Yesterday, today

Yesterday – meet-up, English friends, St Emilion. Today – back to the wood store. St Emilion is one of the principal wine centres in the Gironde giving its name to one of the most important Bordeaux wine ‘appellations’ and although the meet-up was arranged at the last minute, it’s only two hours away from my house and the visit was well worth the drive.

It’s surrounded by a sea of vineyards, as well as by some of the region’s principal chateaux, which come right up to its edge in some cases. The roads around the town to the north (I can’t speak for the roads to the south but I imagine they’re the same) are bordered on both sides by high grey stone walls, all the more to protect the valuable produce behind them from the hordes of tourists who visit the town every year. The feeling driving on them in your car, even in the Kia which has a high view-point, must be like being a horse with blinkers on. Driving through the region and approaching the town, it’s obvious from the state of the vineyards, chateaux and other buildings involved in wine production that wine has brought great wealth to the region. This is even more evident in St Emilion itself, which is very beautiful, very chic, chock-a-block with wine shops and rather pricey for the most part.

St Emilion is built on the side of a steep hill and although vehicles can get right into the centre of the town, they are discouraged by no-entry signs on all sides. Those in the know just ignore them but I didn’t know that and found a parking spot just outside the city wall high up on the northern side that was quite fortuitously not far from where we were meeting-up. My approach down into the town was on foot down a precipitous cobbled road which must be lethal for pedestrians (and vehicles too, probably) in the wet. But that didn’t apply yesterday as the weather was glorious, at least as good as, or even better than, the very best days that we had over the summer.

St Emilion itself was still alive with tourists even though the end of the season is almost upon us. The ones who are there at this time of year, though, are predominantly older, without children, with a high proportion of retired folk. I took quite a few pictures and show one or two below to give a flavour of the place. When I eventually get around to putting up a ‘scenery and places’ gallery here on My Trike to show all the pics I’ve still got from when I was down south, I’ll also include the remainder that I took yesterday in St Emilion.

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Today it was back to more mundane things – the concrete base for my new wood store. The only thing I could do while waiting for my new tow-bar to arrive from Poland was to fill it with hardcore ready for concreting. I’ve been talking about it for several days now, but today was the day when I finally did it. It took me longer and required more effort than I’d anticipated, but eventually it was done, as you can see below.

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I’m pleased with how it turned out. It took longer than I’d thought because it needed a bit of care to keep the hardcore uniform across the base at the right level. I don’t need, or want, to lay too thick a concrete base as the thicker it is the more effort it’ll require to lay and the more it’ll cost. I think it’s now about right. Because I’m a bit worried about the right-hand end, which I’ve built up, dropping a bit over time, I’ve also chucked in three lengths of metal that I hope might help prevent the base sagging and cracking.

Only problem was, as usual, the driver delivering my new tow-bar phoned to find out where my house is and unfortunately I missed the call. She (because indeed it was a ‘she’) phoned again – while I was in the shower. When we eventually got to speak she was over in La Douze, which is too far away for her to have come back from, so she’ll be doing the delivery on Monday. Pity, as I’d like to have fitted the tow-bar over the week-end. It also looks as though the weather could be on the change and we might even have storms for much of the week as from Monday. It never rains but it pours, eh 😕