You win some-you lose some!

I've had a problem over the last few days in that my tractor which I bought 15 months ago suddenly decided it wouldn't start!
I'm certainly no mechanic, but I knew that the problem was in the electrics as not even that dashboard lights came on and when I turned the key  could here a clicking noise somewhere in the engine area.

My first thought were that the battery was low, so I put a charger on it for a few hours but to no avail. I then thought that perhaps the connections needed cleaning so I took them off and re-connected still without any luck.
I then tried to track down the clicking sound and eventually found it coming from what turned out to be a relay switch. I did ponder about taking it to a local tractor spares firm to see if I could get a replacement but in the end decided to email the firm in the UK that I bought it from and order the correct part from there. However I had an email back from them this morning saying that it was almost certainly a bad connection somewhere in the system and gave me a list of things to check.
Half an hour later....Success!

That was the good news!

Another half an hour later I decided to take it across my neighbough's field to my lower field across the stream to bring back a pile of logs that I had cut.

Unfortunately It got stuck in the mud and at the moment it's still there!

As I said you win some and lose some.....watch this space.

Woodpile

Living on the outskirts of a medium sized village here in Brittany we are surrounded by woods and forests and it seems every other person has their own enormous woodpile.

You would think that with all the wood around that it would be cheap to buy? Not so, logs are sold by the corde ( approximately 3 cubic metres ) which can range from anything around 130 to 200 euros depending on the type and how old it is. Ideally wood for burning should be a minimum of 2 years old to allow it to dry out and season. In fact after this amount of time it is probably half of it's original weight and will give out 2-3 times the heat.
Some of my neighboughs have piles of logs that would appear to outlast anyone's lifetime and yet they are still felling and chopping.

I have to admit to slowly falling into the same category, there is something very satisfying in building up a log-pile for future winters and on a rare afternoon as of today when the sun came out, It gives a real feel good factor.

I'm coming to realise that the art in this is to do it on a regular basis, the logs I am cutting and chopping at the moment which are about 18 months old at the moment will be stacked away ready for next winter.

There really is nothing like a good wood-burner roaring away on a winter's evening!

I'm feeling quite good about myself this week. I have a small meadow and woodland area at the bottom of our property that is accessed by a bridge I have built over the stream that divides it from the rest of our ground.
There are several trees that have fallen across the stream that need to be cleared and will also provide logs for our woodburner. I have been down there with a chainsaw sawing up logs however it is a lot of very hard work to carry them back to the house.

However there is access across our farmer neighbough's field where the stream is piped for about 15ft that I can drive my tractor over.
I went round to see him this week and managed to ask in French if it would be ok for me to drive my tractor across the field so I was more than pleased when he not only understood what I said but said yes I also had the bonus of being asked into his house for a glass of 50 yr old home made "hooch" that his father had made, extremely potent I might add!

Winter update (2)

After a lovely stay in New Zealand we resumed or trip. We had intended to spend the best part of three days in Sydney, Australia however we had overrun our stay in New Zealand and in the end just spent one night there.
We did make the most of it though as we were up and walking down to the waterfront by 7am on a lovely sunny morning. We walked down to an area known as The Rocks and along the quay. It is every bit as spectacular as you think of it with the Sydney Harbour bridge on one side and the Opera house on the other.

 

Sydney certainly appears to be a busy prosperous City with a lot of energy about it.

 

Time to move on, so back on the plane and onto Bangkok, we landed at the massive, new airport outside of Bangkok and picked up a taxi to take us to our Hotel in the Chinese district of Bangkok. It never ceases to amaze me how cheap taxies are in Bangkok. Considering it is a major City where you would expect taxi prices to be high, providing that you insist on the driver putting on the meter rather than trying to negotiate a fixed price you can get around pretty much anywhere for the equivalent of £2-£3.

For anyone who hasn't been, Bangkok is a mixture of very modern buildings and infrastructure mixed with an older more traditional way of life and as such is very interesting.

 

 

We spent five days in Bangkok and will almost certainly be back again sometime in the future, probably staying in a different part of the City next time.

Back on the plane once more for yet another 13hr trip to Heathrow where we picked up our car from Purple Parking ( very reasonable at about £60 for the best part of a Month ) and we headed off to Devon.
We met up with our friends, Nigel and Linda, for a very nice roast Sunday carvery lunch and catch up at the Exeter Arms and then went to my brother, Roger and sister in law Margaret's house to spend the evening and stay overnight. It was really good catching up with them both again and good to hear that they would be visiting us in the Summer for a couple of weeks.
The next morning after a visit to Crediton to deal with some banking business etc we drove down to Exmouth to visit Avril's sister and her husband, Denise and Ken.
Later in the afternoon we drove down to Ivybridge to visit our other son, John and daughter-in-law Claire and the grandkids, we were able to catch up for a few hours and have a nice dinner before heading off to the port for the overnight ferry home.
At just over a Month away this had been the longest we had be away but everything was fine and as it should be when we gt back.

Winter update

I shall probably have to split this into at least two instalments as It's long overdue and a lot has been going on.
A couple of weeks into November, we caught the ST Malo to Portsmouth ferry as the first leg of our holiday. We had a very smooth crossing on the "Bretagne" and drove off to head for Wiltshire for our first stop which encompasses all of our family. We arrived in Dauntsey around 10.30 in the morning to visit Peter and Rachael.
Actually as soon as we arrived we were off again, Peter had a meeting to attend for the Midget car racing that he does with two of his brothers, Steve and John. So after a quick cup of coffee I jumped in his car and attended the meeting with him while Avril went off with Rachael to see to her horse.
We all got back to his house in the afternoon and had a very nice visit staying overnight and leaving in the morning when they both had to go to work.

We then headed off to visit and stay with David and Amanda and our grandchildren in Herts, we had arranged for us all to go out for dinner in Hitchin in the evening where we met up with Steve and Jenny. We had a lovely evening in Zizzi's an Italian restaurant.

The next morning we headed off again and visited B&Q and Tesco's to stock up on some things we find either difficult or expensive to buy in France. We then set off for Heathrow to catch our flight to our first stop in Singapore. We flew out on the new(ish) Airbus 380 which is huge and can seat up to 800 people!

The flight there was very comfortable and we both managed to get some sleep on our 12 hour flight. We stop in the Ibis hotel on Bencoolin  road, a very nice hotel right in the middle of things with easy access to busses and underground. I can recommend this hotel to anyone staying in Singapore.
Eating out is inexpensive with a good variety of restaurants in the area, it is also close to the huge Burgis market.

 

 

After a really enjoyable 5 nights there we got back on the plane for another 13 hour trip to New Zealand via Australia.

As always wen we got there is was like we had never been away Anna and the kids were there to meet us at the airport and we were soon at her house which has the most gorgeous view from her lounge windows overlooking Hataitai and the sea beyond.

 

 

Although they live on the other side of the world from us by staying there for the best part of a couple of weeks means that we really have time to catch up on each others lives but not so long to interrupt their way of life.

The position of their house means that there is a wide variety of beaches and coastline to visit all within about a 20 minute drive, some of the area is quite dramatic as you can see from the photo below.



Jazz, Moules and Frites

We had a really lovely night out on Saturday going to what I think is a quite typical French "Do" It was held at a small village about 4-5 miles from where we live called Locmaria-Berrien in the local village hall.

For a very reasonable €12 a head we had a glass of Kir ( white wine and cassis ) to start with then followed by a huge amount of Moules (mussels) and frites. There was also a basket of French bread.

We bought a couple of bottles of Rose, again good value at €5 a bottle.

After the main course we had a cheese course of Brie and more French bread and butter. When that was over we had an ice cream for dessert.

However what really made the evening was the Jazz group that played all night from around 7pm to nearly midnight.
They were called the "Ragamuffins" who we have seen before. Here is a short "Youtube" clip that I took to give you an idea.

There was also a solo guitarist who's name I didn't catch who played during the interval that the group had a break. All in all a truly lovely evening, one of which I am sure we will have many more of!

Autumn

I've just had a very rewarding couple of afternoons down in the bit of woodland leading to our stream. There were a couple of large trees, probably Oaks, that had probably fallen down several years ago. You could see where the whole roots had pulled up from the ground but over the years the tree had been covered with a layer of thick moss and Ivy.

So I have been down with my chainsaw and have made a start cutting them into logs, not the easiest of jobs as it is on a fairly steep slope and several times the log that I sawed off rolled into the stream!

I have a very good quality splitting axe thanks to Avril, who insisted I get a good one rather than the cheaper one I was looking at! It has a carbon fibre handle and is very well balanced so made surprisingly quick work in splitting them up.

I now have quite a decent stack put aside for the coming winter for our wood burner which now goes on every night. We are just starting to collect chestnuts of decent size from our trees which cook nicely on top of it in a purpose built "Wok like" pan with holes in it that Steve bought as a present for us with exactly this in mind.