Arrived back at Maison Blanche yesterday about 6pm, tired and happy to be back. We had spent the morning at a Grotto, read: cave, and NOT the wine kind) deep in the hills east of Cahors in Central France.
I quote"
The Pech Merle cave is situated close to the village of de Cabrerets, Lot county, France (How to find Cabrerets-Pech Merle).
Why is it called "Pech Merle" ?
In the lower third of France is a southern Latin culture called langue d'oc or occitan.
Pech is the French writing of the occitan word puèg which means : a hill. We pronounce as in "fresh". It appears in the name of many localities, written pech, puech, pioch, pey, and you can read it on the signs of the regionals roads. In old French, the good word is puy. For Merle, we know nothing. It could be an ancient Gaelic word or from an older language, which could mean : hill, high area.
Within ten kilometres around Pech Merle can be found a dozen other caves with wall paintings. They are not open to the public.
The upper network of the cave of Pech Merle has no signs of prehistoric use and has been known since the turn of the century. The prehistoric galleries, in the lower network, were discovered in 1922 by André David and Henri Dutertre, when they were 16 and 15 years old respectively. The examination of the paintings and engravings was immediately begun by Father Amédée Lemozi, the priest of Cabrerets.
The cave has been open to the public since 1926. It is classed as a 'historic monument' and is the property of the commune of Cabrerets which is responsible for its management.
The Pech Merle cave is a very large one. It is more than two kilometres long. The visitors can see about the third part of the galleries, seven large halls open the way to discover the exuberant and fabulous riches of subterranean sceneries.
"An art gallery in a palace of nature."
In order to verify that the organisation of the tours and the number of visitors are adequate as far as the safety of rock art is concerned the CNRS subterranean laboratory at Moulis in the Ariège region associated with the Géologie-Environnement-Conseil private office studies the underground environment of the Pech Merle cave."
link: http://www.quercy.net/pechmerle/english/introduction.html
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
This Week
This week, the week of the Paris Air Show! For all the airplane nuts (real WING-NUTS) this is the week that was for them. I went to it with Ted and Kelly back in 2003 just as the canicule was beginning to rear it's ugly head. We were hot, damned hot and stayed that way through many grueling hours on trains, buses and taxis getting TO Le Bourget in NE Paris and it was even hotter coming back! We did it in ONE day, not recommended folks...too much to see and too much travel involved in each days attendance to make that make sense...but we did it nonetheless. Was it fun? Did we see a shitload of aircraft on the ground and in the air doing their thing? YES we did but not without gallons of sweat and enough basic discomfort to make the whole day a real bust. This year would be fine as the weather is mild and slightly overcast pretty much everywhere including Paris suburbs. Go if you can, worth it! Really worth it!
Off to Bordeaux this weekend for a few days exploring that little known region (to us), with it's beaches and vineyards and castles it will be a great break from the work here at Maison Blanche. Kelly has been sanding the gate we bought back in 2009 and painting it a lovely shade of gloss black. There are literally 100's of feet of surface in all these curly-q's and spiky things. She has the patience and determination to get it done.
I'm still perplexed and dismayed at my lack of progress in repairing the @#$$@#! electrical failure. We now are functioning on a string of heavy duty extension cords and need to pay attention to everything we do electrically as we could blow fuses or worse. Frankly, that shock I got back in the summer of 2009 in my kitchen did me for another fine electrocution scenario. These circuits are divided by PHASE, not just one coming in and getting divided as in the US...but 3 phase power at the box with no real color code or written wiring diagram to go by for any part of the house. Not good! One very well could find HIMSELF across 2 phases at once if HE weren't extremely careful. That's ME I'm talking about!
Too, I've tried and tried to put up my Donkey Fair movies on YouTube and no can do...all fail either to have sound that is correct or they fail in the upload stage. Hmmmm this USED to work just fine. Such is progress.
Liz finally got the fine SFR 2G slow-speed sometimes connection to work from her dinner table. A bloody miracle I tell you! And she is not prepared for the trials and tribulations of the internet either I fear.
Many, too many pitfalls for all of us, especially with this lousy slow SFR connection! 2G sucks! No video for us! What a lie they told. So you say...well why didn't you just get the fine DSL connection from France Telecom poozie? It's fast and it works. Sure it does then you get the bills for the line you are actually USING and another for one you never had as well as one you cancelled months before when you sold your other house....and THEN POOZIE...you TRY to straighten out the mess why still being billed each month for services you don't have and haven't ever had OR used...and this goes on for months and months! Then they say they have an English telephone help service. Really? Is that what you call being passed on from one side of the @####@!@ FT house to the other enumerable times? That's all that resulted from that little interaction poozie, that's all. Is that enough reason to abandon good ol' France Telecom? You bet it is....at least this works and they bill correctly even if it runs in slo-mo 2G mode 80% of the time and not at all the other 20%! A better deal. AS better deal. Damn France Telecom anyway and SFR too while you're at it! A POX on their telephone circuits!
Ohhhhh NOT that poozie, not that! It's a bitch I tell you, a B-I-T-C-H!
Rant over for now....it certainly doesn't take me long to get going on that subject, does it? So we ventured to the Descheterie this morning to dispose of some massive amounts of clippings I had stuffed and stomped into a Poo-Bell (garbage can). They don't pick up GREEN matter here with the garbage. No they don't. So one has to either bag it (ce normale) or, like I did, cram it into a rather large plastic garbage can and place it ever so gently in the trunk of the car with the lid fastened down by 6 bungie cords and take the mess to the Descheterie (spelling issue here) (read as DUMP) outside of Lignieres about 2 miles along the road to Chateauef Sur Cher. So we did that, came back, picked up my pill bottles for my low supply levothroid pills and went off to the Pharmacy and got it filled...30 day supply for...Ta Da...Euro 2.50! Would have been $20 at Kaiser! Grrrrr.
Filled in and out in 5 minutes flat we went on to the Tire company by the Carefour store in St. Amand Montrond about 20 miles from here. We had our car thru the bi-annual inspection, yes it's mandatory! It failed on one point...the rear tires were square in spots. Not just a little bit either.
A LOT! So a pair of fine Michelin tires and a wheel alignment as well, plus, I'll do this one myself, a change of oil and the Glace'....Anti-Freeze. Oh, the tires weren't available today...tomorrow at 2:30pm they will be there...so we went for only an appointment. That...when deisel costs about 6 USD a gallon! Nice. I love France, I really do. The people are wonderful, the systems in place are complex and, at times, un-understandable. But I dearly love the place. It's beautiful too!
Off to Bordeaux this weekend for a few days exploring that little known region (to us), with it's beaches and vineyards and castles it will be a great break from the work here at Maison Blanche. Kelly has been sanding the gate we bought back in 2009 and painting it a lovely shade of gloss black. There are literally 100's of feet of surface in all these curly-q's and spiky things. She has the patience and determination to get it done.
I'm still perplexed and dismayed at my lack of progress in repairing the @#$$@#! electrical failure. We now are functioning on a string of heavy duty extension cords and need to pay attention to everything we do electrically as we could blow fuses or worse. Frankly, that shock I got back in the summer of 2009 in my kitchen did me for another fine electrocution scenario. These circuits are divided by PHASE, not just one coming in and getting divided as in the US...but 3 phase power at the box with no real color code or written wiring diagram to go by for any part of the house. Not good! One very well could find HIMSELF across 2 phases at once if HE weren't extremely careful. That's ME I'm talking about!
Too, I've tried and tried to put up my Donkey Fair movies on YouTube and no can do...all fail either to have sound that is correct or they fail in the upload stage. Hmmmm this USED to work just fine. Such is progress.
Liz finally got the fine SFR 2G slow-speed sometimes connection to work from her dinner table. A bloody miracle I tell you! And she is not prepared for the trials and tribulations of the internet either I fear.
Many, too many pitfalls for all of us, especially with this lousy slow SFR connection! 2G sucks! No video for us! What a lie they told. So you say...well why didn't you just get the fine DSL connection from France Telecom poozie? It's fast and it works. Sure it does then you get the bills for the line you are actually USING and another for one you never had as well as one you cancelled months before when you sold your other house....and THEN POOZIE...you TRY to straighten out the mess why still being billed each month for services you don't have and haven't ever had OR used...and this goes on for months and months! Then they say they have an English telephone help service. Really? Is that what you call being passed on from one side of the @####@!@ FT house to the other enumerable times? That's all that resulted from that little interaction poozie, that's all. Is that enough reason to abandon good ol' France Telecom? You bet it is....at least this works and they bill correctly even if it runs in slo-mo 2G mode 80% of the time and not at all the other 20%! A better deal. AS better deal. Damn France Telecom anyway and SFR too while you're at it! A POX on their telephone circuits!
Ohhhhh NOT that poozie, not that! It's a bitch I tell you, a B-I-T-C-H!
Rant over for now....it certainly doesn't take me long to get going on that subject, does it? So we ventured to the Descheterie this morning to dispose of some massive amounts of clippings I had stuffed and stomped into a Poo-Bell (garbage can). They don't pick up GREEN matter here with the garbage. No they don't. So one has to either bag it (ce normale) or, like I did, cram it into a rather large plastic garbage can and place it ever so gently in the trunk of the car with the lid fastened down by 6 bungie cords and take the mess to the Descheterie (spelling issue here) (read as DUMP) outside of Lignieres about 2 miles along the road to Chateauef Sur Cher. So we did that, came back, picked up my pill bottles for my low supply levothroid pills and went off to the Pharmacy and got it filled...30 day supply for...Ta Da...Euro 2.50! Would have been $20 at Kaiser! Grrrrr.
Filled in and out in 5 minutes flat we went on to the Tire company by the Carefour store in St. Amand Montrond about 20 miles from here. We had our car thru the bi-annual inspection, yes it's mandatory! It failed on one point...the rear tires were square in spots. Not just a little bit either.
A LOT! So a pair of fine Michelin tires and a wheel alignment as well, plus, I'll do this one myself, a change of oil and the Glace'....Anti-Freeze. Oh, the tires weren't available today...tomorrow at 2:30pm they will be there...so we went for only an appointment. That...when deisel costs about 6 USD a gallon! Nice. I love France, I really do. The people are wonderful, the systems in place are complex and, at times, un-understandable. But I dearly love the place. It's beautiful too!
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