I am devastated. I watered all my trees yesterday evening as usual and everything was fine. When I looked out of my window at 6.30 this morning I could see foliage on the ground next to the first new apple tree and when I went outside I found that both apples had been attacked and all the fruit and new shoots taken off them. The largest apple on the first tree was 5 cm or more in diameter and a few more weren’t very much smaller.

But worse still, the two main branches on the first one had been ripped off and its shape totally destroyed. I can’t believe the timing. I was going to get fencing today to put around all the trees after finishing the work in my ‘abri’ and it’s almost unbelievable that they’ve beaten me by a day after all the time the trees have been there.

It’s absolutely sickening. I can only hope that the both trees, especially the most damaged apple, will be able to recover for next year 🙁

Previously, apart from two or three rotten old tarps that I threw away, everything in the following pic filled the whole of my ‘abri’. In fact I’ve actually added a few things to what was in there originally.

I fitted out my workshop in my old house with racking but had to leave it all behind as I didn’t have anywhere to put it when I moved. I had a couple of unused double packs left over though and I put them into storage with a lot of other stuff.

I got them out a few days ago and although it’s taken a couple of days working outside in quite intense heat I’ve now assembled them, cleared out my ‘abri’ and put the four racks in along one side, chasing out a couple of mice in the process. They’ve filled the space nicely and taken everything that was in there with a lot of space left over for more, which I’ve got waiting in my car.

I don’t know whether I’ll have enough space for everything that I had in storage – after all, I’ve got another concrete mixer in there which I intend to sell plus a rotavator – but it could be a close run thing. I should be able to get a good idea tomorrow afternoon when I return from my next dental appointment.

After all the toing-and-froing I managed to resolve the photo frame problem. Because of the inconvenience the supplier gave me the second 10 photo frames with plastic fronts for free so I was able to source 10 sheets of glass myself locally and I’ve spent the last few rainy days printing and framing photographs to put on the walls in my bedrooms.

All of the photographs I’ve used are free, royalty-free images downloaded from the internet which I’ve printed A3 size using my large Epson printer. The quality of all of them is outstanding and I’m delighted with the results. Here are the images I’ve chosen in order for bedrooms one, two and three.

And here’s how they look in the rooms themselves.

I’m so pleased that I’ve decided to place a second row in each bedroom above the existing ones and despite the problems I’ve had with the frames arriving with plastic rather than glass fronts I’ve ordered 10 more white and 10 black of the same size from the same supplier. If they come with plastic fronts I’ll just have to bite the bullet and replace them with glass as I’ve searched the internet and cannot find suitable alternatives even at the higher cost. I’ll be using the black frames for more pictures on the white bedroom walls and also in my living room of which more when they are delivered.

With my bike having been picked up yesterday ready to be shipped back from whence it came I was at last able to return to servicing my Savannah which had been standing once again for one day short of a fortnight with no work having been done save for giving the aircraft an initial wash. My aim was to remove the lower engine cover so with the top cover already having been removed I could get free access to the engine.

When I’d left it last time I’d found that the overflow outlet from the radiator expansion header tank was blocked, so the first job was to stick a point into that and unblock it. When I did so I found that unfortunately the problem was more serious. Not only was the outlet blocked but the metal outlet tube was also corroded away, meaning that when the engine became hot the coolant would not overflow into the plastic bottle that was connected to the outlet by a rubber tube so it could return to the system when it cooled down again but would instead spray out to the atmosphere and be lost.

That meant that I’d have to order a new expansion tank and radiator cap as even though I’d cleaned it up, the old cap was still in poor condition. It also meant that I couldn’t start and run the engine for any length of time, and certainly not long enough to warm up the oil so I could drain it out and change it, so a full engine service (oil, oil filter and spark plugs) was again out of the question.

So that gave me time to give the exterior of the engine a thorough clean and it certainly needed it. It could never be made to ‘look like new’ again due to the age of the aircraft but there was plenty of scope for removing the light surface corrosion that was on some parts of the engine (not serious) and the grime that had also built up, using WD40, fine wire wool and an oily rag. It took well over an hour but the final result was well worth the effort.

When I came home I had to get straight onto the computer to order the parts that I needed and when I did so I was shocked. I already knew that the Rotax parts were going to be expensive but I had no idea just how so. Take a look at the following image that shows the parts that I needed from the Rotax parts list together with their prices.

The radiator cap alone was 88€ – I ask you, just for a radiator cap – and the expansion header tank another whopping 127€, giving a total for the two of 215€. I didn’t investigate to see whether those prices included VAT but I’m pretty certain they wouldn’t have included shipping, so the actual total was probably closer to 230€ or possibly even more. And if the header tank was of similar material to the original, it would also be subject to future corrosion over time, as the old one had been.

But as usual, Google is your friend and it threw up an alternative source of supply on Ebay, as shown by the next image below.

This was in the form of a welded aluminium header tank, which seems to me to be of considerably higher quality than the Rotax original and also comes with the radiator cap and all for the princely sum of $99. So what do you think of that? I ordered these rather than the Rotax originals which I think are grossly excessively priced. How can a simple radiator cap be worth 88€? Answer, it’s not, but the Rotax design is exclusive for the engine and they are charging what they think they can get away with just because they think they can.

But now they can’t. This time the Chinese manufacturer can’t be accused of dumping a subsidised product – it’s not like a car, it’s too small and specialised. What they are doing is manufacturing what appears to be a superior product more cheaply than Rotax and selling it at a realistic price that customers are only too willing to pay. I can’t see how, given the time they’ve been manufacturing their original items, Rotax can possibly justify the prices they’re asking for them. I think it’s just profiteering. What do you think?

But not forgotten. As of 1.20 pm today my electric bike has disappeared from my life in the back of a carrier’s van. All I am waiting for now is my refund.

Earlier I checked the CDiscount web site from where I bought it and now find that although the ‘seller’ is still there, they are not now offering either of the two Dakeya models, the DA06 ‘hard tail’ with no rear suspension that I had, or its sister DA03 with rear suspension.

There are, however, a few other similar bikes on offer there which, as I’ve mentioned previously, have different brand names but probably come from the same factory. I assume that they will also come without Certificates of Conformity and I can’t understand why CDiscount is continuing to allow this to happen after I’ve alerted them to the situation.

As expected, I have heard nothing from the DREAL, the French authority responsible for individually registering my bike, and I’m sure they will continue to drag their feet for as long as they can, possibly avoiding coming back to me at all if I don’t rattle their chain and chivvy them up. Such is the way of state bureaucracy in France.

It’s been cool again today and I’ve wasted almost the whole day because the weather forecast was for continuous rain that never materialised. So I couldn’t start on servicing the Savannah or cutting the grass, which is becoming somewhat urgent once again, because of the risk that it might start raining in the middle . However, I’ve just come in from my garden where I’ve been seeing how the new trees are coming on – the answer is fine – and disposing of a few more big stones that were lying on the surface of the ground.

I retrieved a small length of wood that was missed when the builders cleared away the old roof timbers and took it round to the front of the house to keep it as it might be useful as a ground peg when I eventually come to mark out for the base of a garage. I was going to put it down next to the ‘abri’ (tool shed) and as I was doing so the sun was shining quite brightly and making it quite warm. And there, in a small bush front of the ‘abri’ was an adder enjoying the warmth. I think it was quite a young snake from its girth but it had the typical adder colouring of a dark zig-zag along the length of its brown body.

Where I live is outside the boundaries of the areas of France said to be inhabited by adders so this came as something of a surprise to me. I know from my old house that there are lots of grass snakes that are disturbed when the grass is cut for hay but this is the first time I’ve seen an adder. This one looked to have made its escape by disappearing into a hole under the concrete base of the ‘abri’ and if so, I’d guess there must be a nest there.

The question is, if there is, will any more young snakes emerge, and if so, how many? But although adders are more scared of contact with humans than we are of them, I’ll watch my step (literally) when around and about the front of the ‘abri’ in future, especially if I’m wearing flip-flops, which I very frequently am, which I very frequently am, and was when I spotted the snake.

They’ve been resurfacing the road outside my house this week – and to say it needed it is an understatement, but that’s another story – during which time the road has been closed. Despite there being tons of stone and other stuff left in the area up the road next to our ‘poubelles’ (waste bins), nobody turned up to do any work today. But it appears that the ‘road closed’ sign may have been left up.

The postman got through with his little yellow Peugeot van bringing me one of two parcels that I was expecting today, so that was a good start. The delivery was a replacement for one that I’d received a week or more ago from Germany consisting of ten 40 x 30 cm picture frames that I’d returned because although I’d ordered ones with glass fronts, the supplier had sent ones with plastic, that I detest.

I told the supplier that if they gave me a rebate of 40€ I’d keep the order as I knew I could buy ten sheets of glass for 4,30€. This would still leave me 3€ out of pocket but I thought it was a fair enough offer. However, they’d only offered 30€, so back they all went. So I was looking forward to getting the replacements today but as soon as I opened the first one – you can guess where this is going – I found that all of the replacements also had plastic fronts. I’ve now asked for a full refund.

Next I had a phone call. It was the driver bringing the second delivery I was expecting telling me that she couldn’t get to my house because the road was closed. Despite my telling her that she could ignore the sign because she could easily get to my house (she was only 600 metres away) she refused to do so and said that she had to drop my order off at a local ‘point de relais’ (delivery point). Later I received an email telling me that I could pick up my delivery in 24 hours time from the post office in Rouffignac.

Lastly, I was expecting the truck to arrive today to pick up my electric bike and take it back to Poland. Yes, you’ve guessed it, as I type this its already gone 6.00 pm and no truck has arrived. I don’t know if that was because the driver also came across the ‘road closed’ sign but I doubt it because I received no phone call telling me what was happening. But in any case. it was the perfect end to an utterly disastrous and wasted day 😐

I didn’t hear from the DREAL today and as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I didn’t expect to. They’re on the hook and they’ll drag their feet for as long as they possibly can – I’ll probably not hear from them at all if I don’t contact them again first – because that’s the way the bureaucracy works here in France.

So I had to press on with getting my bike packed up ready to be collected and shipped back to the supplier. It was a long job, a full day’s work if I add together the time I put in yesterday and today, but I had to do a good job as the total weight is about 39 kg and I can’t take the risk that the parcel will fail in transit and I get the blame if the bike gets damaged.

I took photographs at every stage to show that the bike was in perfect condition beforehand, how it was packed and the form of the finished parcel. I’ll get the waybill stamped or signed by the driver when it’s collected and then it’ll be over to the shipping company to get it delivered safe and sound. The photographs show how things went.

I’ll be very sorry to see it go but I can’t spend any more time on the bike for now as I have a lot of other things to deal with, in particular my aircraft which are my biggest priority in the short term. The currency of both of them ran out at the end of last year and I had to renew and confirm the airworthiness of both on line the other evening, a process much more straightforward then the tortuous and expensive process that you have to go through in the UK which is totally unnecessary in my view.

But that’s old ground that I don’t intend to go over again. Right now my main priority is to get both cleaned, serviced and back up in the air and I’ll resume doing that as from Friday as tomorrow I have to water my new trees, which are all looking great, and go off to see my dentist who will deftly remove another small fortune from my wallet.

I was driving to Périgueux this afternoon when my phone rang and this time I stopped and answered it. And lucky I did because who should it be but a driver from Kuehne and Nagel who had turned up at my house to pick up my bike and ship it back to the supplier in Poland.

I told him that he was several days too early as I’d been told he wouldn’t be turning up until Friday 14 June and the parcel wasn’t ready to be shipped. He said OK, if it wasn’t ready it wasn’t ready, and we left it there. But it made me realise that things are moving and couldn’t be put off any longer.

I haven’t heard back from the DREAL and if they run true to form I won’t for a considerable period of time. After sending them all the information that I’d researched that indicated quite clearly to me that my bike did meet all of the regulatory requirements to allow it to be registered for use on public roads in France, I’d sent a follow-up email saying that if they wanted to say that it didn’t, I’d like to receive specific reasons for their decision. This, of course, would put them on the hook because if they’re making it up I’d have grounds for taking the issue further.

But the likelihood is that they’ll just hang things out for as long as they can and that would give rise to problems for me. For a start, the shipping company are bound to be back on Friday and will expect the bike to be in a form that’s ready to ship. If it’s not, that could well give the supplier grounds to cancel the agreement we’ve made and I’d then stand little or no chance of getting my money back if I still can’t get the bike registered later on.

So I’ve had to make the decision to get the bike packed up whether the DREAL comes back to me or not with a positive decision, which I doubt they will as French bureaucrats can have brass necks when they want to and can get away with it too. So this evening I’m well on the way with the packing process and will finish it off tomorrow.

As the parcel will weigh 39 kg when it’s completed it’ll have to be pretty strong. I’ve started by making a cardboard tub in which to place the bike and its components and accessories and when they’re all in I’ll build a full carton from stronger cardboard all around it. Hopefully that should do it, but I won’t know for sure until tomorrow.

The three more new trees that I ordered on Thursday last week arrived today. They are from the same supplier because I was so impressed with the ones I bought previously which are all doing so well in my garden, especially the apple. The new ones were an extra cherry and apple, both the same as the varieties that I bought previously, and a plum (Pruneau d’Agen) which I bought to replace my existing plum that was doing well originally but was then attacked by the deer and had some of its bark stripped and its top bitten off, since when it has been struggling.

I gave the new trees a good watering after they arrived in view of how long they’d been in transit and I decided to get them into the ground this afternoon as the ground was still moist after recent rain and the day was warming up. I replaced the two weedy cherries that I moved over to the left of my garden when I bought my last trees with the new cherry and the apple. I then also moved over the poorly plum which I replaced with the new ‘Pruneau d’Agen’. Here’s a shot of the new group of three on the left with the new cherry closest, the new apple in the middle and the poorly plum farthest away.

This is the new cherry.

This is the new apple. It’s a ‘Reine des Reinettes’ the same as the other new one and it has shown just how well the original tree is doing in my garden. My guess is that it’s part of the same batch as the first tree and it has come with several small apples on it just as the first one did. But whereas the apples on the original tree have grown considerably in both size and colour, those on this tree are now some way behind. Only time will tell if they’ll be able to catch up.

This is the poorly plum in its new position over on the left of the garden.

This is the new ‘Pruneau d’Agen’ which I’ve planted in the spot that was originally occupied by the poorly plum. The reason I replaced it was because I wanted all of the trees in the main group over on the right to be at about the same stage of maturity and the same height.

It came with just one plum on it and it’ll be interesting to see if it survives.

The old plum trees at my old house were as hard as nails and produced so many plums that I had to throw barrow-loads away. I was really pleased to get all of the planting and transplanting done that I needed to do as it although the weather is and will remain cooler than average for the time of year I will now be able to concentrate on keeping them watered and ensuring that they get well established for the future. I might start thinking about plants and shrubs but my thoughts were to leave those until next year when I’ll have a better idea of the shape I want the garden to take and have also possibly re-sculpted it a bit with some extra brought-in soil.

At last. And not before time.

Two other registered letters have gone unreplied to and they’ve now replied to my last one dated 23 May which was the strongest of the three. A professionally run customer service operation would at least have acknowledged receipt of the others and said that they were looking into the matter, but that tells us all we need to know about CDiscount.

They have taken no responsibility for selling an illegal bike on their web site and have just blamed the bike’s supplier for being unable to provide a certificate of conformity and who they have acknowledged has now agreed to take the bike back and issue a refund.

They have added that the bike must be placed in packaging equal to the original and that I should put this procedure into action while remaining in touch with the supplier. So I have done all the work and now they are telling me what has to be done. What a bloody cheek.

I’ll wait a couple of days to see what, if anything, comes out of my latest contact with the DREAL. My guess is they will drag their feet and not reply for as long as possible in the hope that I’ll become frustrated (exasperated more like) and lose interest, in which case I will just go ahead and return the bike 😐

The lady in the DREAL who I spoke to this morning was supposed to provide me with her email address so I could ‘submit my question’ by email. But, as expected, she didn’t.

So I contacted her again and she started to give me some spiel about how I couldn’t get approval for a single bike, that it would have to be done by the manufacturer and that would be very expensive. I smelt a rat, so I asked why, therefore, is there a system for individuals to get approval for a single machine and why couldn’t I modify my bike so it was different from the manufacturer’s model and get approval for my version.

This clearly didn’t accord with the game plan and totally flummoxed she transferred me to her manager. After a brief introductory conversation he began to feed me the same spiel and I asked him the same question to which he couldn’t provide an acceptable answer. He kept repeating that the manufacturer was the one who had to seek approval and that it would be very expensive.

However, when I asked how expensive, he couldn’t give an answer and seemed somewhat gobsmacked when I told him that I had the test station’s tariff that wasn’t that expensive and a large part of which didn’t apply to an electric bike anyway. So things weren’t going too well.

I then asked him the direct question – are bureaucratic barriers being put up to prevent the sale of Chinese electric vehicles into France, and although he denied it he couldn’t tell me why it was being so difficult for me to get approval for a machine which, on the face of it, met all of the regulatory requirements.

After I began to list the regulations that I knew it conformed to it became clear to him that I wasn’t just going to roll over and meekly accept no for an answer. I told him that I’d done a lot of research and collected a lot of information that supported my case.

The conversation ended with him asking me to send him the information I’d collected together with photographs and that’s what I’ve done and I’ll now need a detailed response as to why my bike does not conform. I’ll not accept a load of flannel that they hope will fob me off and give them a simple life but I can’t believe that at the 11th hour I’m still pushing for approval for my bike after I’ve told the supplier that it’s on its way back to them!

Here’s a little addendum to my previous post this morning. After writing it I finally received a message from the testing station near Paris that deals with the approval of imported vehicles. It said that they cannot help me until I have approached the local office of the DREAL who will decide on what visual and other tests will be required to approve the bike.

Now, I’ve already been fobbed off by the DREAL and it’s interesting that I should therefore be referred back to them so I made contact afresh this morning. And what did I encounter? More obfuscation.

Someone who is closely involved in the process asked if my bike is from China and when told that it is, replied that that makes it ‘difficult’. So it’s obvious that what is happening is a concerted strategy of imposing barriers to Chinese electric bikes coming into France, and possibly all Chinese electric vehicles for all I know.

It was implied that I wouldn’t be able to get approval for a single bike – although this is the point of being able to homologate a single vehicle for personal use – only the whole series, which would be a very expensive process. I was asked to submit my request with full details by email, so this is what I’m going to do. But seeing French bureaucracy operating in full flow in detriment to the interests of the individual is certainly not a pretty sight 😐

Well, it looks as though my (short) foray into e-biking is soon to come to an end. This morning the supplier sent me a label to be attached to the bike for shipping back to their warehouse. It’s with a very respectable shipper – Kuehne & Nagel- so it’s serious and will have been quite costly to arrange as it’s going all the way back to Chelmiec in southern Poland, of all places.

I’ve now got to pack the bike ready for shipping. I don’t think it will have to be totally stripped the way it was when it was delivered – components like the luggage rack and lighting will be able to stay on but items like the pedals and handlebars will have to be removed so they don’t stick out. I’ll shortly be leaving to drive to Leroy Merlin to buy a roll of bubble wrap and although I was planning to service my Savannah today I think I’ll then move straight on to packing the bike up ready for shipping.

I’ll be sorry to see it go and I’ll be telling the supplier that if the manufacturer does decide to get this or a similar machine (the DA03 which has rear suspension) homologated to let me know as I’ll be in line to buy it. I would also add that I think their current strategy is incredibly short-sighted. From the information I’ve received it looks as though homologation would cost less than 2000€ which would be a very small price to pay to legally open up the whole of the market in the EU.

With their bike selling for less than a third of the price of the local competition they would almost certainly clean up, but there’s no cure for stupid. For now all I want is to see the money I paid for the bike to arrive back in my bank account. I’ve also been appalled by the attitude of CDiscount who have refused to reply to any of the registered letters that I’ve sent to them and after spending thousands of euros with them over the twelve years that I’ve been in France they’ll definitely be getting no more business from me, that’s for sure.

Although CDiscount, who I paid and who own the web site on which I bought my electric bike have not, to their shame, responded to the three registered letters that I’ve sent to them, the German shipper has. They offered me a refund of 10% if I then dropped my claim, which I rejected as derisory, confirming that I would accept nothing less than a full refund of my total cost.

Shortly after they came back with an offer to send me a return label for the return of the bike which they would then refund in full once it had arrived at their warehouse. This I accepted while pointing out that the bike had, of course, been fully assembled after delivery and asking whether a shipper would accept it in that state. I also added that I don’t now have the original carton which I had to cut in order to remove the components of the bike from it.

I knew that this would give them the opportunity to insist that the bike would need to be disassembled and packed for shipment and they proposed a date of 14 June for the transport to arrive at my front door. They also asked for details and a photograph of the package. They probably think that it will be difficult, impossible even, for me to meet such a deadline at which point they will say that it will therefore be impossible for them to take back the bike.

But what they don’t know is that although I have none of the bike’s original packing material, I do have two enormous sheets of very heavy cardboard that my new large bed base was delivered in and although, unfortunately, I’ve been throwing away vast quantities of bubble-wrap and gave away almost a roll that was left over after I’d finished packing for my move, it will be a simple matter to acquire more.

It will not therefore, be that difficult for me to package up the bike for shipment, aided by the fact that I did a video of its unpacking and know exactly how it was packed into its original carton. So it looks as though my plan is coming together and if for some reason the German shipper does not play ball when they get the bike back, I’ll still have the option of claiming off CDiscount who it was I originally paid for its purchase.

It’ll be sad in a way to see the bike go as I do like it and have enjoyed riding it. However, it has already taken up enough of my time and I now have other priorities to direct my attention towards in the form of for starters my aircraft and developing my garden, so it’ll be a relief when I’m rid of it and have the money I splashed out for it back in my bank account.

Yesterday I pulled the Savannah out of the barn where it has been standing for many months and gave it an initial wash to remove all the dust and bird poop that were covering its horizontal surfaces. But before I could do anything I had to cut a passage through the long grass that had sprung up in front of the barn through which to pull the Savannah out, using my electric strimmer that I’d taken with me. It looked all the better for it but afterwards there were still signs that it had been standing for a long time and it’ll need a lot more work to bring it up to scratch again.

Although I’ve not flown either it or the X-air for some time I’ve occasionally started both of their engines and after I’d removed the Savannah’s engine cover and checked it over it started easily and ran very smoothly. Before I take to the air in it, though, I’m going to give the engine a full service – new plugs, oil and oil filter – and I won’t be tempted to take off until I’ve done so. I’ll also need to deal with some patches of light surface corrosion here and there but I can do that while I’m flying it.

Unfortunately, while I was washing the aircraft down I noticed some straw sticking out of a side cavity in its horizontal stabiliser. When I pulled it out it turned out to be a nest of tiny baby birds. The barn is home to lots of tiny finches, which is where all the bird poop comes from, and I’d noticed what must have been the mother flitting around earlier.

I couldn’t leave the nest where it was so found a hole in a breeze block and placed it in there. I don’t know if the mother saw me do it but even if she did I hate to say it, but I doubt she’ll return to her nest and her babies will survive 🙁

Today is a special day for our small group of neighbours. It’s the day on which we all get together, about twenty or so of us, for a meal in the open air. It’ll be cooler than it should be for the time of year but luckily it looks as though we’re going to be spared a day without rain for the occasion.

We all bring along various dishes for us all to share and I was busy yesterday cooking my contributions. I made a quiche as well as some spicy potato salad together with some lovely plump chicken legs (called ‘pilons de poulet’ here) and some spicy chipolatas in my air fryer.

I’ll be leaving soon and taking them along with me together with some wine of course, and it’ll be most enjoyable getting together with all my neighbours again and finding out what everyone’s been getting up to. Always interesting!

This week’s main priority was to get my car serviced (Tuesday), have two new tyres fitted (yesterday) and get it through its biennial CT (equivalent to a UK MOT) today and I’m glad to say that the mission was successfully accomplished without a hitch. Amazingly, I’ve now had my Kia Sportage for ten years almost to the day and aside from having to have a second-hand engine fitted when it’s (expensive) Bosch fuel pump failed and destroyed its engine (I was lucky to get hold of a very cheap replacement in San Sebastian in Spain), it’s been incredibly reliable.

The tester was very complimentary about it (I doubt he’d have been if he’d seen it a couple of days ago before I’d thoroughly cleaned it inside and out) and he was disappointed when I told him that this would almost certainly be the last time he’d see it. I’ve used it to help me fetch and carry heavy and dirty stuff to do with my house build and other stuff in my old house and I intend to continue doing the same with the work I’ve now started in my garden. When that’s finished, though, it’ll be time to pension it off and get a newer car.

But that wasn’t all that happened today! The postman delivered my long-awaited new bed linen for my new bed. It’s taken a long time to come because I think it was made to order. It’s the biggest bed I’ve ever had (I ordered a smaller mattress and when the supplier replaced it they said that I could keep the ‘wrong’ big one for free!) and getting the duvet cover onto the enormous (to me) new duvet was a nightmare in itself. But ultimately I got it all together so I can sleep in it for the first time tonight and the results are shown in the photos.

The room is still very sparse as it only has the bed in it but you don’t think that I’ve gone… errrr… too yellow do you? 😀

Not a great deal of sunshine today but at least it stayed dry enough especially, for me to get outside and plant the trees that arrived yesterday. But first I did a little indoors job, finishing off my wall décor in my bathroom. I’m very pleased with the result and think that the bright colours nicely offset the otherwise plain gloss white of the walls.

The two little figures were on the wall of my old bathroom back in England but although I brought the starfish with me, I didn’t know that I had them until I came across them when I unpacked an old box that hadn’t been opened since I arrived in France twelve years ago. I think they go nicely. I’ve had to drill four small holes in the tiles but I’m not worried as I doubt the ornaments will be removed in my lifetime 🙂

I was then able to get going with the work in the garden, starting with replacing the apple that had been broken off with the new tree that arrived yesterday.

Then I moved on to replacing the two weedy little cherries that were bitten down to sprigs only a metre high by the deer with the new trees that also arrived yesterday. Here are the two trees that I took out.

And here are the two new trees that I replaced them with.

This is where I transplanted the old trees to, over on the left hand side of the garden. It’s up to them now (and the deer I guess) as to whether they survive and prosper or not 😐

Finally, a couple of shots of the new tree group showing the new apple, the two new cherries and the original plum that has also been given a bad time by the deer and has had quite a bit of bark and some low branches that produced some fruit last year, gnawed off.

I think I’m going to have to provide some protection for all the trees as although there’s plenty of other food for the local deer at this time of the year, they only have to hit the trees once to do an awful lot of damage and I don’t want anything to happen to the new ones, which are of excellent quality compared to the two original old cherries.

Taken all round, I’m finding things to be very annoying and frustrating at the moment. Although I’ve kept myself busy doing one or two small jobs indoors, almost everything that I’d like to be involving myself with is outside. I’ve had the materials that I need to clean and service my aircraft ready for weeks now, but aside from only one or two days when it’s been dry long enough to do the work, we’ve been subject to days of rain or constant drizzle making it impossible.

Luckily I found time between the showers to thoroughly clean my car inside and out as this week it has to be serviced (today) and have two new tyres fitted (Thursday) in preparedness for its biennial CT (equivalent to a UK MOT test) on Friday.

I’ve also taken some initial decisions in respect of my garden. Before I moved onto the land I was given two small trees to plant on it for my birthday by my good friends, a plum and an apple. Neither has really done that well in the intervening period. Last year the plum produced four or five fruit that I had to pick and eat because they were beginning to be attacked by birds and although the apple produced a bit of blossom it didn’t result in any fruit. And then to top it all, a few weeks ago it was broken off almost at ground level, probably by a deer.

I bought two small cherry trees two years ago and was most disappointed when they arrived because although one was a meter high, the other was only half that when both had been promised by the on-line supplier (Willemse) to be a minimum of 100 cm in height. Neither has yielded any fruit and because they were so small and weedy both have been eaten back to a height of about 50 cm by the local deer and will probably end up being unfit for purpose and useless.

So the decision I took was to replace both of the cherries as well as the apple, and the new trees arrived a bit earlier today. And I am delighted. Once again I bought them on-line but this time the supplier, Planfor in the Landes, has come up trumps and supplied product which more than exceeds my expectations. The trees were a bit more expensive than those I bought last time from Willemse, but not that much more, and are of far superior quality being a guaranteed three years old and 160-180 cm in height. They have also come in bigger pots because of their extra size.

Here are a couple of general shots of the three of them after they’d been unloaded off the Geodis delivery truck.

The apple is called Reine des Reinettes, which is one of my favourite supermarket bought types being both crisp and sweet and as shown in the following pics, it has come with quite a few fruit already on it. The cherries haven’t, of course, and it’s really the wrong time to be planting them but I’m hoping that I’ll get away with it while it’s still cool and wet.

I’ve already given the pots a good watering after their journey as they were despatched four days ago. They should be OK, though, as Planfor specialise in shipping their products all over Europe but in any case, I’ll try to get them into the ground as soon as possible.

Just to keep those who are following this saga in the picture, today was another interesting day. Getting helpful information out of French bureaucrats is like getting blood out of a stone and if you let that be the deciding factor, you’d never achieve anything.

It appears that the man from DREAL was not giving me all the information I’d asked for after all. He said that it isn’t the role of DREAL to do what manufacturers ought to do when it comes to obtaining a Certificate of Conformity ie homologation, for vehicles like my bike. I’ve delved deeper into things today and it appears that that isn’t the whole story – DREAL do have a role to play.

A vehicle for which approval is being sought has to be inspected and if necessary, subjected to tests at an approved testing centre (as you might expect) but no-one in an official capacity has told me who or where they are. But I found them myself today. I’ll not say any more about that for now but it appears that procedures have been laid down and when they have been followed and the results determined, these are then forwarded to the DREAL for the issue of a Certificate of Conformity.

Usually it’s manufacturers who do this for a proposed series of vehicles that they intend to market but it can also be done for one-offs that meet the relevant regulatory requirements both by manufacturers and individuals who have either built a one-off or imported a machine from another country as I have. So it appears that all is definitely not lost after all as far as my bike is concerned, which I think falls into this latter category ie meets the regulatory requirements for a vehicle of its class.

For the most part, the class of two and three-wheeled motorised vehicles is dominated by motor cycles (Category L3) and search as I might, I couldn’t locate the relevant paperwork to initiate a request to start a Certificate of Conformity project for a bike like mine. So I have sent a message to the testing body that seemed to me to be the most relevant and now await their reply.

If I’ve read the relevant material correctly, ‘creating a new dossier’ costs 85€ and for a motorcycle the total testing and approval programme comes out to around 2000€. This is more than I’d like to pay but I think it would be a small sum for Dakeya to pay if it opened up the whole EU market for their bikes. I also think that as electric bikes like mine are not subject to tests for eg emissions and noise, the cost might be quite a bit less, but I’ll have to wait and see.

The very helpful man at the DREAL sent me a reply. He said that he didn’t have detailed information on my bike’s actual model but he told me the category into which it would fall. Which it does.

From the research that I’ve done, which has been pretty detailed, I also know the features that it must have in order to be classed as a ‘Cyclomoteur’, whether powered by an internal combustion engine or an electric motor. Which it has.

I’m therefore pretty much convinced that if my bike was subjected to inspection, it would be granted approval.

I’ve therefore just sent Dakeya in China a detailed proposal for me to act on their behalf to submit my bike for test. This would require them to pay for the cost of the inspection (whether the bike passes or not) and indemnify me for my expenses and the cost of my bike if, due to the delay presented by the test process, I am unable to recover it from the seller if it does not pass.

So yet again I’m waiting for another reply. I never give up until I know all hope is lost 😕

I know I said that I wasn’t going to spend any more time on registering my bike but I thought I’d have one more roll of the dice. I contacted the DREAL for Nouvelle Aquitaine, a government department that can help out with this kind of problem and received a reply the very next day.

In summary this said that it’s not their role to undertake the tasks that are the manufacturers’ responsibility and that as my bike has been imported, it has to conform to local regulatory requirements including having a Certificate of Conformity granted to its manufacturer. Their advice was that I should seek to annul the purchase with the seller, which I have taken steps to do.

But in the meantime, I thanked them for their reply and sent them the following message.

“.. overall I think that this is a good, well-made bike that is fit for purpose and meets regulatory requirements. It is also at a price at which many people could afford to use it for short journeys instead of their cars, as I want to, which is not true for competitive products that will inevitably always remain as minority products for enthusiasts.

Could you advise me, if I wanted to act on behalf of the manufacturer, how would I go about securing a CDC for this product and what costs would be incurred? I ask because I am not familiar with the French registration system and any advice you can give would be of value.”

So now I’m waiting for a reply.

Sadly, it is now more or less certain that I’ll be unable to register my new bike, meaning that it’ll be illegal for me to use it on French roads. I received a message from the registration authority yesterday after my third attempt to do so, when I had been confident that I’d submitted all the documents that were needed. But I was wrong.

The message said that I’d only submitted a declaration from the manufacturer that it conformed to regulatory requirements whereas what was needed was a copy of the official Certificate of Conformity issued to the manufacturer for the machine by an agency of an EU member state’s government confirming that it did so.

So, as I suspected might be the case, Dakeya, my bike’s manufacturer, needed to have applied to the appropriate French agency, for example, to sell the bike in France and for the agency to have checked that it conformed, possibly tested it and issued the relevant certificate. My guess is that a hefty fee would have been involved somewhere along the line which is possibly why the manufacturer hadn’t done so.

It may be that the process is more straightforward than I think it might be – after all, it can’t be as stringent as obtaining type-approval for a new motor vehicle – but I don’t have the time or motivation to take the matter any further as I now have other priorities to attend to. Like servicing my aircraft and getting them back into the air and getting the interior of my house ship-shape.

I’m disappointed that it’s come to this but French bureaucracy is so intractable and it’s not worth spending any more time and effort. I’ve now requested CDiscount, the web site through which I bought the bike, to arrange for its return for a full refund and I hope that they’ll cooperate without making a fuss as I’ve been a pretty valuable customer of theirs over many years. But we’ll just have to wait and see what transpires from here 🙁

By Jove, I think I’ve got it! I’ve looked all over my new bike in an attempt to find a frame number and up until this evening my searches have yielded nothing. But as readers probably realise by now, I don’t give up that easily.

I got back onto the internet this evening to see if I could eventually crack the problem of how to register a Speed Bike and found a reference that said to do so, you must provide the bikes unique identification number which I guess is then used in a similar way to a motorised vehicle’s VIN number. So I set off looking to find where this unique identification number comes from and found that you seem to be able to apply for one which must then be attached to the bike by something as simple as a sticky label or by engraving it on the frame.

This immediately made me think of bikes I had when I was young that all had frame numbers stamped on them and quite by chance I then happened upon another web site on which you can register your bike in France as an anti-theft measure. The process naturally uses the bike’s frame number and helpfully it offered a little pop-up screen showing the usual places where frame numbers are located.

So that encouraged me to restart the search for a frame number on my new bike and lo and behold, on the last place I looked by lying on the floor and looking up at the bottom of its frame through which the pedal spindle passes, there I found a number.

I could hardly believe it. Why hadn’t either the manufacturer or the seller in Germany, with both of whom I’ve discussed my registration problem, told me about this and why didn’t they include it on the bike’s paperwork? I had to lay the bike down on the floor to read the number but as far as I’m concerned, this is the unique VIN that the registration authority is seeking to register my bike in France.

I’ve already resubmitted my registration application so now I’ll have to wait another two weeks for a reply. But this time I think I’ve cracked it, I really do 😉

I’m still trying to get my new electric bike registered as required in France to legally use it on public roads. My first application was rejected but although I don’t know for sure, I think it was because the delay receiving the manufacturer’s Certificate of Conformity that hadn’t been included with my application was too long and the registration authority just closed my file as a result.

Now there’s a new twist. As far as I am aware, bikes like mine cannot legally be used in many countries (the UK included) and France is the only one that requires them to be registered in order for them to be used legally on public roads. This is because they are treated under similar laws to cyclomoteurs and motor scooters with engine capacity up to 50cc.

As a result, I’m now being asked to provide a VIN number for my bike but because it doesn’t have an internal combustion engine and, presumably, because no other country that allows them to be used asks for them to be registered, bikes like mine do not come with VINs.

I’ve just pointed this out to the registration authority and asked what on earth I can do to satisfy the legal requirements as surely I can’t be the first person in France asking to register a bike like mine. The whole process has been a bureaucratic nightmare right from the very beginning and to be honest, I’m getting a bit sick of banging my head against a brick wall 🙁

I’ve spent literally the whole day, more actually as I didn’t finish until this evening, assembling a base for a bed for bedroom 2, what’s called a ‘sommier’ down here. It was inexpensive but I thought that as I’d sourced it from Conforama it would be of reasonable quality. But some hope. The manufacturing quality was appalling. Several of the long allen-headed screws that hold the main framework together didn’t line up with the inserts they had to screw into and it took a long time to get them to go together as I didn’t want to drill out the holes through which they passed for fear of weakening the assembly.

One of the inserts was also missing, so I’ve had to email the supplier to try to get one sent to me ASAP and I also found that one of the white-painted legs was heavily scratched when I unpacked it. It also crushed a bit when I tightened the securing screw so I may have to add some filler under the head of the screw to improve its appearance. I’ll have to touch up several areas with white paint anyway where the coverage is poor so it won’t require much more effort to make it look better.

Apart from the problems with screws not lining up, assembly required much more time and effort than I’d anticipated and my guess is that there will be some purchasers who’ll give up before completing the job. The instructions were almost too small to read without a magnifying glass and parts labelling was non-existent. I had to dis and re-assemble parts I’d put together three or four times after I’d realised what was required and the manufacturer also had the bright idea of chucking several different types of screws all together in one plastic bag. Oh what fun it was finding just the two of one type I needed at one point from among the 150 or more that were in the bag.

Despite all this, it didn’t look too bad when I’d finished. The mattress for it is due to be delivered in four days time but in the meantime I threw the duvet and pillows onto it to see how they’ll look when the bed’s ready to be used.

I’m very pleased. If I said that I’d painted the wall to match the duvet cover I’d be lying. It was pure luck. I couldn’t even remember having a duvet cover and matching pillow cases in these colours until I unpacked the bedding that I placed in storage when I moved out of my old house and I can’t for the life of me recall when they were last used. It could be years and probably is. I’ll certainly hang onto them for now though, but may end up buying a new, better ‘sommier’ for this bedroom and moving this one into bedroom three where it will get much less use. But it’ll do for now 😉

Today was all about my ride-on mower. I needed the repair that I’d done to work because although today was a good day to be working outside (sunny all day, temperature 22 degrees C) and tomorrow will be similar, I really need a break. And if I could get my grass mown today, that would be possible tomorrow. I’ve been going non-stop for several days and loading and unloading stuff single-handedly to move it round to my house from storage has, quite honestly, taken a bit out of me.

I started by cleaning off all the dried mud and other debris that had collected on the underside of the deck and was surprised by just how much had accumulated. No wonder the deck was so heavy – it was far lighter to manhandle afterwards.

This was the deck after being cleaned and ready to be mounted back on the mower. I’d lubricated what I could but major things like bearings were sealed of course. I thought that it all looked pretty good after the repair.

It took me longer than I’d expected to get the deck installed. I’d forgotten how the cables and springs went and had to find a Youtube video that showed me and it didn’t help that my ride-on mower lifting mechanism is still in storage. But I was super relieved when I’d finished and was able to test it out, with the result that even with its old, worn blades, my ride-on is now cutting as well as it ever has and considerably better than it was up to recently.

I finished all the grass at the back so with a bit of luck I’ll get the break I want tomorrow. If I do, I think I’ll have earned it 😉

By way of summary, in order to use my new bike on public roads here in France it has to be registered and conform to various other legal requirements. For it to be registered it has to have a Certificate of Conformity signed by the manufacturer to confirm that it meets the necessary standards of roadworthiness and safety and it didn’t have one. So I set about researching what the regulations and standards are, produced a Certificate that I believe met them and sent a copy off to the manufacturer, Dakeya, in China for them to add their official stamp and return it to me in order to try to get the registration through.

Then it all went deadly quiet and despite further messages from me it seemed to be impossible to get a response from Dakeya. This seemed weird because what I’d done was to help them out and would, if successful, also be of value to them by making all of their bikes of the same model legal for use in France. In the end it got to the point when on Tuesday I sent a registered letter off to CDiscount, from whose web site I’d purchased my bike, saying that if I couldn’t register it I’d be looking to return it and would seek a full refund from them.

So, of course, what happened was the vey next day I eventually received a very nice reply from China saying that they were very grateful for the information and suggestions that I’d provided and that they had carefully read through all of the paperwork I’d sent. And attached to the email was the Declaration of Conformity that I’d submitted to them, officially stamped and dated.

I immediately uploaded a copy to the French registration web site and now await a response. It’s been a few days and at least my application hasn’t been thrown out again, so with a bit of luck it’s now going through. I guess I’ll have to wait a little while longer to know for sure.

Have you noticed how just when you need your car for a special reason, that’s when it always lets you down? This year it was the same with my ride-on mower. Just as the grass began growing furiously and needed to be cut before it got too long, my ride-on stopped cutting. Luckily only a smallish area was left at the back and I was able to finish it off with my ‘débroussailleuse’ (brush cutter) but that was only a short-term solution as the grass was only just getting into its stride and was going to continue growing at a fast rate, especially with all the showers we’ve been getting.

I had the possibility of another temporary solution while my ride-on is out of commission in the form of a self-propelled rotary motor mower which I put into storage nearly three years ago when I moved out of my old house. This, however, was always going to be a desperate lifeline as it was never reliable when I was using, or trying to use, it regularly. Once it was running it was a good worker but getting it started was always a frustrating business.

Anyway, I removed it from storage and it spent last night in my living room before I took it outside to see whether I could start it and keep it running for long enough to cut my grass front and back. This is it before I tried to see if I could remove, strip and clean its carburettor, which I suspected to be the source of the starting problem.

After checking, cleaning and re-gapping the spark plug the ruddy thing would not start. I couldn’t remove its carburettor because it’s held on by what appear to be 9.5mm bolts (I guess they are an AF size but the spanner(s) I need are in another tool box that’s still in storage) and one of them is impossible to get to anyway, so all I could do was remove the carburettor bowl (which was perfectly clean) and blow up into it the best I could.

After reassembling everything I kept pulling on the starter cord until I got a blister on my right index finger (even with gloves on) and just as I was about to give up and consign the machine to the ‘déchetterie’ it started out of the blue. I kept it going long enough even with a restart to refuel until I’d done the grass in the front by which time I thought it time to have something to eat and a cold beer before starting on the grass at the back. But it was not to be because I could not get the damn thing to run again no matter how many times I pulled on the starter cord.

When I’d dismantled my ride-on to investigate why it had stopped cutting I’d found that the problem was more serious than I’d thought. The spindle of one of the cutting belt pulleys on the cutting bed is mounted in a bracket which evidently is subject to considerable load because over time not only had the hole in the bracket been extremely ovalled by the bolt that forms the spindle but the bolt itself had actually sheared off. When I measured the thickness of the metal bracket I found it to be 5mm which gives some indication of the extent of the load it is designed to take.

My searches on the internet turned up that I could buy a complete new cutting bed, bare so I’d have to transfer over all of the parts from my old bed, for just over 250€ and I’d seriously considered doing that as my mower has been really good and trouble-free the whole time that I’ve had it and a new bed would, I’m sure, keep it going for many more years.

However, I thought that if I cut out the damaged section of the bracket, I could weld in a new piece that would, after drilling, make the bracket virtually as good as new. I’d ordered a small piece of 5mm thick steel which arrived today so I thought that as it was fine and I’d taken my welder out of storage in anticipation, I’d get cracking straight away today so I’d know sooner rather than later if a new cutting bed was actually going to be needed.

The next couple of pictures show the damaged section of bracket that I cut out. It’s standing on a piece of white paper on the repaired bracket because I didn’t take a picture before starting work.

The next couple of shots show the repair that I did. I’m no welder by any stretch of the imagination and it took me a while to weld, grind off the excess and repeat the process before I eventually got to what I thought was an acceptable result.

Once I’d cleaned up and cleared away I turned up a can of matt black spray paint in my ‘abris’ (tool shed) so although I didn’t have enough time to do a proper job, I rubbed off several areas of surface rust and gave them a coat, including the drilled and finished repaired bracket.

And finally, a couple of shots of the repaired cutting bed ready for the belt pulley system to be reassembled and the bed remounted on my ride-on.

It looks as though we’ve got a couple of dry days coming up with afternoon temperatures of 22 and 23 degrees C respectively, so with a bit of luck I’ll be able to put everything back together and try the repair out on my grass. I just hope that it works OK because I don’t fancy stripping and rebuilding the machine again. I’ve ordered a new spark plug for the old machine and if that doesn’t solve its starting issue I think that it’ll be time to send it off to the rest home in the sky for elderly mowers, especially as I don’t really have enough space for it anyway 🙁