Back on the bog

After a snow-enforced break and a few days Doing Other Things, it's a huge relief to be back on the tree bog. I started with the corner posts, then added joists on two sides before planting and attaching the middle posts. After umming and ahhing, I decided to use joist hangers to make it look like this by end of play today:


The weather is forecast to be perfect over the coming days and the only distractions are one male pheasant who seems to be lost (and invisible to the dogs) and two good-sized deer. There are some other jobs that need doing, but for steady progress, watch this cyberspace.

écovallée - as been on TV

Last Autumn, the écovallée yurt camp was featured on ITV1's "Little England", a 12-part series about people living in this part of the world. As you'll see on these four clips, the producer was very kind to us (you should have seen the stuff he left out).









Andy Warhol, if you're reading this, you'll see that the clips add up to almost exactly 15 minutes. Good call.

Summer thing to look forward to

"It's a little bit chilly", as Elton John didn't write - minus 12 with a "real feel" of minus 20. Not the morning to have a chimney fire in the bedroom yurt and have to shut the fire off at six (or so I thought at 05:59).

But this is not a post about that - it's a post about Pilat. The name given (on our English road map) to the tallest sand dune in Europe.

For various reasons we went in mid-May last year. The roads were pretty clear, getting narrower and narrower the closer we got to the coast, going from a three-lane autoroute to a two-way road near Arcachon - a design that guarantees nightmarish traffic jams in the heat of high summer.

After lunch in Arcachon, which was an unexpectedly beautiful town, we headed for the Dune de Pilat.

We drove through the Malibu-like suburb of Pyla, following the coast road, passing several signs for the Dune de Pyla. We thought we must be close. Pilat must be just next to it - Pyla wasn't even on the map. Then suddenly we found ourselves on an empty road heading south, a mountainous dune visible through the trees on our right. After a few confused kilometres we turned round and headed back, flustered as much by lost time as absent signposts. Why would there not be ANY signs to Pilat - the tallest sand dune in Europe? It made no sense.

At a roundabout, we decided to head for the well-signposted Dune de Pyla and start from there. The following roundabout said Dune de Pilat, the one after Pyla, then Pilat again. It was the same dune! (I've just saved you half an hour in a car. You can thank me later.)

We parked up and climbed the stairs to the top (except the Daughter, who arrived a few minutes later, exhausted). This is no dune - this A DUNE. The mother, father and extended family of all dunes. Look:


This is a dune where you don't have to squeeze together unless you want to feel like you're on the Victoria line in rush hour:


You can pose slightly camply overlooking the ocean:


Run gaily down to the beach 107 vertical metres below:


Make sandcastles and play frisbee or just hang out:


Before facing the long climb back:


If you have a boy like ours, he'll fake a foot injury and have to be carried up only to make a miraculous recovery at the top. It's a good scam.

The moment we got home I looked up the Dune de Pilat on Wiki. I give you the following quote from that page that explains the signposts (and lack of) from earlier in the day:

"Pilat is sometimes spelled Pyla, hence the alternative name "dune of Pyla". More accurately, Pyla is the name of the closest town, Pyla-sur-Mer... The correct and original name of the dune is the Dune of Pilat, but because of the confusion that occurred, both are now considered correct."

I'll just write that for you again: Because of the confusion... both are considered correct. This is an almost perfect explanation of why French people shrug.

Cutting it fine

You know when I said nearly a month ago that we'd reached crisis point with the wood for the burners? Perhaps I was being a bit melodramatic.

This is what crisis point looks like:


(I think the giveaway here is being able to see the ground the wood should be stacked on.)

Fortunately, I had a small stash of wood on pallets under a tarp next to the compost heap and a couple of large very well seasoned chunks of acacia in the woods nearby, so we're good for a few more days. I've also got about a week of dry wood waiting near the écovallée parking, but need Tuesday's forecasted thaw so I can collect it before Saturday's forecasted rain.

It's all completely normal for us. And like I said before, next winter it will all be completely different. (Yeah, right.)

Snowy vallée

Like many people across Europe, we've had some snow. Which means work on the tree bog has stopped for a few days (the uprights are cut, stripped and ready to go in)...


...and work thawing out pipes and carrying water for animals has started. Here were the pigs this morning:


And the chickens, who are naturally too chicken to come out:


And here's a long shot of Pepito:


Not sure what the snow will do for the crop we're growing...


...we'll have to wait and see.