I had a bit of a lay in the morning but was woken this morning not by children getting ready for school but heavy rain on the skylight. As I was planning my route I was imagining beautiful French countryside bathed in sunshine often illustrated in my many guide books. The scene outside my window this morning resembled them in no way what so ever. Would this rain ever go away? At least I should be thankful that I was not under canvas!
Tom, Steff and the children where all at home today as Children under the age of 10 in France don’t go to school on Wednesdays so we had hoped to all go out somewhere but the weather was so bad that it was a day indoors.
I spent some time with Tom in his workshop which is full of big boy’s toys, large saws, stump cutters, shredders trailers and several chainsaws and now my 7. On wet days he can’t get out to do tree work so spends time maintaining his equipment and paper work. Today he needed to sharpen 16 very large metal teeth that fit into a machine for removing stumps, this takes several hours each week and has to be carried out with a special diamond grinder as the teeth are made of tungsten.
Later in the morning Steff took me to the local out of town shopping area to see if I could get pay as you go mobile broadband. In the UK we often bemoan the amount of red tape we have and how our French cousins pay little heed to this. Well it’s not always the case particularly with regard to mobile phones and broadband. In the UK I can go into any phone shop and for a relatively small amount walk out with a new phone or broadband dongle on pay as you go no questions asked. In France even for pay as you go you have to have a French bank account, and more id than would be needed to get into GCHQ at home.
After several shops we finally ended up in SFR and they produced a box with a pay as you go dongle all I needed was a credit card and driving license, but Steff had to vouch for me and give her address as my residence for the month. So I have discovered that viva le revolution is not always the way here particularly with mobile phones.
The afternoon was partly spent trying to register the dongle even more red tape. The dongle came with a 30 page booklet and showed how to register and get online. After an hours messing about Steff call SFR to say we were having problems, only then did they say that it took 48 hours to register. Why that couldn’t be in the booklet I’ll never know. I've been rereading ‘Around the World in 80 days’ Phyllis Fog never had this trouble. In the end I’m connected and can now access the internet using the SFR dongle and hopefully will be able to top up once the number is registered. However though this is the glorious EU I will have to go through the whole process again in Spain as the French dongle will not work there. You would think that in a continent that has a single currency that there would be a single mobile net work that you could use everywhere.
After lunch there was a break in the rain and I managed to give Tom and the family rides in the 7 but on the final run the heavens opened and Tom and I got rather wet. The rest of the afternoon was spent play Piou Poiu with Steff and the children. The aim of the card game to get your chicken to lay three eggs. Unlike poker I was surprisingly successful at this new game but betting with a 7 and 5 year old would not be correct.
All the weather reports on French TV say the summer begins here tomorrow which bodes well for the 24hr Le Man which I head to tomorrow morning passing through two places synonymous to the Camino Troo and Verom.
Tom, Steff and the children where all at home today as Children under the age of 10 in France don’t go to school on Wednesdays so we had hoped to all go out somewhere but the weather was so bad that it was a day indoors.
I spent some time with Tom in his workshop which is full of big boy’s toys, large saws, stump cutters, shredders trailers and several chainsaws and now my 7. On wet days he can’t get out to do tree work so spends time maintaining his equipment and paper work. Today he needed to sharpen 16 very large metal teeth that fit into a machine for removing stumps, this takes several hours each week and has to be carried out with a special diamond grinder as the teeth are made of tungsten.
Later in the morning Steff took me to the local out of town shopping area to see if I could get pay as you go mobile broadband. In the UK we often bemoan the amount of red tape we have and how our French cousins pay little heed to this. Well it’s not always the case particularly with regard to mobile phones and broadband. In the UK I can go into any phone shop and for a relatively small amount walk out with a new phone or broadband dongle on pay as you go no questions asked. In France even for pay as you go you have to have a French bank account, and more id than would be needed to get into GCHQ at home.
After several shops we finally ended up in SFR and they produced a box with a pay as you go dongle all I needed was a credit card and driving license, but Steff had to vouch for me and give her address as my residence for the month. So I have discovered that viva le revolution is not always the way here particularly with mobile phones.
The afternoon was partly spent trying to register the dongle even more red tape. The dongle came with a 30 page booklet and showed how to register and get online. After an hours messing about Steff call SFR to say we were having problems, only then did they say that it took 48 hours to register. Why that couldn’t be in the booklet I’ll never know. I've been rereading ‘Around the World in 80 days’ Phyllis Fog never had this trouble. In the end I’m connected and can now access the internet using the SFR dongle and hopefully will be able to top up once the number is registered. However though this is the glorious EU I will have to go through the whole process again in Spain as the French dongle will not work there. You would think that in a continent that has a single currency that there would be a single mobile net work that you could use everywhere.
After lunch there was a break in the rain and I managed to give Tom and the family rides in the 7 but on the final run the heavens opened and Tom and I got rather wet. The rest of the afternoon was spent play Piou Poiu with Steff and the children. The aim of the card game to get your chicken to lay three eggs. Unlike poker I was surprisingly successful at this new game but betting with a 7 and 5 year old would not be correct.
All the weather reports on French TV say the summer begins here tomorrow which bodes well for the 24hr Le Man which I head to tomorrow morning passing through two places synonymous to the Camino Troo and Verom.
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