Friday, 30th August
07.00 – Rain. :-)
9.30 – M. Laramée the roofer turns up.
No point in working today because a big storm is coming. See you tomorrow, 07.30……
Right!
Lots of e-post in the morning; roof-rack on to car in the afternoon and the
assembling of kit for the trip – which is now delayed until Monday when we intend
to drive straight to Buckhorn. Bikes are
booked for Wednesday in PEC. Here’s
hoping I can re-arrange everything else.
Saturday, 31st August.
7.30 – M Laramée arrives.
Seems he’s terrified of wasps and – as previously noted – we have a nest. So we order a nest-spray to be delivered
along with the roofing. Meanwhile he
starts to strip the roof. It rains. He covers
the stripped roof. The lorry arrives and
rather inexpertly (I’m sure it’s an extremely skilful business) unloads the tiles.
M. Laramée takes a look at the weather (there’s a cloud) and declares that the Gods
are not opportune (or something) and departs at 12.15.
Apparently he will be back at 07.30 tomorrow and will bring a heavyweight lad
with him to shift stuff. Work will go
very quickly as a result and so all will be finished by tomorrow night –
really.
A glorious, sunny day ensues. We go into
the village to pay for the wasp spray; I have put some clear silicone along the
lower edge of the south side porch window where there is a bit of a leak (only
there!).
Ali leaps out of the upstairs window, tethered by a bowline, to clean the dormer
exteriors; how do they get so dirty in the countryside?
Ironing, showers, supper all call.
Planter’s punch gets in the way…….
Wednesday, 28th
August
Rain! The roofer turned up at 08.00 to
say that he couldn’t come tomorrow. He
proposed Saturday (!). We are hoping to
start our trip on Sunday – so he will come on Friday and finish Saturday. Better keep our timetable flexible I think!
A very lazy day. Reading, reading up
about Shielings and soil types and cairns and all sorts!
But no images. But, by way of contrast…
Thursday, 29th August.
Up at 7.00 to head off to the mouth of the Rouge – the route we took on Tuesday
and then some.
Quite a bit of faffing
and then we were all put in a school bus, with a trailer full of bright yellow
rafts astern, and taken back to the plot of land opposite the Tree nursery, to
load these huge, not-very-floppy things into the water and start our descent
with a crew of us, a young family from Washington DC and with links in
Tremblant, and Terry (Turtle) our captain.
In part, a great big yellow bag of air is going to get down a river on its own
but in reality, it’s going to do it a lot better and with much less risk to the
crew if the skipper knows what he is doing; and Terry really did.
Sometimes the dunkings were intentional, to
the delighted shrieks of the kids, sometimes we took a smoother line when a
dunking would have been dangerous.
This was really great fun; most of the photos are commercial (we were a bit
busy) and that’s a bit more of the Rouge done. (Green line)
Yaay!
Home absolutely whacked and already aching some. (Ali’s snoozing on the sofa at 21.40!) But then, it has been a long day.
Monday, 26th August
2019
Woke very early, too early to
get up so snuggled down again and – it was 10.30! M. Beaulac had been due at 10.00 -oops. I threw on clothes, rushed down to the phone
and rang him – no problem, he would be there at 11.15 to talk about the dead
maple by the barn. And the branches from
the silver birches by the car-parking!
And he came and we talked and he will be back at Thanksgiving (he
returns to town today) when he will cut and log all and transport it down to
Claude Lanthier because I can imagine that Claude won’t get more wood in by
himself this fall – if he wants it.
And then it was M. Laramee the fosse septique surveyor arriving. He was charming and chatty and we determined
that, yes, our fosse was 50 feet away from our well, and yes, that the site of
the proposed champ d’epurage was more than 100 ft away from the same well. We are going to site it in the old access drive in
front of the house. We shall make the
system for three bedrooms since whoever buys the house when we no longer can
use it will have the option to extend the house without re-building the field… We also explored the big manhole under the bird feeder; it was perhaps 10 feet deep and dry. We'll fill that in when the other works are done!
His excavatrice turned
up soon after and confirmed that we are sand down to 4ft in that area so now he
will go away and prepare a report and send it to us either here or in Bristol! We shall let the Council know in due course!
After all that activity, I popped in to the village to take this photo next to the
spring – it reminded me of “Autumn’s Garland” by Tom Thomson. This is his sketch; the finished item is
smokier in feel…. and I bought food for the
next few days as well.
Which meant that, after I had
gone to visit Claude and Claire to confirm the wood at Thanksgiving, where I saw
this little chap,
I cooked a Spanish inspired stew – without the lobster – from
this book. It was very tasty!
Tuesday, 27th August
Up fairly early to go to Harrington to visit Andrew from Church – an archaeologist
from Plymouth exploring McRae’s shieling.
Andrew is confident of the history of the sheiling – which had a
tradition of summer and winter pastures, rather like “Heidi” – but perplexed by
what may be field clearing cairns or could be very much older. We met up, too, with Bonnie, also from
church, who’s company we much enjoyed.
What a great day of pottering, pondering, postulating, proposing and
finally just sitting in the sun. I think
this conversation will run for some time!
We drove back alongside a very
shallow Riviere Rouge to Tremblant for a lovely, lazy supper at St Arnould’s brasserie
with Karen and Denis. Home in the nearly
dark at 8.00 pm!
