Another 2 weeks have passed since my last blog despite me saying that our good friends had left so we should be able to get back to some project work.
The start of September is culturally the start of everything in France. The start of a new school year; a new political year (which will be interesting to watch with the current situation in France); The most new sign ups to the gym Dave works in (generally busier than the post-Christmas / New Year resolution period which is the norm in the UK); and we were to see it as a re-focus on our projects however, we haven’t managed to achieve as much as we’d have liked in the last 2 weeks – so there aren’t many photos. Sorry.
My last blog said that the previous evening we had suffered some damage to electrical equipment owing to a surge following 2 incredibly close lightning strikes and that then became my priority for the start of the following week, which meant having to go shopping.
On Sunday, we bought one television via the Darty (an electrical retailer) website intending to replace the one that fried in Granary. I was able to collect it from their Morlaix store on Monday and hoped that I’d be able to buy a new LNB that had 4 connections to replace the one which had blown.
Getting the TV was easy – the LNB, less so. There were none in Morlaix (that I could find) so I headed west via Landerneau (none there) to Brest where I finally found one in the third store I visited and was on the verge of giving up and ordering something online.
However, when trying to fit the new LNB in the afternoon I found it was a different diameter and didn’t fit on the arm of the satellite dish! I knew I had an old 4-output LNB in the shed but I had decided not to use it as I thought it would make more sense to buy something new rather than rely on something of unknown age and quality.
However (again!), as I couldn’t install the one I’d bought I dug out the old one which, thankfully both fitted and worked! A wasted morning (although I got the TV) but at least we, and 2 gîtes, had television reception again.
We put the TV intended for Granary into Hayloft (where initially we thought we’d buy a smaller screen) but it looked good, so we ordered another and I popped back to Darty in Morlaix on Wednesday (thankfully we had a hair cut planned which we do in Pleyber Christ which is two-thirds of the way to Morlaix anyway).
Slightly irritatingly, on Thursday we received a message to say our roller iron (if you remember the story from previous blogs) was ready for collection from … Darty Morlaix! So, Friday saw my 3rd visit of the week to the same store!
Thankfully, all of the issues caused by the lightning are now resolved and, for various reasons, we also now have a spare TV, a wifi switch and a Freesat box should we need them in the future.
Last Saturday, David’s uncle and aunt arrived for a week’s visit which again meant project work didn’t get the focus we need! It did allow us to visit some new restaurants (for us) and some old favourites we hadn’t been to in a while.
The new was Le Petit Relais in Carantec (middle of 3 good restaurants on the brilliant beach of Caranrec); the old were Le Jardin des Saveurs (which we hadn’t been to for 2 years as we felt their quality had dipped but, we’re glad to say, they were back on their game and had even improved in some areas); Crabe Marteau (amazing if you like crab, less so if not!); and Auberge du Menez in Saint Rivoal (our weekly destination for Friday night beers!)
Dave’s uncle and aunt left us yesterday morning and, having not achieved much for a couple of weeks, we immediately turned our attention to proper work – aided massively by some amazing late summer weather! Yesterday afternoon, I picked up the, seemingly endless, hedge cutting task and cut the privet in front of Hayloft. No before pic but as I’d not cut it for at least 6 months it really needed a haircut.
Today, I gave the wisteria on the front of Priory its (late) summer prune. Or, I gave it at least 80% of its cut as, while doing so, I discovered a colony of Asian hornets had chosen to nest in the slates of Priory hidden by the wisteria. I was not going to get too close so I left some of it (although, disappointingly, despite having cut out large amounts of foliage, the before and after pictures don’t look too different) and now we need to find someone to come and eradicate the nest. This time of year is when next year’s queens are forming so it is good to kill them now. Asian hornets are not indigenous and quite destructive to local pollinators so need to be fought.
No personal guests (well, at least not until next Friday!) so we should be able to get on with something useful! More next week – promise.
Salut.