Month: January 2022

We’ve got another day like yesterday. It’s not as cold (not quite) but we’ve got mist that will linger all day and discourage getting involved in any outdoor activities. Nevertheless I always like to take a stroll around my land to see what’s been going on and this is what I found this morning.

The sanglier appear to have paid me another visit but this time, bizarrely, only a very fleeting one as there are only three small scrapes to be seen. Usually even when they’ve just been snuffling around to see what they can find they do much more damage than this in the process and I can’t understand what was different this time. And I also can’t see where they (or more likely, ‘it’ from the limited amount of damage) came from.

There’s no damage anywhere on my new fencing and from what I think is new damage on my neighbour’s land on the north side, it appears that as usual, a small herd came up the rise and through the gap at the eastern end. Was my small amount of damage caused by a lone piglet that was able to squeeze through my fence’s mesh and then dashed off to look for its mother and the rest of the herd when it realised it was alone? Has the penny dropped for whoever was responsible that my land has been excavated so much that it has no more piggy delights to offer up?

I have to say that I really haven’t a clue and I don’t think that I’ll ever truly know. What I do know, though, is that I must just be thankful for small mercies – and for my new ‘anti-sanglier’ fence that on this occasion seems to have done its job!

Last night was probably the coldest night of the year. It was certainly the coldest night that I can remember in my caravan and even as I type this in the early afternoon, it’s still freezing outside with a heavy ground frost and the water supply to the caravan is still frozen. Luckily I anticipated this and took the measures that I’ve worked out to avoid it causing me problems.

Before going to bed, I put some cold water in the washbasin to which I can add some hot water for washing and shaving in the morning, and I fill up both my Brita filter jug and my kettle. Then if, like this morning, my water supply is frozen I can still have a freshen up and use boiling water to unfreeze my outside tap which I can use until my caravan water supply eventually unfreezes. Then so long as I keep my jug and kettle full, in the albeit unlikely event that my outside tap freezes again during the day (it nearly did earlier on) I can boil up some water to unfreeze it again.

But it wasn’t like this a couple of days ago. I was up before 8.00am just as the sun was getting itself ready to peep over the horizon and with the light ground frost that had descended during the night, the images presented were magical.

If you click on the following photo to enlarge it you’ll see two small deer silhouetted under the large tree. Earlier on they had come trotting across onto my land and on finding my new fence barring their way had turned back in the direction from which they’d come.

In the next shot you can see them scampering off to the right before turning again and disappearing off into the distance down the slope on the left.

It’s a pity that by building a fence to keep the wild boar out I’ll also discourage other animals like the deer but maybe that won’t be a bad thing once I’ve got a garden that has been planted. I recall very clearly that one evening in my old house I was admiring the lovely plants that I and my neighbour Chantal had spent hours placing in the pots and tubs out front only to find that their tops had all been neatly cropped off in the morning!

Here are some more shots of the lower section of my land and the small valley beyond.

See if you can spot the fox (‘reynard’ in French) in this last one. Clue – he’s just the other side of the fence to the top left of it, moving right to left.

Even at this distance he must have caught my scent because although I kept perfectly silent he stopped, turned to face me and then shot off at full speed in the opposite direction across the valley before disappearing into the bushes on the other side. I feel so privileged to be sharing this environment with all of these amazing creatures.

One of the things that I learned from my dad is that creating something of quality takes longer, and that’s why it costs more. But if you’re doing something yourself and not paying someone else for what is being made, it’s only your time that’s involved, which is free. And that’s a good reason not to skimp and to do the best that you can.

When I looked at a lot of the fences around here that are designed to either keep animals in or out, I found that most of them just consist of wire mesh nailed to wooden fence posts that have been banged into the ground. Usually they are less than a metre in height and the posts have only been bashed a few centimetres into the ground, probably just with a sledgehammer. It’s also very noticeable that many of the fences constructed in this way are either falling over or have been penetrated by animals, the latter probably being responsible for the former.

When I decided to make my own fence I wanted something capable of doing its job of keeping the ‘sangliers’ out and of also avoiding both of those problems. I also wanted something that wouldn’t be an eyesore and would be reasonably permanent, capable of lasting for at least the next few years (I hope) while I’m living in my new house. So that’s why I came up with the design that I have.

Firstly the mesh. Many people here who have smaller gardens (or large wallets if they have a lot of ground) enclose it with grilles of heavy, closely spaced coloured wire mesh mounted on metal posts. This is quite an expensive option and in my opinion looks much too formal for a highly rural location such as where I live. I decided to go for the same mesh that has been used for the other fences around here which looks much more appropriate – it’s called ‘grillage à mouton’ (sheep mesh) so you can see where it’s coming from.

But it’s main problem is that it’s flimsy. Wild boar are built like small tanks and have a similar mentality and can barge their way through almost anything that’s not armour-plated if they have a mind to. That’s why the other fences around here begin to look the worse for wear after a relatively short period of time. If the boar push hard enough against the centre of a simple mesh panel it makes it bulge and stretch eventually lifting it enough for them to be able to force their way beneath it, or at the very least making it into a considerable eyesore.

The mesh therefore needs to be reinforced in some way and its supporting posts also need to be beefed up in order to withstand the rigours of rural life. So that’s why I went for strong, 2 metre length posts that can be banged a metre or so into the ground (not using a sledge hammer of course – they need a heavy tractor mounted thumper) and a tensioned wire suspension arrangement for the mesh. By attaching the mesh along its top and bottom edges and also along its centre to three wires, this has the result of firming up each mesh panel. Also, by having the bottom wire just above ground level, it will hopefully make it impossible for sanglier, and other smaller animals also, to gain access beneath it.

But it’s a time-consuming business putting such an arrangement into place – it’s already taken me several weeks. But I think that it will be worth it because going back to my initial paragraph in this post, I think that the final result will be a much better quality fence that will both withstand the kind of thing that the sanglier will throw at it and will also be fairly unobtrusive in its natural setting, especially if I plant bushes inside it along its length or possibly in time even mount rough boards on its outside. The other big benefit from having it will also be that I’ll be able to have a dog that will be safely enclosed but will be able to roam freely within its perimeter.

Here’s why the job has been so time-consuming. I’ve attached the mesh to the supporting wires using twisted wire attachments, as shown below. Each panel has on average about 32 of these and there are 16 panels in the sections of fence that I’ve erected to date, giving a total of over 500 wire attachments each of which I had to do by hand.

There are attachments every two vertical strands of mesh along the top and bottom wires and every four along the middle wire. The mesh has also been attached to the posts using heavy metal staples, making the whole thing very strong and rigid.

The most difficult attachments to put in place were those along the bottom wire. This was because of the minimal amount of clearance above the ground making it hard to twist the attachment wire as many times as necessary to make the fixing strong enough. I was also hampered by the number of fallen oak leaves that there were that got in the way!

All the mesh is now fully suspended on all of the posts that are currently in place. The next thing will be to get hold of the additional posts that I need to erect fencing along the whole length of the long south side of my land, so I’ll do that as soon as possible. While they’re being banged into the ground I’ll be able to make the two gates that are needed for the other two sides and it’s highly likely that before that’s done, the builder will have started on the groundwork for my new house. Exciting times 🙂

After a cold start it was yet another beautiful day for working outside, so that’s what I did. It was very productive but at the end of it I didn’t have an awful lot to show for my efforts. Not that you could easily see anyway.

The first thing that I did was extend the ‘anti-sanglier’ mesh that I’d placed in the bushes in the tree line at the foot of my land by an extra 3 metres.

This blocked up the gap that I think they came through the last time and hopefully this will prevent them from doing the same in the future. They’d have to be really determined to anyway as beyond its end the slope, although fairly short, is quite steep and the vegetation on it is quite thick. So I don’t think that they’ll bother if there are easier pickings and I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

I then laid out all of the posts that I have left along the southern edge of my land. There are only 11 and I think I’ll need another 13, so I’ll see if the sawmill still has 20 or so more, say, to allow for the bracers that’ll also be needed.

Then I got back to wiring the mesh to the tensioned suspension wires. The whole of the bottom is now done and nearly half of the longer run along the northern edge. It’s taking quite a long time but I think that it’ll be worth it. When I’m finished it should hopefully be strong enough to withstand being leant on by even the most beefy sanglier, unlike all of the other fences in my area that are in various stages of disrepair. I hope so, anyway 😉

I couldn’t believe it when I looked outside at 08.00 am this morning. The ‘sanglier’ had been back yet again last night.

The damage was less significant than previously but it will still take more time and effort to reinstate and quite frankly, I’ve got better things to do than keep shovelling earth around.

The questions are, where did they come from this time and how did they circumvent my ‘anti-sanglier’ fence, incomplete though it may be? The first clue came from the land below mine from which they always ascend through the gap, which had been ripped up yet again.

There was no sign of damage on the land neighbouring mine on the south, so as I’d previously surmised, they had not come from that direction. So it was obvious that the sanglier had taken the same route as previously and after encountering my fence had veered right onto my neighbour’s land to the north where they had done some more quite significant damage.

It was apparent that my fence had had some effect because this time there was also damage to the ground along my neighbour’s side of it quite close to its perimeter.

And high up too, almost to the tree line, showing that the fence had been a barrier to the animals on that side of it, preventing them from coming onto my land this time.

So how had they got onto mine again? The answer was on the ground below mine where a track could be clearly seen entering the trees on the bottom (eastern) end of my land in which I had mounted several metres of mesh barrier.

I mentioned in a previous post that it could probably do with being extended by a few metres more and last night’s events prove this to be so, because the beasts had indeed found the small gap which I said existed in the trees and bushes at its end, climbed up the low bank and emerged onto my land which they had then attacked at their leisure.

This shows the distance between where my mesh barrier currently ends (arrow) and the gap through which they emerged.

So it looks as though my work extending the barrier in the treeline has to go ahead. And sooner rather than later if I’m to avoid repeats like this every night as soon as the weather becomes a bit more mild.

FOOTNOTE

Yes, another one. That’s two in two posts. I went out early in the afternoon and reinstated – for the seventh time – all the earth that the ‘sanglier’ damaged again last night. It doesn’t look too bad from a distance, but close up the ground down there is now looking pretty rough.

Afterwards I plugged the gap that I think they came through as best I could with my large trailer. Only time will tell if it will work until I can do something more permanent. Funny how the ruddy mole now seems to be working overtime as well down there, in concert with the sanglier.

While I was there I happened to look at the field over on the other side of the small valley below my land and was astonished to see the extent of the sanglier damage over there. The following shot has been blown up and is not of very high quality but you can see how the whole of the upslope over there has been scavenged by the beasts. There must have been quite a herd of them.

So they’re not out to get just me – it only feels like they are 😉

As I type this the technicians are about to start work on the ‘étude de sol G2’ for my new house. They turned up at about 9.00 am and I’d only just got out of bed, actually. They hadn’t picked the best morning as the temperature was still below freezing, the ground was covered with frost and there was a thick mist. This was the view when I looked out of my caravan door.

The machine they use to drill the boreholes that go quite a few metres into the ground is mounted on tracks and comes on a trailer. This shot was as they started the engine to warm it up in preparation.

Here’s a closer look. It looks brand new to me, as does the van towing the trailer and the Citroen SUV that accompanied it – I wonder if mine is their first job?

So after much delay things are now getting underway with this signifying the start of the actual building project. Right now they’re measuring up the ground to identify where to drill the boreholes and I just hope that I was accurate with my own measuring when I got the guys to lay the concrete base for my garden tool store. I’d hate for it to be in the wrong place… 😐

FOOTNOTE

I just came back to add that as I type this it’s 18.45 pm and the two technicians are still here finishing off their drilling in the darkness. They’ve had a bit of a torrid time. As I suggested above, their drilling rig is brand new but still gave them lots of problems, so much so that they spent most of the time during the day just hanging around.

The team that did my friend Wim’s G2 a week ago took about four hours to drill four holes. After 7 hours at around 16.00 pm today, the unfortunate pair who have been doing my G2 had only succeeded in completing one borehole! However, when I spoke to them an hour or so ago they said that they wouldn’t need to return tomorrow and would get the job done today. And as the above shot shows, they’ve kept their word 🙂

Now that I’ve got a basic ‘anti-sanglier’ barrier in place on the two sides of my land from which I think the wild boar come to attack it, it was time to attempt to repair the extensive damage that they did on their last visit. A full repair was overoptimistic. Much of the affected area has now been dug up and put back six times so it was already bumpy with large areas showing bare earth rather than grass due to the impossibility of replacing the uprooted turf perfectly.

Dealing with sanglier damage is not like laying turf or repairing a golf divot. Much of the uprooted grass is tossed some distance away from where it came from and the best that you can do is replace it to fill in the damaged areas and try to get them back again to something like level. When I came here, the grass on my land was considerably better than what I left behind at Plazac but it’ll be some time before I’ll be able to say that again about the land at the bottom, when it has had a chance to begin to recover after the spring arrives.

It took quite a few hours to deal with the damage and the most that I can say is that the ground was ‘reinstated’ as best as possible rather than ‘repaired’. Even so, there’s not much now to see from the top as the following image shows.

Yes, there’s still a bit of damage in the far corner, but that’s the result of mole (‘taupe’) activity and there’s no point trying to deal with that for the moment. The little rascal seems to be moving across my land and onto my neighbour’s and with a bit of luck once he’s there he’ll keep moving.

Here are some shots of the damaged areas after reinstatement.

I’m hoping that this will be the last time I’ll have to do this job. Six times is more than enough I think. I spent the rest of the afternoon wiring the fence mesh to the tensioned suspension wires. There’s still a lot to do but I should get the job finished during the week so I can get on with making the gates.

I hadn’t attached the mesh to a large length of the middle and bottom wires along the bottom fence section and when I came to do it I found that the mesh was stretched and bulgy. It certainly wasn’t like that when I put it up so I think that the sanglier probably had a go at it when they came last time but gave up and found a way around it onto my land as at that time most of the long northern section wasn’t in place.

They’re not daft and just found their way up to where the mesh ended. That won’t be possible now, especially as I’ve blocked the bottom gateway with an old pallet and the one along the northern long edge with my small trailer. I just hope that all my assumptions are correct and that they are not, indeed, coming from the opposite direction… 😐

I pressed on today with my ‘anti-sanglier’ fence as I said I would do in my earlier post this morning. In fact I did put the rest of the fence mesh into place along the long northern side of my land before getting involved with constructing some sort of barrier inside the bushes along the bottom because I knew that the latter would be a messy business, which it was.

Here are a couple of shots of the new long side fence mesh with the latter secured just on the posts and not on the tensioned suspension wires, but sufficient so that whatever else happened today, I’d have a virtually complete barrier against further sanglier incursions.

I did better than I expected I would erecting a barrier inside the bushes, mainly because there was enough mesh left on the first roll to extend from the last post in the corner half-way down the rest of the bottom of my land inside the bushes.

I haven’t bothered with having suspension wires – I’ve just attached the mesh to the large oaks with metal staples and to the smaller trees and saplings inside the bushes with wire loops. I’ve also not made them too tight in order to allow for a little bit of expansion of the trunks and branches but at the end of the day the mesh has to be secure because as we now know, the sanglier are nothing if not persistent and will ram their way through it if they sense that there’s little resistance.

Here’s a shot taken from the outside, of where it ends up.

Here’s a shot of the mesh run looking into the bushes from the last fence post.

This shot is of half-way along the mesh and shows how it abutts against the slope along its bottom edge.

This shows its end, which is half-way along the (eastern) bottom edge of my land. This is how far what was left on the first roll of mesh extended and I have the option of extending it by a couple of metres or so should I need to, of which more in a moment

And finally, here’s a view looking back inside the bushes to the last fence post in the corner.

There is what looks like a small animal run into the bushes where the mesh ends but I think (although, what do I know) that the slope in the bushes is too steep there for the sangliers to climb up. If so, I’d prefer not to extend the mesh as I don’t want to discourage the small animals who have a right to be there and don’t do any damage. However, if I find that the sangliers can still come onto my land I’ll have no choice but to do so.

I think that I will extend it before the bushes start to grow as when they become thick, as they will do soon, it’ll be more difficult to get in there. And there are lots of nasty brambles to scratch you to bits which will then also be more difficult to avoid.

I’ve tried to make a bit of a barrier to the entrance into the bushes using old branches, stuff like that. However, I don’t think that it’ll be able to stop the sangliers and it’ll be the mesh, that will be hidden in the bushes by then, that will hopefully do the job of halting their progress. Hopefully… 😐

We had a bitterly cold night last night and the water supply to my caravan is frozen again as I type this. This was the view when I left the caravan this morning just before the sun began to peep over the horizon at about 8.00 am – a winter landscape of frost as far as the eye could see.

However, this was the view that met my eye when I turned to look towards the bottom of my land.

So it seems that I spoke too soon yesterday. The ‘sanglier’ found their way back onto my land after all some time after I finished work yesterday and got up again this morning and the area that they’ve ripped up is possibly the largest yet.

And yet again, it’s mainly only my land that has been affected. You can see in the distance in the next image that my neighbour’s land was slightly damaged again, but nothing like as badly as mine.

And when I say damaged, that’s what I mean. There are huge gouges a metre or so across and 20 or 30 millimetres deep which must have required a considerable amount of effort to create.

I’m not sure where they came from. As always, there are absolutely no signs that they came from the south which would always be too risky for them with no escape route, so I’m sure that as usual, they came up through the gap and up the rise from the east. There are some signs that they then actually walked up and skirted around the fence that I’ve only partially put in place along the long north side of my land but it’s difficult to be sure of that due to the hardness of the frozen ground.

There are also signs that they may have skirted around the short segment of fence in the bottom corner and climbed up through a small gap in the trees that I’ve always know was there and which would be quite an easy route for them now that the bushes have died back, as shown in the pic below.

I was going to leave blocking it with a length of fence mesh until the end of the job but now I think that I’ll have to do it before doing anything else. I have to say that this constant fight has become very tedious to say the least. And it’s also very time-wasting and tiring having to keep filling in and levelling the land after they’ve been and gone and left all their damage behind them.

We’re into a run of superb high pressure winter weather and for now there’s no end to it in sight. This means that we’re getting clear sunny days with bright blue skies with the air itself being cool at only around 7 or 8 degrees Celsius but with the sun’s rays surprisingly warm. The converse is that with the clear skies the nights are cold at a degree or so below freezing with ground frost, but that’s a small price to pay for how marvellous the days are, and I’m not finding it too difficult keeping warm in the caravan in the meantime.

Up to today I’d not had a chance to get back to working on my ‘anti-sanglier’ fence – the ground at the bottom of my land was still too wet to work comfortably down there and yesterday I had to busy myself despatching the bow-and-arrow set that I originally bought to rescue my drone from the tree that it had crashed in last autumn, but ended up not using. But anyway, I at last managed to sell it a few days ago on Le Bon Coin.

I thought that I’d never manage to do it. I had enough interest but delivering it was the problem because of the parcel’s length. None of the usual services would accept it. DHL and the like would but at a cost that was more than the value of the item, so they were ruled out. By a bit of luck I at last found that Chronopost would do it and at an economic cost too, so long as I used ‘Chronopost Relais’. This involves dropping it into a local ‘point relais’ ( I chose le Bugue) and having it delivered to a ‘point relais’ near the recipient. I was just glad to see the back of it, quite honestly.

So today I was free to get back to working on the fence. The first thing that I did was completely finish fixing the mesh in place on the small segment in the bottom corner, and here’s how it came out.

I’m very happy with the result. Unlike the locals, who just nail the mesh to the fence posts, mine is not only nailed to the posts but also suspended on the three tensioned wires at its top, middle and bottom. This should mean that unlike the locals’ fences that all look pretty shabby after only a short while, because they can easily be bent at their top and bottom and bulge when pushed in their middle, mine should stay taught and tidy pretty much forever. Mine will also resist any attempts by animals to push their way through beneath its bottom. Anyway, time will tell if the considerable extra effort (and cost) that I’ve put in was worth it.

Here are the other shots that I took after finishing at 16.45 this afternoon, just as the sun was dipping below the trees on the other side of the road.

Apart from the segment in the corner, the other lengths of mesh have been nailed on the end posts but otherwise not yet been fully secured. I’ll get going again tomorrow and get the final run of mesh into place and secured in the same way. Then I’ll be able to concentrate on just wiring it all to the suspension wires, which I’m managing to do quite quickly as I’ve developed a method to do it. All that will then be left will be to construct the two gates, but at least in the meantime I’ll be pretty much reassured that I won’t be getting any more visits from my little piggy nocturnal invaders 😉

After how long has it been, three, four days of continuous rain? It has at last stopped raining this morning.

Apart from a brief shopping trip and a few snatched moments outside in the fresh air when the rain has briefly stopped before restarting, I’ve been stuck in the ruddy caravan. And it has been made worse by not only having the rain hitting the roof but also the water dripping off the trees after the rain itself has stopped falling. Luckily I’m a fairly resourceful person and I’ve managed to find things to do to keep myself occupied – editing videos, stuff like that – but I’ll be glad when the weather improves again.

Raindrops are very gently still falling while I’m typing this but the forecast is for the rain to be over by this afternoon. From then on we can look forward to a period of freezing nights and chilly, dry days but at least I’ll then be able to press on with my fence work which hasn’t moved on while I’ve been stuck in the caravan. I’m looking forward to it even though it’s soggy and muddy down there. At least it’ll make a change from the inside of the caravan, though 😐

Incidentally, my building contractor told me that they had programmed the G2 soil study for my house foundations during the first half of January. As this is now the second week I’ve sent off an email asking on which day this week will it happen. I’ll be interested to see their reply…

My porcine friends paid me yet another visit either last night or early this morning. Luckily the damage they did was not that great and only took me a few minutes to kick back over and stamp down again. Mind you, my neighbour was less lucky this time and the damaged area over on their land was bigger this time than last. Nevertheless it emphasised the need for me to get a barrier up on the bottom of my land at least, as soon as possible, so although I couldn’t work very much into the afternoon, that was my aim for today.

And that’s what I succeeded in doing by mounting the mesh all along the bottom boundary. The job’s not finished – I’ve not even cut the length for the bottom corner off the roll and have just left it leaning against the last post for now – but I hope that it will be enough of a deterrent to keep the beastly boar off my land. Here are some shots from after I’d done all that I could do in the time available today.

I’ve just hung the mesh temporarily for now and will have to make the fixings permanent in the next day or so. It may not be tomorrow because we’re expecting a couple of days with near freezing temperatures, but I hope it will not be too long as I don’t want the ruddy boar to start testing the fence as they could well then end up bending the mesh and finding their way through it due to the lack of fixings. After all, on the face of it they are persistent if nothing else…

I made an early start as planned this morning on my new ‘anti-sanglier’ fence. Here’s the gorgeous sight that greeted me when I stepped outside my caravan first thing while the sun was still rising.

I didn’t get quite as much done as I wanted to, though. There were two reasons – firstly the day was disrupted by some showers early on in the afternoon and secondly, I decided to reduce the span between the suspension wire tensioners to a standard of 3 posts or 12 metres on the long runs.

This meant that I needed more of them and had to go top Brico Depot to pick up six more, plus another reel of suspension wire while I was there. Even so, I managed to get all of the remaining and the extra tensioners mounted in place and half of the longest section of fence wired up.

I could probably have got it all done but for the wind picking up and some heavy black cloud rolling in. It didn’t actually start raining again but it got quite dark (my phone camera always makes dark shots look much lighter than they were in reality) so I decided to call it a day. Here are some shots of where I got to.

I’m managing to make quick progress now I’ve learnt how to go about things and have developed my technique, so hopefully I’ll be able to get the rest of the wires in place pretty quickly tomorrow. Then I’ll be able to start hanging the mesh on Thursday, which should start to make the job look a lot more complete than it does up to now 😉

Although many people in the UK are still on holiday, the Christmas and New Year break is over here in France and it’s time for everyone, including me, to start work again. Usually there’s only one day’s holiday each for Christmas and New Year but this year a lot of people seem to have taken the whole period in between off, much as in the UK, perhaps because they’re ‘working from home’ due to Covid 😉

I started late so didn’t get as much done as I’d intended and before I could get going again on my ‘anti-sanglier’ fence, I had to do some reorganising of my garden store. We’re expecting some wind and rain in a few days time and I’ve found that with the two together, water gets inside onto its floor. So I needed to get the two ‘tounelles’ (little garden marquees) that I bought for last summer but never used, and a bag of cement, which up to now have been left on the floor, raised up so they won’t get damaged.

I placed a couple of lengths of timber under the tounelles to lift them and placed a pallet under the cement and after making a bit of space by moving my ride-on mower slightly to one side, things are now a bit more organised in there.

Then it was on to the fence. All I succeeded in doing today before the light began to fail was finish getting all of the three suspension wires in place that will support the wire mesh along the bottom segment of the fence and here a few shots taken before I called it a day.

I think that I’ll fit all of the suspension wires on the whole fence before I start hanging any of the mesh and if I get out reasonably early and get cracking tomorrow morning, I’m hoping that I’ll get to that point by the end of the afternoon. I need to press on before it starts to rain again as it can get very muddy down there, plus we’re also expecting a couple of very cold days, at around freezing, and I don’t think that it’ll be very nice working in that… 😕

Here’s the video that I mentioned in my last post of 2021.

The flight was in the Fleurac-Sarlat-Figeac triangle and although I’d planned to do touch-and-goes at both Figeac and Sarlat, there was too much circuit traffic at both airfields. Conditions were perfect for the time of year with the air as smooth as silk with very little wind.

My GPS let me down when I first took off so I had to return to Malbec immediately and reset it. Thereafter the flight was trouble-free and pure pleasure. Spot the low-wing white aircraft that flies across my nose at 8 mins 25 secs. BTW, sorry the GoPro wasn’t mounted quite vertically on the wing.