Having promised to write blogs more frequently than my average last year, and not to have periods of 4 weeks without writing anything, I thought I’d better write something today having already missed last week!
I made a number of statements in my last blog for what I would do and what we were hoping would be achieved by others, not all of which were achieved … Let’s be fair, I don’t think any of them were progressed!
With the title of the blog, I appreciate the normal expression of mixed weather is Four Seasons in One Day – it hasn’t been quite that mixed – yet. I also appreciate that what we have experienced in the last couple of weeks is nowhere near as extreme as much of the UK since New Year and we have settled into the very Breton January routine of damp, grey, but relatively mild days. Last Thursday was especially wet with 30 mm of rain falling in about 12 hours.
The period started with snow flurries which we have most years but, being far west and predominantly influenced by Atlantic fronts, it rarely settles and, if it does, it doesn’t hang around long but looks pretty while it’s here.
David’s Dad, Roger, left us the week after my last blog having enjoyed bright but cold days in Brittany to experience the teeth of Storm Goretti the day after he got home to Cornwall. We battened down the hatches but were not greatly impacted, to our surprise we didn’t even lose power during the storm. Unfortunately, David’s Dad was cut off for a couple of days and the greatest damage here was further East along the Normandy coast.
Our Christmas guests / friends left us last Saturday which gave me a reason (excuse?!) not to do too much in the first week although I did get to the DIY store to buy a few bits that I need to progress the interior of the pool house – but then haven’t done anything with them since. Tomorrow …
Unfortunately, it wasn’t just me who failed to make any progress with the pool or pool house and our builder wasn’t able to come and change the heat pump that we’d hoped for. Apparently Tuesday.
What I have managed to achieve is taking down and packing away all of the interior Christmas decorations. This becomes more of a challenge each year as the number of decorations increase but the space I have to store them above the garage remains the same.
I had a deadline to get the games room clear, where I am able to ‘dump’ the decs before boxing and storing properly, as we have had guests in Hayloft for the weekend who left us this morning.
The best weather we have had so far this year was yesterday but, while we have lots to achieve here, I spent the day volunteering at our village’s new community venture – Chez Mimi et Yvette.
An association has been established which has bought the old farmhouse in the centre of the village, once home to two sisters Mimi and Yvette Le Gall, hence the name. Their house dates from the 1700s and needs a lot of TLC to make it into a café, small épicerie and community hub which is planned.
Yesterday’s work party was redoing the internal pointing of the slate walls with a lime mortar mix. I volunteered for a couple of reasons, principally because we are very supportive of the idea to turn the farmhouse into a useful community space but also because we have lots of walls that need repointing themselves and should all be done with lime mortar. I figured I could pick up some tips yesterday and start my education on someone else’s walls!
Sadly, I didn’t take any photos.
Today, we re-started our Sunday strolls, last week was too wet and Garratt had paw issues (again). When David’s Dad is with us we walked a number of sections of the disused Roscoff to Concarneau railway. It passes close to us just to the east of Huelgoat and can easily be divided into manageable sections.
When Roger was with us we walked a couple of stretches including north from Scrignac station, now a walkers’ hostel. Today we started slightly further north of that by the hamlet of Kermarzin and walked alongside Le Squiriou river for about 4 kms.
There really is no excuse not to start project work next week. I’m sure I’ll have some in time for next week’s blog!
Salut.