Grand Designs meets Jean de Floret

Monday, May 26, 2008
Snork Maiden, Marans
Grand Designs

Well. Well. On Saturday morning Al woke up and said that he had a proposition. No, not that. He said that he thought we should abandon sailing (not ship) for a few more days, while we got the ‘buying a French ruin’ idea out of our systems. After all, we have been planning this for almost 2 years now. First sell the flat in London and then buy a ruin in France, make it habitable and green, then go and live there when the work / money runs out. Low overheads, keep chickens and a goat, stay in touch with friends (that’s you) over the web etc. Some of you might remember that an early incarnation of the idea in more optimistic times was to buy a building plot and install a beautifully built and cheap kit house from East Germany. That one fell at a number of fences, including the fact that most building plots are too small, too remote, too expensive… and most of the best sites have already been developed. So we decided to do the next best thing and go for a restorable ruin.
Last September we found a very neat place in the department of Deux Sevres (named after the 2 rivers Sevre that run through it). It is on the edge of a village near an undistinguished medieval town called Thours (after the river Thouay). To locate it for you, it is around100 Km NE from La Rochelle, 37Kms from Saumur (on the Loire), around 4 hours drive from the Western channel ports, 2 hours-ish from Paris by TGV from Saumur. It’s also quite close to Loudon (cf Ken Russell & The Devils) and Chateau Oiron – home to a VERY surreal art collection. In fact our fermette is probably at the epicentre of French cultural activity. The landscape is rivers / agricultural land with quite a bit of woodland.
The place itself is a barn and cowshed in an L-shape, with adjoining piggery and kind of shed thing joining on to the long side of the L. Then there’s a wall that completes the lines of the buildings to enclose a courtyard. On the other side of the cowshed and barn, there’s a field also enclosed by a wall. The field is big – quite enough for a garden etc.
We drove there in the pelting rain last Saturday, and just as we got there the rain cleared, the sun shone on the little fermette, there was a sound of crescendo strings and readers, we fell for it. Anyway, we have made an offer that the chatelaine next door (Mme Chateau – har har) will probably accept. Now for a close encounter with French bureaucracy.

Café du Quai de Midi in the rain
Aaargh! Now we are ready to go – toilet fixed – copious amounts of new pipe, glue and rescue tape, since you ask, boat all ship-shape and a GRUESOME weather forecast of strong winds and plenty of rain. Still, that’s how it all is with sailing, ain’t it just. Lying around reading and waiting for the weather to get better and buying House and Building mags in French.

I think I may have to split the blog between sailing and la terre. We already have an incipient Jean de Floret over access to ‘our well’. Toujours la meme chose & all that.

Please do keep up the comments – we like to know you’re out there!

Grand Designs meets Jean de Floret

Monday, May 26, 2008
Snork Maiden, Marans
Grand Designs

Well. Well. On Saturday morning Al woke up and said that he had a proposition. No, not that. He said that he thought we should abandon sailing (not ship) for a few more days, while we got the ‘buying a French ruin’ idea out of our systems. After all, we have been planning this for almost 2 years now. First sell the flat in London and then buy a ruin in France, make it habitable and green, then go and live there when the work / money runs out. Low overheads, keep chickens and a goat, stay in touch with friends (that’s you) over the web etc. Some of you might remember that an early incarnation of the idea in more optimistic times was to buy a building plot and install a beautifully built and cheap kit house from East Germany. That one fell at a number of fences, including the fact that most building plots are too small, too remote, too expensive… and most of the best sites have already been developed. So we decided to do the next best thing and go for a restorable ruin.
Last September we found a very neat place in the department of Deux Sevres (named after the 2 rivers Sevre that run through it). It is on the edge of a village near an undistinguished medieval town called Thours (after the river Thouay). To locate it for you, it is around100 Km NE from La Rochelle, 37Kms from Saumur (on the Loire), around 4 hours drive from the Western channel ports, 2 hours-ish from Paris by TGV from Saumur. It’s also quite close to Loudon (cf Ken Russell & The Devils) and Chateau Oiron – home to a VERY surreal art collection. In fact our fermette is probably at the epicentre of French cultural activity. The landscape is rivers / agricultural land with quite a bit of woodland.
The place itself is a barn and cowshed in an L-shape, with adjoining piggery and kind of shed thing joining on to the long side of the L. Then there’s a wall that completes the lines of the buildings to enclose a courtyard. On the other side of the cowshed and barn, there’s a field also enclosed by a wall. The field is big – quite enough for a garden etc.
We drove there in the pelting rain last Saturday, and just as we got there the rain cleared, the sun shone on the little fermette, there was a sound of crescendo strings and readers, we fell for it. Anyway, we have made an offer that the chatelaine next door (Mme Chateau – har har) will probably accept. Now for a close encounter with French bureaucracy.

Café du Quai de Midi in the rain
Aaargh! Now we are ready to go – toilet fixed – copious amounts of new pipe, glue and rescue tape, since you ask, boat all ship-shape and a GRUESOME weather forecast of strong winds and plenty of rain. Still, that’s how it all is with sailing, ain’t it just. Lying around reading and waiting for the weather to get better and buying House and Building mags in French.

I think I may have to split the blog between sailing and la terre. We already have an incipient Jean de Floret over access to ‘our well’. Toujours la meme chose & all that.

Please do keep up the comments – we like to know you’re out there!

Ooops - Al pic

Ooops - Al pic

Readers and comments

Apologies fore ignoring comments! I have only just worked out that I have to look for them. So to all you eagle eyes - yes, that was a fibreglass repair on the skeg, now completed and (we hope) good as new. And we will survive on last year's Ziplocs. And yes, do keep sending blog links. And you can always e-mail me on shark@thesea.co.uk .
Hopefully outboard motor now working - off to test it after trip to la Rochelle this morning. If you had wondered what the pace of sailing is - this is it. Meanwhile pic shows that Al has arrived. Also the crane wot did it.

Readers and comments

Apologies fore ignoring comments! I have only just worked out that I have to look for them. So to all you eagle eyes - yes, that was a fibreglass repair on the skeg, now completed and (we hope) good as new. And we will survive on last year's Ziplocs. And yes, do keep sending blog links. And you can always e-mail me on shark@thesea.co.uk .
Hopefully outboard motor now working - off to test it after trip to la Rochelle this morning. If you had wondered what the pace of sailing is - this is it. Meanwhile pic shows that Al has arrived. Also the crane wot did it.

The view from the top… and the bottom

Thursday, May 22, 2008
Still in Marans
The view from the top… and the bottom

Yes, I know, it seems like a long time and not going anywhere! But we expect a week or two sorting out annual maintenance things and dealing with the unexpected. And its probably true that we don’t advance at full throttle either. Last year we managed a short trip out to the Glennans Islands then went back into port for another round of fixing things and waiting for weather before getting away on the 2nd June. Well, there is a real prospect of leaving Marans in the next day or two if there are no more unexpected events. Al is just now calling the lock-keeper to find out if we can catch the lock tonight and wait on the other side until the morning.
Lots of boat owning is about bricollage – as I think I have said before. The toilet biz really came under the annual maintenance heading, It is a ‘Blakes Baby’. They cost around £1,000 when manufactured and are now made by hand, to order! It’s true you can buy a Lavac for less than £100.00, but you will spend a lot of time unblocking it. So the BB has been undergoing extensive annual maintenance. It was the renewal of the pipe that gave us real pain, since the cabinetwork surrounding the loo had not been assembled with a view to dis-assembly! So we have reached a compromise solution, and we will find out late this afternoon whether it has worked. Keep your fingers crossed or we will be keeping our legs crossed! There’s always the tried and tested method of ‘bucket and chuck it’.
More exciting, we are getting to the point of clearing the chart table, looking at the pilot books, and generally smelling the sea.
An added complication this year is that we are plagued by thoughts of buying a ruin. The little fermette that we saw last year has come back on the market today, and that has given us some pause as to whether we should be shelving the sailing and going to look at the fermette We’ve now decided against that, and are thinking that we will make this sailing trip combined with looking around a little further south (from Rochefort) and maybe also in Galicia if we can make it over to Spain. Now we have a plan, so that also makes it easier to get away. Last year’s plan was easy – we left Port le Foret with the intention of getting to La Rochelle. This year we were a bit vague – of course, a lot depends on the weather. So far this year is better than last year, with fairly moderate winds, quite warm, and only a few showers. Yesterday and the day before were warm and sunny – so much so that we had to work inside during the heat of the day. Like most French towns, Marans goes completely silent from about 1230 to 1345 and then slowly revs up. Even at its busiest, it’s quiet. During the day there’s the odd truck or tractor trundling by, and the doves, tweety birds and ducks; at night there’s a frog chorus.
OK – that’s it. Have to reorganise the car, complete a final pack on the boat, take the outboard motor apart, post the blog, have lunch…. Yes, it’s a nice life! We have a possible visit from Sarah S. and her new bloke – waiting to get a txt that says she’ll be in La Rochelle in half-an-hour and can she bring 3 extra people... we are not sure that she knows just how big (or small) the Snork Maiden is.