Oh my rainy days….we had a damp, damp Spring at la gare de Sos that seemed to go on and on – a couple of days of sunshine would settle down nicely, lulling us into thinking that summer was on its way, then we were back under cloud & drizzle for days. Remember the last day of January when we caught the sun at a friend’s bbq and thought we’d skipped the Spring weather and had gone straight into an early Summer – well, that wasn’t the case at all – we went on to experience days when it absolutely bucketed down for hours and the river Gélise rose and flooded route de la gare again. A very unusual weather pattern for this bit of Southwest France and how we all moaned our silly heads off – El Niño this et La Niña that. So the wellies and wet weather gear had an outing this year but we’re pleased to report that they’re all safely stored back in the platform locker and I’m up writing at 04h00, humid & hot, flapping my paper fan in my face to seemingly zero effect, after realising that we’re heading towards the longest day and I haven’t written a Spring newsletter.
Here’s a few shots from our Nature-camera – it’s not brilliant but you should make out the deer in the night shot. We expected more wildlife captures but so far it’s mainly Lee on the sit-on mower, Lee putting his hi-vis on sur la platform, Lee’s hat walking by or birds, bees & other insects that fly in front of the camera – when the moon is bright though, it can capture some great skies, moon rays and moon shadows. (“A moonlit night” always reminds us of little Nanny, telling us tales about the blackouts in the war in Birmingham).
So this wet weather was responsible for adding to our job list this year and whilst we’ve done a load of drainage and ditching work around The Station, we decided more needed to be done to drain the water away from our guest area and pool. Further towards our nearest neighbours, we dug out The Suez Canal, putting in an additional drainage channel, leading water away to the Highway ditch. With this heavy plant and machinery hired in we then made a start on the new driveway into The Engine Shed – once the driveway is complete, this year’s big project, then we can think about bringing track in for the garden railway – weyhey!
And in Garden Railway news – take a look at our latest loco that arrived at the end of May – unlike the first purchase, this one works! The first loco has headed off to a small local engineering firm for re-gauging and other technical things and the new one is sitting proudly in The Engine Shed, currently opened up, and being thoroughly examined by The Chief Engineer Green. It’s a Diema locomotive – German built, we did tell folks on our Facebook page that it was manufactured in 1963 but after Tracey did some “googling” we’re pretty sure it’s DOM is 1959, so that’s’ 65 years young, having spent its working life on a peat bog in Rathowen, Ireland. It then came to Gouarnez in Brittany, part of a small tourist railway set up and now it’s here at la gare de Sos, to join our little fleet. I found the details online in this German manual below – ours is Diema 2242. It might look like an easy task, demounting that loco off the wagon, but Lee assures me that he felt every single muscle straining trying to pull that loco into place. With the help of the lovely Vincent, it was transported from Brittany without a hitch – we did have a bit of a problem getting the wagon & trailer back out of our driveway – it’s such a tight turn for big vehicles to turn left and the trailer ended up reversing into the water logged, frog-filled, drainage ditch where the railway line walk starts, just down the road – oops – Lee, Pasha and others went to help jack it up and get it on its way again.
Anyone following our Facebook goings on will know that we gave the huge attic space a freshen up this Spring – we would have liked to do a complete re-plaster job on those sloping ceilings but we really couldn’t justify the costs of this so we hope our top floor guests will still appreciate that it’s freshly painted, and the floors had a good polish up. It really is an amazing space up there, we’ve moved the young children’s play area and think the layout works better – more room for the Brio train set. The horribly messy job of cleaning the 4 velux windows completed too. As usual, the bloomin’ pine pollen has blown in again and given every window a thick layer of yellow dust – but it was clean in April. On another pollen note – Tracey is delighted to report that the eye drops prescribed by the French opticians last year, that I have to use all year round now, have massively improved the reaction to the pollen that I suffer from and I haven’t had to wear those ridiculous goggles this Spring. Hay fever sufferers, you have my sympathy, but I wonder if I dare to feel, after all these years of streaming, scratchy eyes, that I may have turned a corner with these drops? I can still hear the kind Mrs Fox, fifty odd years ago, my First School secretary, taking me home from hospital in her little Fiat, saying “Don’t worry Sweetie, you’ll grow out of it” having just been diagnosed with hayfever, after my eyeballs turned red with rubbing and puffed up so bad that I couldn’t see. I’d love to tell her that I may have.
In other jobs, Lee donned his wet suit in March to do some pool maintenance, and jetwashed all the patios to remove the Winter debris & green stuff. ( I don’t think he needed the snorkel but he wanted one to try and in the grand scheme of all his other purchases, this one didn’t break the bank.) We’ve acquired an original BR “No Smoking” sign that’s gone up in The Station and matches our station colour scheme and we rotivated the field opposite the station. We also got our crossing gate rail welded together so that the refurbished crossing gate can eventually slide along it, when it’s installed, when the driveway / new entrance is complete – when that will be, we just don’t know. But our lovely guests that pay to holiday here are all contributing to the costs of these station improvements and we can’t thank you enough – it means an awful lot to us to be able to preserve and improve this special place.
In visitor news – we’ve shared our region with some new and previous guests this Spring and with family over Easter and with some friends from our old village in Shropshire, Hanwood – some falling lucky with the weather, others not. One particular stand out French moment was the Sunday lunch at a village called Lamontjoie. Now Sunday lunches are long drawn out, extravagant affairs here and cost a fair bit too so expectations are higher on Sundays. Upon making the reservation for 4, stating that one was a vegetarian, answering the questions with my best “non, elle ne mange pas de viande, non, elle ne mange pas de poisson”, and got the reply “ok, j’ai note” I felt confident that our Sunday lunch would be a magnificent meal. Sunny Sunday morning, all frocked up, we set off through the Gascon countryside, hungry with anticipation. A lovely greeting, I glanced in the reservation diary and saw the noted “végétarien” and relaxed with our kir-cassis aperos, lovely.
The amuse-bouche came to tickle our tastebuds – a little bowl of dressed salad leaves with a sort of creamy / foamy dressing piled high with a little gang of herby coated….molluscs! All of us were given one and I looked at the waitress as she beautifully described the chef’s elaborate creation of this mini-course of snails and told her very gently “non, non, non, pas bon pour le végétarienne, les escargots”.
“Mais oui, les escargots sont végétariens” (But Yes, Snails are vegetarian)
I knew it was all over and that Nicki was going home hungry. The two starter choices, black- pudding balls or prawns, were offered to her without the black-pudding balls or prawns, the two main courses, sweetbreads or fish, were offered to her, without the sweetbreads or fish. She had two bowls of foam. Some nourishment came along in the form of a strawberry dessert and sugar-coated rose petal. Honestly, it’s absolutely, chuffing hopeless and our search continues for more restaurant options to offer our vegetarian guests. I’m not a great cook but I do like experimenting and even I can manage a selection of roasted vegetables with some nice garden herbs, a vegetable gratin or a chunky vegetable soup, a crunchy fresh salad, a decent cheese plate, a little tart – something that uses all the amazing cheese and vegetable produce that we have in every single market and supermarket in South West France. Even an omelette could have been knocked up in a jiffy. Hey-ho, this is the way it rolls in rural France – I’m left aghast and yet in awe of this attitude – they dance for no man, or vegetarian – holiday makers be aware. The fish was served in a white chocolate sauce / foam which was unusual and we thought there was too much of it – imagine having just that on your plate without the fish – photo is below – you’ll spot it. For the meat eaters though – check out the photo of the huge sharing steak that is cooked on the wood fired grill in the local bistro – go Maisie with that steak and Jude certainly loves his puds.
The Hanwood Posse with a rather nice bottle of local red, blackcurranty, velvety & oozy – called Phi-Ling – a strange name for wine from these parts – must visit the vineyard Horgelus to find out more one day
Now a sad bit of news that we’ve been anxiously coping with this year – our beautiful little Daphne was diagnosed with a cancerous tumour, above her right eye. A pimple to start with, that we just put down to lumpy bits that appear with doggy old age but once metastasis began, it became obvious that something was wrong. Our lovely local vets were going to remove it surgically, but it had become too big, too quickly and we were dispatched to Mont de Marsan to see a specialist. A month on a horrid Cortisone drug started to shrink the tumour but also shrink Daphne – she’s lost over a kilo and a half in a very short time and her lively little personality has been drained by the meds. She’s had surgery this week and we are full of worry and hope at the same time – that the specialist has cut it all out and that it hasn’t spread anywhere else – we want to share a few more years with our little Princess. She’s feeling miserable in her cone collar. And here’s something I noticed before the diagnosis – Clarence had been going up close and sniffing Daphne everyday – he knew something wasn’t right. Animals, so,so special. Here’s their Spring gallery…
So here’s the Spring photo gallery, enjoy – a few, you might notice, are not here in France – we squeezed in two trips before la gare de Sos holiday season got underway here – one a road trip to Spain, camping in the bus, and meeting up with Tracey’s Scottish cousin in Benidorm, where we gorged on fish & chips, and had a fried breakfast with our first ever “square sausage” plus a 3 day trip to Portugal where we stayed with generous friends, ate some amazing-value local cusine, sipped white port and melted over those little Portuguese tart-thingys. We have a contact on the Algarve for a small hillside holiday let with amazing views and in a non-touristy town, but equally close to the Algarve coast and all that offers – get in touch if you want any details. We head back to Portugal at the end of the season, for three days tasting Port in Porto – as you can imagine – a most eagerly awaited trip – we love Port. I made the pasties on a damp day – needed something to cheer us up and that strange tart thing was brie, pear & sausagemeat, with garden thyme, drizzled in honey – might sound odd but the flavours worked really well together. The lovely village with the arches and flowers and bunting is Labastide d’Armagnac and we do recommend a visit to this little place – a couple of nice daytime eateries and plenty of photo opportunities. The prune & armagnac icecream here is fabulous.
Have to end with a massive “woohoo” for our fourth-place footy team finish in the Premier League and our qualification for Champions League football next season – Lee got back for the last home game against Liverpool and was so pleased that he made the trip – what a night at Villa Park that was. Commiserations to our rivals – (we can’t wait to see you in August, we’ll have done all our tee-heeing by then) “Up The Villa”!!!
