Simple Pleasures

So I've been living here in rural Brittany for just over seven weeks, bar a quick four day visit back to the UK, and it feels like a good time to send a postcard. Without pictures. I certainly can't do a "what life's like in the French countryside piece", as I've made no effort whatever to try to live a normal working, socialising life. My bad; I know this is just for a short time, till I have to go back to work.

What I have done, however, is spend a lot of time outside, riding (not enough yet), walking the dog (about right), and sorting the garden (more than I expected). I've not really sought Nature, but it seems to have found me anyway. The things I'm about to describe make it sound like sort of bucolic heaven here. It's not - we live adjacent to two working farms, with all their attendant doings (pig smells when the wind's in the wrong direction, tractors past the front window, and an arrogant French farmer [the other one's very nice]).

However, that hasn't hindered....

...this part of central Brittany feeling like the deepest jungle the last couple of nights; as dusk has approached (which is about 10.30 here at the moment), thick banks of cloud and mist have rolled in, keeping the night time temperature high and the humidity higher. Combine that with the crickets that have already fired up their nocturnal chirruping, and well, it just doesn't feel like here...

...bumping into a black mink this morning on my and muttley's morning meanderings. Daft thing ran down the road to greet us like long lost pals, not realising that I was risking a dislocated shoulder saving the damn thing's life (yes, the dog went mental on his lead). I've seen white mink round here before, but never a black one, which is Quite Interesting (to me, if no-one else)...

...watching a pied wagtail hop to within 30 centimetres of the nose of a very asleep dog on a warm and sunny Friday afternoon. It was on its own, with its mates still in the trees. It was like they'd said "go on, dare you, see how close you can get before he wakes up and chases you". Which he did of course, but didn't come within a mile of laying a glove on his feathered friend

...being treated to a fine display avian acrobatics the other night as the sun set. Now this was special; as the sun was disappearing over the horizon a squadron of swifts seemed to be practising their low level flying manoeuvres in the field at the end of the garden. The barley in the field is still green, but it's got its distinctive ears, and the swifts were just grazing them with their wingtips, before they swooped up and back down, ad nauseum. Brilliant.

Hares, kestrels and, a bit more prosaically, cows all feature regularly on our outings, and Mrs M claims to have seen a red squirrel too. But then she has been drinking quite a lot of Prosecco. If you think, however, I'm turning into some bumpkin who'll be forecasting the weather next based on which way the vetch is lying, think again - I was in Manchester a week ago yesterday, and thoroughly enjoyed it. There was quite a lot of wildlife there too, and not all of it aboard the England football team coach that we saluted as we sat drinking Belgian beer in the Northern Quarter. But all that's a different story...

If you think you can, or if you think you can't.....

....you're right. I've no idea who came up with that bit of sagacity originally - I think I heard it first back in the mists of time on one of those irritating "developmental" courses you go on at work - but it does have the merit of having a grain of truth to it.

Until the last couple of weeks for example I had no idea I could do woodwork on the hard shoulder of a motorway. This wasn't by choice, should that need pointing out. 

I'd bobbed down to Brico Depot to pick up some timber (among other things), to replace some that's rotting round the borders in the veg plot. It only came in lengths of 4 metres. No worries, thought I, I'll tie it on the wooden frame of my trailer, which is 2 meters long, and the other 2 meters can extend above the back of my car. Up to 30 mph, this worked just fine. At 60mph however, my planks were generating so much lift I thought I was going to have to call French Air Traffic Control (it was one of the rare days they weren't on strike), to let them know that a BMW estate and trailer would shortly be ascending to 15,000 feet.

It was at this point that I realised I'd been a plank about my planks, aided considerably by some helpful hand gestures and pulled faces from fellow motorway travellers. So about 100 meters before a viaduct known for its crosswinds where things could have become even more, ahem, interesting, I pulled in to the side of the road to improve the safety of my load, as it were.

I had, in a miraculous act of foresight, popped a saw in the car before I left, which meant that the obvious solution was to saw the damn planks down to a more reasonable size. Eight of them, in fact. I - rather coolly I thought - remembered to don my hi-viz jacket so as not to unnecessarily attract the attention of the Gendarmarie, as I got to work measuring and sawing for 15 minutes. Though to be fair a man in a British-registered car doing woodwork on the hard shoulder may have caused them to glance twice, had it not been a day when they were otherwise occupied policing a strike by some other part of the French civil service. (The farmers are done for this year. They've had their smoky, smelly motorway protests during the winter so they can focus now on the things they need to do to get the juicy CAP payments rolling it).

So there we are. It all turned out OK in the end. If you'd have asked me on Thursday morning whether it was feasible to untie eight planks from a trailer that were secured by a series of ridiculous homemade knots, measure and cut them perfectly to size while traffic passed a couple of metres away at 60 mph, and not feel particularly flustered, I'd have said you were joking. But I thought I could, etc.....

French Sabbatical Week 1: Lessons Learned

Here we go, in no particular order, in a handy bulleted list because I can't quite get work out of my system...

• Throwing petrol on a bonfire is a lot of fun, brilliantly effective, and not nearly as dangerous as you might think (I only singed the hairs on my forearms) - I won't be using any of that wimpy barbeque lighting fluid in the future, I can tell you
  
• When cleaning out a hen coop last used three years ago, check which way the wind is blowing before you throw all the doors open and start chucking bleach and water around, else you'll end up with a faceful of liquid hen shit. Hope it's good for the complexion
  
• If you buy a second hand trailer off some dodgy English hippies, accept you're in for a period of angst. One of the lightbulbs was out. 'I can mend that no problem' I thought. The iffy connection in there meant I blew a fuse in the car, which I couldn't find because the towbar fitter hadn't put it in the fusebox in his infinite wisdom.  And then having finally tracked down the location of the blown fuse and its type, going into battle with French websites, which seem to be explicitly designed to stop you actually buying anything.  They probably see online shopping as another evil Anglo-Saxon invention that should play no part of Liberte Egalite etc..Still got to sort the buggered wheel/tyre that loses 5psi a day as well yet
  
• If you do a nancy-boy office-based job most of the time, and you spend a week in the garden you'll break your hands, no matter what gloves you wear. Mine have got blisters, cuts, scratches, splinters and ingrained dirt, and are now rivalling my feet in own personal Ugly Extremities Competition
  
• Understand how hard it is to not drink beer at the end of every working day. Dammit, I've been outside labouring all day, I DESERVE it
  
• BBC4 can be a useful source of practical advice - I dismantled a shed and needed to move its parts 40 yards down the garden. It was too bulky and heavy to lift conventionally.  Aha! I remembered watching the porters on the Indian Mountain Railways, and how they bent double, then levered large items onto their back. I tried to do the same - it only flipping works, doesn't it?! Even if you do end up looking like a madman attempting unpowered flight
  
• If you need to trap a ginger-and-white feral cat that's terrorising your own cat, make sure you know the difference between that one, and your neighbours's ginger-and-white cat (I don't). This one's still playing out. Let's hope when I catch it and deposit it a good few kilometres away I'm not depriving our French friends of their beloved pet

So there we are; week 1 in France. I've got another week here on my own before Mrs Monmarduman turns up, then I can start on the properly dangerous jobs....

Video diary 2

Demolition Derby

So where were we?

Ah yes, being quite smug about my abilities to recover from a long run. Not so smug now though, heh?

Yes, things didn't quite go according to plan in the lead-up to my long-planned 75km ultra-marathon on Easter Sunday. It wasn't a surprise to me. I've always been one of those people whose successes (such as they are) tend to be the result of working and playing by the rules. The training rules in ultra-marathon training are, respectively, do a lot of miles, increase weekly mileage by no more than 10%, and increase the distance of your weekly long run by also by no more than 10%.

Well, I didn't play by the rules: my mileage was erratic, I didn't always do a lot of miles, and I lurched up to running 34 miles one particular Sunday - which was when the dreaded knee problem came on. Seems I have a very small tear to my medial meniscus, nothing that stops me running a few miles, but enough to cause anything upwards of a half-marathon to be excruciating.  Ho hum.  Time to repair it, do some cycling, and try again next winter.

Strangely, however, while I was disappointed I had to withdraw from my Canalathon, I wasn't devastated, probably because the withdrawal coincided with finishing work for a while, and soon afterwards (that being yesterday), coming across to France for an extended period.

Yes, I did it - I've made myself unavailable for work until the start of August, and I intend to spend as much of it as possible in France. The plan is the same as the one I hatched earlier in the year - manual work, cycle and learn a bit of French.

There are two cycling excursions planned - one to Provence with Mendip Rouleur for an attempt at joining the Club dec Cingles du Mont-Ventoux (that being 3 different ascents of the great mountain in a single day), plus some very civilised cafe-based riding besides, and one to Normandy with Mrs M for a spot of gentle cyclo-touring.

Right now though, I'm even more excited - rather sadly - to get stuck into some Bloke Stuff, most of which I've no idea how to do right now.  Quite a lot of it will involve Bloke Tools too. I've already bought a trailer for picking stuff up at Brico Depot (B&Q) and getting rid of it at the dechetterie (tip). There are steel toe-capped work boots in the garage, overalls, and best of all - I think I might need a cement mixer. Ten years ago I used to covet other men's bikes; now I sneak furtive looks at their tool shed.

What's the cause of all this Blokery? Three-quarters of an acre of unruly and disintegrating garden, that's what. There are fences, sheds and greenhouses to be taken down, other fences and roofs to be put up, and digging, seed sewing and weeding to be done. Not to mention power washing, mowing, strimming, hedgecutting, and bonfires...ahhh, lovely bonfires.

So, there's going to be a lot of outdoor time. I've done one day so far, and my hands are already red and chapped, I'm so soft from the last few months of keyboard-jockeying. Tales from French France and - hopefully - progress that doesn't involve loss of limbs or too much blood to follow.

Recover

...nothing much of interest in this post for non-runners, though I guess cyclists might be half-interested...

Now I'm not saying I've been doing my training runs recently at any great pace, but they have at least been quite long - marathon plus in a few cases. And amazingly, I've not had any DOMS the day after, and been comfortable running again two days later. I don't know whether or not this is the down to the following regime, but in case it is, I share it in a spirit of not wanting to see old men walking on a Monday like they've had an accident in their underwear.

So, when finishing long run / ride and enter the house, I, in order, and starting the moment I've said 'hello' to anyone who's around:

• Drink a pint of water to top fluids up (having taken electrolytes whilst exercising)
• Lie on my back with my legs in the air, resting against a wall or chair, for 5-10 minutes
• Have a hot shower - not sure it contributes to recovery, but it feels good. Don't have a bath, unless it's a cold one, and who wants that?
• Eat some quality food, including some protein - eggs, whey powder, or similar
• Later on, take lots of ginger - a cubic inch or so - in whatever form it can be stomached; I like soya milk, apple and ginger smoothies
• Sleep within 90 minutes of finishing exercise - doesn't have to be much (30 mins will do), but it just seems to kickstart recovery
• Consume as little sugar as possible - I still have some lovely dark chocolate, but it's tempting to shovel cake down your neck after hours of exercise; the less you do, the better you'll feel

That's it; nothing funny, nothing more. Just shared because I seem to have stumbled on something that works.