New Year

I won't bore you with a list of reasons as to why I have not written anything since September as none of them are very interesting and it would just read like a list of excuses! The only comment I will make is that I am well, all is well and life continues. Progress has occurred on the house in that one room has been finished, but there is still much more to do.. the dog continues to be a work in progress, the cat is still alive and we are still enjoying things and so far have not regretted our decision.

We managed a week away in the Alps over the New Year but how times change, as we decided that we were not fit enough to ski and such a decision would invariably lead to injury and thus even more delay with the house. Instead, we went walking with the dog and had a go at snow shoeing, or raquettes as it is called here. That was all going well except for the fact that the very day we needed the snow shoes we didn't have them, and ended up trying to walk thorough snow thigh deep in places. One kilometre has never seemed so long as it did on that day!

I do love the mountains even though I find the air a bit 'brutal'. At the end of the 5 days we were just ready for another week to really enjoy our improved fitness.. except it was time to go home! Here are some pictures taken from the balcony of my brother's chalet.

watching the skiers come home

morning on the mountain

After the snow (for sepia friends)

Where have I been?

I've been away too long! Summer seems to have taken over and I haven't got round to posting recently. I have in fact just got back from a lovely few days visiting with a friend in Holland. She does not live there, but her family originate from those parts, and so it seemed a good place to catch up with her.

I took a short flight from the local airport to Rotterdam-The Hague. It took less time than it does to go to Bordeaux on the train. We met in a really nice hotel and in the evening walked a few hundred metres to a restaurant, where we had exactly what we had hoped for: a lovely meal of the sort that we could never cook for ourselves, with wonderful wine and good service. All this was because we hadn't seen each other for seven years and we had both lost our mothers in the last year, and so wanted to do something special.

How lovely it is to spend time with those friends that you don't get to see nearly often enough, but yet when you meet them again it is just as if you just left them. The truth is that with the great distance that separates us, who knows when we get to meet again and where that will be. Even with the best intentions, we are only likely to meet a few times more in our lifetimes, so we decided to enjoy it!

We spent a day exploring Rotterdam. The architecture was quite interesting; modern but in a way that seemed to blend in with the style of the port. We walked around the buildings, just looking. This is a picture of the 'red apple' building, or rather the reflection it made in the waters of the canal.

In the afternoon we took a boat trip to kinderdijk, to see some of the famous windmills. It was hot by then and so we were grateful of the chance to sit in the shade for the hour it took each way, even though the trip along the river wasn't very interesting!

We managed to get a quick look at the windmills along with all the other tourists and day trippers, before heading back to Rotterdam and on to Utrecht for the next couple of days. Utrecht was a complete contrast to Rotterdam; old buildings, lots of people, noise, shops and restaurants. We did some shopping, looked at the people, drank coffee, and generally caught up on seven years worth of talking! In the evening we hired a canal bike and explored the waterways that run through Utrecht. It was a warm evening and so the edges of the canal were packed with people eating and drinking and talking.

Holidays

Phew..just catching up after a week away. We spent a lovely week in Limoux, in the heart of the Cathar country. Here are a few pictures.

The citie- Carcasonne

Vineyards of the Languedoc-Roussillon

Ax-les-thermes

Snow on the Pyrenees (in May)

 

Rennes le chateau

 

A jolly hiking holiday-Sepia Saturday 172

These photographs were knocking around in my mother's wardrobe for years. They bear the scars as both are rather damaged. When I was a child I used to sneak into my parent's room and go through all the photographs in the wardrobe. They contained pictures of my parents before they met each other and before I was born, and were full of fascination.

This group of walkers looked relaxed and happy. The man on the left is my father but the woman next to him is not my mother! She never knew who she was .."just someone he knew before he met me!" (Apparently in his younger days there were plenty of women that were interested in him!)

Thus is the same group, looking very fit and healthy. They could almost be in an advertisement for a health cure!

I'm not sure where they are but my guess would be either the Isle of Wight or Jersey.

Holiday

How could I forget to mention that we actually managed to have four days holiday as well before I went back to UK. We went to the West Coast of the Gironde, to the North of Bordeau. It reminded me of Canada and in particular the West Coast of Vancouver Island (although the weather was better!). There are miles and miles of sany beaches, surf, lakes and forest and fortunately not too many people. We had a lovely relaxing time, just the three of us!

Fly free water butt! Fly free!

Tonight we are staying in the Premiere Classe hotel in Rouen, which is neither premiere or classy but does have free Internet. The dumper is still attached to the trailer although the water butt that Ian fixed on to it with straps managed to disconnect itself and fly free somewhere south of Calais. The first we knew of it was when we were stopped by a 'securitie civile' man who told us he had been driving behind us as it launched itself into the air! We said sorry, decided the water butt was not worth rescuing, and continued on our journey. Later on we heard a traffic announcement saying that there was an object on the road south  of Calais and to take care. We suspected the water butt!

We ate in the only restaurant in the area, the Campanille. Campanille and Premiere Classe are operated by the same group. The meal was expensive and just ahout edible but being English we didn't complain!

All aboard

We are off to France tomorrow for three weeks and I am feeling a bit stressed as I still haven't finished the packing! I am quite good at last minute packing, but I need to be totally focused and alone. This time I had Ian looking over my shoulder so I am convinced that I have forgotten something very important. Ian arrived mid-day with a dumper truck on his trailer. When I got home at 3.00 it was covered in small boys, staring at various mechanical bits!
We now start the slow and tedious journey to the Dordogne; never going above 90 km an hour! We should arrive some time on Sunday, stopping overnight in Rouen tomorrow. The good news is we should be getting our WiMax on Monday so I may manage blogging on the go!

Off into the sunrise

Well, we are now back home. My efforts at writing draft blog entries while away dwindled as the workload increased and my reserves depleted. However, sometimes it is better to wait a little while before committing stories to print and I have lots of things saved up in my head! However, tonight, with the third lot of washing about to start and the thought of work tomorrow I have no energy but will finish with a picture of the house taken yesterday morning as the sun rose and we were leaving to head north!

A belated post.. the journey down

The journey down to the house was not entirely uneventful. The roads were busy (for France) and although there were no traffic jams the services were full and finding a parking spot was difficult. We stopped for lunch in the ‘baise de somme’ which is in the middle of a nature reserve. There were very few parking spots and the only place we could park was on the grass. We set up our picnic in a place that didn’t smell quite so strongly of p*ss as everywhere else.
When it came time to leave Ian cautiously reversed the van out and went to exit just as Mr Frenchman in a Mercedes pulled in. There then followed scenes reminiscent of the standoff at the OK Corralle, with Mr Mercedes refusing to reverse or go up on the grass, the cars behind refusing to reverse back and Ian getting more and more grumpy! After a few minutes Mr Mercedes very reluctantly pulled over and we were able to leave. As I attempted to get in the van Mrs Mercedes said something to me to the effect of ‘it is a one way’ and ‘you stupid English’. Well, it wasn’t a one-way and Ian was now at the end of his fuse and decided to get out and have a row with Mr Mercedes, convincing him that although English his knowledge of French swearwords was indeed fluent.
Eventually I managed to drag Ian away, avoiding an International incident, and we continued South.

Normal service will be resumed shortly

Not sure whether I will get to do much blogging over the next three weeks as Ian has a gruelling programme of work planned and our internet access is restricted to logging in to the neighbours wireless network. We are off on Saturday morning and I need to pack!

A working holiday

Our three week trip to France is approaching fast and we are planning, packing, and organising to make sure that we have enough tools and materials to do all the work that Ian has planned. Ian always thinks we will do more than we actually manage, but even if we just do half the things on this trip then we will have worked hard! This time last year all we had was a concrete base and now we are plumbing, wiring, insulating and building walls, so we are moving forward. We are meeting Warren on Monday. Warren is an English chap with a digger who is going to dig the hole for our septic tank and various other trenches and drains. He arrives first thing Monday morning.

One thing that I did last year was to contact the head of the school of occupational therapy in Bordeaux. It was a long shot and something I wasn't even sure that I wanted to pursue as my plan was to be a full time llama farmer and bed and breakfast landlady. Anyway, my first approaches were warmly welcomed and to cut a long story short, when we are away this time I am taking a trip to Bordeaux to meet her and her colleagues and to consider the possibility of some sessional work! The winters there are long and cold and I will need something to do!

Journeys

Yesterday morning at 7.00 we were in the Alps, looking up at the clear sky as the sun slowly came up, trying desperately to de-ice the inside of the car windows and pack our things.

The mountain air is challenging. It bites into your lungs, sears your skin, turns your hair and nails dry and brittle but if you can survive it you feel the benefits to your system over time, so despite the fact that I have ached, fallen over, bruised myself and generally felt exhausted I feel calmer, less stressed and now, after a week, much fitter. Interestingly my normal joint pains have almost disappeared.

We drove down the mountain in the dawn and by 11.30 we were passed Dijon and heading up towards Calais and England. We got back to London at 9.30 pm UK time and I felt a strange sense of unreality. How could we be in the Alps in the morning and then back in the city a few hours later? I felt quite unsettled! I have had this experience before when travelling and was telling a colleague who said it is when your spiritual self and your physical self have not quite caught up with each other.

Meanwhile, our physical selves were subjected to a dreadful lunch in a French motorway service station. As we were not in a hurry we decided to join the French in their exodus off the motorway in search of lunch. If I was ever under the illusion that the French were fussy about food and that all French food was better than English food it was well and truly put to rest yesterday. The queues were long, the food cold and oily and I ended up taking it back. The second attempt was not much better! We vowed never to do this again no matter how hungry we were!

To replenish our spiritual selves on the journey Ian tried to find an open D.I.Y. shop. However, as it was a Sunday they were all closed, so we stopped off in Reims and visited the Cathedral!

Getting in the last run

For the last couple of days away the weather turned a little colder and we were back to wearing layers of thermals, although the sun still shone brightly all the time. As usual, by the final day I was feeling less sore, fitter and finally could remember the point of skiing and how to do it (except this is what always happens and then when I return a couple of years later I have to start from the beginning again!). I wanted to get the most out of the final day but as I am not at my best in the morning and I also offered to walk the dog before going, I didn't get on to my skis until just before lunch time. The days are short this time of year and by 4.30 the sun sets fast and the temperature drops quickly. I took these pictures while I was waiting for Ian to finish (as he went off to do some more difficult things..)

I rather liked this tree as it got covered in a layer of ice over night which refused to melt all day, even though it was exposed to the sun.

This is the view looking up one of the main slopes at the end of the day, with everyone rushing to do their final run of the day!

The final picture is the view down the valley into the setting sun, from where I was drinking my hot chocolate!

Christmas Eve

Today is Christmas Eve and here in the Alps there is brilliant sunshine and blue skies again. As predicted I was as stiff as a board today and even getting out of bed hurt, so I didn't do too much. Ian and the others went off to do some high tech skiing and I settled for a couple of runs on my own just to get moving. The best bit was that I managed two conversations on the chairlift in French. The first was with a man from Paris who has a small studio here and visits regularly; the second was with a ski instructor who told me that he was in London two years ago when Le Grand Depart came to London. He was Paul Sherwin's (ITV4 commentator) driver from the London to Canterbury stage so as we were marshaling on Westminster Bridge he would have driven by! I sometimes think that everyone that I talk to in France has something to do with the Tour. The other topic of conversation that all the French people seem to enjoy talking about with the English is the value off the pound against the euro. As my instructor yesterday said 'welcome to the real world!' I think that there is a feeling that we have had it quite easy for many years!

We all met for a late lunch and I returned back to chalet after while the others went off more skiing.

This is the view from the balcony this evening....

Another day on the slope

Another lovely sunny day; almost like spring skiing. Coming off a chairlift this morning I locked my skis around Ian's and fell on my bottom, so now sitting down is rather uncomfortable and I think that tomorrow I will be rather sore! (After that with any luck my stiffness will subside to be replaced with a more supple and lithe body!). My lesson was good and I managed to go down a red run for the first time, only falling when I was standing still! My instructor could not explain why that had happened after I had come down a steep slope! (In the summer he is a keen cyclist and he cycled up the Col de la Columbiere in 31 minutes. Ian took 50 minutes and I took 2 hours!)

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, which is more of a celebration in France than the 25th. We hope to watch the 'decente en flambeau' tomorrow evening, when all the ski instructors ski down from the top of the mountain with lighted torches.

My nephew is doing an ice sculpture outside for his art project and we are awaiting dinner!

Sun and snow (and falling over at 50)

The first day of skiing passed without too many serious consequences! The snow is good and sun and mild temperatures are forecast so yesterday was great for treating my full spectrum light deprivation! I only looked like a complete beginner for half a day yesterday although have still forgotten how to turn properly and so ended up on my bottom several times; the most spectacular involving my skis ending up over my head and a 10 metre tumble down hill. I discovered that getting up once down is a real challenge!

The sun is shining, my legs ache, I have a lesson booked at 2.30 and the slopes beckon so I will be brief!

Memories of other bonfires

Whilst looking through my old Japan pictures I remembered another event that at the time bore a strong similarity to the Lewes bonfire festivities that I attended last week. When we were there it coincided with the Kurama Himatsuri or Fire Festival, which takes place towards the end of October every year just to the north of Kyoto. We went there by train, and as with the Lewes festival the trains and the streets were packed. The origins of the festival were to light the way for the spirits of the dead but my guess is, like a lot of these autumn festivals, it was a way of marking the approach of winter. To start fires are lighted in front of homes and children dressed in traditional clothing march up and down carrying small lighted torches. As the evening progresses the men follow dressed in traditional costume which leaves their bottoms naked to the air (not a pretty sight!). They march up and down chanting and marching to the rhythms of drums, carrying larger and larger torches. Finally they march up the hill to the shrine and then seem to roll themselves down! In many ways it is just like Lewes!

Welcome to Obama

I saw on the News that the town of Obama in Japan was celebrating after Barack's victory! This rang some bells in my head. In 2004 I went to Japan on a 2 week cycling holiday. It was a kind of 'trip of a lifetime' type of holiday and I had saved both money and annual leave to enable me to go. We were the first group to go on this trip and had the dubious pleasure of being followed round for the first week by a well known holiday programme and a rather famous former BBC News reader!

We started off in Osaka and then headed off across Japan to the sea coast, ending in the town of Obama. I remember the weather being rather like it is here today, wet and windy!





The town was grey and the hostel was spartan but the town put on a special treat for us and treated us like royalty with a full Japanese banquet, gifts, games and a presentations! We left the following morning but were hampered a little in our journey as the road had disappeared during the storm two days before we arrived!

After that we took the ferry to Kyushu and the BBC left us in peace! The memory prompted me to search out some old photos taken by me and fellow guests!

Distant memories

My summer in France now feels like a distant memory! Work has picked up pace and I am fully into the flow. I can't believe I was ever away or that things continued in my absence! The list of things that I have to do is getting longer and longer and the weekends seem to be getting shorter and shorter! (Along with the days.. it is now dark at 7.00 and pretty soon it will be winter!)

French ladies who don't get their hair wet

As the rain decided to continue unabated we found the local municipal swimming pool. It is open from 10.00 a.m. until 8.00 p.m. and the best time to swim is between 12.00 and 2.00, when any self-respecting French person is at lunch. The pool was clean, relatively modern and the swimming pool was deep, probably 6 foot at the shallow end and 10 foot at the deep end, so hence it was only possible to swim in it! There were a few ladies in there over retirement age but they put our ladies that don't get their hair wet to shame! Two proceeded to do 25 metre lengths treading water (no easy task!) and one made Ian and I look like we were learning to swim, with her expert tumble turns. She was still in there when we got out! The lifeguards were also unlike any I have seen in England. The man was about 60 years old with a long grey beard and hair and the woman was probably around my age and did not have the build of a swimmer! They spent the time sitting between the children's pool and the main pool, passing the occasional glance in the direction of the water!

When we returned the rain had stopped a little so we decided to take the dogs for a walk. We got half way round the walk when the heavens opened, so I am sitting here in slightly damp clothing, waiting to dry out. (Ian is trying to get his 30 year old tractor started!)