, in which one of the topics was donating unwanted goods to charities and good homes. A subject therefore immediately suggested itself

What with my thesis for my Open University Diploma in Pollution Control where I wrote about waste and landfills, I’m perfectly qualified to talk rubbish and many people have suggested that I’ve had plenty of practice over the years, so that was that.

I had an interruption at midday on Saturday for a shopping expedition to St Eloy-les-Mines where I spent nothing exceptional and bought nothing exciting, but that was that.

Saturday night was football.

Not at Pionsat as the Puy-de-Dôme football leagues are on a winter break – and doesn’t this weather make a mockery of the idea of a winter break? Six weeks with no footy in the Puy-de-Dôme with some of the mildest weather I have ever had in winter, and when the season restarts next weekend – just you watch _ we’ll be snowed in for a month!

Instead, I was at Marcillat just across the border in the Allier where their 1st XI took on Chantelle. This was a match that is nominally in a division one step higher than FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI but the standard of football in the Allier is total rubbish and it was an appalling match.

I’m not sure why I bothered.

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Sunday 13th November 2011 – I DON’T THINK …

… that I will be seeing the wild boar again.

The farmer came down this morning to bring his cows to the field behind the house. He went for his usual walk around to check the boundaries and he must have seen the wild boar tracks because half an hour later the hunters arrived.

I was once at a meeting where I heard a hunter describe hunting as “a noble sport”. I’ve no idea what is noble or sporting about 20 armed men ringing a thicket, sending a bunch of dogs in to flush out everything that is in there and then blasting into oblivion whatever comes fleeing out.

It’s all really sad and pathetic, and brings out the worst in human nature if you ask me. But it’s legal to do it and part of the French rural tradition, so I have to put up with it whether I like it or not.

faille de limagne plaine de limagne riviere allier loubeyrat puy de dome france>This afternoon I went down to Loubeyrat. FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI were playing there today and it’s a nice drive down.

We’ve been here before, a few years ago, and one thing that impressed me then was the view that could be had from the corner of the football ground. It’s right on the edge of the Faille de Limange – the fault line that runs down the centre of the département and there are views from here right across the plain and the valley of the River Allier all the way over to Vichy and the Montagne Bourbonnaise.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire football club de foot loubeyrat puy de dome franceIt was a real shame about the match though.

Although FC Pionsat St Hilare lost the match 3-0 they were desperately unlucky here. Two superb free kicks and a defensive howler were responsible for the goals but apart from that they did really well. This was probably the best that I’ve seen them play in recent times. They even managed to have a good shape that they kept throughout the match.

It’s just a pity that they can’t play like that every week.

Back here this evening I watched one of the videos that I had bought at Noz in Montlucon for a couple of Euros the other day. This was a Frank Sinatra film called Tony Rome.

Not only does Sinatra not sing in it (for which I am extremely grateful) he acts spectacularly well in his role as a private detective in Miami. If you know any of the Philip Marlowe films, then think of Humphrey Go-kart in The Big Sleep, bring it up to date by 20 years, film it in technicolour with good outdoor scenery and give it some meaningful and convincing co-stars and there you are.

It’s easily the best film that I have bought for quite a while and it will be one that will feature on my regular playlist.

There was a follow-up of it called The Lady In Cement. While it is very very rare for a follow-up to be anything like as good as the original, I shall be trying to track down a copy of that.

But it really was a good film, this.

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Sunday, 16th January 2011 – What a beautiful day.

Definitely the best of the summ… errrr … winter so far. Not only did we have the hottest temperatures of the winter, we had the sunniest too. Not a cloud in the sky all day. My batteries in the house are all fully-charged and the water heater (that uses up the excess electricity) ran for 2.5 hours and warmed up the water to 32°C. Not quite shower-warm but we are getting there.

But how ridiculous is this though, when just 12 days ago we had -8.4°C? It could only happen here in the Combrailles.

Today I finished off “holiday lettings” ready for recording tomorrow, and then I worked on a blog for the radio programmes – an important thing that needs doing seeing as we seem to be going nationwide (well – alright, into the Allier and the Creuse). The aim is of course to stream out programmes so that people who miss them or live outside the reception areas can pick them up.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire st bonnet puy de dome ligue football league franceSo after that it was off to St Bonnet to watch Pionsat’s 1st XI give them a good spannering. and I arrived 10 minutes late to find that they were already ahead 2-0. They won 4-0 in the end and that included missing a penalty, thanks to an excellent double-save by the St Bonnet keeper.

But this match was well-planned to be played in mid-winter. The heat that was generated on the field both on and off the ball would have certainly melted any ice that might otherwise have formed in any traditional kind of winter weather.

And so round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse our radio programmes this week. We are recording at Radio Arverne tomorrow and Radio Tartasse on Tuesday.

And now I’m back home in my warm unheated attic – two consecutive days that I haven’t had the heating on here – watching the Jets and the Patriots. And listening to the adverts – including one for Viagra “seek medical attention immediately if you have an erection that lasts for four hours”. At my age, it wouldn’t be medical attention that I would be seeking, I could tell you. It reminds me of the time that a new machine tools factory opened up in Crewe, and the proud owner put up his sign “O’Malley’s Tool Works”. So I rang him up and told him “so does mine, but I haven’t put up a sign about it”.

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Sunday 19th September 2010 – What do you make of this?

sncf notice giat railway station closed puy de dome franceI went to Giat for the footy this afternoon and as I was a little early I went for a wander around the town.

Of course it wasn’t long before I found myself at the railway station – on the line between Montlucon and Eygurande (the junction with the line from Clermont-Ferrand to Bordeaux). Even though the line is still listed as being open, no trains run and the service is assured by an express bus, but I was here to look at the station.

railway sleeper chairs narrow gauge standard gauge railway line giat puy de dome franceAnd if as by pure chance I noticed this railway sleeper just here. – the second (and also the third) up from the bottom. The rails are firmly attached to the sleepers of course, and set at “standard gauge” – which is 4’8½”.

But if you look closely you can see other bolt holes and impressions in the wood where other chairs have sat on the sleepers at one time. And although I didn’t have a measure with me, a quick and rough estimation put the centre of these chairs, where the rails might be, at about 1 metre apart.

sncf abandoned railway station giat puy de dome france1 metre rings a bell of course – it’s our old friend the Ligne Economique up in the Allier and on a couple of occasions the Ligne Economique shared a set of sleepers and a common track bed with the standard gauge lines, especially in bay platforms at shared railway stations. And when the Ligne Economique closed down, the lines in these bay platforms were for the most part ripped up. So this has got me wondering if the sleepers from the ripped-up bay platforms were put into store for reuse.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire condat giat voingt ligue de football league puy de dome franceThe football at Giat was a real “game of two halves”. In the first period Pionsat swarmed all over the opposition. They scored 2 and they could have had 20 without too much effort.

But at half-time they went to sleep and in the second half Condat-Giat-Voingt went on the attack. They pulled one back and weren’t all that far from getting a second. The transformation was remarkable.

After the game I had to go to Terry’s to bleed the fuel system on the tractor. The quickest route between Giat and Terry’s passes through Pontaumur where I refereed last weekend so I had to stop and put on some dark glasses and a false beard.

We were ages trying to bleed the fuel system and it wasn’t working at all. There was clearly something I missed so I asked Terry to look on the internet under “bleeding diesel”. He replied that we may as well look under “f*cking petrol” and we would still have the same result. But we eventually solved it. The diesel was filthy and it seemed that when the tank ran dry the level of dust and scum floating on the top had settled down and blocked the top of the tap inside the tank. Draining the diesel (mostly all over me) and dismantling the tap and we could clean everything out. Once we’d cleaned it and bled it (and it worked this time) we got it running. And I was paid in food – something that is always welcome.

But on the way to Liz and Terry’s Strawberry Moose and I saw a deer. As it was a female, His Nibs wanted to chase it but I had to tell him … “if you are anything round here you are a stag – S-T-A-G – the second letter is not an H.

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Thursday 16th September 2010 – You’ve probably noticed …

… that a photo has miraculously appeared for yesterday’s image. That’s because I took it this morning first thing before I did anything else.

If you take a photo in the evening just after you have finished the cement is never dry and so you can’t really see the pointing so well.

So after that, and after breakfast, I started on my notes for the tacot. And I bet you are wondering what the tacot is. Look in any idiomatic French dictionary and you’ll see that it means “old banger”, as in some kind of disreputable car. But if you translated it to “rattletrap” or “jalopy” then you’ll understand that it refers to the Lignes Economique – the narrow-gauge light railways that littered the Allier at the turn of the 20th Century.

Marianne, the local history expert, found a book on them and has lent it to me, but she wants it back before I go to Canada at the end of the month. And so I only have 10 days or so to make notes.

It’s an exciting book – not because of its style and the way that it’s written – but more the fact that it’s written in some kind of reporter-style sensationalist account. It recounts the history of the duel between a politician and the railway manager and a few other exciting bits (life is not all boring around here, you know) but it’s strangely short on a good deal of technical information that you would have in a British book on the subject. Clearly they are more interested in the social side of events rather than the technical side.

The line at Marcillat en Combraille is featured in it, as you might expect, and it’s a monument to the shortsightedness and pigheadedness of local politicians. The line was proposed to run from the mines at Villefranche through the steelworks at Commentry, down to the limestone at Marcillat en Combraille (my guess about that was a good one) and then on to the main line into the wilderness of South-western France at Evaux-les-Bains. But when they had the quote they decided that it was too expensive and so they would shorten it. They relied upon a standard-gauge railway line frm another company to bring the coal from the mines down a branch line to where the ligne metrique would now start (involving a needless trans-shipment that would cost money and cause delays of course), and then stop the line at Marcillat en Combraille. With Evaux being in a different Departement (the Creuse) it was a case of “if they want it they can pay for it”.

Once the line was opened however, the standard gauge company closed down the branch line and ran their own line down to Commentry instead. Thus, with no through traffic to and from Commentry to the south-west of France, as provided for in the original estimations, the line quietly stagnated

But if you remember the famous bridge that I investigated several weeks ago, I’ve ruled it out as the bridge for the tacot. In the book that Marianne lent me, there’s a diary by a traveller from Paris who took his week’s annual holiday to ride all of the lines of the tacot d’Allier, all 272 kms of them.

He quite clearly describes the route from Commentry and he says that it follows a river valley well to the south (not the north, where my bridge is) of Durdat-Larequille, and makes the point that the village is “away to the north” of the station. Ahh well.

This afternoon I’ve been pointing again and harvesting veg, and tonight I’ve been cooking tea – the same as last night as it happens – and making some damson jam-type of stuff to flavour my plain soya desserts.

I’m enjoying life in the countryside like this.

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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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