Tag Archives: Gorge de la Sioule

Friday 24th June 2022 – CALIBURN, STRAWBERRY MOOSE AND I …

… travel miles on our trips out.

As you can see, at one point we were driving over the Col de la Sibérie, the Siberian Pass”.

Not much chance of a snowstorm or a white-out here in this weather but it’s the thought that counts.

Yes, we don’t ‘arf get about a bit.

We got about quite a bit during the night too. I started off somewhere in Scotland on top of one of these Peel Tower things looking at a couple of lorries parked on the side of the road caught in a swirling fog. That’s all that I really remember about this now

Then we were playing a game with these toy soldiers, busy setting ourselves up in position. All of a sudden the Russian army attacked . We were still trying to find the cannon that were in this collection and other artillery and position them on the board but never mind – the Russians were still attacking and we were beginning to panic. All of a sudden I had a marvellous idea. I pressed “rewind” and sent the game back to the very beginning with the idea that we’d hurry and set up the guns now, make sure that we found the correct ones etc before we hit “play” and started the game again. There was something involving Ingrid in this as well, to do with her animals but I can’t remember what it was about now.

I had some students from school and I had them come to complete a survey asking them questions about first aid, emergency services and a pile of all kinds of different stuff that I can’t remember now. They had to sit there with their piece of paper and write out the answers to some questions that I was asking, which I did. When I was about 2/3 the way through my brother came in and asked for someone, that she had to go. I thought that I’d quickly ask the third question because it was probably the most important but he was there urging us on and trying to make this girl leave. It all became quite tense. I wished that I’d started this survey a little earlier or done it a little quicker but he was there and just wouldn’t leave without the idea of this girl packing up in mid-survey and walking off to wherever it was that she had to go.

Having had their way all stopped from doing something a group of us went off to look for them and record their antics and behaviour but that was all that I remember of this unfortunately.

In the previous dream I remember that I was driving a coach, trying to get this coach ready to go on tour with a full load of people. We had to do all kinds of organising, sorting out the food and cleaning up, entering the used food in the bin etc. At one point someone in a car came along and parked nearby and went into the house. Whoever I was with said something like “that person is going to ignore us” so I made a very pointed point of shouting “hello” to him and embarrassed him into coming over and talking to us, making sure that he did. I said to the person with “oh yes he’ll remember us next time he comes”. We were preparing to leave when someone came over to say that two brothers had been released from prison which I thought was good. On the coach were these 2 young girls serving and we were preparing to leave.

Finally I was in London at the block of flats where my Aunt Mary was living. I saw what I thought was her and Michael – I saw them a couple of times so I decided that I would in fact go along and say hello. When I caught them in the corridor I started to have a little chat. When I was ready to leave I borrowed the ladders off the roof rack of another vehicle to take with me to do something. I got in my van and the fuel was very low so I thought that i’d coast to the petrol station down at the bottom of the hill. Somehow the van ran away without me and went off down this hill. It smashed into a few more vehicles. In the end I ended up with another van and exactly the same thing happened again. While I was trying to push it to start it it ran away and fired up without me and ran off down this hill. I could see it from where I was standing all the way down this hill and pile through a row of bollards at the bottom by a traffic light onto the pavement making quite a mess of everything. There were all these people crowding around it trying to find out what had happened. Of course I was a long way away at the top of this hill and I couldn’t do anything at all to stop it.

After all of that it’s no surprise that I was totally wasted this morning.

A tea in bed again did a little to revive me and a shower also helped but I wasn’t really in any mood to say goodbye.

There was all of my stuff, such as it was, to put into the back of Caliburn.

And those regular readers of this rubbish will recall, if they have been regular readers of this rubbish for years, is that the Gorges of the Sioule are phenomenally famous for the hanging clouds that loiter around down there early in the morning and even from miles away you can follow the trace of the river by looking at where the hanging cloud is.

Anyway, say goodbye I did to Rosemary and Mr and Mrs Ukrainian. Miss Ukrainian was still asleep so I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to her and to my surprise I found that I was quite disappointed by that.

The drive through the Auvergnat and the Burgundian countryside was interesting. Once I arrived in Vichy the Lady Who Lives In The SatNav brought me a different way that didn’t include the expressway. We spent our time driving over the hills of Burgundy and through a variety of mountain passes.

On the way over I stopped a couple of times for shopping and for lunch and I would even have had a little siesta but somehow a fly was trapped inside Caliburn and made such a racket when it wasn’t trying to land on me, and irritated me when it did so I gave it up as a bad job.

One of the passes over which I drove was the Col de Siberié, the “Siberian Pass” as you have seen in a previous photo.

This is actually rather a sad place. It was the site of an old Hotel, the Hotel de la Sibérie, long-since demolished, where three refugees from the German forced labour progamme had fled here to take shelter.

Of course, it goes without saying that the Vichy Milice turned up in force and attempted to take away the escapees.

Despite spending a while trying to find out, I’ve yet to come across a verified account of what actually happened at the Hotel de la Sibérie but the three men involved, Jean Fournier, Marcel Honnet and Florent Andlauer, were taken away horizontally in wooden boxes.

It’s said that torture was involved, the three victims ended up being shot, and the milice set the building alight.

The monument that you see here was erected on 26th May 1946

There is said to be a document giving details of the events but it’s in the archives départementales but I didn’t have time to go there. I’ve asked them for a copy but I imagine that it will be a long wait.

It was about 15:30 when I arrived at Jean-Marc’s. It was his family whom I stayed on a school exchange when I was 16 and we found each other via the internet subsequently.

We’ve seen each other a few times and so we had a good chat about our latest news and about old times too although as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my “old times” are in a book that is well and truly closed and filed away in a locked cupboard.

Occasionally some of my memories crop up in my dreams and that’s the best place for them, if they are going to have to surface at all.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … vinyard I invited him and his wife out for a meal in exchange for a bed for the night. The meal at the Ambroisie was certainly different and the staff was excellent. I’ve been to this restaurant before and I’ll go back again.

Back at Jean-Marc’s later, I bought an oven. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my table-top oven is not very reliable and nothing in it cooks as it did. One of Jacqueline’s daughters bought an oven, a fitted oven, but it’s far too big for her small studio so she was selling it at a more-than-reasonable price. The kind of price where if it won’t work than I won’t lose very much.

By pure coincidence I have a friend who lives near Munich about half a mile from one of the largest IKEAs in Europe so if I make it as far as his place I’ll go and buy a kitchen unit into which I can fit it.

But that’s not for now. Right now I’m off to bed. I’m going round to see Jean-Marc’s mum tomorrow morning. She’s a lovely lady and I like her very much

Tuesday 15th March 2016 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

… for a walk after lunch this afternoon.

And quite right too, because it really was a beautiful day.

I took my time and slowly walked to the end of the lane and then up the main road for 400 metres or so to the turning to Toureix, enjoying the warm temperature of the sunny spring afternoon. From here, you can look down the hill to the turning to Le Fournial and further on over the Gorge de la Sioule.

And I learnt something new today too, which is always a good thing. There’s a huge steel mill about 10 miles from here, right out the other side of Les Ancizes in the countryside. It’s the most surprising thing to find in the countryside and I’ve always wondered why. And now I know the answer.

It turns out that when the built the Viaduc des Fades at the turn of the 20th Century, they correctly identified the potential of the water in the Gorge de la Sioule as a source for hydro-electric generation.

They weren’t wrong either. Today, there’s a big modern dam right across the valley but back in those days 100 years ago they installed a basic, simple hydro-electric turbine which produced its first electricity in 1917.

And then they discovered something important. The generator was a success but they had overlooked to find a market for the electricity. No-one around here had electricity in those days and the transmission of electrical energy was in its infancy and there was nothing like a National Grid to distribute the power.

And so if they couldn’t send the electricity out to clients, they needed to bring in a client from elsewhere. And hence the arrival of Duval’s.

As you know, I had an early night last night. It took me ages to drop off to sleep and once I’d gone off, I remembered almost nothing. I really must have been exhausted. There are just snippets of this and that on the dictaphone that don’t mean much, but then I suppose that after the marathon epics of the last couple of nights, you would welcome the rest.

We started off at the football again during one of my nocturnal rambles and strangely enough, when I awoke in the middle of the night I could name the entire Sheffield United starting line-up but in the time that it took me to reach for the dictaphone, the whole lot had disappeared completely. There was a small guy leading the attack and another small guy in the team and he had been whingeing at me about something or other that had actually started off this particular dream. And I couldn’t recall that either.
But not to worry. I was soon back to sleep, going off somewhere with Liz in her Volkswagen and all of a sudden she came over really, really ill and I had to help her back to the car. I called Terry and he appeared too, so we both helped her back. He was really upset and panicking abut how ill she was and being really nice to her, encouraging her back to the car even though she was in agony. Back home, I was making this salad with rice and chick peas, all kinds of things. I was having to boil up these ingredients separately to go into this rice and someone else was helping me. Liz was there supervising and giving directions. We had boiled up something for quite some time and stuck it in this salad but there was something else on the boil, which I thought was something quick and so I tipped that into the salad as well. It turned out to be dried chick peas so I asked Liz how long they needed to be cooked, as I imagined that it was quite some time. She said that they needed just 2 minutes, and so seeing as they had been on the boil for longer than that, that was OK. I then was curious to know why, if they only needed two minutes, we hadn’t cooked them with the rest of the food. All of this, by the way, was going on in the really cramped kitchen that we had in Davenport Avenue when we were kids.

That was basically it, I suppose. But then I was awake early and downstairs before the alarm went off. I’ve not done too much though because I’m still not in the mood for very much, but I’ve finished off all of the notes for 2015 and done the dictaphone notes for October 2014 and part of them for September 2014 too. But my heart wasn’t in it really – I could do with a change of scenery right now but I’m in no fit condition to do anything about it.

I’m on the move tomorrow anyway because I have the hospital. The allergy clinic followed by the blood transfusion service. Neither of these would have been necessary had the removal of my spleen done its job, but it’s no use crying over spilt milk now.

And so I suppose that I’d better have an early night.

And you can all have an early night too. Only 903 words tonight – I’m clearly losing my grip.

And quote of the week must be that from Terry, listening with only half an ear to the football on TV –
“Manchester City have SEX OFFENDERS in the team tonight???”
“No, Terry” I replied. “He said ‘six defenders'”.

Sunday 25th October 2015 – I’VE RARELY SEEN …

… such a one-sided football match as this. It wasn’t that Charensat were any good because they weren’t – it’s just that Pionsat were so flaming awful. For the first half, the whole team was asleep – their bodies were out on the pitch but the rest of them were miles away. For the second half, three or four of them managed to wake up and it was slightly better, but equally, three or four could have stayed in the dressing room for all the good that they did and no-one would have missed them. Pionsat, relegated from the 1st Division last season, are going to be spending several long, cold winters in Divison 2 if they can’t get it together.

Time and time again, Charensat swarmed right through the Pionsat defence as if it wasn’t there (which it wasn’t) and there were about 20 one-on-ones with Matthieu in the Pionsat goal. A few he saved, but by far the most of them were ballooned miles over the bar or miles wide of the post. The Charensat finishing was appalling. On one occasion Pionsat’s defence, such as it was, stayed around arguing with the linesman for not giving an offside instead of following up the ball while two of the Charensat players beamed down on Matthieu. He saved the first shot and had his defence been playing like grown-ups they would have intercepted the loose ball at the very least. But instead, the ball fell kindly to the other Charensat player, who blasted it about 30 feet over the bar, unmarked from about 10 yards out. This was totally embarrassing, from both teams’ points of view.

In fact several Pionsat players spent so much time arguing with the ref and the linesman instead of following the ball and it was totally unnecessary. Players of Pionsat’s experience should know better. In fact, one of Pionsat’s attackers, too busy arguing with the ref instead of concentrating on the game, was caught offside in what would have been a marvellous attacking position had he been paying attention.

Charensat did score one goal, and how they were limited to one is totally beyond me. They were completely in control of this match. And then we had the totally unbelievable. Matthieu kicked a long high ball right out of the area high up front. Cedric leapt up and headed it on over the defence, and Nico, running on, lobbed it over the keeper for the equaliser. The ball didn’t touch the ground until it was in the back of the net.

But like I said earlier, it’s going to be a long hard couple of years for Pionsat.

Now this morning, I would have had a lovely night’s long sleep except that Bane of Britain somehow confused things so that the reminder for the radio programmes went off this morning instead of tomorrow morning.

And I was on my travels too. I’d been in the far north of Labrador in a vehicle which was like a “Bigfoot” but with a car body of the late 1940s and how that cruised over the uneven roads. Back in civilisation I’d met up with Nerina again and we’d spent a while in a cheap hotel in some dingy town before I had to leave. Given the price of the return ticket on public transport, I went to the darker side of town to buy a really cheap car (I actually did this once in 1995 when I was in London and ended up with a £70 Ford Cortina instead of a Eurostar ticket, and on another occasion it was cheaper to hire a car and put the petrol in to drive from London to Bath rather than pay the fare for the train). Anyway, we had a good look around all of this area at the cheap cars for sale and one of the vehicles at which I was looking was a BMC MG-1300 in white and pale green. I was wondering whether I should ask her if she still had her Wolseley but I decided that it was best not to sho too much interest.

After breakfast I had a relax and didn’t do too much at all. But by about 13:30 the temperature in the verandah was 19°C, the temperature in the 12-volt immersion heater was 36°C thanks to the sun that we had and thus the fully-charged batteries, and so I had a tepid shower in the corner of the verandah with the warm water and a jug. And nice it was too, especially now that I have clean clothes too.

Still plenty of time before I needed to go and so I cut my hair and made myself some butties, and then I was off to Charensat.

After the football match I went round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse the radio programmes that we will be recording.

The way that I went is not a road that I take very often. It’s from St Priest down to the Barrage des Fades and for the first time today I noticed that at a certain spot there’s a stunning view of the Gorges de la Sioule and also of the Viaduc des Fades from an angle from which I’ve never seen it before.

We did what we had to and Liz made a beautiful vegan meal complete with ginger cake, and Terry and I made a few plans.

Back here, I haven’t done much and I’ll be having an early night. We have a lot to do tomorrow.

-1

Friday 5th June 2015 – CALIBURN IS BACK

I told you the other day that I had had a phone call to say that Caliburn was ready. And so today, Liz came to pick me up and we cleared off down to St Gervais to rescue him.

I had set the alarm for 07:30 as usual but I was wide awake, up and about at 07:00 without any prompting. I had an early breakfast, I remembered to put the money out for the boulangère and I was good and ready well before 09:00 when Liz was due. I walked down to the end of the lane to meet her.

The bill for Caliburn came to €370, most of which was for a new caliper. And I will say that I have never had brakes as good as this, not even when Caliburn was brand new. This was money well spent, and it makes a total mockery of the €2500 estimate that I had from Barrat Ford of Montlucon.

Liz and I went for a coffee afterwards, where we bumped into someone whom I knew from Sauret football club. We had a lengthy chat about football, as you might expected, but one thing that I did notice was that there were 10 or so people in the bar there and they were all totally pickled – at 10:15 in the morning. It was all quite amusing, not at all aggressive as you might find in the UK, and sitting out on the terrace in the glorious sunshine watching the world go by, you couldn’t be anywhere else except in France. It’s a feeling that you can’t explain to anyone who has never spent any length of time here.

I went round to Rosemary’s afterwards to see how she was getting on. Instead of going by the main road, I went by the old road round the back of St Gervais down the Gorge de la Sioule to Chateauneuf les Bains and then along the road through the gorge to the Pont de Menat. That’s one of the most beautiful roads in the whole of France, I reckon.

We had a good chat and Rosemary even made lunch which was very nice of her. I went off later to do my shopping and was back here by the end of the afternoon.

I’ve spent the evening making a database of all of the music that I’ve played on the rock programmes. This had been getting out of hand so with the new laptop I’ve downloaded an SQL program and I’ve been busy trying to remember everything that I learned when I did my Diploma in Computing at University. You’ve no idea how much I’ve forgotten – or maybe you have. After all, I’m not getting any younger.

As well as that, I’ve been extracting soundbytes from the old time radio programmes that I’ve been downloading. I need to build up my library to use in the rock programme for my “studio guests”

I’ve had the fan on all evening too. The temperature up here reached 33°C this afternoon and outside, it was 36°C at one time. This means that it’s either going to snow tomorrow or else we are going to have a terrific thunderstorm.

Friday 17th October 2014 – IT’S ALL EXCITEMENT HERE.

Yes, it’s all happening here at Pionsat.

I went a’shopping this afternoon at Pionsat on my way home, and look what I found in a lean-to on the car park at the Intermarché.

Yes, Pionsat now has its own launderette. Not much of a one, that’s for sure, but a launderette just the same. And not only that, there’s a 18kg machine here. That’s good news for me because I haven’t washed the cover on my bed settee in the five years that I’ve had it because I’ve not found a machine big enough to take it since the launderette in Montlucon closed down all those years ago.

And so on the next fine day that we have when I’m at home, guess what I’ll be doing?

And so I did say “on my way home”. That’s because I’ve been out and about this morning. Terry rang me up to ask if I could help him cut some wood.

It was a warm morning today, and with all of the dampness that we’ve had these last few days, it wasn’t difficult to guess where the Gorge de la Sioule is. There is the mist gradually rising up out of the Gorge and dissipating into the atmosphere.

It certainly makes a good photograph, especially in the early morning.

The photo was taken from the birdwatching centre at St Gervais d’Auvergne, and I wasn’t alone here either. There was a pile of other photographers here admiring the view, although I’m not quite sure what it was that was of such an interest to them.

Still, chacun à son gout as they say around here.

Terry and I chopped up a good pile of wood this morning and Liz made a good lunch for us. Then they went off to the dentist and I came home, via the Intermarché at Pionsat.

Back here, I carried on with the tidying up and despite all that I’ve been doing, I can’t see any improvement, and I can’t see any empty space either. I don’t know why this should be, but there we are.

I’ll just have to keep on at it until something happens or that I die of boredom.

-1

Monday 21st October 2013 – HERE’S SOMEONE WITH A SORE HEAD

This was what greeted me this morning on my way round to Cécile’s house. Someone clearly not paying enough attention last night.

Its not the first time that Ive encountered a car in a ditch of course. Keen readers of this rubbish will recall that on my way to the footy at Combronde a few years ago I encountered another one in a ditch near Menat. On that occasion the driver would indeed have had a headache as there was a head-shaped dent in the windscreen just above the steering wheel, but in the case of this car there was no such evidence (I did look).

But just for a change I was up early, as I needed to be. First stop was fuel at the Intermarche at Piosat, and second was at Marianne’s to pick up Cécile’s keys. Then, passing by the car in the ditch I went on to her house.

At the top of the Font Nanaud there was this spectacular site waiting to greet me. Usually, quite early in the morning, there’s a hanging cloud that sits in the Gorges de la Sioule and when you pass by the Birdwatching Centre beyond St Gervais, you can see it.

Today though, it had well-overflowed the Gorges and St Gervais, just down there in that valley, was totally overwhelmed. I hadn’t seen it that dramatically before.

Once I’d sorted out Cécile’s affairs I went off chaud-pied to St Gervais to pick up Liz who had taken the Punto for its controle technique, and we shot off to Gerzat to record the Arverne sessions of Radio Anglais.

That wasn’t as easy as it might have been eiter as Bernard had forgotten that we were coming, and then everything that could possibly go pear-shaped did go pear-shaped and if we had had the time I would have done it all over again.

I took Liz for lunch afterwards as she deserved it, and then I came home. I should have gone to Brussels this evening too but what with a very late night last night (I can’t believe how stressful it is these days dealing with other people’s problems when they don’t really want them dealt with) and I wasn’t up for a 750km drive through the night.

I went to bed instead.

-5

Sunday 1st September 2013 – NOW ISN’T THIS A LOVELY …

… place to stop and eat your morning bagel? This is a place called Pointe au Lac just outside Trois Rivieres and the lac concerned, Lac St PIerre, isn’t actually a lake at all but a widening of the St Lawrence.

Just up the road a little is one of the earliest water mills in the whole of Canada, dating to the early 17th Century, and I’m going for a visit there in due course, but let me eat my bagel first and while I do, I’ll tell you abaout my parking space last night.

I didn’t see the sign that said two hours parking only and any longer than that involves all kinds of diabolical punishments, none of which happened, and I didn’t see the sign that said “long stay parking around the back of the service station” either which was a shame, because it would have been much quieter than were I was sleeping. However the noise didn’t disturb me for most of my stay – I must have been tired.

So now I’ve eaten my bagel we can go to the moulin. It’s actually two mills in one, with two water wheels. One wheel powers the corn-grinding apparatus and the other, a later addition, powers a sawmill and in the sun it all looks beautiful.

But Pointe-au-Lac is a surprising community. Not only is there the mill but an addiction centre for drugs, alcohol and gambling, a friary with a high school that burnt down (like everything else in Quebec – there is a great deal or arson about in the province) in 1994 and a church in the graveyard of which there is someone resting ready for the resurraction (he’ll have a long wait) and someone else who claimed to be the son of Noah, presumably by his second wife, Joan of Arc.

I had a leisurely drive along the St Lawrence as far as St Anne de la Perade and then turned inland as I had a little mission to undertake.

. We had a few moments of light hilarity when a local estate agent in my neck of the woods in France advertised a property for sale in St Christine d’Auvergne, thinking that it was the one along the banks of the Sioule. However, despite its name, it is actually in Quebec and so here’s a photo of it just to prove that it does exist.

From there I went to visit a local hydro-electric plant and it was such an extraordinary spot that I decided that I would spend the night there.

And you’ll all have to wait until tomorrow to see the photo.

-3

Sunday 9th September 2012 – ONE THING …

… about going to watch the footy with FC Pionsat St Hilaire is that you get to go to some really spectacular places.

The 2nd XI were playing at Chateaugay earlier this afternoon and the road up to the football ground has probably the best view that I have ever seen so far.

Way, way, way down there below us is the Michelin tyre testing ground and then over to the right is Gerzat where we record our programmes for Radio Arverne.

And if there had been less haze we could probably have seen right the way across to Roanne. It really was magnificent.
fc pionsat st hilaire fcpsh football chateaugay puy de dome france As for the football though, it was a disaster.

FC Pionsat St Hilaire started with just 9 players. A hasty telephone call brought along 3 more, somewhat late, and after 15 minutes there was something of a team out there.

With a smattering of new players this season it looked slightly-better organised.

But not for long.

Fabien, who seems to have found a little niche playing in the central defence, had to hobble off.

That meant a reorganisation with Xavier, who played up front for the 3rd XI last season, going up front and Bertrand dropping to midfield and Sébastien dropping to central defence.

When the new right-back was injured, Fabien came back on to replace him but was clearly struggling and it was clear that he was just a passenger in the side

Fabien was pushed up front, which is the correct thing to do with an injured defender and Xavier was put at right-back.

Xavier is a big, awkward, ungainly centre-forward – the type that causes a lower-league defence all kinds of problems in the opposition penalty area, but ball-control and tackling are not, unfortunately his strongpoints.

Shortly after this, someone in the Chateaugay side stood on François’ hand and so that was him off the field.

The willing and good-natured Xavier, who had done his best in goal a couple of times for the 3rd XI, valiantly took over there but the result was really a foregone conclusion.

As for the FC Pionsat St Hilaire 1st XI, it’s clear just how much Jérôme animated the forward line of the team and how much they depended upon him for their results.

With him gone, Michael Bucaud suspended and Matthieu Sikorski injured, they had nothing to offer up front which is totally amazing for a FC Pionsat St Hilaire 1st XI side.

I can’t remember if Cedric, the star centre-forward, actually managed a shot on goal. The service he was receiving was non-existent.

Two controversial decisions decided this match.

The referee overrruled a linesman in an offside decision and allowed play to continue.

So while the Pionsat defenders were waiting for the whistle in response to the flag, the Clermont la Glacière forward popped the ball in the net.

I know the referee (we had quite a chat in the interval) and he has a voice like a foghorn and I certainly didn’t hear him shout for play to continue – and neither did anyone else.

Five minutes later an FC Pionsat St Hilaire forward catches the ball brilliantly on his body and then volleys it beautifully from 25 yards right past the keeper into the net.

The other linesman signals for handball – and I was right level with play and if he has his hands there then I’m going back to school to re-learn all my anatomy – and the referee, miles from play, awards a free kick to Clermont la Glacière.

How the ref saw the incident when he was so far away and the player’s body in the way I just do not know, but I’m going to get myself a pair of eyes just like those just as soon as I possibly can.

Back on the way home, I stopped at the fruit stall at Combronde for some grapes and some melon and then I went round to Rosemary’s to drop off some stuff that I had bought for her in Montlucon.

I had a little pause though because just on one of the bends there was a magnificent view right across the Gorge de la Sioule to St Gervais d’Auvergne perching proudly on its hilltop.

That had to be a moment to reach for the Nikon D5000 and the telephoto lens.

Hard to believe that St Gervais d’Auvergne is a good 15 kilometres further on from here, isn’t it? A good purchase, this lens.

Rosemary and I had quite a chat too – more of a gossip in fact. But that’s not important when you are amongst good friends.

But she had a laugh about me and my grapes – that I can sit and eat through a whole bag of grapes at one sitting.
“You’ll be wanting to go to the bathroom all the time” she said.
“Not me, Rosemary. Once a day, 07:30, every morning, regularly as clockwork!”
That’s very convenient and useful, Eric!”
“Not when I don’t wake up until 07:45, Rosemary, it isn’t.”

-1

Friday 8th June 2012 – I WAS UP …

… this morning at 08:30.

That was surprising seeing as how it was well after 04:00 and starting to dawn when I went to bed, never mind to sleep.

What was the spur to my leaving the depths of my darkest pit was a phone call telling me that I was going to have a brief visit. I had a few things to do before then, tidying up being not the least of them either.

After that, it was off to visit Rosemary. She’s had car issues and needed something sorted out at the garage, but didn’t understand what the guy there was telling her.

And so yours truly was summoned to appear …

Rosemary lives in one of the most beautiful parts of the Gorges de la Sioule and the view from the road up to her house is phenomenal – it’s well worth the price of the drive up to visit her.

But anyway, we sorted out her garage man and that part of the story ended happily ever after.

Seeing as I was out and about and I am going to be busy this weekend I nipped to LIDL in St Eloy-les-Mines and did some shopping for next week – no sense in me going out tomorrow if i’m out today.

This afternoon I steam-cleaned the kitchen area of the verandah. Well, some of it anyway. It was in a pretty sorry state.

But I think that I ought to spend some time in my busy schedule doing some kind of cleaning up. The place is looking unhealthy after my long absence just now.

-1

Thursday 17th November 2011 – HAVE A CLOSE …

… look at this photo and see if you can spot where the Gorge de la Sioule might be.

It’s one thing I like about going out to Liz and Terry’s early in the morning – the fact that they live right on the edge of the gorge. And because the gorge is so deep and so steep the sun can’t shine into it until it has well-risen.

That means that the surrounding ground is quite warm whereas at the bottom of the gorge the air is quite cold and damp. And when the sun is high enough to enter the gorge it dramatically heats the cold damp air and you have clouds of condensation rising up from the gorge quite spectacularly.

Liz had to do some kind of newspaper interview the other week, in which she described the Combrailles as “The Land That Time Forgot”, and you can see clearly exactly what she means by that.

But it’s not just that view from here (in case you haven’t guessed, we’re at the bird-watching site at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne again) that is spectacular. There’s a spectacular view across to the Puy de Sancy and the Mont Dore away over there.

All swathed in a hanging cloud or two too.

And if I’m not mistaken, I reckon that I can see some snow up there too. Winter is definitely icumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph

It’s a litle-known fact that when the system of départements was created, what is today the départements of the Puy-de-Dome was to be called the départements of Mont-Dore – which is after all the most significant feature of the region. However, the locals objected, saying that it sounded too much like the mont d’or – a mountain made of gold – and would give the impression that this was an extremely wealthy region.

And so today Terry and I bricked up one of the doorways (their house is two small cottages knocked into one) and fitted the window in the upper half, and then fitted the new door in the other doorway.

And it wasn’t as straight-forward as you might think either. The old doors had been made-to-measure for the doorways and of course, as we discovered as we were trying to fit everything, the door openings were not built straight. That was a complication we didn’t need.

Fitting the door was exciting though. We spent 10 minutes trying to make it seat on the hinge pins,and you’ve no idea how easily it fitted when we took out the wedge that was trapped underneath it.

And we also spent half an hour trying everything that we could to make the door close and you’ve no idea how well it closed when we took the packing strip out of the aluminium closing tray.

Ahhh well. You live and learn, I suppose.

Anyway,tomorrow I’ll be fitting the wind turbine if the weather holds, and now that I have my diamond core drills, I’ll be drilling from the house through into the lean-to and running cables there.

If I’m not careful,I might even have light and power in there tomorrow night.

-1

Friday 28th October 2011 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I took a pic from the birdwatching platform near St Gervais d’Auvergne just up the road from where Liz and Terry live?

Quite some considerable time, I bet.

I was up and about quite early (well, early for me anyway) this morning and after something of a hasty breakfast, in the words of the great Mars Bonfire I got my motor running and headed out for the Highway

It was a cool damp morning but it was heating up quite quickly (well, for this time of year anyway) and this was causing the mist to rise out of all the hollows.

It doesn’t half look impressive when it does that, particularly from up here, and you don’t need any guesses to work out exactly where the Gorges de la Sioule might be when it’s like this. It didn’t half look impressive and it’s one of the sights that everyone should aim to see when they come to visit the Combrailles.

Liz and Terry’s house is down there somewhere and sure enough, they were bathed in mist when I arrived.

Anyway, I picked Liz up and we went to Gerzat for the Radio Arverne sessions of Radio Anglais. We were there for just after 10:00 and so we went for a walk around the town for 20 minutes before Bernard turned up.

It took just over an hour to record the four sessions today – even though Bernard was rather … errr … confused and disorientated. He just now has rather a lot of editing to do.

Back at Liz and Terry’s, Terry and I had quite a long chat about things and then I came back here.

It was raining of course after lunch and so in a change of plan I’ve done a huge amount of tidying up on the ground floor and the first floor and it actually looks like something now to a certain degree. I’ve also done some tidying up outside and that has helped, especially as the vegetation is now dying down for winter and some lost articles are now coming into view.

And tidying up as well. How about that? And to tell you the truth I would have been tidying up this afternoon even if the weather had been absolutely gorgeous because there is a cunning plan looming in the background.

-2

Tuesday 24th May 2011 – I know it’s not much, but …

… it’s all my own and grown with my own fair hands.

Yes, the strawberries are coming into season and this evening for tea I had the four that have ripened so far. It’s impressive that I’ve got some as well after the devastating winter that we had.

It put the seal on the day too, because it was beautiful. Liz and I recorded our programmes at Radio Tartasse and Radio Arverne, and in between we went for lunch at the side of the River Sioule in Chateauneuf-les-Bains, in the glorious weather that we had.

We went from Chateauneuf to Gerzat by the scenic route through Blot and Charbonnieres and that was a gorgeous drive too – all in all it was an excellent day.

But there are changes afoot at Radio Arverne. As we suspected all along, SMADC has withdrawn its funding from our programmes. And it’s worse than that too because SMADC was leasing the radio aerial that transmits to the Combrailles, at €13,000 per annum. Radio Arverne can’t pay that and so it stops our programmes being broadcast to our own heartland.

However, all is not lost. There are a couple of other areas within range of the other transmitter that want to take the programme, and so could we continue the programmes but direct them there instead? We are open to offers, of course, but we can’t research any events to publicise because we have no contacts there. And so we’ve left it that we will still come, that we will produce our programmes, and that the regions that want to broadcast them will supply us with details of the events.

As well as that, they want us to prolong the running time of the programmes. Strangely enough, Liz and I were talking about that. We had the idea to talk about recipes, local Auvergnat ones for the Brits and British recipes for the French, and also some kind of gardening stuff – “what are you doing in the garden right now?”.

So we’ll have to wait to see what happens. it’s all confusing but then again nothing worth doing is ever easy to do.

-4

Sunday 5th September 2010 – One thing that I promised never to do …

… was to criticise anyone else’s attempts at foreign language translations. And for two reasons –

people ought to be congratulated for making any attempt at doing their best to make themselves understood/li>
of course, the stuff that I do is nothing to write home about and I wouldn’t like mine to receive the same kind of criticism

But be that as it may, my imagination isn’t half working overtime about the condition third from bottom on the list on the right, and all kind of images are floating through my mind.

I had a lovely afternoon out this afternoon though, although this morning was something of a disaster. It was about 04:00 when I went to bed, I was dealing with a computer issue for all of Saturday until then – and yet at 09:00 I was up and about and breakfasted. And on a Sunday too.!

“How did you manage that?” I hear you say.
That was thanks to whoever it was who rang me at 08:10 and said “C’est toi, Albert?” And when I told him that he had a wrong number, rang me back twice more until I finally convinced him.

And so with my Sunday ruined, I did some more website stuff for the rest of the morning.

After lunch I set out for the football at Blot-l’Eglise, a nice village up in the hills at the back of Manzat and Combronde.

FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI won 1-0 in a good, enjoyable match played in a very friendly atmosphere in beautiful weather conditions, but in all honesty Blot l’Eglise could still be out there now, all on their own attacking an empty net, and they still wouldn’t have equalised.

On the way back I parked up for a while at the Moulin de Braynant (where I saw the above notice) and went for a walk along the Gorge de la Sioule, such a beautiful afternoon that it was. The weather was gorgeous, the scenery was impressive and it really was a pleasure to be out and about.

This is quite a touristy spot here and a very popular place for watersports, as Lee Potty-mouth and Rick Hollyoaks will tell you.

They also hire out kayaks (and this is what the notice above refers to, by the way) and one day I’m going to have a go at this. It’s a long time since I’ve been in a boat – I used to canoe for my school back in the late 1960s, which is just as well as there are no lessons on offer here.

I asked them how beginners manage, and the response was that they have to paddle their own canoe around here.

They need to make sure that they take all the correct equipment with them otherwise that they can find themselves right up the creek without a paddle.

The notice above, by the way, omits two of the most important rules of kayaking, and maybe I ought to repeat them here.

you are not allowed to light a fire in a canoe. After all, you cannot have your kayak and heat it
it is forbidden to make love in a canoe. After all, making love in a canoe is just the same as English beer – it’s f*cking close to water

And after all of that, I came back here and crashed out for … errrr …. four hours – now I can’t sleep.

In other news, something has happened this evening that I have been waiting 10 months to do. And just like a hurricane, you know that it is inevitably going to happen and you are totally powerless – there is nothing that you can do that will stop it.

Yes, I have finally, at long last, managed to spill a full mug of coffee all over the floor in my nice attic room 🙁

-1

Friday 6th August 2010 – I had a bit of a day out today.

One of the places that I visited was the Meandre de Queuille – where the River Sioule makes an incredibly tight turn around a promontory of hard rock (yes, we ought to put a cafe on it – I know).

I’ve never been here before, even though it is something of a local tourist attraction that brings the crowds a-flocking. But maybe that’s the reason – having spent as long as I did working in the tourism industry my cynicism has made me immune to all this kind of thing.

That’s not the only thing that’s interesting about this place – at least, from my point of view. There’s also a dam – or barrage – across the Gorge de la Sioule just here and a very early hydro-electric generating plant.

Following the success of the hydro plant across the Sioule at the Viaduc des Fades, they built this one here in 1905. There’s a drop of 24 metres that powers 6 turbines that have an output of something like 20,000 volts and the power was supplied to the city of Clermont Ferrand.

I had set out originally to go to see these Health Assurance people. As I’m now a French businessman the health cover that I have is deemed insufficient. I’m required to take out a complementary assurance. But as luck would have it, the cover that I do have is recognised by the French government so I only needed to take out a top-up cover that makes up the difference between the total cost of any treatment and the amount that I would be reimbursed.

It isn’t cheap but in actual fact it is cheaper than the insurance I could take out in Belgium.

After that I hit the shops – Carrefour, LIDL and Bricomarche in Riom and the Auchan in Clermont Ferrand. And nothing of any real excitement except a USB fan for €3:00 – I’ll install that in Caliburn.

Outside the Bricomarche I saw the absolute ideal trailer. It’s 4 metres long, takes 2 tonnes in weight and has a double-axle with 13-inch wheels. It’s a bit knocked about but it’s not all that bad. It belongs to a company that is rebuilding part of the Bricomarche and the manager says that they haven’t used it in years. “So is it for sale then?” I asked optimistically. “Dunno” replied the manager “but I can find out”. So now that he has my phone numder we will have to wait and see.

But the most interesting part of the day was just outside Chatelguyon this morning. You’ve all heard of staff-and-ticket single line railway working. On single track railways there’s a danger that if two trains are heading towards each other they will have a collision. So what they do is to divide the line up into lengths with a signalman at each end and a passing place. These sections are called blocks.

Each block has its distinct staff – a brightly coloured stick – and no train can proceed into the block unless the signalman can give it the staff. If he cant give it the staff, because it is with the signalman at the other end, the train has to wait in the passing place until a train coming the other way brings back the staff. With only one staff then of course there can only be one train in the block at any one time and hence the risk of collision is nil.

Of course it may be a while before the staff comes back to our signalman from the signalman at the other end of the block and if two trains are following each other this could be inconvenient. What our signalman would do then is to show the staff to the first driver who would then sign a movement book in the signalbox to say that he had seen the staff, and he would be given a ticket to proceed, which he would hand to the signalman at the other end of the block in lieu of the staff – effectively reminding the second signalman that the staff is still at the other end of the block and that another train is following.

And so today they were resurfacing the road in the hills outside Chatelguyon. The road was cut down to single-track and there were no traffic lights but a man was there stopping the traffic. There was a stream of cars coming the other way and the last car stopped and handed the workman a brightly-coloured object. Once that car had gone the workman waved us forward and showed us all the object – his authority to allow us to proceed and which he would presumably give to the last car in the queue to take to the other end.

I’ve never seen this done before on the public highway. I was impressed!

-2

Monday 19th July 2010 – There was no conversation group today …

… so Clotilde invited a couple of us round for a chat and some snacks, which was very nice of her. Of course Strawberry Moose came along too to meet some of his admirers.

Clotilde’s house is gorgeous but it’s really discouraging to hear her say that it took 46 years to get it into the condition that it’s in today. And she showed us a photo of how it was when she bought it – and it really was a right tip too.

On the way down to Clotilde’s, I went the long way round with my new camera via the birdwatching centre at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne seeing as how it was a beautiful early evening. This as you know is my favourite photography spot.

Here’s a beautiful view of the Gorge de la Sioule just down there in the centre of the photograph and over away to the left is the church at Sauret Besserve

I wanted to take a couple of photos of the view from there – a view which you all know is one of the best in the whole of France – and see how the new camera performs in the excellent weather conditions.

This is a close-up of the radio antenna on the Puy-de-Dome – a little bit of crop-and-enlarge from a full-size image. We have a new high-quality lens and I was keen to see how that performed too.

But that wasn’t all that was exciting about my little visit to the centre ornithologique this evening. As I was there this evening, the moon rose. Quite early for once, I know, and so I gave it a little go with the new lens too.

Quite honestly, this photo couldn’t have come out much better, could it?

All in all, I’m well-impressed with my new camera and lens. And quite rightly so, considering the money that I’ve spent on it.

Back at Pooh Corner this morning, Terry has started on Lieneke’s roof and I’ve been roped in to help. That’s going to be the plan for the next few weeks I suppose. And her roof is a right mess – far worse than mine was – and only patching a part of it is not going to be a long-term solution, for the more that you rip off the more damage that you find.

The chimney is leaning quite ominously too and I don’t like the look of it.

But it was hot up there on that roof today and my being stung by a wasp didn’t help matters much. 30-odd years since I was last stung by a wasp and now it’s twice in as many weeks.

And we’ve set a couple of records today. A total of 317 amp-hours on the two banks in the house will take some matching. And 44 degrees in the solar heat exchanger and 42.5 in the electric heater – those figures are impressive too. I’ve been thinking about the electric water heater – a 25-litre oil drum would do the job but an old milk churn with lid would be even better. I need to search the brocantes.

But at Clotilde’s this evening I did hear a story about a man who ran some cold water slowly onto his tin roof and took a shower underneath the downspout – and burnt himself, the water was so hot. And here I am, just having fitted about 150 sq m of metal roof on my barn. I’d love to try that out!

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: Gorge de la Sioule

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Friday 5th June 2015 – CALIBURN IS BACK

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Monday 21st October 2013 – HERE’S SOMEONE WITH A SORE HEAD

Sunday 1st September 2013 – NOW ISN’T THIS A LOVELY …

Sunday 9th September 2012 – ONE THING …

Friday 8th June 2012 – I WAS UP …

Thursday 17th November 2011 – HAVE A CLOSE …

Friday 28th October 2011 – HOW LONG IS IT …

Tuesday 24th May 2011 – I know it’s not much, but …

Sunday 5th September 2010 – One thing that I promised never to do …

Friday 6th August 2010 – I had a bit of a day out today.

Monday 19th July 2010 – There was no conversation group today …

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