Today is the annual Caupenne vide grenier, the French equivalent of a car boot sale. Like a car boot sale, there are folks having a clear-out of their attic and there are dealers; unlike a car boot, and unlike almost anything else in France, it doesn’t stop for lunch, but goes on well into the afternoon. The earliest sellers to arrive get the best spots – inside the salle d’association, where it’s cool; the next to arrive have the luxury of being in the shade of the plane trees in the square; anybody arriving after them is stuck out in the blazing sun in the car park, so many people bring sun shades of various shapes and sizes. I don’t envy them; it’s cooler today, but still up to 32ºC in the shade.

I went for a look around this morning; there was the usual mix of children’s clothes and toys, old tools, bikes, books, and general bric-a-brac, but I was delighted to find a copy of Harry Potter and the  Order of the Phoenix, in French, for Alex.

This week we need to pick the figs; we have an enormous fig tree which is groaning under the weight of fruit. We’ve got countless jars of jam and chutney already, so I really don’t want to make any more, but am not sure what else to do with figs. So if anyone has any good recipes for preserving figs, please send them on via the blog or by email.

One idea I had was to dry them; my neighbour has an electric fruit dryer, but with the hours of sunshine we have here, I feel sure it must be possible to make a solar-powered fig dryer. So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to design a fig dryer that works on the heat/light of the sun, so we can have home-produced dried figs this winter. If you come to visit, you can taste them for yourself! Please send designs/drawings/plans to me, again via the blog or by email.

Thank you in anticipation of a flood of recipes and designs;-)

Different boys; different bikes; but still the same spirit of adventure!

Glyn, a cycling-mad friend of Nick’s, has been staying with us for the last couple of weeks, with the intention of doing as much cycling as possible in the time he’s here. With that aim in mind, the two of them set off for the Pyrenees on Tuesday morning, arriving at midday. They cycled two cols that afternoon, before checking in at the hostel; Wednesday was a big day, covering 150km and five cols; then another two cols on Thursday before heading home, tired and hungry. The trip seems to have been fairly uneventful except for the day they were forced to follow an enormous log lorry, complete with trailer, down the tiny mountain roads; on one hairpin bend Glyn, never known for being an overly cautious cyclist, decided there was space for a bike to squeeze through between the lorry and a car going in the opposite direction, nearly causing the poor car driver to have a heart attack! And done on my best bike to boot!

Kieran and I, meanwhile, finished clearing all the spare soil from the back garden, which now looks a lot better. I hope, after his break, that Nick will feel motivated to get some work done when Glyn leaves.

Jean-Jacques, our neighbor, turned up on the doorstep this morning to tell us that there was an injured deer at the end of our garden; it had probably been hit by a car last night and was obviously very distressed. Our friend Kate suggested calling the pompiers; the fire brigade here plays a much more diverse role than in the UK. So I called their number and explained the problem; the man gave me two phone numbers to ring in order to have the deer removed. Both numbers, however, were for people who deal with such things as wasps’ nests, certainly nothing as big as a deer. Which says a lot for my French accent! I called the pompiers again and spoke to the same man; this time he understood the problem and promised to send out a team to deal with it. 5 minutes later, a big red van came speeding up the road, siren wailing and lights blazing…. and shot straight past our house! Kieran and I stood by the gate to flag them down on their second attempt. They had a look at the deer and diagnosed a broken spine; then they took it away to be put down, poor thing. It sounded as though it’s a not uncommon event.

Trauma over, it was time to set to work on the soil mountain left in the back garden when they buried the gas tank. Kieran, being a gentleman, suggested I drive the digger and the tractor while he did the heavy work and showed me how to work the digger. At first, there seemed to be more soil landing around the trailer than in it, but eventually I got the hang of it and by the time we finished this evening, we’d cleared about three quarters of the heap onto a low corner of the garden. We should get it finished tomorrow morning, with a bit of luck.

Nick’s cycling-mad friend, Glyn, is staying with us for a couple of weeks, so the two of them headed off to the Pyrenees this morning for a few days of serious hill climbing. I thought I’d have a few days off, play some guitar, read a book, watch a few films; Kieran, however, had other ideas, along the lines of “We’ve got to make a difference while they’re away”. Hmmmm…..

So this morning, before it got too hot, saw us starting to cut up and bundle together the huge pile of vine trimmings the farmer left us when he pruned the vines back in March. They’re used to cook magret de canard on a barbecue, and do give it a lovely flavour; but we soon got very bored with that game and only did 2 boxes.

We’ve got some lovely big compost bins, but somebody (who shall remain nameless as he’s not here to defend himself) seems to think it better to simply dump stuff in a big heap somewhere near the bins, so I decided to clear the heap. There was all manner of stuff in it, from rotten apples to lengths of bamboo, ironwork, polybags and tree branches; I sorted it and piled the burnable stuff onto the vine trimmings. Kieran, meanwhile, split into manageable pieces and put on the same pile, the roots and stumps of trees we removed last year. Then came his favourite moment, when he could pour white spirit over it and set light to it all; it was quite a bonfire.

A while ago Nick bought me a present, a wonderful gift and something no girl should be without; I hadn’t used it until today, when I was educated in the finer techniques of starting and using – a strimmer. Yes, my very own, lightweight, easy-to-handle (or so it says on the box) strimmer! OK, so I haven’t perfected the shoulder-wrenching pull start yet and after an hour or so, it feels anything but lightweight, but if someone starts it for me, I’m away!

I’m hoping to be given some time off for good behaviour this evening as tomorrow Kieran’s plans include shifting the mountain of soil left when they replaced the gas tank and clearing all the boxes full of as-yet-unpacked stuff from the floor above the arrière cuisine, ready to remove and replace the floor.

I’ll be glad when Nick gets home!

This weekend has been the village fête; a far cry from the very sedate, genteel events I remember in England as a child.

It started last week with a volleyball tournament every evening of the week; the final was held on Friday, the first night of the fête proper. Knowing how much rowdy drunkenness will occur, the commitee and their helpers take precautions such as lining the walls of the bar with melamine faced chipboard, removing the doors and scattering the floor with sawdust. It’s a weekend of eating and drinking to excess, while shouting over loud music, going on till 5 or 6 o’clock each morning.

On Saturday morning there was breakfast served at 8o’clock, followed by a walk, a horse ride or a fishing competition for anyone who was interested. Then lunch was served under the shade of the plane trees for about 60 people. Later that evening there was another sit-down meal in the salle des fêtes, or burger, magret de canard, mussels or duck hearts and chips in the bar, followed by a disco. The main focus of the fête, though, is the Sunday lunch, attended by hundreds of people. Mushroom soup, a seafood tart, roast lamb with dauphinoise potatoes, nougat ice cream, coffee and armagnac (and copious quantities of red or rosé wine, of course). Aperitifs were served from midday and we finished eating just after 5pm. It’s a wonderful chance to meet up with people you don’t often see, as well as, for us, to meet new faces.

After lunch there was the quilles tournament; a bit like skittles, the aim of the game is to knock down 5 of the 6 quilles with another piece of wood, but leave one standing. The whole car park is given over to this game for the afternoon and it’s great to see all ages playing, from small children, allowed to stand only half the normal distance from the quilles, up to their grandparents.

Tomorrow morning is the big clean up; but when we finish, there’ll be lunch provided for the twenty or so people who usually turn up to help.

We were able to attend the fête by car, as we finally got it back last Friday, almost three weeks after it broke down. Once again we’ve been amazed by the generous nature of people round here; as soon as they knew we needed to go to the airport and had no car, two friends immediately offered to take us and refused even to accept  anything for petrol. I like to think that one day we’ll be in a position to repay their kindness.

Today is the first anniversary of our moving to France full time; a whole year has elapsed since we began “living the dream”. It’s been a steep learning curve for all of us; not just in terms of learning how the French systems of health care, taxation, planning etc. work, but also, having left behind most of the family and all of our friends, learning about our own strengths and weaknesses in an unfamiliar environment.

Although the main projects of building our new home and setting up a gite and chambres d’hotes business haven’t actually been started yet, we have plenty of achievements to celebrate, not least of which must be the standard of Nick’s French, which has improved beyond all recognition during the last year. He and Kieran have worked hard, not just in their French class, but also insulating the house, installing a second bathroom, transforming the barn behind the house to give us Nick’s and my workshops and an arrière cuisine, to mention but a miniscule part of what they’ve accomplished. For the first time in our married life, we’ve got a garden worth speaking of and have managed to grow an impressive amount of our own fruit and vegetables. Kieran has also got his motorbike license now and has become an expert digger driver and I’ve learned, amongst other things, how to tile walls and floors, grow fruit & vegetables and live with animals!

The people of Caupenne d’Armagnac and Nogaro have been unbelievably friendly, welcoming us with open arms to the cycling club, the walking club, the patchwork club; and making us feel valued members of the local community. It’s great to be able to go into town, bump into someone we know and stop for a chat; something we took for granted back in Harrogate, but which, we now realise, means a lot in terms of belonging.

Of course there have been difficulties and frustrations; the fear of misunderstanding what’s said on the phone, not understanding how things work, trying to get anything done in a time frame that would seem normal in the UK (not a chance!) and for me in particular, missing my friends and our beautiful granddaughter. But on the whole, neither Nick nor I would want to move back to England, or to have missed the last year for anything.

So what have we done today to celebrate this great event? Much the same as any other day, actually; Nick and Kieran have continued to work on the hangar while I’ve re-sealed the shower again. One talent I’ve discovered I definitely don’t have is silicon sealing showers. After numerous attempts, it was still leaking, so the lads removed the glass bit, I cleaned out all the old silicon, put new in and they sat the glass bit back onto it. I have to admit that it’s not the neatest job, but if it’s watertight this time, I don’t care how it looks!

Work over, it was time for a BBQ and beer. Take one of Val & Gary’s home-grown, free range chickens, cut through the base and flatten out, rub with pepper, lemon juice,  herbs and olive oil from our neighbours’ olive farm in Portugal, then cook over hot coals with potatoes, home-grown tomatoes, peppers and the first of our aubergines, serve with sauce basquaise; awesome!

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading about our adventures and will continue to do so, but we’re always open to new ideas, if there’s anything you’d like to see more (or less!) of, please let us know in the comments!

Now that all the family has left, it’s time to get some work done; until Wednesday anyway, when the next visitor arrives. We still have no car, but a friend has offered to take us to the airport if necessary, to pick him up.

The big project at the moment is the hangar, so Nick and Kieran have been busy preparing that for its new roof, where we hope to have photovoltaic panels installed, to feed electricity into the grid. There are big cracks running down the side walls, so now that the roof has been removed, there’s less holding them together and they’re not very stable. Kieran describes them as “flapping in the wind”; so as they’re going to cast a lintel across the front, above the doors, they’ve decided to cast a complete reinforced concrete ring around the whole building. It was also an opportunity to play with the new toy, a petrol-powered Stihl saw, (very carefully as this is a bigger version of the one Kieran used in an attempt to amputate his leg!) safely cutting the tops off the walls to bring them to an even level all the way round. The shuttering and casting of the concrete will be done tomorrow

I’m still spending hours in the kitchen, preparing fruit and veg for the freezer; at the current rate, we’re going to need a second freezer; the first one is nearly full already. I don’t know how many apples I’ve stewed so far, but the tomato tally now stands at 30kg!

It’s been a fantastic three weeks; first the wedding, then having the whole family here together. We took Alex, Graham and Izzy to the airport today and the house feels very empty and quiet now.

The wedding photos are online on my brother’s site, www.peternorthall.com. Any friends who’d like to see them please email me and I’ll tell you the password.

Adrian and Julie lent us their car for a few days so that we could get out and about and do the airport trip as our car is still not fixed. When it was taken to the garage, a week last Monday, they were going to look at it and give us an estimate the next day, but that turned out to be a bank holiday and they didn’t get around to it till Friday evening. The estimate, including a Peugeot steering rack, was extortionate, but Kieran found a suitable, non-Peugeot, steering rack online which would save us 600euros, so we tried to order it, using 4 different methods of payment, including paypal, but all of them were refused, so eventually Adrian ordered it for us on his card (don’t know why no-one wants our money!), by which time another several days had passed. It should be delivered to the garage tomorrow, but who knows when they’ll get around to doing the work? After all, this is August!

The garden, however, is in full production mode and we’re struggling to keep up with the amount of fruit and veg that needs picking, preparing, cooking and freezing every day. There was another boxful of windfall apples today as well as two baskets of tomatoes, the last of the beans and a few plums and pears, and the Victoria plum tree will need picking tomorrow before the storms that are forecast for tomorrow night. We gave about 10kg of apples to a neighbour yesterday and came home with a boxful of courgettes in return, which I’ve made into courgettes provencales today, with some of our own tomatoes. We should be able to eat well all winter out of the freezer!

There’s no mains gas around here, so you have the choice of bottled gas or a tank of gas; we inherited the latter, which is fine, if somewhat ugly. We decided to have a new, underground tank installed and set about getting this done, but as we’re learning, nothing, but nothing here is done at the sort of pace we’re used to.

I started by phoning the company, back in May; yes, they’d send somebody out to see us. Weeks went past and we heard nothing; I phoned again, and again, and again….. eventually making such a nuisance of myself that I was given the mobile number of the lady I needed to speak to, who came round (only 3 hours later than the appointed time!) and set the process rolling. There wasn’t a lot of gas left in the tank, but she agreed it was a good idea to order a refill when the new tank had been installed. The first date available for the changeover was August 16th; we found a plumber to join the tank to the pipe in the house and thought it would be easy. Why don’t we yet realise that NOTHING is easy here?! What fools we are!

The digger driver arrived at 8am, closely followed by the plumber. It was quite apparent from the start that there was a clash of personalities; the digger driver wanted to get the job done and the plumber’s work was nowhere near fast or accurate enough, even cutting the first length of pipe too short! There were raised voices and things nearly got very nasty when the digger driver, very skilled at his job, just happened to catch the plumber’s leg with the bucket of his machine. On the dot of midday the plumber, who hadn’t quite finished his part of the task, took off for the statutory 2 hour French lunch break; to wind the driver up even further? Who knows?

Eventually the job was done, so I phoned the company to order a delivery of gas; “Do you have the contract?” ” No, the lady who visited us in July took it with her.” She should have passed it on, but it would seem, didn’t, and is now on holiday and no, nobody else can deal with this.” Do you have the certificate of conformity?” ” No, where do I get one of those?”    “The plumber will have it.” So I rang the plumber, who has sent it off to some organisation or other, who will send out an inspector, who will inspect and send it back to the plumber, who will send it back to the gas company! “How long does this normally take?” I ask, bearing in mind that we’ve got less than a week’s worth of gas in the tank. “Normally it’s quite quick, but this is August…..”, which means everyone’s on holiday and France grinds to a halt.

Just a good thing it’s salad weather!!!!!

And speaking of weather, we’ve often been told that it can be unbearably hot here in August; this is our first August and there’s a heatwave! At 9am it was 27ºC, by 11am it was 30ºC and last time I looked it was up to 38ºC. The forecast is for it to hit 40º in the next few days and there’s no sign of any respite until at least next Thursday. By keeping all the doors, windows and Shuttercraft shutters closed all day, we’ve managed to keep the downstairs part of the house to no more that 26ºC so far, but the bedrooms are warmer, so Nick and I have decamped to the trailer tent in the grange – much more bearable!

We still haven’t got the car back, so we’re spending a lot of time in the pool, just trying to keep cool. What a good investment that was! 🙂

The week started off pretty well with Adrian and Julie’s annual barbecue on Saturday night; the barbecue was great, the weather was perfect and one of Ade’s bands played. Everyone had a great time, sitting out till the wee small hours. Once we’d finished cleaning up the following morning, it seemed like a good idea to meet up in the Pyrenees on Monday for another barbecue; this one to use up some of the huge quantity of leftovers. But the disposable barbecues weren’t great, most people were tired and Izzy was being super-whingey, so the high point of the day was the location, on top of the col d’Aubisque, which was pretty stunning.

We were about to leave when the car made a clunking sound; the steering wasn’t working properly. Not ideal for descending 18km of hairpin bends. It’s amazing how fast 5 men can get under the bonnet of a car, well, under the bonnet, under the engine, inside the engine….. not to mention how knowledgeable they are! A nailbiting hour ensued; would we be able to get back down the mountain or would we have to call out the car rescue services, involving what is still my nightmare scenario – having to make a phone call in French. The conclusion was that we were going nowhere; I had to make that call; and worst of all, I was expected to explain what was wrong with the car! Well, being an old-fashioned type of a gal, I hadn’t a clue in English, never mind in French! So I gave the phone to Nick, who used lots of technical-type words before handing the phone back to me for the “who, where, when and how” type stuff.

The end result was that an hour and a half later the car was winched onto the back of a tow truck big enough to seat 5 passengers and we set off down the hill. The hairpins are tight on a bike and tighter in a car, but positively scary in a big lorry, but eventually we reached the garage, where they booked some transport to take us home (fortunately a rescue package is part of car insurance in France).

We wondered about how we’d pick Alex and Graham up from the airport the following day, or take Gemma and Johnny to the airport today, but the cavalry came to the rescue; Adrian and Julie lent us their car for the next two days.

All seemed to be settling down, though we still don’t know when the car will be ready, until I noticed that the shower wasn’t draining properly this morning. The drains to the septic tank had backed up, so nothing was moving. Nick and Kieran have spent the afternoon with drain rods doing whatever it takes to clear that sort of thing; I haven’t asked and I’d rather not know. One of the (few) advantages of being a woman is that we’re not expected to do such “blue” jobs. Well there have to be some perks, don’t there!

They say things happen in threes; I’m waiting….