Back in the groove

After three weeks of touring the local area, eating out and just all having fun together, my sister and brother-in-law left for home on Monday. The weather while they were here was a bit unsettled and certainly not as warm as the average for this time of year, but by planning our days and especially where to go for lunch, it didn’t prevent us from doing anything that we wanted to. There had been news stories that tourists were becoming stranded in France due to fuel shortages as a result of the current industrial unrest here in France but they proved to be unfounded and they made Calais without any problems.

Their main problem as they travelled north was the weather, which became steadily worse the further north they drove, and after a 55 minute delay due to storms in the Channel, they said that their crossing was one of the roughest that they’ve ever experienced. The weather here in Plazac has also deteriorated since they left and we’ve had almost constant rain with only sporadic dry periods since the week-end.

This time last year Wim and I were getting ready for our tour of the west coast but there would be no chance of us doing that again this year. Although the Jetstream now seems to be sorting itself out a bit and getting back towards its usual west-east configuration without the enormous north-south loop that appears to have been influencing our weather so badly, it hasn’t got there yet and forecasts for the next 14 days or so show no real respite from the unsettled conditions that we’ve been experiencing for weeks now.

We plan to head back to Le Thou in the Charente on June 18 for the Club Aero Focus Fête de St. Jean le Baptiste evening dinner that we enjoyed so much during our visit there last year but it’s impossible to say at this stage whether the weather will play ball or not. In fact we’re all doing very little flying due to the weather.

I’m finding it particularly annoying because since flying the Savannah down from la Ferté Gaucher in February, I’ve only managed two more flights in it – the hop over to Malbec and just over an hour to Brantôme and back. I’ve also been prevented from getting the X-Air ready for sale and haven’t even been able to uncover the Weedhopper that’s in bits in my back garden since I put it to bed for the winter back in October. I’ve missed a few flyable days due to the work on my garden, but not that many, and it’s very frustrating.

As I need to rack up a good few take offs and landings in the Savannah to get a proper feel for its handling, I’ve got a flight planned taking in several local airfields, Castillonnes, Belvès, Sarlat-Domme and Galinat. My idea is to do two touch-and-goes and a landing at each one, with a stop for coffee at Sarlat-Domme, before returning to Malbec.

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This would give me a total of 13 take offs and landings including the one back at Malbec, which I think would be very useful experience. I emailed the aero club at Belvès for prior permission to land there but have so far had no reply, so if I don’t hear from them soon I’ll have to give them a follow-up phone call.

I’ve also been able to get back onto house and garden planning matters that have of necessity been in abeyance while my relatives were here. My priority is to finalise a proposal for a new waste-water treatment system without which, under recent French law, my plans for extending my house won’t even be considered. After conducting a brief inspection of my back garden a month ago, SPANC (the authority responsible for dealing with such matters) in Montignac said that it is too small to accommodate a conventional septic tank system of current specification and that I should install a considerably more expensive microstation system.

When I mentioned this to Jérôme from Agrafeuil while he was here overseeing the work on my front garden, he said that I should consider an alternative natural, eco-friendly solution which works out considerably cheaper and is just as effective. It is an approved system that was developed at a French university and is marketed through an organisation called Aquatiris that has its own French/English web site.

The system uses filter beds containing water-based plants and converts a mixture of household effluent and ‘grey’ water into clean, pure liquid before returning it into the ground. Before going ahead and installing it, your house, garden and your future plans are subject to a study and a young chap dropped by yesterday evening (in the pouring rain!) to make a preliminary assessment.

His conclusion was that the area behind my house is too small even for an Aquatiris system, but that there would be no problem in installing it in the front garden. I initially baulked at the idea, but he said that it would be very simple using a small pump and an underground plastic pipe to take the liquid household waste up to a bed in the front corner of my garden, where there would then be a filter bed of plants. He said that the bed would be almost unnoticeable and would fit in nicely there, which I had to agree with, and that a second bed with different plants would be completely optional.

I was very encouraged by his ideas and am keen to go ahead to the next stage, which involves a paid-for detailed study of the lie of the terrain and the sub-strata, especially as the system as it’s been described to me is totally natural and considerably more cost-effective than technological alternatives, such as a microstation. So watch this space for further details as the project progresses!

So that’s about it for now. I’m dropping over to see Wim this evening for our regular Wednesday ‘apero’ session and we’ll have a bit to catch up on. While my relatives were here, I quickly put together a plan for a tour of central France along the lines of our west coast trip of last year, but I can’t see it coming to fruition while the weather remains as unsettled as it is. Maybe it’ll be something for the autumn – who knows, we’ll have to wait and see.