December SITREP – 2023

Here’s hoping that Santa was good to you all and everyone had a very merry Xmas and that you are all looking forward to a great New Year.

Helen and I have had a bit of slow-down-time since the end of the season, our list of things to do remains as long but we made a conscious decision to do one thing per day, we have also managed to control ourselves and ensure that we are only working outside when the weather is good and inside when the weather is bad.

So far it has worked out well and I have spent most of my time catching up on the decorating, purely because the weather really has been that wet. 

Here is a useless statistic; back in 1988 it rained in France for 30 days straight, from January the 13th through to February the 11th, at the time that set a record, there was an accumulation of 187mm of rain, it had never been heard of before nor since.

Not until 2023 that is. It has been a long hot summer that seemed to last forever, but then it started to rain and since then it has been so wet that we have broken record after record, including the 30 day downpour record. From October the 18th through to November the 16th it rained every day for 30 days and we accumulated a massive 237mm of the wet stuff, and with an occasional exception it has rained almost everyday since. The whole place is saturated!

This is obviously not helping with the outdoor jobs !!

Some of you may have noticed that by the end of last season we were operating with the lake water level about 3cm lower than normal, even given the worst drought conditions my water supply is so consistent that we never lose a millimetre let alone 3cm, thankfully it had a simple cause and should be a relatively easy fix, albeit another one that I could do without.

The problem was the sluice:

When the sluice was originally constructed back in the 60s it was a simple set of steel beams slotted into a sequence of H-steels with a set of steel gratings slotted in on top. The steel beams dictated the depth of the water and the gratings prevented anything unwanted passing over the sluice in to the river.

Over the years much of that steel has started to corrode and at some point during last season one of the steel beams moved and allowed the water level to drop.

This is a couple of the steel beams:

And this gives you an idea of how far they had rusted away:

It was only a matter of time before a more serious leak occurred.

During this closed season I am designing a repair; the steel beams are going to be replaced with steel reinforced concrete and the gratings are all being replaced with new ones.

The new gratings have already been made and delivered:

But this is as far as I have got with the sluice:

but at least it has now been stripped back to the H-steels and, weather permitting, the concreting will be finished by mid-January. I will keep you informed on that.

I am getting rather frustrated with the dark mornings and evenings and was very glad to see the arrival of the Winter Solstice, when effectively the dark is as dark as it gets and the light days start to get longer. According to my records we have already gained 3 minutes of daylight and albeit only three minutes it does suggest that Spring is only a matter of weeks away.

One of the pleasures of living here is the view from our conservatory, which we use as our main dining room. It is surrounded by countryside and the view lifts your spirits when sat there having a quiet 5 minutes.

Only this year our view was being reduced due to the energetic growth of the lime tree in the middle of our drive :

If I was going to sit and enjoy the view while eating my Xmas dinner something had to be done, suddenly this task was promoted to number one on the things-to-do-list.

That’s better:

And it didn’t take long really, only a couple of hours.

We have had some good news from the electricity company, EDF. You will remember that we had the heat pump installed 2 years ago :

Well, at the time EDF made an assessment of our future usage and increased our standing order, as they do. We have just received a letter to say that they were way off the mark and have given us a rebate and reduced our payments by 100 Euros per month.

It has worked out to be more economical than we ever anticipated. Happy Xmas indeed.

We are going to try and do not-a-lot between now and New Year’s Day, other than try to eat all of the food that Helen bought for Xmas, and believe me, that will be a challenge in its self.

Judging by all of the early enquiries I am receiving regarding the opening of the 2026 calendar I expect to be talking with many of you on the 1st of January.

Until then, take care.

Happy New Year