Last week’s blog said that progress had slowed on the garage principally because the weather had been so wet but also because we were waiting on a wood delivery from the builders’ merchants. This week started with similar drizzle which thankfully dried up from Wednesday and, when we got back from school on Thursday, we found a lot more wood waiting for us – although I haven’t made much progress!
While it remained damp at the start of the week I began to clear away the branches we had cut down a couple of weeks ago when we had our concrete delivered – you may remember the saga of delivery day. Having cleared a path for the lorry, we had focussed on building the garage rather than clearing the debris away and I had left them next to the track behind us.
Previously I would have piled the branches up and had a bonfire at some point but, since we have had the trailer it has been easier to strip the branches, keeping the big bits to burn in the pôele and taking the rest to the déchèterie. As I had been tidying the inside of the wall up with my new dry stone wall which I spoke about last week, I thought I would take the opportunity to tidy the outside which was another area of bramble and Japanese knot weed.
This has taken far longer than I had anticipated. I knew that brambles had a difficult root system to dig out but the knot weed was almost impossible – and we have found that it only takes a tiny amount of root to generate a new plant – it is no wonder that it is so difficult to eradicate. Thankfully it is not considered the toxic waste that it is in the UK (perhaps it should be) so I can take that to the déchèterie too. Like other areas I have dug it appears that the back of the wall has been used to dump rubbish in years past and, while I didn’t dig up anything of particular interest, there were a number of bottles and lots of rusty metal – including what looks like an old bed pan!
I am quite pleased that Christmas is approaching as I think I need to ask Father Christmas for another fork. In my digging I have managed to get through a couple and, while there is a lot of slate in the ground I didn’t think that I had used these to lever anything solid out!
When the weather did improve in the middle of the week I was able to spend a day working on the garage and I inserted the noggins on the second bay. Thankfully I had enough wood to complete them before the new wood arrived. These pictures are without noggins (left) and with (right) – doesn’t look much but took all day!
In fact the weather has been so good for the last few days, and as now is the start of the Marché de Noël period, I haven’t made any more progress as we have taken the opportunity to visit a few artisan craft fayres and walk the dogs.
Chateau Kerjean, where we visited a plant fair in the summer, also holds a Christmas fayre which was highly recommended and it had some very high end artisans and crafts.
Our favourite however, both for fayre and walk, was in Châteaulin, which had the most fabulous walk along a part of the Nantes-Brest canal where it was obvious that, as the weather had been so mild, all the trees were starting to bud.
The other reason I haven’t managed to make more progress on the garage after the new wood was delivered, is that this time of year is one I always look forward to as there are so many great sporting events to watch. As a result, this weekend has been quiet work-wise as Dave and I have enjoyed watching more of the autumn rugby internationals and, today, the culmination of what has been an exciting Grand Prix season.
During the week however, David has been busy working on Kergudon’s website which now has a German version. We see a lot of German cars in this part of the world and are told that Brittany is very popular with German tourists, earlier this year we hosted a German travel journalist for a night who was reporting for Berlin radio which, with our website, we hope will attract more Germans here. At least, if today’s sporting events are a gauge, we know that Germans are unlikely to suffer any mechanical defects driving here … 😉
Salut.