Wind Of Change

It's been incredibly windy down here the last couple of days! It's not easy working in that kind of weather, or cycling along a rather busy dual carriageway. We came into Elne to use the internet at a lovely bar with a couple of computers but it's closed for the next two weeks. We managed to get a free hour in the library on a very slow connection but today we found the "proper" cyber cafe. So Darren can now provide you with lots of pictures. No beer though. Or coffee...

We made it to the beach on Sunday! It was a bit of a gloomy morning - good for cycling but not for sunbathing. Still, we went to Argeles village where there was a market (some of which looked more like a jumble sale!), then to the port for lunch. Darren decided to confront his disdain for the idea of Moules Frites and we both had a portion. It's a fine idea - more filling than you'd expect and very messy!

We then cycled back to the beach and the sun came out so we did get an hour of sun-worshipping in after all. Only an hour though because it was kick-off in Manchester. We sat in the pub with some good ol' Cockney Utd supporters and pints of beer (haven't had a pint for a while!) Then we cycled back before it got dark. Hopefully we'll get an afternoon nice enough to nip down to the beach again before we leave.

I booked a hotel room in French! Well I think I did. We'll find out for definite when we get to Villefranche du Conflent tomorrow. In health news, my hayfever has been very bad here, so I don't think this is an area of the world where we'll be setting up home. Maybe it's because I haven't been eating the local honey...

Bicycle Race

I'm aching all over. Not because of the work, my body's getting used to that. Our latest farm has a couple of bikes, and as the nearest town is only a couple of kilometres away, we're making some good use of them. Now, bear in mind that the last time I was on a bike would have been at least half of my life ago, it didn't have gears, the handlebars were higher than the seat and once I got above the age where I could cycle on the pavement I got freaked out and decided that cycling was not for me. Still, I got my courage up and ventured onto the road. For our first trip into Elne we took the long way which avoids the busy duel carriageway over the river Tech. This was about 10km, which is why I am now in so much pain. Still I'm enjoying the freedom that it gives us - the main thing is that we're a bit less reliant on our hosts.

Elne is quite a nice little town although we haven't looked much further than this internet café yet! There is a big 11th century church which I think we'll visit one afternoon. On Sunday we're going to the beach in Argelès sur Mer - Ursula our host took us for a look around on Wednesday night and it's quite touristy so if I'm lucky I might get to see the Man Utd / Chelsea match! We're also hoping to go to Villefranche du Conflent in the mountains if I can find a hotel...

La Ferme Musicale is our current location. So far we've done quite a lot of jobs. There's always weeding of course (and these have been some huge weeds) and Darren's been using a strimmer everyday. We've collected a few squashes, raspberries and tomatoes, trimmed pine and orange trees and I've had to poison some moles (not sure that's something I like doing, but sometimes you just have to do as you're told). In a change from our last place, we're in an upstairs room in the house but our bathroom is outside. The floor to our attic conversion room is very creaky and our hosts are sleeping below - Victor being a musician doesn't like to be disturbed too early so we have to creep about as quietly as possible! Victor and Ursula have two daughters, Delphine (14) and Joanna (10). It's good for us to listen to their French conversation but they speak very quickly sometimes! Darren definitely has a better idea of what is being said than I do.

Steve Hogarth was excellent in Marseilles. My favourite tracks that he performed were Cage and Three Minute Boy, but that may have been because we all got to sing along! We spent Sunday doing a few tourist things, the most impressive being the Palais du Longchamp. Not knowing really what it was or what to expect - the scale was breathtaking. It's a fountain which makes the Trevi look like a bidet. It's simply huge, and the best thing is that you can climb it! We approached it from the gardens at the top and the view of the city from there isn't bad either.

Our journey to Elne was fairly uneventful. We had a couple of hours in Nimes, so we hauled our packs on our backs and had a wander. There's a big Roman arena which still stages events including bull-fighting - if we had more time we'd have gone in but we contented ourselves with a walk around it.

About an hour after we arrived at the farm - in what is becoming a common theme - the heaven's opened. And I mean REALLY opened. It blew a gale, there were many thunderstorms around and it was as if someone was pouring a huge vat of water onto the roof. It didn't last long and we could soon see the skies clearing over the mountains.

I've changed a couple of things on the blog. On the right hand side there are two links, one for the photo page (not sure how many photo updates Darren can do here, a bit of trouble with these computers) and another which says Current Location. This will take you to a Google map link zoomed in on our current location. It can take a while to load, so be patient! Also I've unlocked the comments function so you should be able to leave a comment if you wish.

Let It Bee

I forgot about another final piece of excitement during our stay. Mandy and Brendan decided to empty their beehive, but the honey had crystallised in the combs and wouldn't spin out. So their friends (with many decades of bee-keeping experience) came up with the bright idea of leaving the honey in the metal spinner outside the house (like a big tin bin) to try to melt it. Unfortunately no-one told the bees who thought their home had been moved and bee-sieged (sorry) the house. Hundreds of them gathered around the spinner, and when night fell they surrounded the house instead! Eventually Mandy and Brendan managed to move the spinner back to the hive, but the bees wouldn't bee-have themselves so they had to be smoked away. When the eventually worked out where the proper hive was it was too late - they took their honey back with them so the whole operation had been in vain.

We just made it to Marseille! We only had 10 minutes to change trains at Toulouse, so I had a sinking feeling at Limoges station when the board sad that our first train was running 5 minutes late. On top of the early morning start and the tilting train I felt really quite sick on the first leg. We prepared ourselves to jump straight off the train in Toulouse - we had 6 minutes to find out the right platform, get to it and board our train. Fortunately we made it just before the train and the panic was over!

Last night we had a very dodgy meal and then saw out the evening in a bar with a live blues band. We mostly stayed outside to enjoy as background, but as they came to an end we went in to join in with the shouts as they played Mannish Boy, to generally clap along and be rowdy drunken Brits (well we haven't had a night on the town for a few months!) They closed with Hey Joe which is my favourite Hendrix song and was fantastic. Boy did I have a hangover this morning. Tonight is definitely going to be a sober one...

Here Comes The Sun

We’re coming to the end of our stint in central France. The weather has improved and we’re basking in sunshine now – a marked contrast to our arrival in the driving rain. We’ve had more fun and games with France Telecom who cut off the phone AGAIN in the same way as before. When the engineer came out to fix it he told our hosts that there should never have been a line in the first place, and that the line engineer would have to look at it. Fortunately (because otherwise we wouldn’t know where we’re staying tomorrow night) the line engineer put the line back on today, but how long it lasts, no-one knows…

I’m going to miss this place. It’s been the most incredible insight to (a) starting up a new farm and (b) starting up a farm in France. Wherever we choose to settle, it will definitely be worth doing a WWOOF in the area with an English host first! Brendan and Mandy have been excellent hosts, and I've got quite attached to the girls (it's what happens when you stay away from your nieces for too long!)

So it’s 9 hours on trains down to Marseille for the weekend where we’re going to see Steve Hogarth on one of his solo gigs – we missed all the UK shows last year so we thought we’d make an effort. Then on Monday we travel from Marseille to Elne, just south of Perpignan right on the Spanish border. As well as growing and selling fruit and veg, they hold music workshops and make musical instruments out of cucurbitaceous plants. It all sounds very intriguing…

We’re also trying to plan until the end of the year. Hopefully Barcelona will be the November stop, with somewhere in the south of Spain to follow. Then it’s up to Paris to see both Fish and Marillion, then home for Christmas!

Digging In The Dirt

Over the last two days we have, quite literally, been doing a crap job. Yes ladies and gentlemen, it is a fact of life on an organic farm that sometimes you have to shovel some manure. The routine has been this – dig a hole, fill with manure, plant a courgette, cover with topsoil, repeat. We’ve had to erect a polytunnel over them as well which took some time and working out, but we are quite proud of it. And it’s not as smelly as you might think!

We’ve been given the bottom field as our project for the month, so we have a nice 15 minute walk to the "office" most mornings. The main job has been planting – as well as the courgettes there has been fennel, beetroot, lettuce, radish, red chard and endive. We have been weeding leeks and carrots, pruning tomatoes, putting up a fence for beans to run up, preparing salad for evening markets, trimming onions for sale and harvesting green beans. We also spent a few days at couple of other fields that Brendan and Mandy have been renting digging up onions and potatoes. Lots of onions and potatoes. DAYS of harvesting onions and potatoes. Lots of scrabbling about on hands and knees. It’s so glamorous this travelling lark…

Away from the farm we have been to a few more evening markets. As well as La Dorat there is another on a camping site in La Souterraine. This is a smaller affair, with the stallholders setting up their own barbecues to cook on. The first we went to was completely washed out, but the last week has been really good weather, so both markets were excellent. We have also spent a morning in La Souterraine. We bought some pastries from a patisserie and took them to a coffee shop overlooking the market for breakfast, then wandered around in the sunshine. Not the most entertaining place in the world, just a fairly typical small French town.

We also took a long walk around some of the nearby villages. First due east to a disused uranium mine which Darren has been obsessed with since we found out about it. You couldn’t really get close enough to see the big hole in the ground though – not even when he snuck under the security gate! Next we walked north to Jouac and stopped for a beer. Jouac is a very pretty little village which is more than can be said for St Martins Le Mault. We walked there to find it’s a bit of a dump and the bar wasn’t even open! The knowledge of a cold beer back home kept us going for the southbound leg past a huge "pond" (more like a reservoir) and through some nice shady woods. In all we think we walked about 11 miles. This weekend we’re going to Limoges for the day, the biggest city in the area.

Apologies for not updating this for a few days. Last Friday, the phoneline went dead. Mandy called France Telecom who tested the line and said it must be a fault in the house. On Monday we found out from Mandy’s mum that the line had been diverted to someone else’s house in the village. Another call to France Telecom – if it were a business number they’d be out in 8 hours, but as a personal line they couldn’t come out for 48 hours. The next morning, after working out in the fields Brendan finds a note from a France Telecom engineer saying he’d been round but couldn’t fix it because no-one was in (despite the fact that they’d broken it without being anywhere near the house in the first place!) The line was finally reconnected today, although Mandy and Brendan still can’t find out if they’ve been billed for any calls made from the other house ("you’ll just have to wait for your next bill"). And you thought BT were bad…

Le Pluie

It’s been raining. Lots. Our washing has been attempting to dry on the line for 4 days now. This is not what we came travelling for, but it’s definitely proving to be a very grounding experience. Today we have been pulling up onions in the drizzly rain. Our other tasks over the last week have been to weed the leeks and plant some fennel.

Not much else to report. Darren has temporarily (we hope) lost some of the use of his right foot, so we took Tuesday off for him to recuperate and we’ll work at the weekend instead. We were going to go for a walk on Sunday but that’s when the rain really started so we’ve been a bit holed up for the last few days. Hopefully we’ll get the chance to go into either La Souterraine for the market on Saturday or to walk into Lussac Les Eglises, the nearest town as the forecast is looking a bit more promising. And I might get to post the postcards I’ve been trying to send for the last two weeks!

Geneva to La Souterraine via Paris

Well we eventually arrived safely in our new abode. As our train progressed towards Paris the skies got greyer, and as our connecting train left Paris (an hour late) the rain began. When we met Mandy at La Souterraine station the heavens well and truly opened and we got drenched trying to fit our bags into the little car.
The new farm is a little more rustic than the last – Brendan and Mandy have only been here since March, and as the farm is their only income that has been their priority. We’re sleeping in a section of the barn that has been closed off, it’s nice and cosy. They have two young daughters, Bronwyn who is 3 years old and Ailish who is 14 months. They’re both very sweet, and Ailish in particular is a real character. There is also a dog and two cats.
The land is quite big, although not all of it is in use yet. Brendan and Mandy sell at quite a few markets including two evening markets – we spent our first day preparing salad for that evening in La Dorat. At both of these markets a big barbecue is set up and you buy your meat and they cook it for you. There is entertainment and it’s a wonderful atmosphere.
Brendan and Mandy evidently work very hard. I think this is going to be a good insight into what we might be letting ourselves in for if we decided to run our own farm. It’s certainly interesting to hear about how things are in France, the red tape, rules and regulations. The quiet here is very striking – in the Alps there was a lot more background noise, traffic, airplanes.
Unfortunately there’s no broadband here, so we may not be able to get many pictures up while we’re here. I’ll try to keep you updated in text though!

Smoke On The Water

Last week it rained. A lot. This meant we couldn't do too much work, which sounds great but is actually quite depressing. We did go to Annecy one day - it's the biggest town in the Haute Savoie department, and has a very pretty old town. We spent the day browsing shops, and ended with a crépe. Last week we also had proper fondue which was delicious and very good fun!

On Saturday there were the closing fireworks for the Geneva festival. As we had the day spare we went in early to watch Ratatouille at the cinema. We then struggled to find a good spot to see the fireworks but we did ok in the middle of a closed street. Most importantly it had a barrier that no-ne else was leaning on where Darren could set up his replacement camera. We couldn't see much of anything low down but the big bangs during the 45 minute display were spectacular and at times relentless!

Yesterday we went up a mountain. We took the train to Chamonix and a cable car up l'Aiguille du Midi. In two stages it takes you to 3777m, a height gain of 2800m in just 20 minutes. It's fair to say that your ears pop! We went up to the top, then took a much smaller cable car across the Vallée Blanche and Glacier du Géant to Helbronner in Italy. We had a beer there (hmm, beer and lack of oxygen, probably not a great idea!) We then came back and took a lift up to the peak of l'Aiguille du Midi, another 60m. At 3842m (12605ft) it is the highest point you can get to in Europe without putting on lots of gear and hiking! Unfortunately the cloud had drifted over us so we didn't get any view at all. On the way down we stopped at the midway point to watch the cable cars go over the edge, then headed back into Chamonix for some food.