MY EXCITING ENCOUNTER WITH A FRENCH PUSSY - MARVEILLEUX

Yeh, I tried to get some single malt scotch at Heathrow on a long wait, and all they had was Johnny Walker. Talk about nonplussed.

Osso, if you want some REAL (moonshine style) Calvados, I will have a word with my Brother's French Bruv in Law. His Dad was a forester up in Calvados producing Normandy, and they take the wild apples that are growing in the forests, mash them up and eventually put the fermented juice through an unofficial and totally illegal still, which is located deep in the darkest bit of some remote foresty bit.
The end product is then stored in oak barrels and hidden in several very secret locations.
I was given a (clay) bottle of it once, and drank most of it with a friend one Christmas eve. I swear that when we went to walk my dog in the park at midnight, there were two moons.
Lethal.



Where we are situated, you are much more likely to get your hands on either Macon wines (Macon Rouge 2004 was excellent and very cheap), Cotes Du Rhone (again...the 2004), and plenty of famous Burgundy names, such as Gevrey Chambertain (about 80 miles away), Nuits St George and Chateauneuf du Pape...all reasonably "local".
My immediate area is only famous for it's beef cattle. Bloody great muscular white things that are eventually consumed in the finest restaurants all over France.
The "Charollais" is the French equivalent of the Scottish Aberdeen Angus.


I was having a pee in the back field one early morning (very French...they ALL do it), when a bull in the neighbouring field stuck it's head over the hedge to watch. He had a look that said "Is that all you've got?", then shook his head and strolled off.
I finished and went to look at him in strolling around among his hareem.
It took me a while to realise that he didn't, in actual fact, have five legs.

GW, you are seriously welcome to come and stay anytime you like. That offer goes out to anyone else on A2K that I have come to know and like.
The keys are stored in a secret place, the house is empty for 75% of the year and the only things you'll need to do is to clear any cobwebs above beds upon arrival, switch the electric and water on, and leave 5 Euros a day in a pot to cover the electric/water charges, and any wood used in the log fire. This is the standard agreement with all "visitors" and seems to work well.
Plus of course, when you get bored looking at the cows, you can always look in a barn for some gardening implements and get yourself fit, chopping down the jungle. We won't object....

How do we know?

I've got some before and after pics of our newly installed floor this time, but will endeavour to take more of other "renovations" as time progresses.

The 500 year estimate on the little house is quite conservative, I am told, as because of the bread oven, it is though (by a local historian) to be a couple of hundred years older than that.
The OLDEST structure on the property is defintely the Well, which was probably put in place when the castle was built. This could be anything up to 800 or so years old.
It is made from carved granite "bricks" which, when placed together, make a perfect circle and so form the shaft of the Well.
The "collar" stone at the top is of particular interest to well watchers, apparently, as it is consists of one solid pice of granite, carved into a large "doughnut" (sorry...donut) shape, and has the additional feature of being carved into a taper underneat (quite ornately) so that it sits perfectly on top of the shaft.
This is very rare, and must have been one hell of a job for a stone mason, way back when.
Most of the surrounding farmhouses have similar wells, but we haven't yet seen one that has a single slab collar stone yet. It definitely points to the fact that it was the well for the castle, as it would have been commissioned by an extremely wealthy client.

Before clearing of the moss and nearby brambles.......





After.......



The surrounding approach stones need re-laying, which a local guy has promised to do for us.



The collar stone.......





See.....it has water!!......



We tied a lead weight to a length of string and lowered it down to see how deep it was. The string was over fifteen metres long and we reached the end without hitting bottom. I must take a longer piece with me next year....

Ah....good question.

Now....I suppose it depends on how good they are at chopping down stinging nettles or painting, really.

Free labour eh? That most *English* of attitudes to work.

I would have couple of suggestions for ascertaining the depth of the

Well?

A picture of the castle........

We don't really know the full history of this place, but it certainly looks very ancient, and was basically ransacked during the French Revolution, wherupon the owner, I suspect, was dragged off to meet Madame Guillotine.
The house on the right is the back view of our main house...the house on the left is the neighbour, who lives just across the road.
The castle is immediately behind his house, but he doesn't seem to bother too much about keeping it in good order, as there are now trees growing out of the turrets.



I'll try to do some googling on it, and see if I can find anything.

You own that?

I want to move to the Uk......we don't have cool crap like that here.

That is one serious old well, I would come just to see that. I wish I was a better landscape painter, as I would love to paint some of the scenery posted. My husband and I are trying to arrange a trip to the Chelsea Flower Show or one of the big UK garden business conferences in the next year or two - you might find us at your door(s). We are competent campers and don't mind things like leaky roofs or bats in the attic, it adds to the ancient charm.

No Bella, we have nothing to do with the castle, apart from probably snaffling its well (it's in France, although we have castles here in the UK as well).

About fifty yards to the left of the castle as seen in the above photo, there is a solitary turret sticking up out of the middle of the field, directly opposite our house.
I have a sneaking suspicion that it was all part and parcel of the same castle, with battlements running in between the turrets, forming a large square with a turret on each corner.
Over the years, the stones have all been stolen to build houses in the local area (including ours, probably) and so the battlements have all but disappeared.
The other theory is that this was the baron's outside loo....


Solitary turret, with Charollais calf in foreground.

We certainly have bats in the barns....AND Dormice! They are protected both in the UK and France, and are getting quite rare.
Nobody told the cat that, though......

http://www.the-piedpiper.co.uk/th1k.htm

Is there a local history office where you can get the full story on your castle?


I'm very fond of dormice, although they do not make for very interesting guests at tea parties:

Yeeek! The faces of Alice and the Dormouse after they transform are horrifying, Greenwitch...Thanks in advance for all the nightmares I'll be having tonight!

Cough, Cough!

Bella

I'm with ya!!!!


That is the most beautiful place I have had the pleasure of enjoy through pics....stunning!! The history that place must have.....amazing!!

Why do you poms insist on scraping away the moss?

What a gorgeous well, gorgeous cows, gorgeous turrets...... sigh.

I was a little snappy earlier, re a2k (awk) policy, but I've relaxed over a day.

I admit sheer envy, but then I'd have to have funds to back up what I might want to do. What I might want to do is fairly little, conceptually - it is a farmhouse with a barn and adjacent place.

What I might want to do wouldn't necessarily be remunerative, just restoritive. Careful...

Getting the units from the barn. Are you sure of All of those? No barn at all ever? Maybe a new barn further afield?

What about the Fol-du-Rol Bleating Goat cheese????

I have some architectural digest memories (the magazine I love to hate) where people did libraries in antiquated barns. Might still have the links.

My own take is, you want to do a library, start a new one, and provide outdoor connection and pleasure.

I dunno, lord, I think that is a glorious space. A talk with a few architects might not hurt. Still, maybe it would. There is a certain takeoveritis that occurs.

So, instead put yourself in their mindset...

lk, I scrape away the moss, as I prefer to see the stone underneath, I suppose.
There was one complete wall that was left unscraped last year, and this was totally covered in a thick blanket of moss which basically looked just like a hedge from a distance. I just think that it's a shame to allow what must have been months of painstaking work by someone, to be all covered up.
I take great pains to leave all the lychen, though. Lychen is good on old stone, and is a lot less invasive.

I'll leave the odd clump of moss next year though, in your honour.....

......(it will also save me a bit of time and sweat)