Random update

I grew a small amount of sorghum this year.  I'm not sure why, perhaps I thought it was a good idea at the time.  The grains are now drying in the conservatory.   Anyone got any idea of what to do with sorghum grains?

It was windy on my walk the other day but this tiny butterfly was holding its own.  Not a good piccie, the phone zoom is not that good.

My walks sometimes take me past this barn.  It's never been in good repair, but the roof has finally collapsed after the recent storms.

Our village hosts art exhibitions every year.   This evocation of a forest I thought was excellent (it's complete with sound).   The careful use of mirrors makes it look bigger than it is.  Can you find the hedgehog?  The mouse?

Piccies of the Puy du Fou

No need to go into a blow-by-blow account of the shows we saw; here's some pictures.   Everything on offer was done to the highest standards of production and theatrics that I have ever seen, and the horsemanship on display was extraordinary.

A few points of note: it's impossible to see everything in one day; plan to stay overnight if you want to see them all.  Be prepared to walk a fair distance, and queue up if you're there at peak season.   If you rent a mobility scooter there is no need for an "emotion" pass (costs extra but gets you reserved seats).   Restaurants in the hotels are self-service, but good.   My favourite show was "The Star and the Mime", that is also the newest show - indoors so no piccies.  The theatrical effects were effective without being showy, and the story engaging.   The Last Panache was also excellent, though again no pics.

The secret of the lance:

The horses seemed to love this.  At certain moments, they would be galloped across the scene, one at a time.   They were all docile until it got to their turn, when they would get all excited, rear up and be difficult to control until finally they set off at full tilt.

The Vikings

This show had some "how did they do that" moments.   The viking long ship rises from being completely submerged, with what appear to be model people on it.   Except they're real people who then take part in the fray.  I hope they were wearing wetsuits under their costomes, else they'd be freezing. At the end these same people get back on the boat and it disappears underwater.  Not a very realistic arrival or departure for real vikings, but still quite impressive.

The romans

The chariot races were great fun, with thrills and spills; wheels come off, chariots break away....   The centre stage in the first picture transforms into the galley in the second one.   It turns around as well.

This was a fun break, with the weather being the only downside.  The first day was rainy, the second was rainy and cold.  Not the fault of the Puy du Fou.

Visit to Puy du Fou

This is a guest post by Anita, who has written up the trip on facebook:

We have wanted to go to the Puy du Fou theme park for several years. It's about a 2 hr drive south of us and very popular but not open all year and it is difficult for us to reserve in advance without a possible conflict with weekend gite rentals. But this year we managed to find a couple of days in late September when we could get an onsite hotel. I'm glad we went but came away with slightly mixed memories,because it was exceptionally cold and windy and rained a great deal both days we were there and I was suffering from a fever and mild gastroenteritis, thus not exactly on top form.

The place is HUGE (300ha) so each day I rented a mobility scooter, but even the walks from the hotel or car park to get to the rental place were long. There is a cute 'train' that goes from the hotel area at the north of the park to the other end of the park but generally it is very challenging place for anyone who does not walk easily.

The park now consists of a number of shows and immersive experiences (some outdoors, some indoors) plus some newly constructed or renovated buildings simulating a medieval village, French town square in 1900, etc. and 4 historically themed hotels.The name comes from the ruined Chateau called Puy du Fou, which was the focus of the earliest show in 1978. Over intervening 40+ years many things have been added or revised. A few shows and restaurants were closed when we went and also the famous lakeside evening show (Cinéscènie) had finished for the year. New shows are being added every year, with an emphasis on French history, particularly of the Vendée area where the park is located. 

I was afraid it would all feel very Disneyland-like and artificial, but with vast areas of woodland in between the attractions (some landscaped and accessible), the general feel was more like being lost in a forest with occasional time portals (and several thousand other people - not being a crowd person, I thought it was good that it was at perhaps 30-40% capacity). 

The shows don't run continuously (usually one or two times per day, so careful planning of your day is important and it is not possible to see them all in one day. The restaurants in the hotels were self-service with costumed staff according to the theme period of each hotel, but again rather regimented (you had to reserve a time slot) but that all follows from the need for extreme crowd control!

A significant feature of the park is the use of animals, with some truly impressive horsemanship on display. But they also managed to work in oxen, dogs, pigs, deer and geese! Water is also a big thing with fountains, lakes, and water used dramatically within some of the shows.  We saw the following main shows and I will post a few pictures of each in subsequent posts.

The Last Panache 

The Vikings

The Sign of Triumph

The Musketeers of Richelieu

The Mime and the Star

plus the Grand Waters (a fountain show on a small lake, which seemed a bit dull), the First Kingdom (an immersive show about the first Christian king of France, Clovis, which I found tacky), and the Mystery of the Pelouse (another walk-through immersive show set inside a French scientific expedition ship that was lost at sea) and we also went through an area recreating (rather unconvincingly) scenes from the famous fables of Jean Fontaine, the Automaton Musicians and the Grand Carillon, which was a sort of steampunk bell tower with music.

We stayed in the Ile de Clovis, a faux Merovingian villages of huts constructed on stilts with walkways over water (2 rooms per hut) . The were actually quite well done with all mod cons and rustic solid oak furnishings.

Fête du four

There is a bread oven in the village.   It's not in frequent use, but once a year it is fired up as the focus of a general get-together of the villagers.   Everyone brings something to cook, and shares it out when ready.  

Heating the oven needs care, and has to be done gently.   A small fire is set on Friday evening as a first pre-heat, with a further pre-heat on Saturday late morning.  And the real thing starts early Saturday evening.

The only problem was the weather - it was so cold!  But a good time was had by all.

Fried chips

We had a power glitch the other day.   Not one of the more common sub-second extinguishing of the lights combined with the beep of the UPSs cutting in.    This time, UPSs went beep, but Anita's PC, mains powered, (no battery) but connected to the UPS) went down, but the lights stayed on,  the clocks kept the time, and everything else seemed normal.   Strange, a power spike maybe.

Until that is, I turned on the stereo.  Most of the time it was working fine, but a couple of times at first, and then all the time, it was emitting a nasty chug-chugging sound in all of the speakers.   Sounded like a power supply problem.  The process of elimination traced it to my hitherto faithful Behringer cross-over.

I use this device as a low-pass filter to drive the bass bins, and although it can be used as a three-way cross-over, the sound quality is not good enough for the mid-range or treble, but it is fine for the bass.  It has died.   Fortunately I have a less versatile but fully adequate substitute, and my stereo is back in fine fettle. I am unlikely to be able to fix the Behringer, so it's probably for the dump.

Sign of the times

The Hotel Beauséjour at Ste Suzanne is closing down.   They have been looking for a buyer for a while, without success, and they are now selling off their equipment.   The Hotel du Commerce in Vaiges has been closed for a few years now since the owners retired.   There were talks about turning it into an old people's home, but they come to nought, as far as I am aware.   That's two large hotels, both within 20 minutes of us, gone.

Booking dot com and Air B&B are reporting downturns in activity, and we are also seeing this.   Our laundry service who deal with smaller accommodation business in the area have complained to us that they have less business than usual, since there are fewer tourists.

My own opinion is that no-one has any spare money, what with the swingeing increase in energy prices and the increase in mortgage rates here from 1%-ish to 4%-ish.  Competition from the olympics probably doesn't help, either.

Discount shopping

I am grateful to a friend and neighbour who told me about this discount warehouse for building materials in Evron, not far from my place.   They sell building timber in various sizes, I think it comes from leftovers from various projects.   Since I will soon be buying some wood for a garden project, I went there to see what they had.  I made the mistake of taking Anita to show her.

Well, look at that!  A set of pots and pans that work on induction hobs just like ours, at the exact same moment that our current pots and pans need replacing.   Just imagine that!

Happily, our old ones have found a good new home.

Formal French garden

Or should that be French formal garden?   I'm not sure.   Anyway, there is one, a big one, the Chateau Vaux le Vicompte, at Melun, a suburb of Paris, and we took a quick away day (and night) to go and see it.

Yep, it's big, with fountains, statues, formal plantings and (surprisingly) a very nice informal planting.   Fireworks and candle illuminatins in the evening too, if you go on a Saturday.   The mansion is grand too, and looks out over the garden.

You can rent handy little electric carts to travel around the grounds, they're neat, and they're worth using, as well as being fun, and not too expensive.

The weather wasn't kind to us - I experienced a genuine cold front - it was warm, and there there was a cold gust of wind, and the temperature was down 5 degrees C.   Oh and rain came.   But it was well worth the visit in any case.

Eggsplosion

When I was last in England, I wandered into a kitchen shop.  I had started regularly to eat a poached egg for breakfast, and wondered if there was any gadget that would make cooking it easier.   This little pot is designed for poaching eggs in the microwave.   You grease the pot, put the egg in, prick a hole in the yolk to stop it exploding, clip the cover on, then cook it.

It's important to prick the yolk, since an explosion is guaranteed if you don't, and pricking it is supposed to prevent this.  Well it didn't this morning.   Blew the little plastic top off (it still clips on though - a miracle!) and splattered the egg.   I had cleaned up much of the mess before I thought to take a photo, but it did make a mess.    I really need to experiment to get the right combination of power and duration of cook.

Hearing aids

My stereo was giving me problems; the sound balance was wrong.   In order to hear fully what was going on, I had to turn the volume up, and the solid state amps would go into clipping, that awful sound they make when they sound like they're too loud but aren't, in fact, as loud as real musical instruments.   I was thnking I would need to buy a more powerful amplifier.

Conversations with one or two people were fine, but in meetings with 15 or so, those at the other end of the table were unintelligible, things being made worse by they fact they were, not unreasonably, speaking french.  My mother, and my sister who is 5 years younger than I am, both use hearing aids.   Ok so I'll get my ears tested.

They're dinky little things, and quite discreet, not that that concerns me too much.   I got them under the french health system from an outfit called "EcouterVoir" who seem highly professional, and have an outlet at Evron where I often go.  After all the medical subsidies, 350 euro for two, to include a charger at 150 (!) euro..   And they work great.   And Anita can't believe how quietly I am happy to play the stereo.

Onions and leeks

I strayed into a plant fair last year and bought a couple of edible plants: a perpetual onion, and a perpetual leek.  I like the idea of veggies that just keep on producing without having to buy seeds or, for example, onions sets.   Apparently they are becoming fashionable again, and you can pay €10 for a single perpetual onion bulb if you buy it from a plant catalogue.

I kept the onion, once it had died back, over Winter in a fridge at about 9°C    It divided into two in storage, and I planted both bits in the Spring.   They then split into separate bulbs, like shallots do;  I harvested 6 bulbs.   I'm eating one to see what they're like, and keeping the rest to plant and multiply.   A seventh bulb is currently flowering so I don't expect that it will be worth eating but I will keep and plant the seeds to see what happens.

The perpetual leeks are less successful: the wet Spring led to an infection of rust.    They are all flowering and I expect they will die afterwards, though I'm not certain.  One flowered last year and seeds are producing what look to be viable plants.   I have yet to get anything edible out of them.

The onion sets (Sturon) yielded a good crop that is currently drying in the conservatory.

And we might have had the warmest Spring and early Summer on record according to the met office, but my tomatoes don't believe them.

Pickled Shallots

I have a good harvest of shallots this year.   It's probably because I planted loads.   To tell the truth, I bought, at the garden centre, as many as I thought I would need, but then I saw a bargain pack at Lidl for only €2 so I bought that as well.   We decided that the best thing to do with them would be to pickle at least some of them.

Sprinkle them with salt, cover and leave overnight to draw the excess water out.   Create a pickling sauce with a mixture of wine, apple, malt vinegars, add spices and leave to steep overnight.   Sterilise the jars, letting them cool before you fill them, then stuff them with the shallots and top up with the sauce.   Leave to mature for several weeks, eat within a year.

Accordeons at Picherande

I'm just back from a week's course in accordeon playing in the little village of Picherande in the Puy-de-Dôme département in the Auvergne region of France.   A great time with players of all abilities from beginner to a sexagenarian who has been playing since he was six.

The main tourist activities in the area seem to be skiing (in Winter) and hiking in Summer.   I was able to take some pleasant walks along the local farm tracks.   The fields are left to be grazed by the cows, or cropped for hay or for silage for winter feed.   You could tell the presence of cows even when out of sight, from the sounds of their bells.   Though one farmer has gone modern and has (silent) GPS tags on his cows.   Seems to lose something of the romance, somehow.

I was struck by the proliferation of wild flowers by the roadside.   Perhaps it has something to do with the method of farming, but it seemed to me that there were more, and more varieties of, naturalised wild flowers.   Maybe I should look into herb lore....

I saw no grains being grown; no maize, wheat, oats, etc just fields of pasture and grazing cows.Water seems to be carfully managed there.   Ditches beside the roads were deep and wide, often with rivulets at the bottom.  Bowsers of water for the cows were freely distributed about the landscape.   The edge of the garden uphill from the gîte had a ditch along its length to take the descending water away.

Slate mine at Travassac

On a free afternoon we went to see the slate mine at Travassac.   It's not far from Tulle, and is well worth the trip.   It offers sepctacular views of the site and the old rocks, plus interesting information about the slate and how it is mined.   The deposit is unusual in that the strata are vertical, due to the pressure from colliding tectonic plates.

The slate deposit was discovered in the 17th century, and the locals were delighted to use the stone to build their houses, and then they discovered that it could be split into wafers and used to cover roofs.   The slate it provides is very high quality: it's only 2% porous which means that it will last some 300 years as a roof covering, unlike the inferior spanish product that lasts a mere 100 years.

The arrival of artificial materials for roofing tiles led to a decline in demand for slate, and the mine was shut down in 1962.  It was re-opened in 1997 as a tourist attraction, and slate is once again mined there to make replacement tiles for those original ones that have started to fail.