It’s been ages since I last posted, but it’s all been a bit hectic. We had a great two week holiday, but on the second day our neighbour called to say we’d had a storm and the power had tripped – with two freezers in the cave and two fridges and a freezer in the house, that’s no laughing matter. Our lovely neighbour took one freezer up to his house (probably because it had two of his chickens in it!) along with the contents of the other, but that still left the inaccessible indoor appliances. Two weeks later, arriving home at 7pm, we were met with the smell of putrifying food – just what you need after a days drive. Yes, I know we could have come back earlier but we wanted to put it off as long as possible!

While cleaning out the small freezer, I noticed lots of black flies on my legs (must be the rotting food, I thought). Next morning, my ankles were covered with about 50 bites each – I’m not exaggerating! So, that night was awful – the itching kept me awake, and while awake there was the permanent smell of decaying defrosted chicken and fish. I was in tears as there was no escape from either the smell or the itching.

Next day, a call to where my mother was staying to see if they could keep her for a day or two -  no problem. So, set to work airing the house, recleaning the fridges/freezer, then vacuuming the carpet, spraying lethal anti flea spray everywhere, washing everything that wasn’t fixed down. We’re exhausted we need a holiday!

Anyway it’s all back to normal now, Suzie the flea trap dosed with Advantix is back home, and all seems to be well. By the way, sellotape makes a great flea catcher for your legs – I took great delight in seeing them trapped between two layers of sticky tape *smirk*

So, now to bore you with my holiday snaps (come back!). We’d decided Austria was the place to visit, apparently though, there’s not so much rain a month later. We booked four hotels in advance + one in Czech Republic, they were all great except the hotel from hell, the aptly name Gasthof Karawankenhof which we’ll expand on later.

Firstly we went to the Leutasch valley near Innsbruck. It was pouring with rain, we couldn’t find the hotel, and that was when our neighbour called. We found it eventually though – navigator error (me). A lovely, though modern, hotel, with a charming Belgian proprietor who speaks four languages: Gasthaus Reiterklaus in Unterkirchen. This is worthy of a recommendation – it’s cheap, good food, quiet and friendly, and the owners are making an effort. It’ll be a great place for kids as there is a vast play area under construction.

While there, we visited Kaunertal, like all of Austria, a very pretty valley, so what more can I say?

Kaunertal Austrian Tyrol by ruralfrance

They have lovely cows with fluffy ears there too

Alpine cow birthday card by ruralfrance
See other Alpine Cards

The second hotel was Spertendorf in Kirchberg, again, a lovely hotel with a super terrasse out the back, and for horse-lovers, overlooking a livery yard with some trotters. Perhaps not quite as personal as the first, but we had our own tourist info folder, great food, quiet nights, and more important – good weather! We had a drive up Kitzbuheler horn the next day in sunshine, but I haven’t uploaded the photos yet.
The third hotel was THE hotel to avoid – Karawankenhof, Finkenstein, near the border with Slovenia. More expensive than the other two, the staff more interested in sitting in the bar talking amongst themselves. The hotel looked great on the site, but our room overlooked an unkempt yard. It was quiet, but the food was average to be polite – well cooked but 90% chips. The deciding factor in our hotel from hell rating was the fact that, although they take credit cards, you had to pay for the meal separately – mentioned nowhere. After a trip up two flights of stairs for the unacceptable credit card, we were not best pleased. Nothing to do with taxes eh? A shame, as I’d planned for us to visit Lipica in Slovenia the next day (home of Lipizzaners), but we decided to cut our losses and leave a day earlier. I’m not sure that I didn’t gain a few overnight bites either. They are definitely NOT trying, even the tourist brochures dated back to 2005.
From there we had an unscheduled stop on the Danube before our next stop in Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic. I’ve been there before and knew it was photogenic, hence the revisit. It’s a Unesco world heritage site. We stayed at a hotel within walking distance of the town – Penzion Onyx. The only pity was that there was no restaurant, but there are plenty to choose from in the old town. The owners, Peter who is British and with a Slovakian wife were away, but Mrs Peter’s sister was there to look after us (sorry, I can’t find surnames!). She convinced us over an evening of wine and beer that Slovakia is our next destination. I would have like the chance to practice my pitiful Czech, but as with all tourist destinations, they speak fluent German and English. (Why is it that when I speak in Czech, they answer me in German?) In summary, Penzion Onyx is a little oasis on the edge of the old town.
The weather wasn’t that kind, but I took loads of photos anyway:

Cesky Krumlov old town postcard by ruralfrance

Cesky Krumlov 2011 by ruralfrance

Finally, on the way home, we had an unplanned stay at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, due to an unchangeable flat tyre. What a pretty town this is. Our taxi driver found us the most expensive hotel, but never mind

Garmisch-Partenkirchen at night postcard by ruralfrance

Garmisch-Partenkirchen postcard by ruralfrance

Agricultural shows next!
Oops, I forgot to mention the beer!! Hefe Weizen is my favourite, that’s the cloudy, almost chewy wheat beer in Austria and Germany – plenty of that to be found everywhere.
And if you’re in Czech – Smazeny syr, fried cheese with tartar sauce – my favourite.

Early summer is always a busy time – haymaking takes up a week just for one cut, so when you have several paddocks, that’s a fair chunk out of your time. I’m not talking air-conditioned tractors, self-levelling cutters and round balers here! We have an old International Harvester 523, an oldish cutter, a tedder given to us by a neighbour, an ancient horse-drawn (but tractor mounted) rake on loan from another neighbour – does the job of raking into rows very well actually, an old but well maintained small square baler and a bargain slightly distorted but very solid wooden trailer with hay ladders that we found by chance. Now, while it’s great to have all these implements, each job means swapping them over on the tractor, unlike the professional farmers who have a tractor for every implement. The tedder also does the job reasonably well, but does tend to throw the hay out into the corners, so you end up with piles of hay in the corners, a large bare patch in the middle of the field, and blisters from raking it back from the edges by hand.

Old horse drawn hay rake

The square baler is our pride and joy – it was our third attempt to buy one. (Two major points when looking for a baler – make sure the cutters work, and make sure you can still buy twine for it – the second one we had on trial worked, but we couldn’t buy spools of twine to fit the canisters!) The make is a Riviere Casalis, and it hasn’t put a foot wrong since we had it. Small bales are so much easier for the smallholder – you can pick one up in each hand, and easily throw them up into haylofts or onto trailers. I can see that if you had a herd of cows and hundreds of hectares, it wouldn’t be much use, but fine for two goats and two ponies, and about two acres of hay, and infinitely better than cutting by scythe/brushcutter and loading the hay loose as we did the first two years! Anyway, never one to miss an opportunity, I grabbed some photos in between blister gathering to add to the growing collection of business cards in my Zazzle shop – perfect for tractor and farm machinery dealers!!

Riviere Casalis square baler

Riviere Casalis small baler

Hay tedder, fanner or spinner

My long suffering agreed that we could make our week’s holiday in May coincide with my renewed enthusiasm for wild orchids, so we went via the Auvergne, Rhône alps, Provence and back to Auvergne in a week (chasing the sunshine – the weather was apalling)

I’ve been researching wild French orchids, and it seems we are in the worst place being in the Creuse, since most orchids like more alkaline soils. Although we have the common Early purple orchid, orchis mascula, and a dactorhilyza that likes acid wet conditions (that’s the Creuse!), there isn’t much else here so it was great to see what’s on offer in the rest of France. Here are some of what we found:

Orchis purpurea (everywhere), dactorylhiza sambucina red and yellow (Cantal), ophrys sphegodes, orchis pallens (Izere),  not orchid related – a gentian, possibly acaulis or angustifolia, and orchis simia (monkey orchid).

What’s the world coming to?

Wisteria in the snow

I’m having a hard time keeping up with the flowers now, every day there’s something new. Last autumn I bought some corydalis solida (which all rotted incidentally) and scilla bifolia, only to find their siblings fraternising with wood anemones just around the corner.

corydalis, scilla and wood anemones

The insects and lizards are out as well. We have an old stone trough as a garden pond, where the lizards and sparrows come to drink, and some rather interesting insects like to hang out.

Common wall lizard

Pond skater

The display of dandelions here easily equals the yellow rapeseed fields in England. I stopped to take a photo of one, and found this orchid just on the fence line.

Early purple orchid

Visiting some friends, I came across this oil beetle, and also a bright green lizard which wouldn’t sit still for long enough.

Oil beetle - meloe violaceus

Can’t stop! Photos to take.

The flight paths of BA aeroplanes stuck with nowhere to go made gripping viewing last night. I feel a bit anoraky saying this, but we watched flight paths for three hours (not something I normally do) as various planes were trying to get back into Heathrow and Gatwick. I felt much sympathy for the passengers as their flights were delayed, and even more for the pilots who were set in seemingly endless stacks in the middle of nowhere.

Most impressive was this BA flight from Vancouver

We’d already seen a couple of flights diverted to Shannon, but after circling half a dozen times around the Isle of Man and apparently redirected to Ireland, this flight changed direction and headed back to England after reaching the Irish coast, only to have to circle again over Birmingham. After a long haul flight, I imagine that’s the last thing you want to do! In all, that took about three hours – and what a flight path!!

Close runner up was this flight from Lagos which circled about 10 times around the Channel Islands/Cherbourg, the other was a flight from Orlando to Gatwick, which still made some interesting patterns.

Orlando top, Lagos bottom

History in the making! We could tell when Heathrow & Gatwick were given the all clear – it was like opening the gates at a greyhound race. Everyone left their circling paths and converged on London from all directions. I bet Shannon was relieved!

What total chaos!! But you’ve got to wonder at the logic of sending a plane across the Atlantic, not knowing if it’ll have anywhere to land.

Wow, what a lucky escape!! The preferred proposed route for the new link goes smack bang through the middle of a stable block we put up, about 100 metres from the house! I feel really sorry for the people that bought the house 10 years ago, but what a close shave – If it had happened then, I’d probably still be stuck in the UK! I know many would cry “NIMBY”, but something like that is devastating to individuals all along the route. Probably though, with changing governments and lack of money, it’ll never happen anyway.

We bought a house once that had a road widening scheme planned on it about 10 years previously, that never happened while we were there, and still hasn’t happened to my knowledge 30 years on.

Having said that, we’ll probably find a second Millau is planned 20 metres from our door – you’re not safe anywhere!

Meanwhile, the aforementioned blue iris has flowered, and lovely it was too:

Iris reticulata Katharine Hodgkin

Iris histrioides "George"

It seems so! The snowdrops are still out, now the crocuses and iris histrioides (or reticulata – no-one agrees), and taking the pretty route to the shops yesterday, I came across a large witch hazel bush – hamamelis -  in flower – in the grounds of a hospital. The daffodils are also about to burst and the horses’ rain water tank is beginning to defrost, which is a relief after taking 2 watering cans of water to the horse trough three times a day!

This iris must be one of my most favourite flowers (available both in the bulb shop and on Zazzle products) as it flowers in late February. It really is a beautiful rich velvety purple, just as in the photo. I’m still waiting for the similar and spectacular, but ice blue “Katherine Hodgkin” to appear, but they were planted very late so they’re a bit behind.

The woodpeckers are doing their annual 21-gun salute, the sparrows are collecting nesting material and dropping it from the eaves.

We had a bit of a storm at the end of February. I think we came off better than other parts of France, but still had 300 euros worth of holes in the barn roof and lost 6 of the polycarbonate panels from the greenhouse – one blew over a 15 foot high hedge into the neighbours garden. All were recovered intact though and the insurance paid for two thirds of the barn damage. We also lost the reine-claude – greengage tree, sadly, as I love greengages, but it was a bit rotten in the middle. Still, a bit more firewood.

Witch hazel - hamamelis

I’ve moved all my Zazzle blogging over to a new blog, to keep business and pleasure separate. I’m hoping my new blog is going to be interesting though, as I do like to post the facts behind my photos. I shall still keep this blog up with day-to-day happenings, gardening and general photography etc.

I finally came across a reasonable photo of Aber, taken in the early 90s. We were towing a boat that someone had bought, that didn’t have an engine. I believe it was from a boatyard on the River Soar, so this photo was probably on the Leicester main line on the way back to Cowroast.

Aber didn’t have any mod cons in those days, “crew” slept under the canvas in the hold. There was a chemical loo in the small foredeck space though
I did get the pleasure of sleeping in the boatman’s cabin one winter though – with the stove going, even though it was snowing outside, I had to sleep with the doors open.
Aber is a town class large woolwich working boat, built in 1936 and registered in 1937 – one of the Grand Union Canal Co.’s Town Class fleet.
Ron, if you see this, get in touch!