Moving into the present

Well after almost 2.5 years of suffering dial up Internet connection with speeds from as low as 14.4bps to as high as 42.6bps on a good day we did install a satelitte internet solution yesterday.

Reasonably simple thing to do and a doddle if you (Read the manual) RTFM hardest thing was understanding and communicating with the French engineer when it came to activate the link, but once done all we had to do was route the cables through the roof into the loft and then down into the study. We are also all WiFi'd p too so feeling pretty chuffed to be able to do simple tasks on the internet which would normally have taken hours now happen almost instantly.

Downside is of course another Satelitte dish on the front of the house but as long as Mark and Kay don't go and plant a wall of coniferes we will be okay...

the system is from www.viveole.net/ cost 399€ or the dish, LNB, all fixings, Cable/coax, connecters, a Satelite modem and Cisco WiFi router. and took approx 1.5 hours to set up and another 2 hours to tidy up and route the coax correctly. cost is 39.45€ per month, with an 80€ connection charge. but well worth it in the long run. And we did give the landline companies long enough to get their S41t together.

Were Happy ;)

It's Freezin again

It's too cold to be laying concrete or cement so Jimmy and Jamie have been finishing off the guttering today and what a difference it has made to the look of the house, a big improvement .

We did manage to move 9 tonnes of dress stone and place it between the two patios, but it was freezing -5 most of the day though it did warm to 0 by 3PM the stone was frozen n the sacks and again on the ground when we were finished.

The last slab going down



The stone going in

The Patio complete just the ornimental steps leading up to the pool and steps leading up to the patio to finish. Then that leaves us to put stone along the bank and cement it in place.

Almost done now

So Tuesday was agreat day sadly though Wednesday was a wash out and by lunchime we had decided to give up and pack up for the day. Thursday and Friday were again nce days so we cracked on and would have got the patio slabs down if I hadn't come up with a way to use up some of the spare slabs we would have put the last slab down, the idea is to stager the edges of the patio to avoid the big square look. Also this will allow us to work in the huge ground rock which we encountered on the left side when we were digging out te bank, the digger certainly couldn't budge it so we are not going to mae much of a dent in it. At least it will creae a feature and a base for some steps up to the pool area. - so Friday saw us just about done less 17 slabs.

Some tidying up left to do before we start putting down the dress stone to finish the area off build some steps onto the terrace from the front of the house and some rendering of the walls will finish it off enough for Jimmy and Jamie to get the guttering up. That will leave me to collec piere stone fom around and lay it along the bank cementing them in place to create a natural looking stone bank.

Sunday see's our first customers of 2010 arrive for 4 nights, give us a chance to get back nto the right frame of mnd...

Scott has been with us since Thursday and after a longwekend e is homwardbound tomorrow early. donsn't seem lng enough, Wendy has had a nice time catching up with him and has certainly made her weekend.

Spring has Sprung...

Well after some different weather, gale force winds, mini tornados (fit to take your roof off, torrential rain, hail storms etc we woke to a saturday/Sunday with trees down, debris scattered, and everything repositioned in the garden...

This is a picture of Mark and Kays house (used to be the barn with the rusty tin roof, it is far from that now as you will see, but this is the apex of their roof which was removed by the winds, Mark is most of the way to putting the ridge work and tiles back. you can just see where it is still bare.

Monday was wet in the afternoon but I was able to get out and prune the tree out the back near the Patios. A stitch in time...

Tuesday we awoke with glorious sunshine and a base temp of 11 degrees. So we cracked on with the patio...

Progress, well a little...

Well by Sunday the snow had gone and Monday saw a nice drying morning with some sun But the afternnon came with avengence and a lot of torrential rain.

We did manage to get the concrete floor down in the end garage rear area where once dry goods had been stored, It will become our drying room for wet biking gear because it does rain here in the summer.

We also managed to get the rest of the slabs down on the 1st patio area (well Jimmy and Jamie did as Wendy and I went ito Limoges to have the lights changed to LHD on the MX-5 costly at 555€ fitted. But needed if we are to register it here in france.

Today (Tuesday) we predicted rain so had a day off, we were wrong though as the sun is shining as I type and I was able to get out and prune the tree out front earlier even though it was a little overcast..

Would you believe it! FFS!

I guess a picture tells it all... and 2 pictures make it more believable...

Guess I will stay in today...

Talking of inside I have been remit in mentioning the superb job Wendy has done in the Dining area of the kitchen... Looks nice and fresh light and clean (which it is) ;)

The snow is gone but my back is aching

Wednesday saw torrential rain which washed the last of the snow away leaving it clear for us to start work again on the back area...

Thursday 18 February,we have now owned the house for 3 years and 2 days... And a patio begins to take shape.

Today we moved 3 Ton of hardcore to level of the area we are working on, in a couple of hours to discover that we needed some more, so using a trailer to fetch and carry 1/2 a tone at a time we shifted another 1 tone, This time the hard way as we had to wheelbarrow it up to the patio area unlike the previouse 8 ton which was lifted up by the delivery truck with its hydrolic arm. Jamey and I took it in turns to fill and push the barrow.

By the end of the day we had leveled and tampered the main area though still required a small amount of hardcore to finish off the last part. Which I would collect first thing in the morning...

Friday 19th Febrary - After I returned with a trailer load of hardcore, 10 bags of cement we were ready to crack on I got streight into moving and setting out the slabs, Jamie set up and started to make cement for Jimmy who had already started to lay the slabs out. We had not quite mananged to get the 1st patio down by the end of the day - though we only had 42 slabs to put down and 50% of those will require cutting - so decided to crack on again tomorrow morning and get the 1st one completed. (If it doesn't snow).

Friday 12 February - Still snowing...

Been creating a web site for our Billy today pretty much staying in the house where it is warm. And unexpectedly the ToutFaire delivery lorry turned up.

It is another lorry possibly from neighbouring Uzerche as it was in good nick even came with a remote control box so the operator could walk around with the load ensuring it was landed correctly. The Treignac driver operator was in accompaniment, you could see he was green with envy at the newness of this lorry with its technology and gadgetry.

Both blokes couldn't do enough for me to get the slabs, sand, and hardcore set down in a convenient place so that we could utilise it without having to push and carry it up the banking... Sweet.

It is still snowing quite happily and is forcast to do so now for the next 4 days Damn.

Fighting the Ellements 1 step forward 2 steps back...

Well, we were galloping along at a good pace despit the weather turning a little frosty we were able to lay down 5 Tonnes of hardcore base before we needed to order another 3 tonnes to complete the work on the 10th Feb.

The delivery truck arrived on schedule however its hydrolics had frozen so were unoperatable, even after some defrost measures. So the Truck and our delivery returned to base.

This morning I awoke to several Cm of fine snow and the air full of it so we are now officially paused due to being snowed in.

We were also unable to take Wendys MX-5 into Limoges to have the lights changed over to LHD. an appointment we had made 2 weeks ago due to being snowed in then and being unable to get out of Le Theil - the pleasures of being truely rural.

We'll report in once the snow has disipated and we can get started again.

Wendy has been busy in the Kitchen this time stripping the aweful yellow paper off the walls and re papering with white moulded paper and painting the windows, pipes and radiator white.

Of course she has also been providing us with copiouse amounts of hot brews to keep us going out back.

Time to get outside and sort out the Patio area...

8 Feb having delayed the start of working outside due to being snowed in we got started, and what a glorious sunny day for it too. We managed to get the area level enough and lose the soil in a day.

Tuessday we woke to a good frost and news that the gravel and sand were not going to be with us until late 16:00 ish... this meant that there was little to do other than mark out and peg the areas for the two pattios...

We finished early just as ut started to snow, heres hoping it doesn't settle ;)

Out with 2009 and bring on 2010

How do you say 2010? I mean we said 2k1 to 2k9 or Oh-Nine but 2k10 or One-Oh doesn't realy have that ring to it, oh well I guess until something crops up natural like I am going to go with Two-Ten for now.

So before we condemn 2K9 to the annuls of our memory lets summerise what it meant for us...

Grand children.The biggest piece of news has to be the birth of Lj Wendys 1st GrandSon which has generated some 4 trips to the Uk during the latter quater but what a charmer he is becoming and shout well you know what I mean... And the expected Birth of a baby Girl to Billy and Lissy making 3 GrandSons and 2 GrandDaughters on my side

So on with the other news...

RidersRest Bikers Only B&B in the Central Massif...

What a superb year we have enjoyed with the B&B, we trebeled our visitors in 2009 which gave us a massive increase in visitors. We also took advantage of offering "Guided Tours" as part of what we do and charge for as opposed to me just taking people out for rides. This has been really successful so in 2010 we will continue and grow this type of activity. We now feel that we are "Out there" in the right places and more people are begining to hear about us and what we have to offer. We are very pleased with the feedback we have been given by our guests, which motivates us to carry on with the business. Feedback can be viewed here --> http://ridersrest.eu/guests.aspx

It has been a hard year though for Wendy who had all the cooking to do, Breakfasts and Evening meals. Which incidently were superb, I cannot think of one occassion where the food was not spot on and never saw a single meal left. Hey we even saw grown men eat vegitables and enjoy them... The riding was even better in 2009 than in 2008, we had found many more places to ride to of interest and via some superb biking roads. I even got a website up to show some of those routes at http://www.motomassif.info/ contains most of the routes, maps, photos etc. SO here are some photo's of some of those ride outs and places we visited the rest can be viewed at http://www.whereistonynow.co.uk/ or http://www.whereiswendynow.co.uk/

Oradour Sur Glane:

Lac Vassiviere:

Agentat, Collonges La Rouge, Dordogne Valley:

Rocamadour, Guoffre de Padirac:

Cantal Volcano Puy Mary:

Auvergne Volcano Puy De Dome:

Mount Dore - Super Besse:

Millau Viaduct:

Chateaux Various:

We have had our share of reasons to be stressed 1.. 2.. 3.. so in no particualr order.
To Bee or not to bee... We were infested by wild honey bees, 100's of thousands of them to be fair all living in our chimney there were at least 4 Queens, Wendys first action was to light a fire which just pissed them off and sent them airbourne, the hause became full almost immediately. by the time I returned home with a group of our guests the road and house was alive with the bloody things, luckily no one was bitten.

A local authority on Bees came and advised us to use a poison gas which which came in sticks to burn in the fire. we did this and killed off thousands of the poor things but failed to dislodge the Queens all they did was move outside onto the edge of the chimney, once dusk arrived the swarm settled down for the night, so we hosed them off the roof.

Come morning we were left with a small community of them which I had to finally climb up the roof to get rid of them as they had now worked their way into the fabric of the roof and were re grouping. after 3 days a battle we were rid of them, they are now nesting in a hole under a tree not too far from the bike wash down but sufficiently far enough.

Salamander anyone? We did of course get our fair share of other visitors such as this Salamanda which found its way into the kitchen even though all the doors and windows were locked and it was in December so not very warm... Certainely surprised Wendy as we hadn't seen one so big before.

Water everywhere but not a drop to drink. The mains pressure rose to approx 9Bar and blew of the mains pipe to our meter sadly our side of the meter and was able to vent onto the road for approx 5 hours what a waste of water and subsiquentially monies too. This in turn blocked our fosse drain off with silt and backed up all our showers and toilets... needless to say we didn't take any pictures but it was an interesting time digging everywhere to find and clear all the pipeworks from the Fosse, at least now I know where they all are and have put in new pipes where they had broken and put in rodding point to make it easier should there ever be another occassion where they need unblocking.

A New Car or two... Wendy had a slight accident in the car, wrote it off in August quite convinsingly whilst on her way to meet up with an English chap who made his own bacon...

It was a good excuse to get a new car more suitable to carrying people - namely a 9 seater Hyundi Satellite nice and big... Plus as a bonus Wendy also got an MX-5 for her 50'th Birthday to replace the one we sold pror to coming over here. Should make it easier for her to get out and do the shopping in a safer and more enjoyable way... at least.

A New Road up to RidersRest for 2010 In October we were visited by a very keen man from the Marie keen that was to get us to agree to giving up a couple of hundred meters worth of land about 2 meters wide so they could improve the road leading up from the main D16 to Le Theil, this means that we will see a wider and resurfaced road in place of the old rural cambered, pot holed, gravel strewn manky road that had prevented us using it with bikes as it was not really up to it. So we signed it and now hope for a good road for our customers and our use alike. To be honest anything they do will be an improvement and to our benifit.

Winter Time Like the UK we have been having our fair share of wintery weather, and were snowed into Le Theil for 8 days before we were able to get into toen by aid of Mark and kays 4x4. Some pctures tell the tale...

Fuel delivery on the 1st day of our being snowed in - he didn't want to come up to us but we insisted it was an emergency, I had to dig him out when he slid and couldn't get it moving again, we took 989 Ltrs of domestique fuel and are warm - thank you...