Last day of 2016

The year is only eleven hours from finishing as I write this in front of the woodburner at St André.  I arrived back home on Thursday morning with my daughter and grandson who will be here until their ferry sails from Roscoff on 2 January 2017.  As I was going to be away I didn't do decorations inside but did have my usual two pallet Christmas trees hung in the driveway.

Amazingly, I was driving back from St Nicolas du Pélem, just before Christmas and found a Christmas tree in the middle of the road.  I turned the car around and just about managed to get the majority of it into the Land Rover with the back door open.  My housecarers decorated it and placed it in the garden opposite their cottage.  They took care of everything here while I was away and did a good job - all animals are fine and they even lit the woodburner in my house ready for our arrival - double brownie points!

I went over to Cornwall for Christmas, the first in the UK since I moved here in 2006. 

One lunchtime, with Libby and Charlie, we ate at a new Mexican restaurant, Chiquito in Truro.  There were sombreros for diners to wear during the meal.

I stayed with my son, Matthew, and the weather was mostly dry and bright. We spent Christmas Day at Brett's parents home, here are Matthew and Brett while we were playing Jenga. 

On Boxing Day, Val and Colin came back to us for lunch, Breton prawn cocktail, duck, spicy red cabbage, petit pois, roasted butternut squash and dauphinoise potatoes, followed by lemon meringue pie and Christmas pudding with cream.

We were joined by others later for food and drinks.  No Christmas would be complete without Quality Street of course ...    We seemed to have four or five days in a row spent drinking quite a lot with various friends coming round, ending with a party the night before I came back home.

The ducklings that were born in October have grown and nearly have all their adult plumage now.

Earlier in December we had our Writers' Group Christmas lunch at Le St Antoine in Plemet. The food was excellent and we had a great time.  We enjoyed it so much that we are planning to go back in April for our normal meeting and also to celebrate my 70th birthday.

I missed a couple of the competition bowls matches this year due to hospital appointments but managed to make this one, doubles, and Daryl was my partner.  At the start of the last end of the final we were only one point behind but Martin and Linda played too well for us and we were runners up.  It was a good day with a good selection of buffet food provided by members.

My most recent Workaways, a young French man, and then an older Italian, worked hard clearing up for the winter months.  Amongst other tasks, apples were collected and stored, individually wrapped in newspaper and the log delivery was neatly stacked away.  Luckily my Breton neighbour is my log supplier so I should always be ok for nipping round for a wheelbarrow of logs if necessary.

They and my neighbours, Christian and Paulette, helped collect some attractive pieces of carved stone which had been dumped as waste in an area used by the local stone mason. Not sure what I'll do with them, but they were too nice to leave.

My baking has been going well and I now bake bread every other day.  I think it's the buttermilk which helps the rise.  In our Brittany supermarkets there are usually seven different types and I use this for the liquid necessary topped up with a little water.

And, lastly a photo taken by a previous Workaway, Bill, of my village from the other side of the calvaire, he posted it on Facebook and I've nicked it ...  hope you don't mind, Bill.

Three things I like:

1.   Coming back through my door when I've been away - there's no place like home.

2.   Catching up with friends and family when I'm back in Cornwall.

3.   Settling down in the warm, with the cats on my lap and computer table, in front of the woodburner when it's dark and chilly outside.

I WISH A HAPPY AND HEALTHY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!

The first frost, the last leaves on the acer

The first frost yesterday morning meant that I had to break the ice on the animal drinking containers on the field and in the garden.  It seems earlier this year ...

The Autumn colours are so beautiful in the lanes that I have to keep stopping the car and taking photographs. The last leaves have fallen off the acer in the garden.

My Workaway, Lynn, mother, Ute and sister, Elin walked around the Etang de Beaucours at St Nicolas du Pélem and the reflections in the water were beautiful with the trees just starting to change.























We had two evenings with me cooking on the first and Ute the second, playing Triominos and Gin Rummy.  Good times.  

Their journey from the north of Germany by bus took 13 hours to Paris and another 6 hours on to Guingamp.  

Two days later Ute, Elin and Lynn too returned home.  It must have been exhausting travelling.  









While Lynn was here we drove up to the north coast of Brittany and collected shells on the beach at Pordic.  There was a chap walking across the beach with lots of equipment. He was hoping to shoot - yes shoot - bass.  















We watched him slip into the water and round the edge of the bay.  Unfortunately we didn't see him again so don't know if he was lucky.

At Binic, we also collected shells - so many different ones - and finallly walked from the beach behind the wall on the left in this photo, and somehow, don't ask me how, as I am seriously challenged with heights, I climbed up a set of steps on the end with no viable handrail for the first part.  It was a slow, ardous, terrifying climb for me, but I did make it.

I took a photo of the seafood restaurant I saw last time I was there and also photographed the menus.  I definitely want to eat here sometime, the food looks really good.












This was the Créperie where we had lunch in Pordic.  It had a good atmosphere and bio drinks.  Very pleasant and worth a second visit.




My neighbours, who have a holiday home in the hamlet have given me permission to pick from their orchard and I went over to collect medlars.  

They need to blet - that is rot - or at least get very ripe.  To that end, I have spread them in a single layer on newspaper in a fruit tray and will wait for them to be ready to make medlar jelly.

My three surprise ducklings seem to be thriving and love it on the duck pond with and without their mum.

The little chick who sat on my shoulder for most of the mid-summer and who I named Annie, seems to have grown into a cockerel.  Although there are no large tail feathers yet, there are spurs and these combined with thick legs make me feel that soon we will be getting a crowing noise from this bird.

Baking today, and I made a dozen seeded rolls.  Last week I made this plaited loaf which rose and rose, so much that I nearly couldn't fit it on the baking sheet.  I hadn't really baked much bread since I was ill last year and it's good to get back into it again.




















My woodburner is performing beautifully again and in spite of the colder weather outside now, inside is toasty warm.

The photo on the right was one I found on Facebook and loved - what a way to display a logpile!

















The sunsets and sunrises are beautiful at the moment, here is one of the sunsets last week.

















Lastly, a group of cows standing in a gateway, who made me stop my car and record them!

Three things I like:

1.  I had my 'flu' jab this week from a nurse who managed to slip the needle in without me feeling it at all - hopefully that will see me with another 'flu' free year.

2.  Started - with Lynn - on the mammoth task of clearing the stored stuff in my studio. Already found some things I haven't seen for years ...

3.   The early morning cobwebs glistening in the branches in the lane.   

Warm weather has delayed Autumn but it's finally arriving

Nearly another month has rushed by - it's true what they say about time passing faster as you get older.  Everything has changed in the countryside, the leaves are turning to their Autumn colours, the short cut to the field is covered in fallen mountain ash leaves and there are fungi everywhere.

My Workaway Bill and I had a day out on the north coast visiting the practically deserted beach at Pordic - just two swimmers who had just come out onto the beach.  It was beautiful there and I collected an armful of different shells.  

We then went on to Binic.  After a quick walk we  and sat and had a crepe from the market before having a walk along the front.  There was a lovely looking seafood restaurant, Cabane a Crabes, right at the end of the harbour which I would like to and eat at one day.  As I walked past I could see the lunches the diners were enjoying and my eyes were green.

My housecarers from last October returned to help me out for this October's trip back to Cornwall.  Being a small world, it turned out that they had mutual friends with my occasional neighbours from across the lane, Val and Mark and that they only lived about a mile from my neighbours back in Oxford.  Ian and his American wife, Jeannine are lovely and not only looked after my animals and the house but also juiced all my grapes and put nineteen litres of packaged juice into my freezers.  They also took delivery from my friends Jac and Ken of a load of hay for me to use for animal and poultry bedding - grand job.

I was lucky with the weather in Cornwall and it only rained on my last evening.  Luckily it was dry for me doing the long pack of the car.  In spite of the damage to the Land Rover I managed to nurse it there and back.  Bill, my Workaway until I left for England, made a wooden repair for it to cover the worst of the damage and make it slighter better for any pedestrians brushing by the parked vehicle.  

The local bodyshop owner has now been to collect my Discovery and has left me a small, petrol, left hand drive, manual, two door car, so something to get used to over the next few weeks/months, until I get my repaired vehicle back.  I suppose there's still a chance they may write it off when the examiner looks at it, I shall have to wait and see.

My second day in Cornwall was my daughter's birthday and we went for lunch to The Heron at Malpas.  It was a glorious sunny day - seriously hot sitting on the terrace outside to eat lunch and my mussels with sweet potato chips were delicious too.  

Friends Chris and Carole came to stay for a few days before I went back to the UK and we went walking on two days - a bit of a shock to my system but I did enjoy it really!  

We also met up again for lunch when they were in Cornwall while I was and had lunch in Charlestown before they carried on to stay with friends for the weekend.

Other visitors to Brittany, at the end of September, were Viv and Geoff, old friends who I hadn't seen since my fat days, and Geoff's sister.  They treated me to lunch at Le Pelinec and it was lovely catching up after all this time - at least six years.  Neither of them seemed to have changed at all and it was a lovely if brief meeting up.

The acer in the large flower bed in the garden is changing daily and looks glorious with the sun shining through the leaves - I have taken so many photographs but it's hard to resist.

Just as I got back home here, a young German girl, Lynn, wrote to me saying that the placement she had for Workaway wasn't clean and wasn't nice.  Amongst other problems, they had put her in an unheated caravan to sleep. I collected her on Friday and she is now helping me here until Sunday next week.  This morning we have cut back the mass of brambles which climb the tall bank from the lane and arrive just behind the swimming pool.  It has never been cleared like this while I've been here and I'm very happy with what we've achieved this morning.  Those who know me would have been astounded to see me climbing to the top of the bank - I'm terrified of heights - even standing on a chair is too much - and using both hand to hard prune the brambles and nettles to the ground. I came in to cook lunch before the heavens opened and three hours later the rain is still pouring down.  

Two other Workaway requests this weekend: a young French chap and a Spanish boy each would like to come at the beginning of the second week of November.  If the weather is kind I hope that we may be able to re-felt a chicken shed roof, clear gutters and do the other things for which I need a strong and taller male.

The bees have had their varroa strips removed now and apart from putting insulation boards into the roof sections of the hives I think that is all that has to happen before winter.  Oh - apart from turning them all 180° to make the access easier now that my neighbour's boundary trees have grown.  I'm not sure I am able to lift a full hive, so was very pleased to meet someone who may be able to help me on Thursday when I did a fungi foray.

The fungi foray was arranged by Barbara, above left, and she organised for an expert mycologist, Paul Nichol, to come over from the UK to take a group of us  around two different wooded sites, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with a very pleasant lunch in between at Les Restrouvailles near Plevin.

I was a total pain and managed to slip my small shoulder bag of my shoulder during the latter part of the morning walk and had to go back to look for it.  I was accompanied by the very amenable Darren, who spotted it within five minutes and we were able to rejoin the group only slightly late, at the restaurant.

It was a very enjoyable day and I do hope there will be other foraging days arranged.  I certainly learned a lot about fungi and hope I can retain it.  We found so many different varieties of edible and non-edible fungi and it was a very pleasant day.  

These were the fungi I collected in the morning 

and this was the afternoon's bounty.

One of the chap on the foray, Jim, was someone who had helped me out in the past with the delivery of a drake and he told me that he also keeps bees.  I am hoping that he will lend me his strong arms to turn my four hives at some time in the near future. 

Lots of herbaceous plants came back with me from the UK and they have all now been planted out along with twenty wallflower plants - never seen these in Brittany - and they will all be appreciating this long rainy session we are having today.

Three things I like:

1.   Clearing up the garden and filling the compost bins on the field.  Luckily, for the perennial weeds and brambles we have a garden tip in the village, just the other side of the calvaire, so within wheelbarrowing distance.
   
2.    Coming back through my house door again - I love coming home - especially to my woodburner, and especially in the dark evenings after I've put the animals to bed.

3.   Eating my first lamb joint from this year's flock.  A beautifully sweet shoulder with all the usual culprits for a lovely roast meal.