When I came back from Holiday the latest BT bill was waiting for me on the door mat. They have charged me £105+VAT to establish my phone line - something they promised that they would not do. So not only did they incorrectly handle the phone move they also screwed up on the billing.
I HATE BT!
posted 13:00 ::
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Eventually it had to come to an end. We packed up the tent in the morning just before the heavens opened up and set of north for Saint-Malo. We went slowly through the pretty countryside and checked into our "motel" for our last night in Brittany of this year. We had enough time to pick up a last few essentials in town before settling in for the night.
On the last day we drove through a sleep town to the port to board out ferry home. It was the "worst" day crossing we have had to date, that only means it was cloudy once we were in English waters and we were still able to walk about as long as you were a bit more careful. Overall a decent crossing really.
posted 22:20 ::
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The past few days have been a blur of driving to places, looking at something, very short walks, shopping and eating out. Highlights included:
posted 17:58 ::
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We started this day by packing up and moving to Concarneau. We drove through some pretty places including the very touristy but none-the-less still pretty Pont-Aven. The campsite in Concarneau wasn't as nice as Croas-an-Ter. It was in the town, more cramped and though not full it was quite busy and noisy. After settling in we walked down to the near by beach before meeting up with family for dinner.
We went for a day trip to L'Archipel des Glénanon the following day. It's a set of small pretty islands in shallow clear sea water and in glorious sunshine it feels like a tropical paradise. Well worth the visit, it's just a shame it was for only a few hours and that a lot of other people where there at the same time...
posted 23:15 ::
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The problem with Brittany and any other peninsulas or small islands is that the weather is very volatile and greatly influenced by the sea. That often means that it often starts wet in the morning and then turns out very nice in the afternoon. So we had a few damp starts but nothing to worry about.
First up was went for a nice walk along the river La Laïta and then along the coast to Doëlan via Le Pouldu. It's a very nice river valley leading on to a pretty coast line and even on an overcast day it's enough for me to get a sun tan.
The next day had a very rainy morning we decided to go for a shopping trip to the near by town of Lorient. By the time we arrived it was a swelteringly hot day and it would probably have been best going to the beach!
On the following day we went for a bike ride through Clohars-Carnoët (Kloar-Karnoed) to Doëlan and finally to Kerfany-les-Pins. Another flat sort of day but again enough for me to catch the sun.
On our final day here we biked up to Quimperlé (Kemperle) to hire a canoe for a few hours paddling about on the La Laïta. Great fun and a fantastic way to see this fabulous river valley.
We then packed up the tent from our very nice camp site* and drove on to Concarneau (Konk-Kerne) for the next leg of the holiday.
* Our camp site "Croas-an-Ter" was brilliant. It was mostly empty so the facilities were spotlessly clean. It had lots of cute animals: red squirrels; bats; hedgehogs and rabbits. The plot was lush green grass and it was enormous and we had no noisy neighbours!
posted 22:15 ::
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We arrived in Saint-Malo on time and drove to the campsite just north of Le Pouldu. We got the tent up in nice weather and settled in.
On the second day after a damp start we drove to the morning market in Quimperlé. Nice little place, quite busy even on a Sunday.
posted 13:15 ::
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Yesterday I tried my ADSL line and it's active again, so I'm back on line three days ahead of schedule!
We went to Winchester today to have a look at the farmer's market. It was quite busy and I bought a case of my favourite Hill Farm Orchard apple juice. It's not cheap but it's worth it.
This morning I received an email from a rightmove automated search suggesting that I may be interested in the house I use to live in. We were forced out by a greedy landlady who wanted to sell up and extract the capital that had appreciated in the house. At the time of the eviction she offered us the property for £225k (US$450k), which I thought was completely over the top. In the subsequent months she has paid two more months of mortgage repayments, the builder's bill to tart the place up and the loss of two months of rent. The house is now on the market for £10k (US$20k) less.
Ha! Ha!
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Today I made three batches of jam. I am now full of enough sugar to power a Tour de France bike rider up an Aple. I started with 2 Kg or redcurrant juice to which I added 2 kg of sugar to make 9 jars of jelly. Next it was a kilo of rhubarb, 500 g of crystallised ginger and a kilo of sugar to make 6 jars of jam. Finally 2 Kg of rhubarb, a kilo of oranges and 2.2 Kg of sugar make 12 jars of marmalade. Should keep the household running another year.
It's taken so much of my day up that I've still not had time to get
NFSv4 working with Kerberos 5. I've just had enough time to join
together kinit, telnet.krb5 and
ksshaskpass.
posted 20:00 ::
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Today I went to a friend's garden to pick his surplus rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum or Rheum x hybridum.). I collected over 4 Kg, of which 3 Kg is now soaking in sugar and lemon juice in the fridge.
After lunch we went to the nearby PYO farm on the hunt for redcurrants (Ribes rubrum) and strawberries (Fragaria spp.). They were out of strawberries, which is a bit odd as there should still be plenty and last year at this time they were over run with them. The redcurrants had also been picked hard (and very poorly), which made picking them a pain but we were easily able to collect over 3.5 Kg of red and white currants. Except a few kept for eating the currants are simply mashed up and filtered to make jelly.
Tomorrow I plan to make one batch of redcurrants jelly, one batch of rhubarb and ginger jam and one batch of rhubarb and orange marmalade.
posted 18:14 ::
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At the Sheep Fair we sold all our jam, after materials the OBS made a profit of over £100 on the jam. Even after the event people have been asking to buy jam and I have to keep telling people it's all gone, all 20 kg of it!
posted 12:46 ::
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Tonight we had a look round the local church yard for the common glow worm Lampyris noctiluca. It's not as warm or humid as it should be for the best viewing but even so we spotted 13 females doing their thing.
This weekend is the Overton Sheep Fair. Today we sold over 50% of the rhubarb jams we made earlier this year and tomorrow is supposed to be a nicer day so I expect we will sell it all!
Though representing the OBS I was also able to speak to a few local people about Linux/Unix which is always good. One of them is a former Windows SysAdmin now in the process of upgrading to Linux/Unix - which given his job is at the UK's Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, it's scary to think that they trusted our nuclear arsenal to a toy operating system with a reputation for not being secure...
Today when I got home there was a letter from my bank. They have decided to automatically triple my overdraft limit, if I don't want all this cheap credit I can reply using the pre-paid envelope to let them know. It's very nice to know I can borrow a lot of money for very little it's even occasionally useful. However as I'm a tight northerner I avoid debt like a plague and doubt I'll do anything with this extra line of credit.
What is more annoying is that they sent it to the wrong address, we moved a month ago. It's not as if they don't know I have told them and they have already sent a statement to the new address... It must be brilliant if you are an ID thief to get a letter like mine...
Methinks the banks have only themselves to blame...
posted 21:20 ::
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