Last week, I suggested that I might have some excuses for not starting back with project work during the week however, no excuses required and the project work has begun again despite having experienced one of the wettest weeks I can recall since we moved here.
That said, thankfully the week started dry and allowed me to make a start taking down the exterior Christmas lights. I have de-rigged the lights on Hayloft and put the deer away for the year. I have to give credit to the company who sold the deer to us as they supplied a new adapter for our fourth deer.
You may recall from a blog before Christmas one of our adapters had disappeared during the year which meant we were only able to put 3 out. Before checking online, I asked the company if they sold adapters separately which they, happily, interpreted as sending me a new adapter without asking for payment. If the delivery company hadn’t been so terrible, we would even have received it in time to use the fourth deer over Christmas, however we only received it last week but will be able to allow all 4 deer to graze next winter!
Also last Monday, our pool builder came to reposition, and replace, the heat pump that heats the pool. Again, if you’re a regular reader of our blogs, you will recall that in October we said we wanted to move the pump from behind the pool house to the end. This was because the pump was making more noise than the pumps we use to heat our house and the gîtes and our neighbours had asked if there was a way we could mitigate the noise. Moving it was the simplest thing we could do so it wasn’t facing directly at their house and we wanted to do what we could to be good neighbours.
Over Christmas, we then found that pump initially installed was not what we had asked for and wasn’t sufficient to heat the pool in the colder days of the winter. Our pool builder had agreed to change the pump and he arrived last Monday to do that.
The new pump is larger than the old and, pleasingly, quieter. In its new position, in the spring we will also be able to erect some sort of sound barrier between it and our neighbour’s house further reducing the noise. Everybody needs good neighbours – where have I heard that before?!
Since Monday, the week seems to have been wet days followed by even wetter ones! Thursday saw this week’s storm pass through – Storm Ingrid – which, thankfully, as the previous week’s storm, Goretti, didn’t lead to the horrendous winds that we’d feared (and were forecast) but did lead to lots, and lots, and lots of rain!!
Thankfully, I have an indoor project that I was able to pick up and progressed, and finished, the frame required before installing the plasterboard in the pool house. It’s amazing, although probably not surprising, how heavy rain sounds like exceptionally heavy rain when you’re in what is effectively a green house and every gust of wind sounds like it is about to blow the pool cover away!!
With the frame complete, next week I can start attaching the plasterboard that may just make the pool house look like a room you’d want to relax in and move away from the breeze block garage aesthetic!
Today was, pleasingly, the best weather day of the week and we woke to blue sky and sunshine. Knowing how wet it had been in the last few weeks and so how muddy most of the area will be for a walk, we decided to do another section of the old Roscoff to Concarneau railway as the old track bed is generally a solid and well maintained surface.
We headed south this time to the town of Poullaouen between Huelgoat and Carhaix and walked south (towards Carhaix) for just over 4 kms.
Here, the old train line skirts to the south of the town. Mysteriously, I haven’t found any evidence that there used to be a station here which seems odd as while Poullaouen is only a small town, it is so close and the stations that do exist, Locmaria-Berrien and Scrignac for example, are kilometres from the towns they are named after.
Even if the residents of Poullaouen couldn’t catch the train easily(!) it is now a really pretty stretch of the line to walk moving from semi-urban surroundings through open countryside, agricultural fields and forest. It was made even prettier today with the clear skies, amazing birdsong and the fact that in the 90 minute, 8 ½ km walk, we only saw 3 other people.
Next week the intention is to get as far with the plaster boarding as I can on my own before asking for help with the taping and filling!!
Kenavo.