Getting serious now!

I picked up another bargain today. After my experience slopping through all the mud outside my house this Winter I decided that I need to put a path in as soon as possible really. After all, we can get heavy storms just as easily during the Summer and the result would be just the same – a small river and an expanse of mud outside my door. So I’ve been keeping my eye open for a cement mixer on the small ads web site. I didn’t want one that would be too small, only able to mix 100 litres or so at a time, because there’s nothing more frustrating when you’re laying concrete to have the bed you’ve laid going off while you’re doing another mix. Ideally you don’t want to have joins showing. On the other hand, there would be no point my having a mixer capable of producing industrial volumes of concrete as I only want to lay a couple of paths, build a couple of sets of low steps and lay a base to park the car on. I was thinking that one with a ‘cuve’ of around 160 litres would be about right.

Several have come and gone over recent weeks with, as usual, none in the immediate vicinity which always seems to be the case. Nothing I’m interested in ever seems to be in Aquitaine – it’s always miles and miles away! But on Sunday I saw a new ad for a 160 litre electric mixer, in good condition from the pics shown, and at a price of only 60€, which is about a quarter of the new price! So I phoned up immediately and after a couple of questions said I’d like to buy it. Yesterday there was too much snow left on the ground so we re-arranged our ‘rendez-vous’ for today at 1300 hrs at Layrac, just south of Agen. I’d left some sand in my trailer which I decided I’d take out as it accounted for quite a bit of weight and I didn’t want to overload my little trailer, so I was out at about 10.00am this morning bagging it up. As the temperature was around -2 degrees Celsius, it turned out that the sand was frozen almost as hard as concrete and I ended up breaking it up with a club hammer and cold chisel, but managed nevertheless to be away by around 10.30am as I’d planned.

As seems to be the usual whenever I look forward to a drive through a picturesque part of France, for most of the journey south I could hardly see a thing. It was around -2 degrees Celsius almost the whole way and there was a lot of standing snow around and the trees were all covered in frost. This was very pretty except that it caused a lot of mist which became quite thick as I ascended into the hills of the Lot and Garonne. It didn’t slow me down at all but it did prevent me seeing the sights and views that were any distance away, which was a bit frustrating. I arrived at Layrac at the agreed time and my seller met me outside his house. He was a very genuine guy and said that after me he’d received hundreds of calls about the mixer, which I said didn’t surprise me. He showed me it working, helped me to load it onto my trailer and he then returned to work and I headed off back home.

The journey back was a lot different to the one down because although at the southern end, it still didn’t quite get above freezing, the mist began to clear. As I approached the Dordogne the temperature rose to 5 or 6 degrees Celsius and I was treated to the most glorious clear blue sky and some of the most breathtaking views imaginable of chateaux, ancient villages perched on rocky hillsides and fertile farmland hemmed in by tree-covered hills. It’s one of the reasons why I love it here. I was home without incident by about 4.00pm and when I unloaded the mixer from my trailer, it came off a bit quickly catching me unawares and scratched one of the lenses of my glasses, which I always hang on the neck of my jumper. Very annoying – there always has to be something to bring you back down to earth again, doesn’t there 😐