Catch-up

So what’s been going on? No progress on my house build, obviously, because I’d have been very quick to post about it if there had been. I think the delay this time is due to the construction of the made-to-measure floor beams (‘poutrelles’) that will be placed on the peripheral beams that were mounted on the support columns, to form the floor of the house.

I’m not acquainted with this form of construction so I can only surmise at this time that this is what will happen. The space below will be left largely empty – it’s referred to as a ‘vide sanitaire’ – and the ‘poutrelles’ will support the concrete floor slab.

Before moving onto other more interesting items, I thought I’d give a quick mention concerning my Kia’s new tyres. Having tyres fitted to your car is a bit different here in France compared to the UK. In the latter most people would routinely go to their nearest specialist tyre depot that would usually carry a wide range of tyre brands at all prices and wait while a new set is fitted, with balancing and tracking services being available if required. Here in France it’s not quite so simple.

There are a few national tyre specialists and quite a few independents and from my experience the former are quite a bit more expensive. Alternatively, the independents seem to offer a fairly restricted range selection on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, so getting new tyres can present a bit of a quandary. The last alternative is to find the tyres that you want on line and then get a local garage or tyre station to fit them, and that’s OK so long as you don’t also need a ‘specialist’ service like tracking.

My problem was that when I last had new tyres fitted I followed the latter route and thought that I’d done the right thing. I bought a set of four expensive Michelin Latitude Tour tyres on line and then found what I thought was a capable local fitting station (a respectable garage actually) to fit them and also check the vehicle’s tracking. All seemed to go well but afterwards I did notice that on tight roundabouts, for example, I was getting a bit of tyre squeal and the steering seemed a bit heavier than I thought it should be, which I put down to the model of tyre.

But after driving the vehicle for a few years it was evident that the tracking was not as it should be because the outer edges of the front tyres were worn much more than the rest of the tyres’ surfaces and something obviously needed to be done as my biannual CT (two-year French MOT) was due at the end of May and I had to replace the Kia’s two front tyres at least. To complicate matters, when I checked I found that Michelin have replaced the Latitude Tour with another Latitude model of different tread design and at an even higher price, so I decided that rather than just go to a local tyre depot I’d locate another suitable tyre and find a local fitting station.

Since I last replaced the Kia’s tyres there’s been a change of law in France. In certain ‘alpine’ départements, during the winter months summer tyres have to be removed from your vehicle and replaced with winter ones. You aren’t allowed to drive in those départements during those months on summer tyres, even as a visitor and there’s no snow on the road, but there is an alternative, which is to fit your vehicle with ‘all seasons’ tyres that can be used all the year round.

The Latitude Tour was an ‘all seasons’ tyre so my initial task was to locate an alternative that was also ‘all-seasons’ with a similar tread pattern, and that’s why I didn’t want to go to just any old local tyre depot who would have been more interested in just flogging me any old tyre that they had in stock. I found what I was looking for and had them delivered to my home address and then had to find someone to fit them. In fact that proved to be easier than I thought because the first garage that I phoned said they could do it while I waited.

It was a relatively new garage in Montignac that I’d never used before and when I arrived I was told that usually they didn’t fit other people’s tyres as they supplied their own and was asked why I hadn’t come straight to them in the first place? I told them that it would be a good idea for them to put a sign up out front saying that they sold tyres because there was absolutely no indication that they did. I was also surprised to see that they had two well-appointed and organised service and fitting bays before I left to do a bit of shopping in Intermarché while the work was being done, which with balancing and tracking took about an hour.

The bill I was presented with at the end I thought was a bit on the high side but it wasn’t worth quibbling about, the more so as I’ve found since driving on the new tyres that I don’t now experience any tyre squeal on roundabouts or anything like as much road noise as I did before, plus the steering is lighter and more precise. In fact the Kia feels like a different vehicle. So they did a proper job, unlike the garage that fitted my last set of Michelins. If and when I have to replace the Kia’s two rear tyres I hope that the new place will make an exception for me again and fit them for me 😉

Now to last Sunday. A few days before I’d received an invitation by SMS to a mysterious luncheon. I didn’t know what it referred to so I wanted to find out before replying and before I did a neighbour, Gerald, dropped by to say that I hadn’t replied and should head over to the appointed venue, which was the lane passing by another neighbour’s house, at midday. It turned out that this is actually a regular annual event referred to as ‘le repas des voisins’ (the meal of neighbours) that’s restricted just to the folk who live in our little corner of Fleurac. As a newcomer this was my first time and as the following shots show, it was a very enjoyable, friendly event with a group of lovely people.

Now to the week itself. Wednesday was my turn for our weekly ‘apero’ get-together now that we’re into the summer and can use my two ‘tonnelles’ to sit out in and enjoy the fine weather. One of my biggest problems from living in my caravan, as I found last year, is that only having a small fridge I have great difficulty getting and keeping things cold. As last Wednesday was to be our first session outside, I wanted to offer a good chilled rosé wine which most of us like to drink at this time of the year, but only having my small fridge it was going to be impossible.

I therefore decided that I’d solve the problem by finding a suitable small freezer on Le Bon Coin, the French free ads website, that was old enough to keep outside and my plan was to actually get it back to the caravan by Tuesday so I could get everything ready for Wednesday with a wine box inside it for sufficient time to get it down to the required temperature. In fact I had a very lucky break.

I found what I was looking for in a village called Flottes in the Lot, in the Midi-Pyrénées just west of Cahors. The price was right and with a pick-up cost of just 20€ for fuel, it made it about 2/3 of the price of the freezer when new, so I wouldn’t have to worry about leaving it outside.

The drive there and back was idyllic, passing through wonderful scenery and some charming villages with narrow streets and I have to say that I think that the Lot is actually more pretty than the Dordogne. But my surprise when I got there was to find that actually the little freezer was almost new and far from being only good enough to leave outside, even under some sort of protective cover. So to cut a long story short, I found that by relegating my air fryer to a place near the window, I could put the little freezer next to my microwave, which is great. So now I can at last store frozen food and stuff, including ice cream for the first time since moving into my caravan. Pure luxury 😀

Here are a couple of shots of it.

As a result, Wednesday turned out to be a roaring success, at least I didn’t get any complaints anyway (not true actually, as I served marshmallows at the end as a surprise sweet dish to finish off, which Sophie didn’t think much of, bless her). The ‘tonnelles’ worked well and here are some shots that I took of them before I’d laid out the snacks and my guests had arrived.

I was very fortunate because the night before, we’d been on the receiving end of yet another monster storm accompanied by a deluge of rain. I’d had to get up a couple of times in the night (easy because with the thunder I couldn’t sleep anyway) to clear the accumulations of rainwater off the rooves of the ‘tonnelles’ in case the weight did any damage but in the event they soon dried out again in the morning and I was able to get everything cleaned up and ready for the evening.

The thunderstorms have persisted for three nights and earlier today I saw a report that ten French départements, mainly in the centre and north are under threat of severe storms today that are forecast to move south-west into our region again tonight. This is getting a bit much now as the ‘tonnelles’ are not made to stand up to continuous severe weather, but hopefully if the weather forecast is correct, the storms will have abated going into next week. I sincerely hope so anyway 😐