Pintxos,Pintxos,Pintxos

We had wanted to go to Spain for some time now, Tina had never been and I had only been on my brothers stag tour so the only Spanish culture I had seen was the Real Madrid museum.

We had seen San Sebastian featured on some TV travel shows, and it looked like the sort of place for us, nice old buildings and loads of tapas bars. What's more it is only just across the French border, so last month we did a bit more research, found a nice hotel in the centre of town and off we went.

It only took us about 4 hours to get to the Spanish Border, and another half hour to get to San Sebastian, or Donostia as it is called locally. Donostia is the basque name for the city, and the basque influence extends both sides of the border. The French region approaching the border is known as PaysBasque and the even the road signs are in the basque language as well as French.

The first impression as you cross the border is that it is very built up along the coast, as there is very little space between where the Pyrenees end and the sea begins, so building land is at a premium. Parking is very limited, and expensive in the city centre, so we left our car up by the University and caught a bus into town. It was pouring down with rain, so we couldn't see much of the city.

Our hotel was on the edge of the town centre, only ten minutes walk from the old town, and the owners were very friendly and helpful, giving us loads of information on sights to see and some of their favourite pintxos bars.

http://www.pension-bellasartes.com/ingles.html

Pintxos are the basque version of tapas, and San Sebastian/Donostia is famous for some of the best bars in the world. It has more Michelin stars per head of population than any other city in the world, where you can eat for €140 a head, or like us, you can have a pintxos suprise ( glass of Cava and fresh crab and prawn on a slice of baguette) for €2.50.

We were a bit unsure of how everything worked, so we just watched in the first bar, before we got brave enough to copy the locals.

In every bar the bar tops are covered in plates of delicious looking morsels, anchovies, breaded sardines, hams, black pudding ..... the list is endless. Then there are other dishes listed on a blackboard, that are cooked to order. You just point at what you want and then when you finish, just tell the barman what you have eaten.

There are well over 100 pintxos bars in Donostia, if you went to 10 different bars each night you still wouldn't run out of bars in two weeks! The website below has a list of most of them, and even pictures and recipes of some of the best dishes(best to use the Spanish pages as not all of the English pages work).

http://www.todopintxos.com/recetas/recetas.php

The next day we woke up to bright sunshine, and set of to explore the town. There are two large hills that frame the bay, one of which has a funicular railway that goes to the top of it. Not on Wednesdays in November though. We had to climb it ourselves, hard work , but worth it for the views.

View from the top

Wind Combs sculptures



One of the three beaches in Donostia San Sebastian

Theatre

Old town

Conference Centre


The old town lies at the heart of San Sebastian, with bays on either side. Although it is only a few miles from France, the building stiles are very different, as you can probably see in the pictures. It is nice and compact, so you can see walk to most of the sights quite easily, even better if the funicular is working so you don't knacker yourself out in the morning. We never sat down for a meal the whole time we were there, preferring to snack out on pintxos instead, and we even managed the odd word of Spanish, although we did get some replies in French, as we must have slipped the odd French word in instead.

We had a fantastic time, and we will definitely go back in the future.

Let there be heat

A big job this year has been to get the central heating installed.

Being so remote, we don't have mains gas so we had the option's of a gas tank, heating oil, wood or electricity. With an eye for the future, we have gone electric. Oil and gas process are only going to go up over the next few years, where as most electricity in France is nuclear or hydro -electric, which should keep prices a bit lower and is a lot better for your carbon footprint.

After a lot of research, we opted for an air source heat pump, which extracts heat from the air, and uses that to heat up water for the house. This is very efficient and should produce 3 or 4 Kilowatts of heat for each KW of electricity that you put into it.

Robert had already laid underfloor heating pipes in the downstairs floors, but before we could install the heating, we needed to weather proof the old dustbin shed, which was to become the new boiler room.

First of all, we had to fill in the gaps between the top of the stone walls, and the roof. I built some stud work and fixed chipboard on the inside, insulation in the middle and tongue and groove on the outside to make it look better.

We filled the open window in with glass bricks, and to keep the room weather proof, I built a new door, to replace the one with holes in, recycling some old beams to make the new door frame.

Finally, I connected the cupboard up to the mains and we were ready to go.

The French heating guys were very efficient, fitting the whole system in three days.

The biggest piece is the compressor, that sucks in air and takes the heat out of it. This sits on the back of the boiler room. It looks huge, but it is incredibly quiet.

This sends the heat inside into the heat exchanger, and then on to the underfloor heating. The tanks also lets us power some radiators , which are still on order.

The pump is not power enough to heat the whole house, but we should have enough power for radiators in all of the upstairs rooms.

The underfloor heating seems to be working well at the moment, and it doesn't seem to be using too much electricity at the moment, but it will be interesting to see how it reacts when it gets really cold.

This Little Piggy

Back in the summer, we decided to go take up an offer of a half share in a pig, with our Dutch friends, Joop and Cathelijne who have a small campsite and small holding.

They had kept two pigs the year before, but found that they had too much meat at the end of it. They still wanted two pigs, to keep each other company, so we offered to buy a half share in one of the pigs.

I went with Joop in his van, to collect the pigs from a farm near St Junien. The farm had deer as well as pigs, with some enormous sows, and the piglets were in a pen in a barn, with a radio on to keep them company. I didn't realise that we would have to catch the pigs ourselves, a tricky business as piglets are quite nippy, with a low centre of gravity. Joop managed to grab a brown and black male, but I found it hard to get hold of one, and the farmer spared me the trouble, plucking a pink sow up as I chased it past the gates. Joop wanted one of each, as it makes a good pairing, but the male has been neutered, as a male pig tastes disgusting once it's bits drop.

I had to keep the window wound down on the way home, as one of the pigs was a nervous passenger.

When we got back to Joop's we grabbed the pigs out of the back of the van, and headed over to the enclosure that he had built. I thought the single wire fence was a bit tall for the pigs, but I thought it must be OK, as they had kept pigs the year before. We set the pigs down, and left them to settle in.

Within a minute, they had a quick look around and scarpered straight under the wire fence and into a maize field. It looked like the quickest €25 I had ever spent. We enlisted the help of some of the families staying on the camp site, and spread ourselves out in the maize to drive the pigs back out.

This seemed to work fine, and the pigs were soon in Joop's field, with his horses. Unfortunately, the horses thought that the pigs were great fun, and promptly chased the pigs back into the maize field.

On the second attempt, we managed to catch the brown one, but the pink sow proved to be more elusive.

Next up, I went to see our neighbour Thierry, to see if one of his sheepdogs might do the trick. The dog did get the pig out, and drove it away from the horses, but it couldn't get it into a little pen, like on 'One man and his pig-dog '.

My next thought was that we needed a crop dusting plane to chase the pig out, as this had worked with Cary Grant in 'North by Northwest', but we didn't have one handy.

Finally, we decided to lure it out. We put a radio on, to make it seem like home, tied the brown pig to a post near the pigsty, and put some food out. A little pink nose kept peaking out of the maize.

We left them to it , and after an hour or so, both pigs were re-united in the sty, this time with a bigger fence.

This was not the end of the pig fun though. A few weeks ago, Joop and Cathelijne decided to go to the coast for a few days. They couldn't get hold of their neighbour, who usually looks after their animals, so we volunteered.

Joop gave us instructions for all of the animals, horses, goats, chickens and pigs. We had to visit twice a day, to let them out in the morning, and to get them in at night. The chickens are a bit like teenagers, and would go to bed until they are good an ready, at sundown each night ( obviously the similarity with teenagers stops there). The pigs were left to roam their enclosure, and we just had to feed them dried feed in the morning, and swill at night.

This all seemed to go OK, and we didn't loose any animals. However, Joop's neighbor had been keeping an eye on the animals as well, as he had heard the pigs being a bit noisy. It turns out that we had been feeding the pigs sawdust every morning, which Joop had left in a pig feed sack, next to the swill! Luckily the neighbour gave them some non-wooden elevenses each day to keep them going. Still, a bit of roughage is supposed to be good for you.

Are you Wolves ?

Over the summer, we have managed to get out and about a bit (it's not all work,work,work you know).

For our wedding anniversary, we had a night out in Bordeaux, and a trip to the coast the next day. We never realised that it was such a surfers paradise on the Atlantic coast, so were a bit surprised at all the surfing schools and oxbow shops.

The surf was much better than we had seen when we went to California, and they say that it is even better if you go down to Biarritz.

When Tina's sister Helen was over, we went off into the hills to see a wolf sanctuary.

Wolves used to be native in the hills of the Limousin, but over time they were hunted to extinction. Now they have been re-introduced, in a purpose built sanctuary in the hills above Guerret. In fact, it is so isolated that you have to drive through the woods for miles up a single lane track to find it.

The main enclosure is next to the visitor centre, with an elevated viewing platform.

As you can see, it is a very natural enclosure and the wolves look like they have stepped right out of the forest.

There were about a dozen other enclosures, most of which were so big that it was sometimes hard to see the wolves at all. One had a pack with two new cubs, but they were so small that you couldn't get a picture, and you could hardly even see them through binoculars, they looked like a big pair of fluffy slippers left in the middle of a wood.

The cutest pair was in the last pen, a pair of Canadian wolves, much lighter than the grey European ones. I would definatley recommend a visit, but maybe not to our neighbour Thiery, the sheep farmer.

Allez les Girondins

For a birthday treat, I went to my first French League game with my mate John who was over on his holidays ( Tina would have come, but she thought it would be a good boys outing and that if John went instead, she wouldn't have to watch and talk football all day with me).

Girondins Bordeaux were at home to Nice on the Sunday after my birthday, ( the French FA refused to move it to coincide) . I brought and printed the tickets on-line 10 days before the match, all for the princely some of €16 each. Not a bad price to see the current French champions, compared with £24 to watch Saints play Brentford, or £50 to see Arsenal give the skates a good hiding.

The game was a 5 o'clock kick-off, but we decided to get down to Bordeaux in time for lunch. We had a very civilized pre-match tapas, and had plenty of time for a few beers before kick-off. We stopped of for a couple in a bar that was owned by La Tupina, one of the top restaurants in the world according to surveys. While we were in there, a old boy came in with his dog, ordered a glass of wine, pointed at a large piece of left over steak on a plate, and asked if he could have it for the dog. We thought they might just put it in a napkin for him, but the chef promptly chopped it all into bite sized pieces, and served to the dog on a plate. Can't imagine Gordon Ramsey doing the same.

We set of for the ground an hour before kick-off, which should have been plenty of time, as the ground is about a mile out of the city centre. It is in quiet a nice residential area, no Kingsland estate or Dickensian Fratton slums, and there was a decent bar right within 100 metres of the turnstile which was heaving, so it is not just the British who like a bit of lubrication before the footie.

The turnstiles weren't very well sign posted, so we ended up going to the wrong end at first and then marching all the way back to where we started in 30 degree heat. We then got passed from queue to queue as our E-Tickets wouldn't work on the bar code readers until finally we were referred to a steward, who sent us round to the only side of the Stade that we hadn't walked round yet to where the special E-Ticket turnstile was located. All of which meant that we didn't get to our seats until 5 minutes after the kick-off.

As you can see, Nice didn't bring much of a crew with them, not surprising as Nice is 800 km away from Bordeaux, but there were probably more than the Skates took to Bolton last year. The main home support, with all of the flags, banners and fireworks, was at the other end. Our end was a mixture of all ages, with a group of about fifty nippers gathered around a bloke with a megaphone, stood right behind the goal. With no roof, and the full sun on us, it must have been nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit in there, like watching a match, sat in a sauna.

Onto the game itself.

The first half was quite even, with Bordeaux attacking the home end. Both teams played to fee, and defenders all tried to play there way out of trouble, so much so that the first an only corner of the match didn't arrive until the 78th minute.

Nice's main threat was their number 7 Remy, who was very mobile, good at taking on his defender, and had a decent cross as well. I doubt if he would be interested in swapping the South of France for Southampton though. The crosses were often wasted, as Nice seemed to be playing with just two wide plays up front, so there were never enough bodies in the box to get on the

Bordeaux's played two at the back, with wing-backs pushing up all the time. Diarra, the

ex-Liverpool player, was the anchor man in the midfield, which allowed Jussie and Gourcuff to play the attacking roles. Jussie scored the first goal, in the 42nd minute with a bullet header, from some good overlapping on the left.

At half -time, John and I headed for the shade, under the stand. I checked out the catering. There were no pies, but you could get chicken and chips, and the only beer was Amstal Libre with no alcohol, but in that heat it tasted great, better than the Carlsberg at St Mary's.

The second half was a lot more one sided, with Gourcuff running the show with the sort of touch, power and movement that has seen him called the new Zidane. He was on loan from Milan last year, and this season he has signed for €15 million. Why Milan let him go at the same time as selling Kaka, god only knows. He scored two very similar goals, shooting home from either side of the box after good one touch passing moves.

Diarra netted the fourth with a firm header ( coup de tranche) from a free kick with 15 minutes left, and we thought we might be in for a cricket score, but the game eased off a little, not surprising really as it was so hot.

So it finished 4.o to Bordeaux. It was a great atmosphere throughout the match. We didn't understand most of the songs, but they had borrowed an Italian favourite 'Niceois, Niceois, va fan...... ' which we got the drift off. After every goal, you all have to chant 'buteur' when the announcer reads out the name of the scorer, and at the end of the game, they all sang 'Merci Bordeaux' with typical French politeness.

It was a long day out as it is a 2 and a half hour trip each way, but it was well worth it. The football was of a much higher standard than the West Ham v Spurs match that we had watched beforehand, but it did lack the tension of watching Saints, a bit like a nicotine patch instead of full tar St Mary's.

Green fingers

We have joined the growing trend for self sufficiency be growing a bit more of our own food this year, something of a challenge as I don't like much veg in the first place.



We dug a new vegetable patch, where we used to have the bonfire, and set to work filling it with natures goodies. It took a bit of work to clear it, as it was full of charcoal and bits of metal from old doors that we had burnt, but it does seem to have left us with decent soil.


We planted spring onions, aubergines, tomatoes, broccoli, courgettes and squash.




We also planted some more broccoli and some red onions in our old veg patch, and put some potatoes in an old dustbin full of compost.


The broccoli in the old bed all got eaten by something, and no amount of slug pellets or traps would stop it. The red onions started well, but started to go sideways, and then stop growing all together, so they have had do be dug up and dried, to try again next year, and the spuds were nice, but we only got enough for a couple of meals. We think that the old patch is too much in the shade, and so next year we will just use it for courgettes ans squashes, which seem to grow anywhere.


The new bed is a different story. The spring onions were great, and the broccoli heads have been huge, although they all matured at the same time ( we planted F1 broccoli which apparently is not some new motor racing offshoot but is in fact a hybrid grown to be picked at the same time).
The aubergines are looking good, and we have had so many tomatoes for the last month that I am in danger of hitting my five a day target on a regular basis, as opposed to my normal 5 a week.





The colours and flavours have been much better than anything you could buy at a supermarket, so we will definitely be planting even more next year.

On the landscaping front, dad cleared back the old conifers, which were still dying, and showing no signs of forming an orderly hedge.





While I was getting round to chopping down the stumps, they made a great hunting stool for Henry.

Pool Finished Shock

After only 3 years we have finally been able to finish the terrace around the swimming pool. More slacking I hear you say, but nay, nay and thrice nay. There were sound geological reasons for leaving the end for another year, as we had to allow the ground to settle after we put in the extra drainage last year.



Bob and Sue gave us some help digging out the ground, and putting the gravel footings down. Bob and I also fitted a pipe loop from the filter to the edge of the patio, so that we didn't have to dig everything up again if we ever decide to get some heating for the pool. Bob was very helpful with this, as he sells pumps for a living. Sue also sells pumps for a living, and she helped us by interrupting Bob in the middle of a tricky bit, to show him a plant that she had just potted( the plant does look nice though).

















It was then time for Tina to get her favorite toy, the cement mixer out so we could build the
concrete base.



We had some fun and games laying the slabs, as the patio on one side of the pool was longer than the other. Bob thought it would be best to lay the outer edges first and then fit a line of slabs to get the ends to meet up.







.


As you can see in the photo, we tried to do this, but when we got half way across it became clear that the slabs were going to miss by about 5cm. It is very difficult to build things from two different ends. They managed it with the Channel Tunnel, and that big viaduct near Montpelier was within 1 mm. Our gap was a bit worse than that, so we had to lift some slabs up and cut 2 of them short so it all fitted.



Now it is all grouted and finished, it all looks good.

We even bought ourselves a labour saving roller for our pool cover, to make things easier in our old age.

We've been busy

As the title suggests, we have been quite busy over the last few months, as the visitor season gets into full swing. So far we have had both sets of parents, Tina's sister, Tina's old boss, my Auntie Sue and her boyfriend Bob and some old friends Sue and Richard along with their kids.

All of this has been very nice, but it does tend to interrupt the building work.

We have boarded up all of the walls for the new bedroom and bathroom, so that we will be able to attach cupboards and bathroom fittings etc. According to some American websites, this is also good protection against earthquakes, not likely in France I know, but it is reassuring to think that if the village is ever flattened by an earthquake, our bedroom wall will be the only thing left standing!

The chipboard was all put up at the same time that all the windows in the City were being boarded up for the G20 summit in London. It gave us a bit of extra security in case some protesters thought, mistakenly, that I got a pay off like Fred Goodwyn's and decided to come after me.

We've put up plasterboard on one side of the walls, but we have to leave the other side of the walls open for the moment, until we can get all the wiring and plumbing in.

With the outside wall framed and lined, it was time for the trickier task of building the main bedroom wall. As it was so tall ( 4.5 metres in the middle ) it had to be built out of timber, pine chevrons that are slightly bigger than a UK 2 by 4.

All the dry lining examples in my D.I.Y book are for standard height ceilings, like you'd find in a 2 bed semi, but we had height . sloping ceilings and large ceiling joists to navigate.

Luckily for us our friend peter volunteered to help us out, as he is quite handy with a saw, but he is more used to making furniture than building walls. This gave us someone to bounce ideas off of, when we were trying to work out how we could fit each section. Crucially, he could saw straighter than me, and make rebate joints as well.

Tina and I had a lot of fun manoeuvring it into position as it was long and heavy, and kept getting stuck on different joists and bits of ceiling. It took a lot of effort, with plumb lines and lasers, to ensure that the wall was straight and hopefully vertical as well.

It looks OK at the moment, but we the test will come when we try to hang a picture on it.

Onwards and Upwards

We have now started to build our new bedroom, before we finish the ceiling off, as building wisdom is to build your walls first, before you try to join the ceiling to them.

First up is the outside wall. We opted for the lafarge metal railing system, as it is quicker and cheaper than the UK method of building wooden stud work.

We didn't need any scaffolding this time, as we were only going up 4 metres, so we could just use ladders. The railings are joined together by crimping them with a specially designed tool. It is very quick, but hard work if have a girly handshake like I do.

The insulation is a by product of the NASA space program, and it turns out that something that stops Astronauts from cooking is also good for keeping your bedroom warm. It does also look a bit like a set from the old sci-fi series "Blakes 7" although it is a lot more sturdy.

It only took a few days to build the whole wall. The trickiest bit was fixing brackets on the wall, halfway up the railings, as the railings can twang a bit, if you use long lengths, and a twangy wall is no good to no-one ( apart from Blakes 7 that is).

More Death Defying Stunts

Not content with making the extractor fan duct disappear, as if by magic, our next trick involved feats of daring unseen since Blondel walked across Niagara Falls.


Not really, but it did involve working up a very tall scaffold.






We had a load of insulated plasterboard left over from last years work that had started to bend a bit, so the best way to straighten it out seemed to be screwing onto the ceiling. That's all well and good, but to get to the ceiling it meant that I had to build the scaffold really high.





To get to the highest bit, the scaffold had to go right to the edge of the landing, leaving me staring at a 6 metre drop.





When it came to the front part of the barn, we had to put the scaffold up yet another layer, making it extra wobbly. Extra care had to be taken when any Queens of the Stone Age or Undertones was played on the radio, in case I pogo-ed my way to an early grave.

Luckily, this was all done a couple of months ago, before Saints went into administration, or else the local pompieres (fire brigade) might been needed to talk me down from the edge. It is comforting to know that apparently it is not Rupert Lowe's fault, according to ......... uhm Rupert Lowe . Perhaps now that he has a bit more time on his hands he can pop round to Fred Goodwins house, and they can swap notes .

Hello again readers

Yes I know that this hasn't been updated for months, but I do have a good excuse, as our PC broke down, so I had no Internet for a couple of weeks while we waited for a part to arrive.

I'm not saying that I use the PC too much, but using Teletext instead just wasn't the same, a bit like methadone ( for any smack-heads out there).

Anyway, we have been busy working again, and have finally finished the kitchen, making the ducting disappear.

We had to sort through the last of our stack of old wood from the barn, a clean it all up and treat it which to a while, as it was all covered in whitewash and 50 years of farm waste.

But after a couple of weeks work, hey presto ........

... it's vanished .

As if by magic !

Cabin Fever

We have been snowed in for almost 24 hours now. The snow fell on Monday night, and we managed to get out on Tuesday for a bit of shopping, but since then we haven't left the house.

The road's are frozen, the bins haven't been collected, and the post lady has abandoned us. Today our post was delivered by the mayor. Can't imagine Boris Johnson doing that, but if he did, I would move to London and buy a mad dog just to chase him.

We had about 3 inches of snow in all, and this morning it was minus 10 C at 9:30 am.

Niemi has been out for a look around, but not for too long but Henri loves it. He is out hunting all the time, and runs in and out of the cat-flap like he is on speed. He has caught a couple of birds, the first of which he ate, but we did manage to rescue the festive Robin.