Tag Archives: sankey trailer

Monday 1st August 2011 – Actually I’m quite astonished …

… by the people who read this rubbish, and how helpful they are. Having published yesterday about my missing morning, the farmer who owns the field next door came roaring to the rescue this morning on his tractor – at 07:11 exactly as it happens. And I didn’t even know that he read my blog!

And so after crawling out of my bed at a reasonably-indecent time, I spent a few hours on my website. I’m now finalising the pages on Halifax ready to publish them. I’ll let you know when they are on line and you can read them, and you’ll see why it is my favourite city in North America.

puy de dome franceBut before that – you might remember me saying that I have made a few alterations to the media corner in the attic where I live. Well, here you can see it in all its glory and I have to say that it does look quite impressive, as does the huge pile of wood and paper ready for winter.

And that’s not going to be all that far away you know. At least the wood is keeping dry in here. It’ll burn a treat when we need it.

After I finished on the website, I went outside and spent the morning working on the guttering. You may remember that I had several issues with the guttering – on the house there was a piece missing and there was another piece that had collapsed under the weight of the snow in the winter. On the barn, a piece melted in the heat from the fire earlier this year, and part of the rest of the guttering had sagged.

Anyway, I’d fixed it all before lunch. There’s a few new brackets and a couple of the old ones have been bent further round – let’s see if that stops the water cascading over the top. I also replaced the melted bit but apart from the fact that I can’t find the left-hand gutter end that was attached to it, I can’t find any other either – which is bizarre because I have three right-hand ones. How did I manage that?

The guttering on the house is fixed now as well and the missing piece added. I’ll post a pic here tomorrow so that you can see it, for I forgot to take one earlier.

After lunch, seeing as it was a glorious day, I did a load of washing. Temperature in the 12-volt immersion heater, heated by the surplus electric energy, reached 62.5°C and so it was a nice hot wash. And while that was doing, I did some tidying up and then I had a nice solar shower, seeing as the water in there was 38.5°C. So clean clothes, clean bedding, and clean me tonight. What luxury!

After the Anglo-French meeting I bumped into Simon. He was trying to fit a 700-litre diesel tank into the back of his van to take to the tip tomorrow and so I went to help him. But to cut a long story short, it’s now in the back of Caliburn ready for me to use as a biodiesel tank for when I set up my refinery. Thanks, Simon. And apart from that, Bill and I had the guided tour of his new abode.

Tomorrow if the weather stays nice, I’ll be doing another load of washing and that should bring it up to date. And now I have some heavy duty sacks, I’ll be doing what I ought to have done a year ago – namely emptying the Sankey trailer.

And while I was up a ladder hanging on grimly with one hand “lucky grimly” – ed, using a cordless drill and balancing a few lengths of guttering, I seem somehow to have pulled a muscle in my right forearm and it hurts like hell.

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Sunday 5th June 2011 – HERE’S AN INTERESTING …

WOMEN ONLY WALK SIGN LADYBOWER RESERVOIR SHEFFIELD UK… notice.

I was always under the impression that the 21st Century was going to be all about doing away with sexual and gender discrimination, and promoting equality and all of this lark.

So what part in modern society does a “gender-discriminative” event such as this have to play?

And not only that, it is a blatant ageist-discriminatory event and even worse, it discriminates against single parents who are prevented by this ageism from bringing along their children – but yet no childcare or creche facilities are on offer.

The Sheffield City Council and its employees should hang their heads in shame. An event such as this has no place in modern society

ladybower reservoir sheffield UKThis was photographed at one of my habitual haunts – the Forestry Commission car park at the Ladybower Reservoir. That was where I spent Saturday night.

We’ve been here on many occasions in the past as it is one of my favourite spots. And you’ve been lucky enough to have seen the photographs in winter when there have been no leaves on the trees to obscure the view.

But I’ve known this area for much longer than that. It was here that the 1971-72 North West Schools Orienteering Championships took place and Yours Truly finished 18th – and no, there were many more than 18 entrants.

Having dropped Caroline off last night, I come over the top via Axe Edge, Buxton and Castleton to arrive here. A beautiful drive in the dark and even better in the daylight.

It was quite late by the time that I arrived so I treated myself to a lie-in (well, it IS Sunday) and then off to Towsure in Sheffield for some gas and some other assorted bits and pieces.

One thing that I wanted was a new mounting for the jockey wheel on the Sankey trailer. I want to tart that up a little this year. It’s showing its age

strawberry moose helena morley UKThis afternoon I went to Morley, just off the M62 to meet Helena, one of my friends from school. Something else for which Social Media has a lot to answer.

We haven’t seen each other in … oohhh … 38 years I suppose; so we had a lot of news to catch up on over a coffee or two.

Of course Strawberry Moose took the moment to have a photo opportunity like he does. He’s quite a hound for publicity.

Right now I’m at the Motorway Services at Washington on the M1 not too far from Newcastle-upon-Tyne heading to the seaside at Whitburn where I’ll be staying the night if all goes well.

Tomorrow His Nibs is being reunited with his sister. It’s been a good few weeks since they have seen each other and he has some things to give her.

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Saturday 16th April 2011 – One thing you have always wondered …

… is “what happens to the shop-soiled and damaged goods that LIDL can’t sell?” I can answer that for here in France – it all goes to “Les Bonnes Affaires” in Commentry. One of my favourite “end of series” shops – it’s had a major makeover and a huge pile of the junk that’s been in there for years has all gone. It’s now packed full of LIDL special offers in damaged, damp or torn packages.

The lady who runs it doesnt have a clue about pricing. Some of the stuff is 3 times as dear as it was when LIDL sold it. But other stuff is for nothing, like the battery-operated LED motion detectors at €2:99 and the 12 Volt LED lights with MR16 fittings (the ones that I use here) at just €2:00 each – I cleaned out the stock of them, I can tell you.

It was a really profitable half hour in there, I can tell you.

So this morning I did some tidying up in here and threw away a load of stuff that I no longer need. And then moved the Sankey trailer and dumped it in the lane (and now watch someone want to come past for the first time in a hundred years)  before going off to Commentry for the shopping. Apart from the usual, I bought 6 tomato plants for €2.30 and 3 aubergine plants for €1:90. I hope that I will have better luck with the aubergines and tomatoes than I have had previously. And the LIDL in Commentry has been enlarged – and about time too – it was far too small.

Swimming at Neris was next on the agenda. The water was lovely and a good warm shower finished that off nicely. Back home I gave Lieneke some of my mint cuttings (anyone else want any? I’ve a load)  and at 20:00 went to watch Marcillat’s 2nd XI play, seeing as there was no footy at Pionsat this evening.

Franck, the Pionsat team coach, was playing central defence but he couldn’t save them from a right spannering – 6-0 thay went down and they were lucky to get nil as well. They really are awful. Within the opening 30 minutes Marcillat had had to use one of their substitutes and he was booked twice and back in the dressing room. An astonishing performance.

But there’s footy tomorrow afternoon at Pionsat – the 1st XI are playing St Bonnet. Pionsat beat them 4-0 down there and they really do need to run up a cricket score tomorrow to keep their promotion hopes alive. We shall see.

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Friday 15th April 2011 – I’m going to bed in a minute.

Yes, I dunno what’s the matter with me just recently – I can’t seem to last the pace any more.

And it isn’t as if I’ve done anything particular either. This morning I spent a couple of hours writing up my notes on Newfoundland, and then spent a while photocopying some documents that I need, and making the odd telephone or two.

Then apart from that I’ve been tidying up. The front of the house has been weeded in some kind of fashion and then I put down some plastic sheeting and put some pallets on top, and there I have my dustbins – all 4 of them. I’ve also cleared a pile of stones from in front of the house too – the big ones to the rockpile and the smaller ones to the paths between the new raised beds, and it’s in place of the stones that I put the pallets and the garden furniture that was up on top on the old potager. I’ve also rearranged the herb beds and the trees that I’ve been keeping in buckets until I can clear the orchard.

This evening I was invited to the annual general meeting of the Virlet Cultural and Historical Society and it seems that I’ve been talked into doing a presentation of my trip to Labrador sometime at the end of the year.

Lieneke is back again too and so I went round for a chat. She’s taken me by surprise as I had put the Sankey trailer across the door of her barn not expecting her to be here until the beginning of May as usual. I’ll have to shift that tomorrow.

And that’s been my day. Hardly tiring, is it? So I don’t know what’s up with me right now.

And in other news, I have gherkins and cucumber rearing their ugly heads in the cloche, and potatoes in the early potato bed.

Things are slowly coming to life here.

I wish that I was.

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Friday 27th August 2010 – It’s been an exciting day today.

This afternoon I had a good wander around the vegetable plot checking up on things as it’s been a while since I’ve had a really good look, what with one thing and another.

cucumber cloche les guis virlet puy de dome franceOne of the things that I did was to check in the smaller cloche where I have the strawberries and the one surviving cucumber plant. That has just been growing and growing with plenty of flowers but nothing much else, however today I noticed for the first time that the cucumbers are set.

There’s just three of them at the moment, still quite tiny but it’s nice to see some kind of progress in there. If the way that the courgettes have burst into life is anything to go by, within a week they should be monsters.

After that I went and checked on the tomatoes in the mega-cloche. They are just growing and growing with tons of flowers and fruit and so I took an executive decision and topped them all. No point in growing stuff that is never going to ripen and letting perish the fruit that is already there. Topping them will hopefully concentrate all of the energy into the fruit and they may even ripen.

gherkin plant greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceThere’s a stray tomato plant in the greenhouse so I went to check on that. And fighting my way in past the gherkin plants I noticed that they are finally starting to do stuff.

And that’s about time too. Thousands of flowers and not the least sign of a fruit, and all of a sudden a few of those have burst into life.

Now what do you do with a gherkin? If I could get malt vinegar over here I might be tempted to pickle them but I can’t so I’ll have to think of something else. All  suggestions are welcome

I followed that up by pulling the veg for tea. I had a veggie-burger lined up and so I pulled up some carrots and spuds, and picked some beans, spinach, sage and rosemary. Add a garlic clove and an onion to that lot and it really was a nice tea. Quite enjoyable. And I sowed the last of my parsnip seeds in where I’d removed the carrots. I’ve no idea what they might do but they won’t do anything in the packet.

The rest of the afternoon I’ve been sawing wood. I need to move the wood to erect the dividing wall in the lean-to where the composting toilet is. I keep on moving this wood around and nothing ever happens to it so I’ve decided to remove it by cutting up for burning, no matter how long it takes (and it will take a while). Winter’s not far away, you know.

This morning though I spent until midday working on my website. It’s almost up-to-date – I reckon another week will see the monthly pages done up to August 2010, and about time too. Nevertheless I was interrupted by a buzzing coming from across the yard – the water boiler that Smon gave me sprung into action at about 10:00. The weather today was terrible (it’s still pouring down now) and there wasn’t enough current to really fire it up, but it ran for a total of 3.5 hours. And more of this anon.

Once I’d knocked off computing at midday I went with Caliburn round to Lieneke’s and tidied up there. It seems that Terry and Simon have finished.

sankey trailer caliburn hardstanding tractor les guis virlet puy de dome franceI rescued the breeze blocks, the sand and cement, a huge pile of buckets my tarpaulin and ladder and a host of other stuff, heaved it all into the Sankey trailer and brought it round here.

I reversed it down the lane (hard to think that 20 years ago I did that for a living) and parked it next to Terry’s tractor where it can live for a while.

And it’s amazing how much room there is on there. I still reckon that the money I spent on having that done was money well spent. There’s room for another couple of cars on there I reckon if I tidy up a little bit better.

But the exciting bits involved the water heating.

Of course the day that I get everything ready for blast-off is the day when the weather turns miserable. The immersion heater in the house ran for a grand total of two minutes. But it was trying its best to fire up as the charge in the batteries bounced along the critical voltage. It was quite a windy day so I reckon that if there had been a wind turbine on the roof it would have worked a treat. I’m going to have to sort out this wind turbine.

As for the water boiler, even though the solar energy levels were pretty miserable it fired up in early morning once the batteries in the barn were fully-charged and ran for a total of about 3.5 hours. And the water, all 2.5 litres of it, was boiling away merrily to itself. So much so that with it being POETS Day ….
“POETS Day?” … ed
“Yes, that’s right. P155 Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday!”
… today I had a lovely hot wash and shave out of that boiler at 17:30 when I knocked off. And had it been less windy, I would have gone for the hybrid shower – the solar water (that struggled to reach 30°C) diluted by the 2.5 litres out of the boiler. Now THAT would have warmed it up.

I topped up the water with cold water once I’d emptied it, and it carried on warming itself for a short while until the sun went down and the solar charge stopped. And when I went to do the washing up after tea at 22:00 it was not very far short of being hot enough to do the washing up. A couple of minutes on the gas ring sorted that out.

All in all, I reckon that this is major progress and I’m really pleased with all of this. This place is slowly starting to take shape one way or another. I just want a nice sunny day now so that I can see what the immersion heater will do. But with all this rain that’s going on right now that isn’t going to be for a while.

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Wednesday 11th August 2010 – We’ve been at this roof all day.

We started off by hanging a chevron (or rather two chevrons fastened together to make one long one) off the side wall of the house to attach the roof beams to. And that would have been so much easier if the holes for the anchor bolts hadn’t been drilled so deep that I needed to hunt down my lengths of threaded rod. And it would also have been easier if we hadn’t have got the SDS drill bit stuck in the wall!

kwikstage scaffolding roofing sloping wall roof lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut once we had organised that we finished building up the wall we started yesterday and then made a start on the two others. We need to keep these two level with each other so that we can cover them up with the roofing sheets at night.

Terry was doing the bricklaying, Simon was cutting and I was labouring. And it’s hard work mixing load after load after load of lime cement and then in my spare time bagging sand (we had to go down to the quarry with the Sankey trailer to buy another load).

.

roofing sheets sloping wall roof lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut we weren’t out there for all of the afternoon – we called it a day after a while because it’s absolutely p155ing down outside. You can’t work outside in this kind of weather.

We heaved the two left-over sheets from my barn roof onto the area where we were working to keep the rain off our working space and Lieneke’s bathroom and then we all went home. I for one don’t fancy the idea of mixing cement with an electric cement mixer in the pouring rain.

Shocking, what?

But all of this work is wearing me out – so much so that when I got back here I crashed out for a bit. I need to keep my energy for tomorrow

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Tuesday 2nd March 2010 – Well, the Passat has a new home.

volkswagen passat parking les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn fact I’ve moved it to where we cleared out yesterday. It’s not actually where it’s going to stay but we had a little operational difficulty about that – namely it will be parked right over where we had the fire yesterday – and that it still burning – or it was at 17:30 this afternoon.

Well done to the Passat though as it went everywhere under is own steam, the first time it’s seriously moved since 2003 as keen readers of these pages in one of its many former reincarnations will remember that it was when I was down here from Brussels with the Passat in 2003 that I was taken seriously ill, and Lieneke drove me back which meant that the Passat had to stay here.

So I charged up the battery on the solar panels in the barn but the battery wouldn’t hold its charge (no surprise there) so I had to jump it off Caliburn. None of the electrics were working either so I had to hotwire the heater plugs and after three rotations the engine fired up. Smoke everywhere, especially from the damp that was everywhere and having to dry out) but then again so would you if you had stood around for 7 years and someone put 13.4 volts through you.

The handbrake had seized so a simple rolling backwards and forwards freed that off, and then I set off down the lane, negotiating the elageur who had miraculously appeared in order to mow the banks. At this point the throttle cable snapped, so I wedged the throttle stop open with a piece of wood (to go faster, you just stick a thicker piece of wood in – all hi-tech this, you know) and I eventually got it into position.

Tomorrow I’ll be moving the Escort van and the Sankey trailer, and taking my towing dolly round to Bill’s. Once that is done I can sit back a little.

I’ve also been hacking my way through the undergrowth in the garden and as well as that I’ve been moving he rubble out of what will be the bedroom. I’m not short of work round here at the moment.

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Monday 1st March 2010 – Dydd Gwyl Dewi!

future car parking les guis virlet puy de dome franceWe celebrated St David’s Day by having a work-in here. Just Terry, Liz and Yours Truly but of course it’s quality that counts, not quantity.

As you know, I’m looking for a place to park the Escort and the Passat (and also the Sankey trailer) so that they can get access down to the fallen tree and the collapsed house. I have a patch of waste ground that has old trees, stones, rocks, brambles, thistles as well as rusty beer cans and hibernating lizards and so we set to clear it out so I can move everything down here.

liz messenger garden fire les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis led to one of the biggest fires I’ve see down here (in fact it’s still burning even now) and the space is totally clear of rubbish and I can start moving the cars down there tomorrow. I was a little disappointed in Liz who refused to play the starring role in my production of “Joan of Arc” but there you are.

I’m ever so impressed with what we accomplished today.

I needed the heating on again tonight as the temperature has fallen again. But it’s the wood-burning stove doing the business right now. Liz has found someone who does the compressed blocks of wood and he’s given me a couple to try. I need to saw them in half though – they are too big to go through the hole in the stove.

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Thursday 24th September 2009 – TODAY’S PIC…

space blanket insulation fitting stud wall les guis virlet puy de dome france… is taken from almost the same place as yesterday’s. That means that it is much easier to compare the progress for today.

what you will notice is that the framework around the head of the stairs (or where the head of the stairs will be) is now in position. And I have to say that I’m quite impressed with it, even if it means that I have to enter the room now via a ladder. You can almost picture it being clad in plasterboard (except for where the water tank will be, which will be a wooden door).

The horizontals are not permanently fastened yet, which means that I can still bring bulky objects into the room, but I’m not sure what objects I’ll be having that will be so bulky.

I was about to start on the insulation but then I noticed the time – 18:15. As the late, great Arthur Naylor once said -“it’s not worth starting another case” and I resolved on an early night. well, late by normal standards but early these recent days.

It doesn’t look a lot of work, but each one of those joints has been filed by hand to make a millimetre-perfect fit and that takes time. And then I had to go with Terry to the quarry to help him with his order for sand. And a good job I did, as the digger was out of action and we had to handball 800kgs of sand onto the Sankey trailer.

Tomorrow I’ll be insulating, and then finishing off the flooring. Once that is in I’ll be plasterboarding the outside wall. The plasterboarding for the partition walls won’t have polystyrene on them , so that will be done at a later date.

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Wednesday 23rd September 2009 – NO VEGAN CHOCOLATE CAKE! SHOCK! HORROR!

But there was vegan ginger cake instead so that was ok.

And I reckoned I earned it too. Caliburn certainly did, hauling almost 2 tons of gravel over the Font Nanaud in the Sankey trailer. And then we had to unload it and bag it afterwards.

Terry offered me a shovel – a standard size one but I had my LIDL special – a long handled variety.
“It saves my back – I can shovel up while I’m stading upright”
“But the long-handle means you bash people with it when you turn round”
“Anyone who has worked with me for any length of time ought to know not to get too close to me no matter what tool it is that I’m wielding”.

space blanket insulation erecting stud wall attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceMeanwhile, back at the ranch, I’ve started to erect the other pillars and cross beams for the partition around the head of the stairs. This is the part where the door will go.

I’ll be fitting the water tank in the space over the top of the door but it’s looking smaller than I expected it to be. I have a 200-litre tank that someone gave me but I don’t think that it’s going to fit and so I’ll have to actually go out and buy … “you do know that word then” – ed … a smaller one.

Talking of buying, I’ll be having a weekend of not going to Brico Depot. Caliburn is still chock-full of stuff from last weekend and I’ve nowhere to store it, so I’m going to have to work on using all of the material that’s hanging around in order to make some space.

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Friday 17th July 2009 – THERE WAS THIS REALLY IMPRESSIVE VIEW …

low cloud puy de dome france… of the Puy de Dome as a low cloud sailed quietly past. The Puy is actually 1465 metres so that gives you an indication of how low the cloud was, which also gives you an indication of the weather today.

We woke up at about 07:30 but the weather was far too bad to go out and go a-roofing. By 10:00 it had stopped raining so we set off to Pontaumur to buy the concrete. But despite taking our money they had no concrete in stock so I renegotiated the deal for some money back and 10 sacks of cement.

Terry and I then dragged the old Sankey trailer out from underneath the undergrowth and set off to the nearby quarry for half a ton of sand. The sand cost us 18 Euros and luckily there was about half a ton of gravel still in the trailer from a project from 2003 when I was taken ill and so for a sum much less than the 14 bags of concrete we have enough cement, sand and gravel for about 5 times as much. And it won’t be wasted either.

But that was as far as we got, for the driving rain came back. With the wet, the slippery conditions and the possibility of lightning we decided to call it a day and have the afternoon off. A sensible precaution, methinks.

The weather forecast this weekend is for “better weather”. It would have to be, as it couldn’t get very much worse.

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