Shelsley Watermill - III

Take four gentlemen of retirement age, four buckets and spades and a wheelbarrow and stand back.

An eyeball estimate of the spoil-heap from today's efforts suggests that we moved about 1 1/2 tons of wet clay soil out of the bottom of the tailrace along with uncounted bricks.

We seem to have found the upstream edge of the original race in a very tumbledown state, nothing like as well preserved as the opposite side, but more or less parallel. The bottom of the race has yet to be defined and we are not sure what form it took. It could have been stone flags, brickwork or even bare clay, but we are just hoping that we will recognize it when we get there.

If the wheel is going to turn efficiently it should not be standing in water so there is still some way down still to go, which brings us to the next problem. The tailrace joins a culvert that contains the overflow stream from the mill-pool but the bed of the stream has silted up to level with our latest excavations. We are going to have to deepen the stream inside the culvert and further downstream to clear the tailrace. A job best done before the weather turns cold!

Shelsley Watermill - II

The borrowed JCB has proved a great success and we now have cleared out most of the 1960's backfill of the tailrace.

No sign of the floor of the original tailrace yet, and we have gone as far down as the digger can reach. We have opened a narrow channel to drain the wheel-pit by hand and it looks as though we are going to have to dig the remainder out with buckets and spades. Any volunteers? The channel goes through the side of a culvert to join the stream that drains from the old mill-pools. This culvert was clearly built up in different stages, with the lower parts of the walls being of stone with brick barrel vaulting that looks as though it was added in two or more stages much later. When the mill was in use the culvert was probably an open channel.

An earlier examination of the wheel showed it to be bolted together, and the bolts have gone a little rusty (that's irony for you) but a specially made socket to fit the square nuts has proved to be able to loosen them. This is good news, with 17 bolts in each bucket and 36 buckets to be renewed. Grinding off 612 bolts was going to be hard work with the risk of damaging the cast wheel quadrants.

Bewdley Beer & Cider Festival

Say no more

Shelsley Watermill

As us boys get older we like to play with bigger toys. Building clocks is a good hobby and keeps me indoors in the winter but for really big gear wheels you have to have a watermill, and now I've found one.

Not just me, of course, but the Shelsley Watermill Society. When the Midland Automobile Club negotiated the lease renewal of the world famous hill climb venue the farm buildings were included in the new lease and this old watermill was included.

Many MAC members did not know that the mill even existed as it was so overgrown and hidden but a group of people have got together with the aim of getting the mill working again and making it available for educational purposes. The mill-pools will also be restored and it is hoped will form a reserve for wildlife.

There is an awful lot of work to be done, but a start has been made. The wheel is iron, with cast iron shaft and spokes and sheet steel buckets. As you can imagine these have rusted a bit since the mill last worked in the 1920's. Just restoring the wheel is going to take a lot of time and effort but before we can do that we need to recreate the mill's tailrace and drain the wheel pit. This seems to have been filled in in the 1960's judging by the rubbish we have found when we started digging.

Some very basic historical research reveals that there was a mill in the locality in 1308 so we will probably celebrate the 700th anniversary in 2008 if only to raise funds!

Lourdes, Pau and home

The clouds that had hidden the marmots marked a change in the weather so it was easier than it might have been to think about returning home.

We left Luz Saint Saveur after filling up any nooks and crannies amongst the luggage with wine bottles. As we headed out of the Pyrenees northwards we paused to visit the holy places in Lourdes. The souvenir shops around the area were every bit as tacky as we expected but the Basilica and the Grotto were havens of peace and tranquilty. The experience was very uplifting.

We were entertained over lunch by the behaviour of a group of ladies from the USA who had lunched together but wanted to pay individually. It was like watching an episode of Golden Girls live. When we had stopped giggling we got back in the car and headed to Pau. The date was 21 June, which is celebrated throughout France as the Festival of Music.

We were told that the festival was an occasion for schools, colleges, orchestra and so on to play to the public at many venues. What we found was that every street seemed to have musicians playing a broad variety of music. We ate a chinese meal to the sound of a brass band, we strolled past rock bands that made us click our fingers and wish there was room to dance and we listened to piano music played with style.

The gentleman pictured had a deep bass voice and was singing tribal music blended with pop backing. It sounded much better than my description.

The following day we headed onto the autoroute and made our way back to Bilbao to catch the ferry back to Portsmouth. It was a great holiday but it is always nice to get home.

Luz Saint Saveur & Gavarnie

We left Luchon after four nights and drove over mountain roads to Luz Saint Saveur. The drive was mildly challenging for those of us with a fear of heights, which is me. I was not driving anyway near the road edges!

The highest point was the Col de Tourmalet at 2115 meters and we were surprised by the number of cyclists who ride up this route until we realized that we were following a stage route of the Tour de France in the reverse direction only a couple of weeks before the big event. Some of the cyclists were in teams with support vehicles!

We found a charming little hotel in Luz, the Hotel de Templiers, which proved to be an excellent base for exploring the area. The owners speak English and are happy to give advice about where to go and what to see. We walked into the Cirque de Gavarnie and gazed at the highest waterfall in Europe at 423 meters. We had bemoaned our failure to see a marmot at the hotel and they suggested we visit the Cirque de Troumouse as that was a well known haunt of the rodents. As this was quite close to Gavarnie we decided to end the day by driving up into this cirque. The GPS showed an altitude of 2091 meters when we parked at the top but we couldn't see much because the cloud extended down to 2000 meters. After a brief and clammy walk around in the clouds we decided to give up the search for marmots and come back another year. By this time the cloud had thickened enough to make the drive down a bit scary. I don't know which is worse, being able to see the 500 ft drop at the edge of the road or not being able to see the 500ft drop because of the fog!

After some 7 kilometers of very cautious driving we emerged from the clouds at an altitude of 1600 meters only to see a marmot sitting by the side of the road looking at us with an expression that clearly said "These humans are crazy". We didn't argue!

Cooling off in the Pyrenees

Millau Viaduct is very impressive but it doesn't cast much shade! After another flying visit with our son near Toulouse we headed south into the Pyrenees to find some cooler weather.

The first stop was at Luchon de Bagneres, a spa town in the middle of the Pyrenees. It proved to be a great spot for going walking! In the mountains above Luchon there is a ski resort called Superbagneres at 1800 metres altitude. The wind was almost cold!

It is possible to hire a mountain guide from the Guide Office in Luchon and go for a guided walk to see marmots, amongst many other options.

Our walk to find marmots was foiled by the weather, heavy rain and thunder kept the animals in their burrows. Just because they are small and furry doesn't mean they are stupid! Unlike me, who got back to the car to find I hadn't closed the windows all the way.

Our guide seemed almost embarrassed about taking his fee but we had really enjoyed the walk, he had pointed out two isard in the distance and being inside a thunder cloud was a novel experience. I did take a picture of the isard which are the local kind of chamois but it was raining very hard and almost dark so the result is not worth posting!

The guide recommended another good walk up to Lac d'Oo. With the benefit of hindsight I think he had overestimated our level of fitness. We did walk up to the lake and we walked back down again but we were pretty slow. The lake is part of an hydro-electric scheme and the water level was quite low when we got there so the lake was not as pretty as it could be. It was some compensation to find an Auberge with good lager on draught. I was trying to work out how they got the barrels up the mountain when I spotted a quad bike with an extra rear axle (a hex-bike?) Even with six-wheel drive it must have been fun getting up the track.

Heading further eastwards

After a long weekend with our son & daughter-in-law we headed off in an easterly direction, starting out while it was still fairly cool.

Our first stop was at Albi, a city with an impressive cathedral and a museum dedicated to the the city's most famous son, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

There was a funeral taking place in the cathedral when we arrived so we spent an educational afternoon in the well air-conditioned museum. It was fascinating to see the preliminary sketches for the famous Toulouse-Lautrec posters. Many of the sketches are much more detailed than the posters but the essence of the character in the sketch is carried through into the poster using very few colours. Oh to have that kind of skill!

We did get to see inside the cathedral later in the day. Photography is not allowed inside the building so you will just have to take my word for it that it is much more ornate inside than out. I wouldn't plan a holiday around this one cathedral but if you are ever in the vicinity it is well worth a look.

We spent the night in a newly opened hotel an easy walk from the town centre and set off the following morning to drive up the valley of the river Tarn. The major roads all follow the high ground on either side of the valley but there is a minor road that follows the riverside for many kilometers that was very pleasant driving. The only tricky bits where the tunnels, unlit and very narrow. Fortunately we only met one other car actually in a tunnel and we managed to creep past each other without scraping the walls or each other but it was a very tight fit!

For many years the river Tarn has been a major obstacle on the route from Paris to the French Riviera and we wanted to see the solution to the problem. We where still some way from the town of Millau when we rounded a bend and got our first view of the tallest bridge in the world, higher than the Eiffel Tower.

The stats are impressive. According to Wikipedia the total length is 2,460 metres with a longest span of 342 metres and a clearance of 270 metres and a total height of 343 metres.

That is all just numbers. Go and stand underneath it and look up. It is awesome. In the town you can buy pictures of the bridge in clear sunshine with clouds underneath it. We drove half way across France to see this bridge and it was worth the effort. The town of Millau is working to adjust to being famous for its viaduct rather than for the worst traffic jams in France but we spent a leisurely afternoon and evening there before heading back towards Toulouse the following day.

Boiling Hot in Biarritz

I'm spending a lot of time at this keyboard on a project that I'm sure I will be able to blog about soon so there is probably going to be a few pauses between posts.

My last post promised to reveal how we learned to cope with high temperatures and no air-con in the car (apart from taking the roof off). We had spent the night in the Campanile in Biarritz and after a leisurely breakfast we set out to explore the town.

Our first breakthrough was to discover the French practice of placing their car-parks underground. Relatively cool, clean and amazingly cheap. At least the car would not be imitating an oven when we returned. After a stroll along the beach we stopped for coffee and then went in search of an ATM and a trendy sun hat.

Biarritz is a lovely town with a mix of ancient and modern. We loved it and will probably return one day to spend more time there. One memory from this visit was our lunch. My grasp of the French language is not as good as it should be and was yet to be refreshed, so reading menus was a bit hit and miss. We picked Oeuf au Plat, frite & salade. What we got was egg and chips with style. It was wonderful!

Feeling well fed and happy, off we went on our next mistake. We set out to drive to Toulouse, leaving in the heat of the day. With the roof down the sun was fiercesome but the breeze kept things bearable. However, at motorway speeds the breeze became very noisy and we eventually gave in and put the roof up which made it quieter but hotter. We resolved that we would make all long journeys in the cooler mornings from then on.

We arrived, hot and sticky, at ours son's house and were made very welcome. We didn't waste much time about trying out their new spa!