Le château de Costaeres
Yes, that was my reaction the first time I saw it too. “Yea, that would work”.
Built in 1892 within yards of Ploumanach by a Pole who was hired as an expert in electrification by the French government, he made his fortune by inventing electrical gizmos. He died before completing the chateau but left it to his daughter who was later killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The place came close to being lost in a fire in 1990 but remains in private hands. (Until I win the lottery)
I rarely suggest any web sites to visit but if you have any interest in seeing our favorite haunts as seen from the air, there is an excellent one that actually allows you to ‘fly’ over the entire French coastline from the French Riviera in the south to the border with Belgium in the north. Check it out at: http://www.francecoastline.com/recherche.php Click on ‘Bretagne’ or click on the map itself (Brittany is the part that sticks out to the left). You can also simply enter the names below in the search box.
In our neck of the woods, Bugueles, Ile de Brehat, Plougrescant, Ploumanach, Port Blanc and Perros Guirec are our neighborhood beaches. The way the photos are shown you can start at any one of them and follow the coast in either direction as far as you like.
We know that we are here partly off-season and as a result a number of touristy places are closed until April. It is amazing though to see that the closer you get to the ocean, the more homes are boarded up and unoccupied. The thinking is that they are all fat cats from Paris waiting to return to their summer homes. There are just so many (I figure in some waterfront areas it could be as much as 80%) that if that were the case Paris would have to empty in the summer. (Some say it does)
Does Honey Bee freeze
in the winter?
Is the Pope Catholic?
The short answer: Yes. It freezes harder than a constipated Rhino!
Being in somewhat of a micro climate lying in the middle of the river the surrounding area tends to be a little warmer than just a few miles inland. ‘A little warmer’ is a relative term. It still freezes like the dickens but there is less snow.
You ‘might’ be able to walk over the ice to the island but then again you might not make it. The gentle current keeps the ice rather thin making it at best a risky proposition. We have never had any ice damage to our wood dock, which leads us to believe that the ice is very thin. People have asked us if we fear someone going over in the winter to break in while we are not there. We are not.
The river acts like a giant moat around the island. There are lots of unoccupied cottages and homes within sight of us that would make much easier targets. Besides, someone would have to risk life and limb just to get there….and for what? Are they going to take our refrigerator? Our clothes? Our TV? Then what? Carry it back over the ice? If they were lucky enough to make it there it is unlikely they would be lucky enough to make it back. Besides, that is what we have insurance for.
We don’t heat the cabin when we are gone all winter so we go to some lengths to think through our departure and we have developed some rather elaborate checklists. Paint, glue and cans of tomato soup go because they will freeze and explode. Window cleaner stays because it has alcohol in it and won't freeze. Portable phone battery and soda cans go, Vodka stays. (You might need emergency liquid rehydration when you are marooned on an island)
Sometimes we still get it wrong though and we are still on the way up on the learning curve. Before we left last year I made sure to carefully go through room-by-room looking for anything that would not survive freezing. When we returned for the summer I found a little puddle next to the UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) for the computer. I had forgotten that it too had a battery. It froze and was history.
A problem that that both the Bee and our house in France share are our computer printers. When we first arrived in Europe this year, it became obvious that our printer was having seizures and would not print several colors. I did all the usual stuff like run it through print head cleaning programs and when that failed I put in new ink cartridges. When that failed I found some print head cleaner for just such a problem but it made absolutely no difference. I had not removed the ink cartridges before I left last summer so that the ink would not dry and clog the print heads. Fine, so now the whole shebang dried up like a prune. Chaching! Another printer please!
But wait! Before you reach for another box of tissues to wipe your tears away because of how hard and unfair life is for us, there is much more sadness….. At the Island, I have to remove all the ink cartridges before I leave in the fall so that they don’t freeze, burst and make a mess of our printer there. Fine, but now I have a printer that has no ink in it so the print heads will dry out also and probably also need to be replaced. Chaching! Another….
Win some, loose some. It sounds like I might loose one every six months.
Bicyclists own the road
It’s a simple fact of life here that bicyclists own the road. Personally I don’t like it but I have yet have anyone ask me for my opinion or cared what it was. Whether it is a lone bicyclist making his way up the country lane or a 50-member bike club on a typical Sunday road trip, they ride as if they are “tolerating” vehicular traffic.
They don’t ride on the edge of the roadway allowing you to pass them safely; they ride well within the traffic lane forcing you to slow down behind them until you see far enough ahead to safely pass. The bike clubs ride 2 or 3 abreast forcing you to come to almost a stop behind them until you can pass the whole group stretched out over a few hundred feet. They couldn’t care less if vehicles have to follow them for any distance. They will not pull over, stop or attempt to accommodate in any way. They have an attitude of entitlement second only to Liberals (Oops, sorry that just slipped!) or to some people here trying to park their cars.
I have mentioned before that sometimes and in some places, parking here is a whole new experience. I have photographed cars parked on sidewalks, cars parked in all 4 crosswalks at an intersection, cars parked in front of fire hydrants, ambulance entrances and partially on the center islands on the roadway. (I say partially because the front half is on the island while the back half of the vehicle is actually still on the road) Law enforcement in this area is all but non-existent, as they seem to have simply given up.
We regularly see people parked so illegally in city parking lots that they cause absolute gridlock. The exit lanes out of the parking facility are sometimes blocked by illegal parkers forcing those trying to enter to back up for someone wanting to leave. It’s a zoo. This creates a situation where some people are so frustrated that they just stop being courteous or civil in any sense of the word.
More than once I have seen someone who had been patiently waiting for someone else to back out and leave from his or her parking spot, be cut off by some aggressive driver who just flat ‘stole’ their place. In America it would cause instant road rage and be a clear case for justifiable homicide. Usually you can spot them as they hover into place like vultures.
Spotting such a scumbag who saw me signal and pull up next to an empty spot, he positioned himself directly behind me. I waited for him to go around but he was waiting for me to move forward a few feet positioning myself so that I could then back in (Proper parallel parking). Had I moved forward, he was planning on driving in (forward into the spot) and claim my space. I waited a while but seeing that he was not going to leave, I got out, walked up to him and explained that I was retired, I had a good book to read in the car and that he could wait till hell froze over if he wanted to but that I would not move until he left.
He did.
Life is a party!
Fully aware that we only have about 30 more years to live (statistically at least), we decided we had better start partying big time. So, in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, we threw a little bash for 20 of our nearest and dearest friends. A number of them are parents with younger children (some with very young kids) so we decided that this one should be for grown ups only. We were somewhat surprised at how many leaped at any excuse to have the chance to get out on their own.
Janice is an experienced, skilled and frequent entertainer and she sure did herself proud. Because the numbers precluded a sit down dinner, she set up one of her favorite ‘table scape's’. This allowed her to serve a gorgeous 3 course buffet dinner. We had a great mix of friends (English and Francais), a number of who had never met before. The long and the short of it was that we had a blast.
We were taken aback by the manners of our predominantly French guests. As Americans, we like to think of ourselves being a little more laid back and casual in social settings. Sometimes that can mean being a little too casual for the circumstances. These folks showed up with the most elegant and breathtaking 'hostess gifts' I have ever seen. I mean, Wow!
I must admit that I hesitated inviting our family doctor. He is a really nice man but I just wasn’t sure I wanted to “get to know him better” considering the man had just performed a prostate exam on me days before. ‘Male bonding’ was completely out of the question of course, but we did hit it off (I am getting myself in deeper and deeper here, aren’t I?) partially because of the oddity of our being the only Americans around, I suspect. All in all, it was about as international of a mix of people you could imagine. All we needed was a 3-legged midget, a Democrat and a Burka clad Jihadist to complete the set.
Life in Europe.
OK, it’s been a few years since we have been going back and forth to Europe so how is it working out? Well I guess if we added all of the time we have lived here it would amount to about 18 months total. It has not been continuous time so it is surely not the same but it is still 18 months.
We have made about as many British friends as French but like many of the Brits that live here, we make a point not to surround ourselves with only other English-speaking people. None of us came to France so that we could avoid the French.
For us, “English speaking” is a relative term of course as all the English we hear here is mispronounced. (note to our British friends: Whilst I art just kidding, mates!) (Note to our American friends: I rest my case!) We still find it fascinating to notice all the little idiosyncrasies in our different lifestyles (American and European) that we come across in our everyday life. There are absolutely brilliant ideas that we see in all aspects of life that we wished we had or used in America, and then there are positively stupid things (to us) we see that we cannot fathom why they are done here. I guess that is what keeps the experience so interesting.
It is perfectly understandable that by and large people here do not hold the same fascination that Janice and I do when it comes to historical stuff we see everyday. Barely worth mention is an aqueduct we found that was about 10 minutes from home. I say barely worth mention because while a splendidly preserved specimen it ‘only’ dates back to 1610. Spending this much time in Europe has given us a whole new view of history and time. There is SO MUCH historical stuff to see all over the place that I can’t bring myself to get real excited unless the site is at least 500 years old. It is an extravagance that here, we can afford.
If there were such a thing at home, there would be signs on the freeway for a hundred miles around directing you to it. There would be a huge parking lot next to it with shops, restaurants and park rangers supervising your visit. Here, we had a heck of a time finding it and when we did it has only reachable down a dirt path on private property. (Good thing no one was home)
Oh yea, on the way home, we found a 13th century ‘Colombier’. Also known as a ‘pigeonerie’, it is a stone structure that housed up to a couple of thousand pigeons to provide meat for the Lord of the Manoir. (See The Epistle, December 06)
“Time” takes on a new dimension here. In some ways, I have come to relate to other busy retired people I have talked to who say “ the older you get the faster time goes by”. I can’t explain it but I now know exactly what they mean. Time is shooting by a mile a minute. On the other hand, life is a lot slower also. When I worked, I remember thinking how every free minute had to count and be ‘productive’. Well I don’t have any time to waste now either but there is not the same frantic rush. Now I am perfectly comfortable to not finish what I had intended to do on any given day and to simply say to myself “Oh well, maybe I will do it tomorrow”. If I feel like it…….
That is a whole new attitude for me.
Predictably, wine is a big deal here. Sure there is a lot of good French wine and it is somewhat cheaper. What I had not expected is how the exchange of bottles is as common as a handshake. We take a bottle over to friends whenever we are invited over for dinner or for a visit and they do the same when they come over. (We could probably just use the same bottle over and over!) Bottles are given as thank you’s and for generally for no apparent reason at all.
A well-traveled letter.
Sometime in October our friends and neighbors next door to us here sent us a letter when we were still at the island. Unfortunately it got there after we had already left so the letter got forwarded to California. As we were in Seattle at the time, our mail inadvertently got returned to our summer post office in NY (our professional mail forwarding service is staffed by minimum wage earning teenagers working their first job. Their work ethic mantra is "What-ever!") They [in NY] in turn cannot forward mail to Europe but could only “return it to sender” so, back it went to California (during the Christmas rush) so that it could be forwarded to France. We received the letter on January 10th, after the letter had traveled some 16,000 miles (25,000 Km) to go a total of about 3 feet (1 meter). The living rooms of our homes share a common structural wall.
TIP: If you don't see any of the photos or would like to see them larger, just double click on them.
