Sunday trip out--L`Ile d`Oléron.

   We have been confined close to home for a week or so, both by the weather, which has been very rainy though mild, and by the fact that I have had a nasty cold for the past week. We both felt a little stale and decided to take a trip out on Sunday, even though the Météo was not very promising. As we both miss the sea, we decided to visit the Ile d`Oléron, our favourite seaside location. In the UK we lived mostly at Portsmouth or Plymouth, within easy reach of the sea. Indeed at Hooe, one of our houses you could walk to the beach in 20 minutes. Although we love living here in the countryside in France, we do occasionally need a `fix` of sea air! Even though it`s a two-hour drive!
  However, first things first, we always plan to have a MacDonalds at Marrennes before venturing onto the island, so we set the GPS to go via St Jean dAngély to add a bit of interest. The weather was showery when we set out, but fortune smiled on us and it brightened steadily towards the afternoon.
  After our meal, we headed towards the impressive bridge onto the Ile. Oléron is the second biggest offshore island of France after Corsica, and is an intriguing mixture of tourist and holiday trade and the shellfish industry. Along the shores are many tidal pools where the oysters are parked to purge them after being fished up out of the sea and the little painted wooded huts of the oyster farmers. There are also several fishing ports, very picturesque with typical single-storey cottages. There are also large quantities of holiday homes, some big secluded hotels, riding schools, all sorts of aids to having a good time in the Summer. There is even a lengthy narrow-gauge railway, which has its own fire-waggon! The St Trojan Railway also runs trains which don`t need rails!

  We like best the beach near St Trojan called Grande Plage, which is on the seaward side of the island. The beach is miles long, of golden sand and the surf crashes on it in spectacular fashion. See the header pic for a view. You approach the beach through half a mile of pine forest with frequent picnic spots and eventually arrive at a parking spot from where you walk out of the forest over the dunes to the shoreline. The wind was bracing to say the least and you could see the fine sand drifting along the surface as the dune slowly migrated inland! We had a walk along the shore admiring the surf. A school of sand yachting was teaching some young pupils how to manage their swift-sailing `boats`.

Gatseau Plage

Sea holly and `horses tails growing above the beach

  Although we loved the views, the wind was very chilling, so after half an hour we retreated to the car to warm up and drove off through the forest. We decided to visit another beach new to us, on the lee-side of the island, Gatseau plage. Although the approach was similar, through the pine forest, the beach was far more sheltered though it lacked, of course, the spectacular surf. There was a huge thallaso-therapy hotel further along, and I felt the place would be nicer to swim in in the summer, though not now!
  As it was four o`clock, we decided to head for home as it is a two hour drive and it gets dark early now. We went home direct, or fairly so, as the GPS was not aware of a length of new dual carriageway towards Royan, and thus could not advise us when to turn off it. The poor machine was under the impression we were driving across country and kept asking us to `rejoindre une route.`
  We arrived home in the dusk, tired but having vastly enjoyed our day out.









Bye for now, we`ll tell you when we next go on tour!

Turn on the Heat.

   Well it`s that time of year again, the faithful Franco- Belge wood-burner has been re-lit and won`t go out until March apart, perhaps for a few days at Christmas. It`s muttering away to itself, keeping the kitchen warm and spilling its welcome warmth into the rest of the house. It`s also heating three kettles, two large ones a neighbour gave us years ago and a new one Kim bought in England to use for making tea. The large hot-plate top surface is useful for cooking, too. I lit it three days ago and it has kept in well overnight twice now and I am re-discovering the art of getting the best from it.
  Not that lighting up is a matter of throwing a switch!  First I had to sweep the chimney with the sweeps brush and rods. Then the stove itself needed a good clear out of the soot and clinker accumulated inside it. Then I pre-heated the firebox with a hot air stripper. This sounds a bit over the top but I have found it a wise precaution, without which a reverse draught can set in, filling the kitchen or even the whole house with choking smoke. Then it`s just a case of dry kindling and a couple of fire-lighters and it was away!
  Or you could look further back, to the delivery of five steres of logs a few weeks ago and their stacking in the barn, or to more recently in the cutting of the older logs with the electric chain-saw. Slightly to my apprehension, Kim has undertaken to do this for the moment, though in fact she is probably more practiced in this than I am, she would never let me use our small Black and Decker saw in Plymouth...
   If all this seems a great deal of trouble, I suppose it is, but we both feel a strong satisfaction in heating the house in this way. It seems more French somehow, more country-life. The house feels drier and there`s a satisfying tang of woodsmoke in the air. If the time ever comes when we cannot do it, we will be very sad.
  Bye for now, going to put dinner on the stove!
 

Testing Times

   I promised in yesterday`s blog to give an account of my Driving test in my Morgan Plus Four. It was somewhat eventful as you will see.
  The first problem was that the Test was on a weekday, and my benevolent naval qualified driver was, of course, at work and not available to drive me to the Centre. What I did to get round this was to leave the canvas hood erected, together with the rather opaque side screens and drive carefully and furtively to the centre. Even though I still had the L plates displayed, a police officer would have had to peer in the low windscreen to see that there was no accompanying driver and luckily none did. Once arrived near the Test centre, I stripped the screens, hood and frames and stowed them away, vastly improving the visibility. Luckily the weather was dry!
  I went into the centre to sign in and emerged with my allocated tester, took the rudimentary sight test of reading a number-plate at 25 yards, and led the tester towards my vehicle. When we arrived at the Morgan, squatting at the kerb, the tester continued for a few paces before looking incredulously at the Mog. `Is THIS your car?` he asked. `If I had known I would have brought my coat` I apologised abjectly and we crammed ourselves inside. `Where is your qualified driver` he demanded. I explained he had to see a man about a dog, or some such story... `He should have waited` Again I apologised. Things were not going well.
   They did not improve, either. As we started off, I noticed, to my horror that the speedo had quit. The examiner noticed it too, of course, and my (true) comment that it had only just failed was somewhat sceptically viewed. The Test had started in disaster, and the only benefit was that, as I was convinced I could not possibly pass, I drove in a much more relaxed way , despite having a mouth so dry it felt like leather. As I have said, I had driven the Mog several thousand miles and was thoroughly at home in it. The Examiner may also have been impressed by my hand signals, In those far-off days, cars did not have to have indicators or trafficators and the Morgan was not so equipped.
  The driving went well and I easily answered the Highway Code questions as I was still used to absorbing and regurgitating quantities of info from my schooldays. Finally he checked his clipboard, hesitated and reluctantly said `Well, I think I`ll give you a pass.` I could have kissed the fellow! After he had walked off, leaving me to wait for my `Qualified driver` I tore off the ignoble L plates and stuffed them in a near-by hedge, before driving off in triumph `licenced to kill!` The speedo came back on line, typical, and I later found that the needle sometimes seemed to turn back too far and did not engage. I cured this by gluing a splinter of wood to the little stop... In those impoverished days garage repairs were not affordable!
  Bye for now, going to muse on the vehicles (wrecks) I have driven in my time....
 

Transport nostalgia

   It is a well-known side-effect of getting older that memories of long ago seem sharper than that of the recent past. I find that recollections of events and scenes of half a century ago are as real as they ever were. Wouldn`t it be marvellous if the brain could be made to display some of these scenes, it would be like a time machine or a gateway opening on the past....
   One of the things I recall as if it were yesterday is my first motor-car. I suppose everyone can visualise their first transport, especially if they have had to buy it themselves and not be given it by Daddy, as seems to happen nowadays. And my first car was memorable in itself, being a Morgan Plus Four in sky blue. Morgans have always been a race apart, the factory is still in production, one of the few genuinely British vehicle producers. The cars have, in fact, changed astonishingly little, remaining very similar to my 1952 Plus-Four LWK 813 (I can even recall its registration number) It was a two-seater sports car, a long, long bonnet behind a horseshoe shaped radiator reminiscent of a Bugatti, ending in a VERY low windscreen some 8 inches high  The front wheels stuck out in front of the bonnet and were covered by sweeping mudguards leading down to a running-board below the doors. Behind the low cockpit were TWO spare-wheels surrounded by a tapering bodywork. Unfortunately I don`t have a picture, people were less into photography at the time. The bodywork was of aluminium over an ash frame, Morgans are one of the only cars that can suffer from wood-rot or woodworm! The very light body was driven by a Standard Vanguard engine of 2088 cc`s an unusual capacity. That was not the only unusual feature! The gearbox, for example was situated in the cockpit under a leather-covered hump just in between the driver and passenger`s legs, which ensured a very positive gearchange!, as the short gearstick enters the gearbox direct.  It was driven by a short primary drive shaft from the engine, rather than being directly connected as are all other cars. The front suspension rather resembles a motor-cycles, being a sliding cylinder arrangement. As this requires frequent lubrication, Morgan have included a system where the driver is told to press on a button on the floor of the car next to the clutch. When this is done, the oil-pressure gauge drops a pound or two as a squirt of engine oil is administered to the suspension! Don`t do it too often, though, or the surplus streaks the front tyres.... The doors were topped by flexible perspex windows which could be, and usually were, removed as they were not as transparent as all that til I had them re-done. The hood was the usual canvas job over a tubular frame and took ages to erect, awkward in case of sudden rain. The car did have a heater, which made a whine similar to a supercharger but delivered little heat... All in all a most impractical,uncomfortable uneconomic and thoroughly glamorous machine, capable of some 110 miles per hour for those with nerves of steel. I loved it!
  There was, however, one slight snag after I had bought it;- I did not have a driving licence... I was in the process of taking driving lessons. However, I abandoned the course and determined to continue to learn in my own car. A more unsuitable vehicle for a learner driver would be difficult to imagine than a 2 litre sports car with low visibility. Luckily, I had a secret weapon. In my digs, also lived an intrepid naval lieutenant who liked nothing better at weekends than being taken on long tours in the Portsmouth area at someone else`s expense. So that is what we did. We covered several thousand miles during my apprenticeship, without any accidents, until I was ready to present myself for the dreaded Driving test at the Portsmouth centre. I will, however reserve an account of this eventful occasion for my next blog.

   Bye for now, until we meet again on Test day!

Health.. and Safety

  I have just come back from a visit to the Doctor; not, I hasten to reassure my faithful readers, because I am ill but rather because I`m not.  Let me explain.
  A couple of weeks ago when Kim was in England with Alyson, I began to feel a bit headachey in the mornings and also had a nagging pain in the lower ribs. Now, one of the side effects of Atenolol, which I take for high blood pressure is that I don`t get headaches, so this symptom seemed to me a sign that my blood pressure was creeping up. A while ago, we bought a spig or blood pressure measuring machine in case we wanted to monitor ourselves, and rather unwisely I tried this out with alarming results. Rather than worrying myself into an early grave, I visited our local Doctoress with my machine and demanded a comparative test plus a diagnosis on the rib pain. I dare not do this kind of thing when Kim is in residence as she worries even more than I do, a confirmed hypochondriac.
  Our Doc is a good sport and agreed to this bizarre suggestion. Her machine gave a more reassuring result and she said ours was reading a couple of points high. The pain was easily dismissed as a rib strain from heaving things about. A good result, still it might have been serious, even hypochondriacs get sick! In fact she said she would increase my blood pressure tablets slightly to bring the level back to normal, which has since done the trick. However, I did not escape scot-free as she said I had not had a blood test for a year and prescribed one, which was carried out last Tuesday.
  Today, a formidable report arrived through the post and after poring over it a while we decided to take it to the Doc`s for deciphering. She interpreted it, liver ok, heart ok, kidneys ok, pancreas ok,prostate within limits etc. nothing to worry about in total. She also re-took my blood-pressure which has returned to its usual excellent level. We were able to come back much reassured, and I am now hopefully certified to carry on in good health. The French system is a thorough one and reckons to catch problems early, when something can be done about them. Perhaps this is why the French have the longest life-expectancy in Europe!
  Bye for now, going to enjoy the sunshine.
 
 

Concatenations of events..

This has been an eventful couple of days among the feline side of the Ark`s passengers. Firstly, we are glad to announce the return of Lillou after an extended absence of nearly six months. Goodness knows where she goes, usually in Summer, but this time we had really given her up for lost. However, I was feeding the sheep in the dark early Sunday morning when I saw her sitting on a gatepost at the side of the field. She was fat and sassy as usual, showing no sign of any privations. I carried her back indoors where she spat at all the other animals, before settling down as if she had never left and appropriating my chair so I have to lift her up and put her on my knee each time I want to sit down. Definitely a happy surprise!

   Not so happy has been a sudden illness of our latest passenger, Storm. She had been less lively for a couple of days, sleeping nearly all the time and not raising Cain as is her wont. When she went off her food as well, we decided it was time to consult the vet. The Chef surgery was full on Monday morning, so we were redirected to Brioux, and saw Solene, who diagnosed a temperature and a bad worm infestation. After treatment, she seems to be improving slowly and we hope this will continue. Its a worry running an Ark!
  Bye for now, going to have some tea.

The way we were

I have just returned from a week in Plymouth, having gone over by ferry with the car to bring back Kim ( Mrs. Noah ) and her numerous purchases after an extended stay with our daughter Alyson. Now Plymouth is the city where I spent most of my formative years, from 11 to 18 as a teenager, and a more recent stay of 20 years or so before moving to France. You would say, then, that it is the most familiar and homely town that I know.... and yet I find now that I really don`t know it any more.  It`s not only that the streets and shops have changed in the 11 years we have been in France, but the living conditions have worsened to a surprising extent. Even the street plan has altered, with a new attempt to create a more rapid traffic flow into the town in the mornings and out in the evenings, a system unlikely to succeed, I feel. TRAFFIC, that is the one thing that renders the place unsuitable for civilised life, a huge, almost stationery double line of cars that means commuters will spend over three-quarters of an hour on a ten minute journey and no doubt waste several litres of fuel into the bargain. If there is one advantage in the move to France, it is the relative scarcety of traffic jams. I will admit they do exist, any journey near Paris will reassure you of that!  However, here in Deux Sevres, they are an endangered species, I am happy to say. Long may it so remain!

  Bye for now, off for a burn-up on the open road!