After a very stormy Saturday night, we got up early (6.30am) Sunday morning to go to the 15th Ronde des Sangliers By the way, if you didn’t know a Sanglier is a Wild Boar! It was in the Monts de Blond area which is a great place to ride your mountain bike – proper stuff. After the usual coffee and croissants we set off at 8.30 sharp – the Grand Depart!
The first half was lots of climbing as they took us to the top. The trails were wet and slippy and lots of big boulders and rocks to catch you out. A couple of stream crossings and lots of mud. At one of the road crossing, we turned left into the next chemin. The marshal shouted “A gauche, a la piscine”.
I thought what is he going on about, to the swimming pool and then there it was, the biggest muddiest puddle you’ve ever seen – with no way round. Well it’s all in good fun so I tried to go straight through but it all went wrong and I ended up wading in the boggy stuff!. 
After the revitalement stop, they sent you down descent after descent. Again with tricky rocks and boulders. We went down single tracks, through woodland and then then it was all over. It was great fun, very dirty, but great fun. I took my ticket to the Lucky dip and I’d won a tyre – a pretty good offroad, 2.1 Swalby one at that. Then to top it all, they had bubbly to drink with the food at the end. My favourite – a perfect morning’s riding.
Archive for ◊ May, 2007 ◊
Another job done on the road to re-decoration. We took out the old smelly toilet.
As with all things DIY it’s not quite as simple as going out and picking the loo you like. Our ‘exit’ hole is through the floor and we didn’t want to move it! After looking at various loos and measuring just about all 20 of them, we finally found one that would fit the measurements. It happens to be a very nice loo and comes with a 10 year guarantee. But seriously, the main reason for replacement as well as getting rid of the old one which was pretty ‘orrible, is that we pay for our water here by the m3. The old loo didn’t have a dual flush. Our new one does and it means we can use the small flush which is only 3L of water as opposed to about 6L. It smells better too!
Out with the old In with the Loo
I bought a ladder today. As usual, there are all types and sizes and it’s hard work trying to decide which one you need. There are a lot of jobs we need a ladder for, so we wanted to buy one which would do most of what we wanted. Decided to buy a 3 piece one which can be used in all sorts of ways. You can use it as a standard step ladder, 3 separate ladders, a step ladder with extra extension over the top and finally a very long 7.9m ladder. It’s very light weight and has wide feet on the first section for stability.
First job is painting the eves of the house. They’ve been looking a bit desparate for the last few years and in need of some weather protection. I started at the end of the house and made good progress, moving along higher and higher to top roof level. As I got closer to the top, I could hear some loud scratching and shuffling going on. A huge hornet flew out from underneath the roof tiles and I thought maybe that was making all the noise. It got louder and then I heard another sound, like a high pitch squeak. It suddenly dawned on me that there were bats roosting and I must have disturbed them with my paint brushing. Suddenly one flew out from the roofspace and nearly knocked me off my ladder. Then another and another. All in all about 5 flew out. I felt a bit guilty for disturbing them but I didn’t know they were there. Someone pointed out that there are plenty of old barns and buildings for them to find another home if they didn’t come back. We have seen the bats flying since then, so they are still around. Maybe they will come back and roost there as I’ve finsihed that end.
The weather has been most strange this year. We had a scorchingly hot April and May has been decidedly chilly and rather wet. The latter part has been warming up a bit and amazingly, we have mushrooms coming up the in the garden. We think they are edible field mushrooms but it’s most strange seeing them in May. We’ve decided to leave them to redevelop later this autumn. Will look forward to a nice mushroom omlette.
We are all being told about our impact on the planet with global warming etc but what about every day? It’s not until you live somewhere with so much wildlife about that you realise that small things have a big impact. Take the birds for example in the spring, crashing into the windows. It’s not our fault that they think the reflection is the next flight path to the next tree but we can help by moving the blinds down a little to cut out the reflection. The lizards quite regularly use the window sills as a shelter when the temperature goes down at night. There’s been a number of incidents of trapping lizards when opening them to shut up the shutters, only to find a very flat squashed lizard a few days later. We now use the method of shaking the window a little before opening to try and shoo them away so they don’t get trapped.
The most recent example is that of our friendly field mice. We noticed them one day eating the grass seeds that we had put down to regrow on an old mole mound. Slowly creeping outside to take a picture, we realised that they weren’t bothered by our presence at all and in fact were happy to eat straight from your hand. We went to bed as usual and the following morning were on our way out when we noticed that there were two field mice trapped in a bucket which had been left on the patio over night. We tipped them out and one scampered down over the grass quite happily but the other one looked very weak and was not well at all. It looked like a very small baby. I picked it up in my hand and it immediately curled up and tried to go to sleep. Not wanting to hold onto a mouse in my left hand for most of the day, I put it into a small container with some tissues but it wasn’t happy with that. It stumbled away and then buried it’s head in the long grass to get some rest. As there was a rain storm coming, I covered it over with an egg box lid and a tea towel and left it there for a few hours. Checked on it later to see if it was still breathing and it was still alive. After a few more hours, we checked again and it had gone. It had recovered and sure enough, we saw it a few hours later scamping around in the grass.
So, don’t leave buckets lying around up turned and make sure you put that ladder in your bath to help the spiders climb out. It’s the small things that you do that can make a difference.
There we were just enjoying a glass or two on the patio when over the other side of the pond, we saw something a wondering over the other side of the pond. “Is that a hedgehog?” Steve grabbed the camera and wondered over. What a friendly chap he was and obliged by letting us take a nice close up picture. Nice to know we are a hedgehog friendly garden.
Finally we have our internet connection and telephone all up and running. The problem – some rogue branches on a tree. It only took 5 engineers, 3 visits and a new telephone cable to work it out! Anyway, I’m glad to be back up and running. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Well if you are wondering why I haven’t been posting on my blog lately, it’s not because there’s nothing going on. We have been having a problem with our phone line and ADSL connection. I’m only able to connect to the internet for a few seconds or minutes at a time. This makes posting blog articles and pictures nigh on impossible. We’ve had 2 engineers out already. The first ones were a complete waste of time. They simply told me that my modem was broken and they removed a fuse from the telephone connection in the garage. Of course, nothing changed. Our calls cut off when the wind blows and we can’t connect to the net. Called again, this time the 2nd engineer got up the ladder and has decided that we need a new cable because the old one is corroded. This was last Wednesday and in May the French have lots of bank holidays. So we are waiting for the arrival of the engineer on Wednesday to replace the cable. I have no doubt that this won’t make the slightest difference to the problem, but they seem to like to do things one step at a time, taking at least a week to do each stage. Watch this space ….
