Tag Archives: land rover

Friday 26th April 2019 – I’VE HAD …

… another miserable day today.

Not because I’ve been tired – in fact I’ve managed to go the whole day without even the slightest hint of crashing out – but more to the fact that I couldn’t summon up the energy to do anything productive whatever.

I’d had another bad night too, tossing and turning for most of it. And yet I’d managed to go on a few mazy, amazing voyages.

We had been on a ship, a big one, in the South China Sea somewhere and it sank. Three of us were washed overboard and we swam in this sea for quite some time – days, it seemed, – until we were washed ashore on this populated island. We had to climb over a fence and found ourselves in someone’s back garden. The woman had a big sprawly house that had started off as a small cabin and had been enlarged with additional rooms haphazardly as time had gone on. She fed us and said we could stay the night. Next morning I went for a walk around. The guy had this beautiful large yacht and it was clear that he spent a lot of time looking after it. he was talking about going around the Arctic on it and I agreed that this would be the right kind of craft to go up there and he wasn’t the ordinary run-of-the-mill Indonesian or Filipino fisherman, he cares about his boat and done his research etc. We ended up walking through a typical suburban English housing estate but a huge weird animal like a rhinoceros but with a weird head with all kinds of appendages stuck on it. I grabbed my camera and took a photo but the flash didn’t work so it didn’t come out and the animal disappeared before I could try another shot. I went back to the house to ask about staying another night but she said “no, it’s full”. So I asked if there was anywhere else I could stay. She replied that there was bound to be somewhere else in the town. She then cooked me a meal and they asked me questions “do you eat ‘x’, do you eat ‘y’? How long is it since you’ve eaten ‘z’? Did you eat it when you were a kid?” all this kind of thing. But now it was becoming dark and I needed to find a place to stay and, more importantly, a way to get off this island and back to wherever it is that I’m supposed to be
A little later I was with a woman and I can’t remember what it was that I was doing but we’d been detained by someone, a young smallish guy with black hair and a black beard. He said that he had been working for the CIA and should have been an agent but they said that with his perfect memory he ought to be a salesman. He showed a photo of this woman coming out of a department store. This immediately filled her with horror. She looked around and there was this young lad behind her smiling away. He said “do you remember this story?” and produced a newspaper article showing that she had been arrested in it for something or other. By now she was in tears, making some kind of totally incoherent statement. he then produced some kind of small light-blue patterned cushion and said “you always leave your calling card behind in places like this, don’t you?”, waving the cushion around and that put her into even more tears.

I awoke several times during all of this going on, and eventually went back to sleep to step right back into, not the one where I was with that woman, but right back to being on the island again, in exactly where I had stepped out a while before. I don’t recall ever doing quite that before. But anyway I did end up stopping the night at that place on the island and I remember undressing to go to bed. I had my wet-weather overtrousers on so took them off, got into bed and went to sleep. Next morning I was up early and started to dress. Everyone else was getting up and this young girl came in to say hello, and a few other people. The house was busy pretty quickly. I ended up sitting ona bed with a huge collection of cats sitting on me, first a black one and a ginger one, then a white one and all different ones taking it in turns to sit on my knee for a stroke. I heard the buzzer on my phone so I looked and saw a message “your breakfast ready at 09:15”. I thought that I’d better finish dressing. These two women came in and went to a cupboard fetching out little phials of stuff. They game one to me and said “this will do for you”. I worked out that it was shampoo and it hit me that they were “suggesting” that I take a shower. I wanted to finish dressing but I couldn’t find my trousers. the plastic overtrousers were there but not the normal ones.

The alarms went off at 06:00 and so on but I couldn’t care less. 08:25 was when I awoke. But that’s not at all the same as saying that that was the time that I left my stinking pit. Not at all.

So a rather late start to the day, and once I’d composed myself, I attacked a few of the dictaphone notes from just recently that had built up on the dictaphone. And that took me most of the morning too and I don’t know why.

Lunch was inside again, with the start of the last batch of home-made hummus out of the freezer. It’s just as delicious as it was the day that I made it too.

After lunch I made a start on the outstanding mountain of photos that need to be dealt with. And the more I deal with, the more there seems to be to deal with.

foot forward bicycles trailer solar panels granville manche normandy franceThere was a brief stop of my walk around the Pointe du Roc in the wind. On the car park were a couple of people on those weird foot-first bicycles.

One of them was towing a trailer on which were two 110-watt solar panels, so I went to have a chat with the rider. It’s an electrically-assisted bike and the panels charge up the batteries while he’s cycling.

On a good day they can give about one and a half charges to the bank of batteries so that’s probably a range of about 30 miles.

But I don’t get the trailer idea though, unless it’s for the luggage. I would have been tempted to go for a roof over the bike and put the panels on that.

The Quebec flag on the front bike is of no significance. The people on board came from La Rochelle.

Back here I continued with the photos in a very desultory fashion until tea time. That was a really delicious steamed veg and falafel in a really tasty cheese sauce. One of the best that I’ve ever made.

land rover winch rue notre dame granville manche normandy franceMy evening walk was interrupted by a collision with a neighbour. We had a lengthy chat about this and that.

And as I continued on my way I was interrupted yet again. Parked in the rue Notre Dame was one of the commercial lorry-type of Land Rovers but what caught my eye about it was this beautiful 12-volt winch.

I have a 12-volt electric winch that I was going to fit onto the Kubota tractor to winch logs and things like that around the farm, but I never actually managed to get round to fitting it.

In fact, there were a lot of things down there that I never got around to doing.

As a result of all these delays I almost missed the start of tonight’s football.

It’s the final round of matches in the Welsh Premier League tonight and Bala Town were playing Caernarfon Town live on the internet. Caernarfon played for the first 15 minutes as if they were asleep, and during that time Bala had scored a goal and missed two or three total sitters.

It took 33 minutes for Caernarfon to threaten the Bala goal, and then the match livened up.

The second half was a wonderful advert for Welsh Premier football, and for the final 15 minutes Caernarfon were camped in the Bala Town half and although they didn’t manage to equalise, they hit the woodwork and and a couple of other good chances too.

Down south in the manth between Barry and Newtown, Newtown didn’t do enough to overhaul Caernarfon so that gives Caernarfon home advantage in the playoffs for the vacant place in the Europa League next season. That’s not bad for a team that was only promoted to the Welsh Premier League this season, and it’s all down to the fact that while they might not be the most skilful players in the league they have a magnificent team spirit.

It’ll also be interesting to see how Noah Edwards plays next season. I didn’t think of him as anything extra-ordinary at the start of the season, but as the season has gone on, the better he’s become. If he continues this progression next season he might become another Henry Jones or Callum Morris or kayne McLaggon.

It’s shopping tomorrow so I’m off to bed right now. It won’t be an early night so I’ll probably crash out in the afternoon but that’s par for the course these days.

sea on rocks baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france
sea on rocks baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

waves sea wall baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france
waves sea wall baie de mont st michel port de granville harbour manche normandy france

yacht baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france
yacht baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

mussel beds donville les bains manche normandy france
mussel beds donville les bains manche normandy france

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Monday 14th May 2018 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that when I bought my cheap Chinese smartphone back in January, I couldn’t remember the times that I had set the alarms to awaken me.

Well, I know now, don’t I? It was 06:00 and 06:15 and I’m sure that you can gather how I managed to find it out can’t you?

So heaving myself out of my stinking pit and going through the usual morning routine, and also chatting to Liz who appeared on line before she went to work.

After breakfast I had a little relax and then phoned up to book Caliburn in for his annual service. And it seems that the garage is closed on Mondays too. So I’ll have to phone them back tomorrow now, won’t I?

Once that was out of the way pro tem I had another task to perform. There is another huge pile of photos having accumulated over the last week or two, so I sat down and edited them.

Having done that, I started to work backwards in the blog and add photos that were missed off. I’ve done about a week’s worth so if you missed them, you need to check back and have a look.

Lunch was quite late what with one thing and another (and once you get started you’d be surprised at how many other things there are) and I didn’t eat much. Perhaps that’s a good thing, or else I’m sickening for something yet again.

But I did have a really bad afternoon. Wave after wave of fatigue overwhelmed me and it was all that I could do to tear myself out into the hurricane and go for a walk, not feeling much like it at all.

series 2a land rover station wagon granville manche normandy franceBut I’m glad that I went out because we haven’t featured an old car in these pages for quite some time, and there parked on the car park down by the lighthouse is a old Land Rover.

It’s British of course, and the registration number tells me that it was registered in Lancashire some time during the second half of 1969 and the first half of 1970.

Leaf springs of course, not coil springs, and the headlights in the wings not the grille means that it’s probably a later Series IIA model, and also, of course, it’s a very desirable station wagon.

In my opinion, although I wouldn’t say this at any Land Rover gathering, I consider the IIA Land Rovers to be the best model that they ever produced, especially when fitted with a “two and a quarter” diesel.

Back here, I made a coffee but I never had the chance to drink it. 18:20 when I awoke and the coffee was cold. Hardly surprising – I must have been stark out for a couple of hours.

I’d fallen asleep reading the works of Henry de Bracton, one of the first of the modern judges from the 13th Century. And I carried on reading them during my voyage. And my voyage took me to the coast where the seas were stormy, just like they are now in fact, and most people were leaving the beach. But a couple of boys were doing some slalom stunts in a kayak through the waves, with a girl on the beach pleading with them to come in. “Even …. (she mentioned the name of someone who was clearly important in this sport) has come in now”. But my route took me along the headland and I came to a car park where several people were boarding a bus. Standing next to the bus was TOTGA, a very young TOTGA, dressing herself up in black leather and a crash helmet and sitting astride a silver scooter of the Vespa type. “Did you come on the bike or in a car?” I asked, being aware that she didn’t have the brats with her. “Yes” she replied helpfully. “Yes?” I enquired. “Yes” she answered. “I came here in the car and I’m now going home on the bike”. And even during a nocturnal ramble that sounded most illogical.

This evening I made myself a surprise tea. Someone on the internet was talking about Bombay aloo, and that had my mouth watering. And just as it happens, I had some tinned potatoes left over from my lentil doodah last week.

So I chopped up some onion and garlic, diced a carrot and put them in a casserole dish, added the potatoes, cumin and turmeric, covered it all in oil, stirred it up and put it in the microwave for three minutes.

While that was doing, I started to cook some rice and frozen peas.

Once the stuff in the microwave was finished, I added some water and gravy powder, stirred it all up, and then put it back in the microwave on medium heat for six minutes.

And absolutely beautiful it was too. I’ll have to make some more stuff like this, I really will.

waves crashing over sea wall granville manche normandy franceI mentioned “hurricane” a little earlier didn’t I?

It was high tide again later this evening and sure enough, during my little evening walk around the walls, I stood and watched the waves crashing onto the sea wall and the spray going over the top onto the promenade.

The amount of power that there is in the sea during a storm like this is impressive. No wonder people want to harness the energy from it.br clear=”both”>

gravel port de granville harbour manche normandy franceAnother thing that I noticed was that there’s now a huge pile of gravel from the quarry near Avranches accumulated in one of the berths down in the harbour.

It looks as if we might be having a visit some time soon, doesn’t it? And that’s probably just as well because it occurs to me that there’s been no gravel ship been here for quite some considerable time – since the new lock gates in fact

We could do with building up the maritime traffic in the port otherwise my utility as a ship reporting station here will be called into question.

So now it’s bed time. I hope that I’ll feel more like it tomorrow.

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Monday 2nd November 2015 – WOW!

Yes indeed. We’re having one of the windiest days that we’ve ever had since I began keeping records. We’ve had gusts of up to 47kph and all of the wind turbines here have been going round like the clappers. We’ve not quite had record wind energy figures, but we aren’t far off it and it’s still cracking up (although I’ve taken the records now so the rest will be added to tomorrow’s figures).

As for today, I was up fairly early, and after breakfast I spent some time on the computer. This course on Hadrian’s Wall that I’ve started to study is rather different. It’s done on line with embedded videos and that’s going to cause a load of problems with my sad internet speed. But it looks quite interesting.

Not many people realise this but there are two wall systems in the UK. Hadrian’s Wall between Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Carlisle, and the Antonine Wall between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth. Some people think that both walls were built by the same Emperor but the Northern one is definitely by the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. Hadrian had only got one wall.

I didn’t have lunch today – I went out and started work instead and was rather carried away. We had beautiful sunny weather and with the wind we had a nice pile of electrical energy and with no dump load at the moment, I adopted plan B and fetched the chop saw.

I set up a workbench outside and started to attack the huge stack of wood that’s been building up outside over the past few years. Old branches and tree trunks that I’ve pulled up and cut down in the past as well as the old chevrons from when I replaced the roofs here.

The stack of wood doesn’t look much smaller but I’ve cut up enough to make a huge pile of wood. I’ve filled up the woodshed with some of it, and I’ve filled an IKEA bag to bring up here ready for whenever winter might arrive. But the chop saw idea worked in spades. With plenty of electricity to play with, it was 10 times quicker and 10 times less tiring than doing it with the hand saw. But there are some bits that won’t fit under the chop saw and so I’ll need the chainsaw for that, when Terry has finished with it.

But it does go to show. I once had a friend with whom I shared all of my hopes and aspirations about this place and my aims for the electrical system. I regarded him as being my best ever friend but then I found out that he was going onto a Land Rover forum on the internet and mocking my ideas, he and his friends having a really good laugh about it and a few offensive comments being thrown in for good measure. Of course, no friendship can withstand that, but it’s this kind of thing that is showing that I’m having the last laugh.

When I finished, I came up here to watch a film (I’m reverting to my old habits at long last) but crashed out instead. Once I had woken up, I cooked the pizza that I had forgotten to eat.

Tomorrow if the weather is good I’ll be carrying on with the woodpile. And if not, there are plenty of other things to be getting on with. High time I cracked on.

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Friday 14th August 2015 – ZURICH IN THE RAIN

view from premier class hotel lyon part dieu france
Having crashed out at some silly times like 22:00 last night, and having slept the sleep of the dead, I was up and about, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, by 06:00, admiring the view from my hotel window. And a nice warm shower quickly brought me round into the Land of the Living.

By 06:30 I had finished watching the film that I started yesterday, then edited all of the photos, uploaded them onto the web and then brought my blog

up to date, all by 08:30.

I’ve had a good breakfast too – I’m not sure at all that there will be something for me to eat on the plane to Zurich and while I’m now in possession of a fruit loaf and some biscuits (as well as a bottle of water), thanks to the Carrefour Hypermarket in the gallery down the road, on these kinds of journeys the plan is to eat when I can.

I’ve uploaded a pile of radio programmes to the laptop too, to refresh the radio library, and with a few other things that needed to be done, I was out of the hotel and gone by 10:45.

airport tram lyon part dieu airport st exupery lyon franceAt the station (the other side of the station) there was a tram already parked at the platform ready to go to the airport so even though there’s a €1:00 supplement (on what is already a steep fare) for tickets bought on board, I wasn’t going to hang about. A bird in the hand … and all of that.

Lyon airport is something of a maze, and to make matters worse, you have to look long and hard for a baggage trolley. I couldn’t find one, and at first I thought that they simply didn’t have one, but I later saw someone at the check-in with one so they must exist somewhere. But the terminal is big, clean, light, airy, and there are not too many people about. At the baggage check-in, I didn’t even have to queue. There was an assistant waiting for me.

Even the passage through “security” was relatively stress-free, although the woman at the scanner had a good moan about my camera. I think however that that is more to do with the fact that she was of the moaning type, rather than for any other good purpose.

dash 8 400 swissair flight lyon france zurich switzerlandAs for our plane – well, what can I say? It was nominally a Dash 8-400, built by Bombardier in Canada, but you don’t need to be an aircraft expert to recognise this for what it is – a Vickers Vimy.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were at the controls, Ameilia Earhart was sitting at the back, and I had to move Glenn Miller’s sandwiches off my seat. That’s the kind of plane that it was.

view fromair dash 8 400 taking off from Lyon st exupery airport franceI shan’t say much about the flight. The events speak for themselves. We had to wear our seatbelts throughout the entire flight and they refused to serve tea and coffee at any moment during the flight. All of the kids were screaming during the flight, and one or two of the adults were too. Not for the faint-hearted, this particular flight.

And as for the landing – well, we didn’t actually land. It was more like we were shot down over the airport. But even that didn’t deter the passengers, many of whom rose from their knees to give the pilot a round of applause – presumably to celebrate the end of the flight

And it was here that everything started to go wrong. I was waiting for over an hour for the hotel shuttle bus to arrive, which it never did. And no-one answered the hotel telephone. Eventually, another hotel bus driver told me that there wasn’t one for the Ibis Budget Hotel. He offered to take me for 20:00 CHF

However I’m not easily taken in by this kind of thing and I walked down to the bus station. Here, one friendly river with whom I had quite a chat with whatever German I could remember. He sent me over to the 510 bus an while the driver was a little on the grumpy side, he put me off at the right place and pointed out the way to the hotel from there – all of 50 metres.

At the hotel, there’s no electrics for guests. All of the sockets are these two-pin mini-continental sockets and you need to buy an adapter – cost 10CHF.

We had a few words about that, and at the end of our debate she finished with "is there anything else that I can do for you?"
Well, she was in her early 20s, long blond hair, a nice shape, but I remembered where I was."No thanks. You’ll probably want me to pay for it".

old land rover snow plough zurich airport switzerlandWhen the rain stopped (did I say that it was p155ing down?) I walked back to the airport for a recce. I ended up walking past the car park for a hire company. And here parked at the back was an old Land Rover snowplough that had clearly better days.

In fact, this is quite a rarity here in Switzerland. There are all kinds of old cars in the country but mostly quite expensive and fully-restored. I can’t say that I have ever seen a vehicle in this kind of condition lying about like this.

zurich airport switzelandYes, I really did walk back to the airport. It took me all of about 15 minutes. And I’m glad that I did because it gave me an opportunity to photograph it

I discovered that a 24-hour ticket would cost me 13:20CHF to cover all of the zones that I need to get into the city, and so I duly did. Had I done that earlier, instead of paying the bus driver for the single journey, I would have been quids-in. But you have to pay to learn.

I found an all-night supermarket, lots of water, and a main-line railway station where, inter alia a train goes every evening to Budapest. I made a note of that. But I’ll tell you something – I was astonished by the number of beggars (mostly young, fit types) loitering in the streets.

zurich city centre by night switzerland

Another thing that I noticed was that allbut one of my night-time images of Zurich didn’t come out. I’d gone into the city with the intention of trying out the camera on the phone at night in an urban environment, and the result has not been succeesful. The daytime ones work fine as you can see, because everything to date has been taken with that.

And on the way in, I noticed at the Haldenbach tram stop an imbiss type of place so I leapt off the tram (such are the advantages of a 24-hour tram ticket) and yes, they did indeed sell falafel.

So I’m fed and watered and ready to bed. But I’m struggling to come to terms with Swiss prices.

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Monday 9th June 2014 – I HAD TEA TONIGHT …

… sitting outside on a garden chair. Yes, at lunchtime, Tery and I moved the chairs and table onto the concrete, and doesn’t that make a nice little terrace? It’s very nice and comfortable.

I had a very disturbed night last night. It was far too hot in here so I left the inverter running all night so that I could have the fan going, but I had to turn it off after a while as I couldn’t get off to sleep.

And during the night I was in prison. And I was too, even down to being in a cell and choosing my bunk. That was frightening to such an extent that I was glad to wake up.

After breakfast I was out straight away and attacked the waste land next to the Subaru. I cleared as much as I could with the long-handled secateurs and then when Terry turned up we attacked it with the digger. The little Kubota did really well pullind the Sankey trailer with the soil and rubble in, up to where we tip it.

land rover minerva parking space les guis virlet puy de dome franceBy the time lunchtime came around we had dug out and flattened a parking space at the side of the Subaru and so we pulled the Minerva across the way into what will be its new home for a while.

That is necessary because where the Minerva was parked, that is where we will be laying the next load of concreting, so it had to be cleared.


takeuchi mini digger digging out earth bank les guis virlet puy de dome franceOnce we had done that, we moved the rest of the stuff and then dug out the rest of the earthern bank so that it’s now level with where we dug out the other day.

Terry went off home after that and I tidied up. And then I took advantage of the solar hot water. It was 38°C which is no surprise seeing as we had the hottest day of the year today – 38.4°C. I must have drunk 3 litres of liquid during the day.


While I was emptying the trailer on one of my trips, I met Nicolette who was taking the dog for a walk, and we had quite a chat. It’s been ages since I’ve had a good chat to her.

Up here in my room it was 31.8°C, and so it was no surprise that I ended up eating outside tonight.

Tomorrow I’m going early into St Eloy so that I can order all of the breeze blocks that I need to build the retaining wall and line the inspection pit, as there will be one of those here too, and I’ll also order the concrete cubes that I need to build up the columns that will support the roof

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Friday 22nd November 2013 – WELL, WE HAD THE SNOW…

… and more than enough of it too. In fact, I don’t think that it stopped all day.

First job was of course to clear off the solar panels just in case the sun decided to show itself (which it didn’t, of course) and then after breakfast I had a play with the printer that I inherited from Marianne. I finally managed to get it to work but of course it ran out of ink almost immediately – par for the course I reckon.

I went round early to Liz’s seeing as the weather was bad, and I was helped on my way by the Parisian who brushed the snow off a few branches to let me pass. He was smiling and we had a little chat too – dunno what’s come over him, being sociable. I hope that he keeps it up – it’s so much nicer around here when everyone gets on with everyone else.

We had a quick lunch at Liz’s and then it was off to Gerzat to record the December Radio Anglais programmes, as the snow was falling quicker and quicker and the roads were becoming worse and worse.

On the way back, we made an executive decision and went to the Carrefour at Riom to do our shopping. We drive right past it and it would save both of us an unnecessary trip out on Saturday – not advisable if the weather gets any worse.

On the way back, the roads were more and more difficult and so I forewent my usual evening coffee. I dropped off Liz and her shopping, and made my way home – via the Intermarché at Pionsat because I remembered a couple more things that I had forgotten.

I made it home safely, which is more than two other vehicles did – slid sideways into ditches. And one of them was a 4×4 and that doesn’t surprise me because people who own them think that they can do anything and drive just as fast as they did before. That’s nonsense because these modern 4x4s are not built like an old “Series” leaf-sprung Land-Rover and when people hear stories of 4x4s being friven flat-out in all kinds of adverse weather conditions, they don’t realise that “flat-out” in an old “Series” leaf-sprung Land-Rover was 40mph.

So now I’m back here, battened into the attic with the fire going full-blast. I have everything that I need so i’m not moving until Monday afternoon.

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Tuesday 17th July 2012 – NOW THIS IS ASTONISHING!

You are probably wondering what the photo below is all about – but read on.

Now to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … Rosemary came round today to offer me some more help in the garden and as I had no tinned potatoes for the salad I asked her to pick up a tin or two on the way round.

Instead of tins, she appeared with a bag of new potatoes – and these needed cooking of course.

potato 400 watt vegetable steamer les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt was a glorious day – probably one of the best I have ever had as far as solar energy goes (and doesn’t that make a change just recently?) and it came to my mind that ages ago I had bought a 400-watt electric steamer – cooker.

I’d never used it although I remembered a few weeks ago saying that I would like to give it a run out some time or other in the near future. With all of this solar energy right now it seemed that the appropriate moment had arisen.

Result – 15 minutes later one perfectly-steamed pile of spuds. I’m well-impressed with this. This really is Progress with a capital P.

I remember one of my best friends (an ex-best friend now as it happens) taking the p155 out of me behind my back with all of his friends on the Land Rover forum about my plans to try a microwave oven here.

They spent a considerable amount of time calling me a few choice names and so on.

And while an electric steam-cooker is hardly a microwave, it’s still up there with the coffee machine and the electric fire that we have had running during the winter as signs that home comforts are perfectly achievable with my set-up.

As you also know, I’m running a 12-volt TV-cum-video player up here as well.

Yes, I absolutely hate being surrounded by negativity – it drags me right downhill. One of the (many) reasons why I left the UK.

Rosemary and I spent a few hours weeding and I’ve never seen the garden looking as good as this, that’s for sure. We even started to pull up the new spuds but that was a waste of effort – seems like my crop has disappeared.

rebuilding stone wall collapsed lean-to les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter Rosemary left, I carried on with the wall of the lean-to. You can tell how much I did by looking at where the mortar is still grey and not white.

I’ve accomplished quite a lot there but there’s still plenty to go and I’m wondering if I’ll have enough stones. If not, I’ll have to go on the scavenge and see what I can find.

But the wall underneath is in a bad way – there are three large cracks running down it. Seeing this made me glad that when I made a brief start in repairing it all back 10 years ago I had made that strip of reinforced concrete underneath where the breeze blocks are.

That strip of concrete is embedding the horizontal beams of the floor and thus ties all of the thing together. But once the new bit is finished I can repoint all of the cracks.

I’ve also been attacking the hole that I’m trying to drill out, what with all of this electricity we had today, and I’ve grounded out with the circular drill bit.

Of course, I lent out my other extension to Rob, didn’t I

We finished the day with the hottest solar shower I have had for a long time, and it was gorgeous.

But as for starting the day – how about 06:35 for breakfast? When has that ever happened before?

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Saturday 17th September 2011 – I HAVE SAID …

… “on many occasions too” – ed … that if I were to live around here, the vehicle that I would choose would be an old Land Rover.

old series land rover keswick new brunswick canadaAnd not just any old Land Rover either. Not a Defender and not a 90 or 110 either but a “series” Land Rover with leaf springs and other prehistoric fittings that I find so attractive.

And sure enough, here we are. A Series Land Rover (I can’t tell if it’s a 2A or a 3 but at a guess I would say that it’s a Series 3) complete with snowplough parked up at the back of someone’s house. A new galvanised chassis underneath that and a little tidying-up of the bodywork and you would have something that would last for 100 years.

burpee drilling keswick new brunswick canadaHere’s an interesting sign. I’ve also found a Burpee Drive and a few other Burpee things, so it might be a common local surname.

My interest in this name is that there was a “Burpee” – in fact, a Pilot Officer Lewis Burpee of the Royal Canadian Air Force who flew Lancaster ED-865 “AJ-S” on Operation Chastise “the Dambusters Raid” and was lost with all of his crew near the Gilze-Rijen night-fighter airfield in the Netherlands

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. There are a couple of garage sales around here and I’ve stocked up on a couple of tools and a couple of books, including one on how to build a typical Canadian wooden building. I’m really making progress here

old burial ground fredericton new brunswick canadaParking is difficult here on Saturdays but I find a place near the Historic Burial Ground of Fredericton. This is where you will find the early pioneer settlers, United Empire Loyalists, civic leaders, visiting provincial dignitaries and the like.

And also the unmarked graves, just in front of me, of British soldiers who died while serving at the barracks in the city between 1784 and 1869

skateboarder queen street fredericton new brunswick canadaI went off into the town to see what was happening. And with Queen Street being closed off to traffic, we have a pile of street entertainers – all kinds of things happening.

One thing was some kind of informal skateboarding competition with teenagers leaping over a few jumps and, a little further down the street, an old car. You can see that there was quite a crowd watching the entertainment, and it certainly was entertaining.

I had a chat with a couple of the skateboarders later and, unfortunately, I can’t find the notes that I took. Did I mention that the batteries went flat in my dictaphone and I had left the spares in the Dodge?

And going all the way back to the Dodge to pick up my spare batteries, I had the shock of my life.

citroen 2CV fredericton new brunswick canadaDespite being the symbol of the trendy hippy-set of Europe in the 1970s and 80s, the 2CV had a dreadful reputation for exhaust emissions and I never expected to see one on the roads in North America.

However a few were actually sold in North America and whatever reached Canada didn’t last long due to the wafer-thin bodywork being destroyed by the amount of salt on the roads in winter. So this is quite a rarity.

stakeboarders queen street fredericton new brunswick canadaI can now carry on with my wandering around the street entertainers down Queen Street and end up with the skateboarders again who seem to have moved on to have a go at leaping over the car that I mentioned earlier.

Many of the skateboarders don’t seem to be able to manage the leap, but credit to them because I wouldn’t want to do it, but this guy here does it in spades, so chapeau to him.

double dutch hutch harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canadaBy now the music has started and I’m drawn to the marquee un the Barracks Square to see what’s going on.

This is someone, or someones, by the name of Double Dutch Hutch who are competing in the Galaxie Rising Stars competition with the prize of playing at an international blues competition in Memphis, Tennessee in the New Year.

george street blues project harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canadaAnother band that is competing in this Galaxie Rising Stars competition is the George Street Blues Project, whom we met the other day … “yesterday, in fact” – ed … in the open air at Officers Square.

Highlight of their show was definitely a spirited rendition of the old William Bell number “Born Under A Bad Sign”, which echoed many of the lyrics written by Lightnin’ Slim in 1954 in “Bad Luck Blues” and made famous by Cream on Wheels Of Fire and which went down well with the crowd.

snooty fox morgan davis geoff arsenault drummer harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canadaHaving seen these before I went off for a wander and there at the back of a dimly-lit “Snooty Fox” I encountered Morgan Davis and Geoff Arsenault.

I had a chat to Morgan afterwards. It appears that he’s originally from Detroit and came to Canada in 1968. Probably too young to have been one of the people who found peace on Canadian rather than Swedish ground, and now he lives in Nova Scotia. And quite right too.

On my way to catch Taj Mahal I ended up chatting to quite a few different people, including a guy who was a sales rep for a Fibre-Optic system. He had quite a keen interest in all kinds of Renewable Energy and in the social situation in the UK – such as it is.

taj mahal harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canadaThis time, armed with a media pass, I could take photos of Taj Mahal, and so I did, much to the chagrin of a security guard who made a spirited grab for my camera until he saw my media pass.

I’ve never seen anyone go so quickly into reverse than I did just then. It was all rather amusing.

taj mahal harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canadaI enjoyed the concert, especially as they played “Good Morning Miss Brown” – an old blues staple that was part of our playlist with “Jack the Ripper” and “Orient Express” in the early 70s.

And I enjoyed his sense of humour too. He played some of his own compositions as well asa few old standards and generally took the mickey out of the audience “I recorded this song when ‘it’s squid-dipping time in Nova Scotia’ was top of the Canadian hit parade”.

7 string acoustic guitar t j wheeler harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canadaNow what do you notice about this acoustic guitar?

That’s right – it’s a seven-string guitar made by Eastman and I’ve never seen one of these before so I went off to have a chat with the musician, TJ Wheeler, after the concert. Apparently most musicians string it to A to use it as a seventh string for chords, but he has it strung to B and uses it to play walking bass notes while he’s playing a “normal” chord.

Not content with playing acoustic guitar and bass at the same time, he can play the kazoo too. I would have been confused a long while before this.

Still, they are all bizarre in New Hampshire, which is where he comes from. And his gob-iron player is Dan Robichaud who tells me that in his day job he’s an educator attached to the First Nation communities in New Brunswick.

thom swift harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canadaNext up was a guitarist called Thom Swift. He played a variety of different guitars, including this interesting 1930 National Steel guitar – and steel is the right word to use, because it is.

It has a built-in speaker in the front that resonates backwards into the body and the sound reverberates around and escapes out of the holes in the front. They were made for public performance in the days before electricity

thom swift harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canadaI quite enjoyed his act, as did the large crowd here in the Hoodoo House, even if he did spend a great deal of his time singing maudlin songs about his mother and his dog.

But isn’t that what the blues is all about? As for me, I regret very much going on the Prozac because I haven’t had the blues for years. I’m going to have to sort out my bass guitar and take up the music again.

rick fines female bassist harvest jazz and blues festival fredericton new brunswick canadaFinal act up on stage at the Hoodoo House tonight was Rick Fines, complete with a lady bassist and I’ll try to track them down too to find out her name, as I missed it (out getting a bag of chips at the Lebanese takeaway down the road) when they came on stage.

I quite enjoyed their act too – quite simple basic blues, but then what do you need more than that as entertainment? It’s possible to overcomplicate your music and play ten notes when one note is much more effective, isn’t it, Chris Squire and Jimi Hendrix?

And so having had a really good day out, and now that I’m thoroughly exhausted, having walked about 100 miles today, I’m off to bed.

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Wednesday 3rd August 2011 – Well, I’m exhausted this evening.

I had another early start for a change and then attacked the web site. I’ve almost finished the Halifax pages and it won’t be too long before they are on line.

After that, seeing as the weather was miserable, I attacked the Sankey Trailer. That’s now empty at last, and I’ve fitted the new bracket for the jockey wheel. That meant drilling the chassis, seeing as it’s a heavy duty bracket and doesn’t fit into the holes of the lightweight one, and the huge inverter, a LIDL 300-watt electric drill and sone decent bits (stepping up from 3mm, 5mm, 8mm, 10mm) made short work of that. But the problem isn’t really the bracket – the jockey wheel just isn’t strong enough for it. But never mind – there will be one on one of the old caravan chassis that I can use.

After lunch I set about cleaning out the room that is over the bread oven in the lean-to. Full of tiles, dust, straw, all kinds of stuff in there since God knows when. That took a while and I’m now on the way to building a pile of wooden shelving to go in there. I’m going to store in there everything that won’t be spoiled by rats – such as engine oil, paint, all kinds of things like that. It’s high time I had a go at getting my storage sorted out.

So that took until about 18:30 when I ran out of easily-available wood. What I did then was to move the Sankey trailer into its new home. And I rather wish I hadn’t because you have no idea how heavy it is, and it’s all uphill as well. I finally got it to move and then I realised that I couldn’t let it go as it would roll back down right into Caliburn. A Sankey (these are the old British Army Land-rover trailers in case you are wondering) weighs about half a ton and that is blasted heavy going uphill on your own when you have a pulled muscle in your shoulder, I can tell you. But it’s now in place and I had to go and lie down for an hour afterwards. It’s a long time since I’ve hurt like that.

This evening I’ve been surfing the web. Shopping on IKEA Montreal, Walmart Montreal, a Solar Panel shop in St Laurent, and a few other places besides. I’m having to do all of this on my own of course, the way things have turned out, but it’s still exciting all the same.

With regard to a mobile phone, that scam company never got back to me, as I suspected that they might not. I was looking on eBay for a triband phone for North America but the prices are absurd, and then I saw a battery for the ancient Nokia 6110 that is hanging around here – just £2:49 plus 35p postage. What I’ll do is just pile loads of credit on my French mobile number and use that with the Nokia. It would have been easier with a proper phone and a proper phone number but there are some things that you just can’t do remotely.

One thing that I realised years ago, and I can’t ever remember why I keep on forgetting it, is that at the end of the day I just have to be self-reliant, do what I can do myself, and not lose any sleep about anything else.

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Thursday 10th March 2011 – I have to go to rescue my Minerva.

If you are fairly new to these pages I bet you don’t know that I own a Minerva. It’s something I bought years ago while I was on the lookout for an old Land Rover for hauling logs around the farm. Ever since then it’s been in storage near Antwerp but I received an e-mail today to say that the storage facilities are closing down and I need to move it.

Luckily we are here with Terry’s big trailer, and I reckon that the Minerva will fit on it. It’s rather a shame in a way because I was hoping to be able to move the Cortina 2000E estate and get that down to the farm, but it will still be nice to recover the Minerva after all  these years. Ahhh well.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’ve painted the door frame to the apartment and I’ve also prepared the wall at the back of the terrace. But when I went out to paint that, the wind blew me back inside again. It was rough out there, and so that will have to wait until another day.

This afternoon I cleaned all of the paintwork in the hall and then painted the ceiling in there.

Terry carried on with the odd jobs such as repapering part of the kitchen and fixing a few electrical items while Liz carried on with her marathon floor-waxing, with the help of Terry once the little jobs were finished. Once the floor was something like, we moved the living room back into where it ought to be and I’ve moved my bed and computer into this room while Terry and Liz started to paint the walls in the hallway.

Tomorrow I have to empty out my room of what is left there and then give it a good clean, put the second coat of paint on the door frame and paint the terrace wall if the wind will let me. Terry and Liz will finish the walls in the hallway and then paint my bedroom. The second coat for the hall and bedroom is planned for Saturday morning, and then all that will remain will be touching up in the blue bedroom where Terry and Liz are sleeping.

And that, dear reader, will be that. We’ll empty the place on Monday morning, have an estate agent round on Monday afternoon and then adjourn to a hotel for a couple of days so that the place will be completely empty so that we can do the touching up.

Such is the plan. And so you just watch something happen to upset it all.

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Tuesday 5th October 2010 – SOUTHERN SHORE OF LAKE ERIE

mar lu motel marblehead ohio usaThis is my motel from last night.

It was rather out of my budget but

  • it was here
  • it was open
  • it had a room
  • it was nice and comfortable
  • it had a good situation right on the waterfront

and you can’t say fairer than that.

lorry fitted with wheels for running on railway lines sandusky usaAnd remember years ago when we saw that lorry driving up the railway line and I thought that it was an optical illusion?

So here’s another one and you can see by the fittings underneath it that it’s not an optical illusuon and these lorries do actually exist. I had a chat to the workers – apparently they are rail welders and check the rails for cracks, which they weld up if they can, or signal for replacement if they can’t.

raw sewage discharge into lake erie sandusky ohioLake Erie has a reputation of being the filthiest lake in the world, with all kind of industrial discharges into the water.

But that’s not all that is discharged into the lake, judging by this sign. And to think that there’s a beach resort just a couple of miles up the road. Not that the USA would care too much about that, I suppose.

vermillion inland waterways museum ohio usaThis is the Vermillion Inland Waterways Museum, or some such name. It goes without saying that it was closed when Casey, Strawberry Moose and I visited. But then again, I wasn’t expecting anything else.

And Vermillion is the birthplace of Lester Allen Pelton who invested the “Pelton Wheel” type of water turbine. I had a quick look around but couldn’t see anything in the town to commemorate him.

marina vermillion ohio usaThe Vermillion Museum is situated in Ferry Road, which tells you such a lot about the history of the town, and it its fortune has always been based around the water.

Today, it’s famous for its marina and attracts thousands of water-borne tourists each year (who I bet haven’t read the notice in the harbour down the road at Sandusky). Nevertheless, it’s a nice pretty little place even in this kind of weather.

cleveland ohio usaThat’s Cleveland, Ohio, just down there. I was planning to park up and go for a little wander around but just after this photo I was engulfed in this most astonishing rainstorm the like of which I haven’t seen in ages.

That put paid to all of my plans – I wasn’t going to set foot out of the car in this kind of weather. I stayed put and carried on driving.

But one thing astonished me about Cleveland is that not only did it have buses, it had dedicated bus lanes too. Imagine that in the USA!

aldi food store cleveland ohio usaAnd that wasn’t all that surprised me about Cleveland either. Here on the corner of Lakeside Boulevard and East 315th Street is an Aldi. I had to go in for a look around.

And my conclusion? Well, the only resemblance that it bears to the European version of the shop is the sign on the shop front. For a start, the Bargain Section is total rubbish, something that would never be the case in a European Aldi, and no-one from Europe would ever recognise any of the products on sale here. The “German” potato salad bore no resemblance to any potato salad that any German Aldi has ever sold.

Oooohhhhh! Now take a look at this.

rover sd1 ohio usaI’ve been musing to myself as I’ve been driving through Ohio that I haven’t seen any old cars around and that’s been something of a surprise. But here on the way out of Cleveland near Madison, I’ve encountered an old Rover SD1.

You don’t see any of these in the UK these days – they’ve all been broken for the V8 engines that people have fitted into Land Rovers, so no-one was more surprised than me to see this one looking comparatively fit and healthy in the USA. However did it manage to come here?

point park ashtabula ohio usaThis is Ashtabula – one of the very few working harbours remaining on Lake Erie these days. All kinds of stuff – coal, gravel are shipped from here and it has the reputation of being one of the most polluted places on the lake – and that’s saying something!

Bob Dylan sang about it, Jack Kerouac wrote about it, it’s also been the site of one of the USA’s worst railway disasters, and the rail ferry that sailed from here across the lake to Canada sank just off-shore following a collision. It was 52 years old at the time.

From here, I cross into Pennsylvania having missed out on the fate that befell Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer (and, incidentally, Joseph Lewis, John Cleary, Thomas Grace, Alan Canfora, Dean Kahler, Douglas Wrentmore, James Russell, Robert Stamps and Donald MacKenzie, the suffering of whom is largely ignored by the media).

In fact, you can tell that we are elsewhere other than Ohio by the amount of rubbish and old cars lying around. And I don’t mean that pejoratively either, because I’d been making little notes to myself all along today’s journey about how unusually (and unacceptably) tidy everywhere in Ohio is – it’s no place for me.

I’m running on fumes looking for a petrol station (which I eventually find, manned … "personned" – ed … by someone from Swindon, Wiltshire) and looking for a motel, as the night is upon me. Eventually, the town of Erie comes up with something and so I settle myself in.

It’s heaving down with rain and I’m not going out.

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