Bonne Année, Bonne Santé pour 2024 à tous. That’s Happy New Year and Good Health to all for 2024. Read about our trip to Banyuls sur Mer, our wagon restoration progress, Christmas at the station, angry farmers and Tracey’s soup diet, as well as all the usual photos of food, the local area and the station pets.
It’s feeling like Spring already at la gare de Sos and whilst we’ve had some grey winter days we’re happy to report that we had our first BBQ in full sunshine at the end of January, hip,hip,hurray! And we both caught the sun while sharing “un bon moment entre amis”. Here’s the freshly caught trout on our platform that we’d been given by a friend of a friend – oh my days – what do I do with these thought Tracey as Lee ran off in the direction of The Engine Shed muttering something about fish coming in batter and paper, not with scales & heads and innards. So once Tracey had managed to get a grip of the slimy things, she hacked away and managed to get some fillets in the freezer, learning that absolutely uber sharp knives are required for the gutting of fish, only to be told a couple of days later that scissors are much easier for the job. After several meals of trout en papillote I was delighted to hear our lovely Belgian friends agree to barbeque the remaining trout and what a grand bbq it was – and IN JANUARY, delicious tender trout that melted away from the spine easily, soft & flaky and not too fishy. (Lee had duck by the way!)
Conclude 23 in The Winter Sea!
I’m looking back in the diary to see what we’ve been up to since our last newsletter – I can’t remember yesterday so without our photos and diary notes I couldn’t write this newletter – we did have a fabulous break in November to Banyuls sur Mer, at the Med and very close to Spain, on another great, dog-friendly campsite. Our end of season treat and we were swimming in the sea again and tasting one of our favourite apéritif wines – Banyuls – a fortified wine with a sort of sherry-like taste – strong & warming and usually sweet – one to sip and savour for Autumn & Winter. We love driving towards the med, the snowcapped Catalan Pyrenees range on one side of the autoroute and The Black Mountains on the other and as you approach the Banyuls appellation you see the little, slightly scruffy, parcels of old, old vines, clinging to terraces and slopes and we’re smacking our lips in anticipation of our first glass as soon as they come into view. We took the 10 minute train ride along the coast from Banyuls to Collioure – if you’ve seen our Station Vacation Facebook page, you’ve already seen these pics – stunning Collioure – easy to understand why all those twentieth century artists went there to paint – everywhere you look there’s a photograph to be taken. Accordingly, it’s touristy, so out of season trips are great for avoiding the hordes & queues and you pretty much get the beach & sea to yourselves.
When we got back to Sos, it was time to close our pool down for winter and our last dip in November was at 19 degrees, which, after the warm med, felt positively glacial. We’re generally a bit glum when our swimming fun comes to an end so we’ve made a big effort to get to our nearest thermal baths and have had several trips to Les Thermes at Casteljaloux, 40 minutes drive from here, where we can swim inside and out in gloriously warm water. On sunny days swimming outside in the thermal waters, when it’s actually pretty cold outside, is just amazing. You can be massaged by water jets and bubbles that burst out of the pool – shoulder & neck massage jets, bubble beds for back massages and chairs that send little tickly jets just everywhere, plus there are steam rooms, saunas, jacuzzis, a cold plunge pool and sensorial showers. You can spend two hours here for 18 euros 50c and it really does give you a lift when it seems like winter is dragging on. Most clients here are taking the three week “thermal cure” – which you can get a prescription for in France – and have three weeks in the spa with all manner of mud and water treatments for your aches & pains. The photo is from their website, https://www.bains-casteljaloux.com and then there’s a pic of Lee’s last November swim in our pool.
November and December jobs here are all about the maintenance of our old station and the grounds – a lot of leaf collecting goes on – have I ever mentioned that? Plus vegetation management – see photos of Lee lopping the Catalpas and getting some help from the older nephew down by the river and putting up yet another tool board in the big garage. Tracey mod-podged some of lee’s motorcycle posters on to the old double bedroom headboard to create this one. The boring maintenance stuff gets done by Tracey – the fiddly cleaning jobs, getting into nooks & crannies, the spiders & cobwebs & flies & stink beetles are scooped up, cupboards get sorted, all the bedding & upholstery is sorted, washed, ironed and repairs made – everything gets covered up and the station goes into hibernation. Except for Christmas of course when we light the fire, put up the tree and get cooking! See the photos further down. We had a wonderful Christmas with friends – everyone contributed something to the feast and we didn’t want it to end. But end it did, and we pondered the dreadful month of Dry January – and decided not to participate this year. Instead, we went for liquid January in the form of homemade soups and generally found ourselves with the choice of Orange Soup, Green Soup or Brown soup each day, depending on what veg Tracey had bought at the Sos Wednesday market and what combination she had used. Now, I’m quite sure that if we’d just stuck to the soup, and not added a whopping big fresh baguette to the meal and the glass of wine, that we’d be bragging about our weight loss. So, no pounds shed but we really did enjoy soup month and we’re still enjoying a homemade soup meal a couple of times a week. Here, take your pick – green or orange soup Sir?
Leaves and more leaves, tree pruning and yet another tool board….
Christmas and New Year festivities in The Station, notice the pic of our baker, with the annual “tot“ “of whisky, when Lee went to collect the bread
Afternoon Birthday Tea, Dec 30th 2023, spot Lee caught stealing from the buffet before the guests arrived!
Wagon Restoration Project
And here’s the interesting photos for railway enthusiasts – Lee’s restoration of his wagons for the eventual garden railway. He sets off every morning around 10h00 to head out to work in The Engine Shed in his orange overalls. He pops back home for lunch at 13h00 and then he’s back at work by 14h00. He’s loving it and I’m sure you’ll agree that he’s making a very good job of things. Just before New Year he finally got the heat proof panelling in place so he can now light his log burner in The Engine Shed when needed. The flatbed is still ongoing and is being converted into a brake van and he’s meticulously measuring and sketching out his design, based on a Glyn Valley Tramway’s guard’s van. He’s also had to move the position of the wheels for some unfathomable-to-wife-reason and there’s an awful lot more detail to this bit of the project but I’ve already glazed over trying to recollect what he told me – please write to the Chief Engineer of The Sos Carriage & Wagon Works at la gare de Sos for more details! Lots of photos of the two restored wagons I know but they just look so brilliant, I couldn’t help it.
One little project of Tracey’s, just to even things up – remember a photo of an old barrel we’d acquired from a local armagnac producer last year? Well, it’s now a new apero table – under cover at The Pump House for Winter but we’ll bring it out for use in the summer – such a shame it was empty!
Farmers’ protests, The siege of Paris, (and a bit of Tractor Heaven)
And just before we end with the socialising and the pet photos, I’ve got to mention the farmer’s protests in France – never seen anything like it – not since I marched on an anti-poll tax rally have I seen such grass roots solidarity and never have either of us seen so much manure! If you’re driving in France this year and get lost because of the road signs, you’ve been warned here – nearly every village sign post has been turned upside down as part of the protest, except for SOS. So as well as the poor ole Parisians being impacted when fresh produce couldn’t get into Paris for a week, we got blocked on the autoroute towards Toulouse by bales of hay and had a thirty mile diversion via L’isle Jourdain (try reading that upside down) and then we narrowly missed a blockade of protesting taxi drivers blocking the main access roundabout into Toulouse airport. There’s real fury here, especially in the countyside of The South West, where the protests began, against cheap imports, government bureaucracy and the threat to rural life – “Quality has a Price” and “Manger Français pour sauver vos paysans” was the general theme of the banners. And the support is massive for the farmers, even from the starving waifs during the siege of Paris. Look what they did to our beautiful Prefecture Building in Agen, (where we go for our residency permits and other such administrative things) – I just hope they didn’t have any of the windows open when they started spraying all that manure across the front of the building, ugh! But that’s how the French do it…Vive La Campagne, Vive La France! I’m sure the British papers will have had photos of the go-slow tractors blocking the roads in France and the mounds of dumped tyres and hay bales, so for anyone with a big tractor-love, like Mr.G, the news was a constant commentary on this John Deere, that New Holland, this JCB etc etc along with estimated values of the “paysans” bit of kit.
Nephew visits us prior to relocation to Japan, we’ll miss him. He took Tracey to a Japanese restaurant for Ramen noodles & hojicha japanese tea – loved the noodles, tea was unusual
Cheese & Wine Afternoon, Jan 24, somebody had too much wine
A selection of recent socialising and out & about, first frosts
Station Pet news…Daphne and Pasha have a couple of new walking pals – Isla & Leah, two dogs rescued by friends of ours, just getting to know the old railway line walk…
So that’s it folks – the barricades are coming down and hopefully someone in Agen prefecture will be able to fill in a form to get the ball rolling to arrange for the big clean up, no doubt it will be debated for a long time and the form will go all over France, while the bureaucrats tiptoe through the manure into work every day with the usual Gallic shrug. I’m just patiently waiting, in this wonderful revolutionary country, for the food shortages to lead to the diktat “Let them eat Cake” !!!