Alane

I've just spent the day in the garden and I ache in every muscle. Not gardening but feeding 150mm beams into a planer thicknesser to even them up to make the housings for window frames in my Normandy barn conversion. The beams weigh a ton (not literally). I bought a 1500W Brico Depot 300mm thicknesser about 2 years ago and it is fine for planks and beams up to 100mm. With the 150mm beams it is very difficult to get the height of the roller stands feeding the timber into the machine spot on and the feeder tables deflect under the load so it takes many feeds to take off the required thickness. The machine looks similar to the Axminster product so I suspect there is a sweatshop in China making machines for all Western outlets. My machine is generally fine. I'm sure a 3 phase workshop machine would do a better job. It is VERY noisy - I was waiting for the neighbours to complain today but maybe I didn't hear them as I was wearing ear defenders. I bought a load of green oak planks and posts from a supplier in Berkshire on e-bay a couple of years ago and it has been air drying in the back garden since. The wood ripples and warps as it dries so definitely wait until it has dried before planing. The planks have come up really well in the thicknesser and I'm very pleased. 100mm post were also fine but the 150mm posts have some black marks where the rollers have struggled to pull through the heavy timber - these will sand off easily. To be fair this work verges on abuse of the machine although it is advertised as being suitable for 150mm timber. Chris - I'm not going to have enough timber to finish so I would be interested in kiln dried oak.  

 Lime putty - not found it in France but maybe I'm not looking in the right places. Oak timber framing pegs. Steel and aluminium manhole covers - cheaper in Wickes.

Dick At the time of purchasing the ten tickets you will not need to specify journey times. Individual journey times can then be booked either online or by phone. According to the rules journeys need to be booked 24 hours in advance but I've found they can be booked by phone on the day of travel - even while we're travelling down to Folkestone. I only had a problem once with someone who refused to book at such short notice but it only needed a bit of smarming to get them to do so. It is not, however, possible just to turn up at the terminal and book. Once a booking is made it can be amended, by phone, right up to, and even after, the time of travel. The number of Frequent Traveller tickets are limited so it is risky to wait until the last minute to book at popular times although I've found that it is never a problem three or four days in advance. This became more of a problem last year so I don't know if Eurotunnel are gradually tightening the restrictions on the number of Frequent Traveller tickets.

We frequently travel to our house between Pont Audemer and Lisieux via the tunnel so not quite the same route as to the Caen area but not too far away. On a good run it takes us 2:35 from house to tunnel and almost never over 2:45 unless we encounter a blocked road or other serious problem - the distance is 180 miles. That is travelling at the legal limit all the way on the Autoroute but holdups are rare and traffic generally light. The exception is the A13 towards Rouen on a Sunday afternoon/evening which can be very congested and I suspect the stretch past Deauville will be tricky at that time. In the summer the telepeage doofer is indispensable as there can be delays at the peage. Travelling to Caen it would probably be quicker to avoid Rouen and take the A29 via the Pont Normandie (I agree - it is a beautiful structure and worth the detour) but if travelling through Rouen there are routes which are fairly pain free which I think have been described by others but I can post if it helps. Last year we made 12 return journeys via the tunnel between March and October. We frequently go for a long weekend travelling out Thursday evening straight after work and back Sunday night. If we leave Buckinghamshire at 5:30pm we can be in bed in France around midnight or just after if we get a clear run. In winter we tend only to make one or two standard weekend trips and take advantage of the special offers on BF and travel Portsmouth Caen. The £39 fare only applies off peak - late afternoon and evening to France and morning and early afternoon back to the UK. We usually travel to France in the evening so no problem there. We never get a £39 fare on the return journey as we leave late afternoon to get a crossing around 8:30pm. For most summer weekends that means a fare on the return leg of £69 and £59 at other times. The service on the Tunnel is not what it was up until 2001/2002. Financial problems have meant a reduction in the number of trains that run with often only 1 per hour at quiet periods and even fewer between midnight and 5am. That said if we travel out from the UK in the evening the check in is usually rapid with short queues and it isn't unusual to board a train within minutes of driving to the marshalling area. The frequent traveller tickets are flexible and in the last couple of years we've never had a problem getting a shuttle earlier than the booked crossing if we arrive earlier. Conversely if we are seriously delayed on the M25 travelling to the Folkestone terminal and arrive very late we are then into the period of 1 train per hour and it always seems that we've just missed a crossing and have to wait an hour. Staff reductions have meant that they have installed automated check in devices that result in severe delays at busy times with long queues to check in. It only takes one traveller to have a ticket problem, not understand the instructions or for a machine to run out of printout for the delays to be frustrating.  We have found that it is not unusual to queue for 30 minutes and sometimes much longer at the check in. Experience here varies and some other frequent travellers report few problems but we tend to come home on a Sunday night which I believe is their busiest period. We have found that it is necessary to arrive in plenty of time to catch the booked crossing at busy times because arriving late can mean being allocated to the next available space two or three hours later. It's no fun sitting for that length of time in the car park as we find there is little to attract us into the terminal building. That said, one point in there favour is that if the check in queues are the reason for the late arrival at check in they usually allocate us to the booked crossing, even if it has already left so that we can then get the next available crossing. Overall we have experienced serious (over 1 hour) delays on 1 in 3 crossings back from France but again others report never having a problem so it is obviously the luck of the draw. The most common cause of serious delay, other than long queues at check in is if there has been a train breakdown in the tunnel when it can take them hours to clear the backlog. We could of course choose to travel back at another, quieter, time but in general that would mean effectively losing a day in France as we find that if we plan to leave earlier that the whole of the final day is spent preparing to leave whereas if we leave at 5-6pm that isn't the case - just one of life's mysteries. Another alternative would be Speed Ferries but my wife suffers from sea sickness so we have discounted that route. Eurotunnel seem to be getting to the end of the negotiations to reduce their debt. If they succeed they should be in a position to start showing a profit so perhaps we can expect to see some investment to improve the service. Overall we tend to find the journey from Calais to Normandy quite relaxing and don't feel overly tired by the trip - even after all these years there is still the sense of anticipation as we make the journey to France. When we first purchased, back in 1998, I was working stupid hours, weekends and no holidays, and we used to do day trips when I could snatch a day off, up at 3:30 down to the Tunnel and in Normandy by late morning, leave in the late evening and back home at 1 or 2am. The ageing process means that I'm not up to that any more. We have a diesel powered car with 212,000 miles on the clock so low fuel costs (especially in France) and no concerns about depreciation, which means that the high  mileage on the trip isn't of much concern. On that basis, for us, the Tunnel is a good option even with the irritating problems.    

The beer bellied drunkards belching in the middle of the night won't be outside these cabins - they'll be in the cabin next to me. I seem to be a magnet for these people. It's always a dead giveaway when we hear a group of blokes laughing in the cabin next door as the boat leaves harbour and then things go quiet. We know they've gone to the bar and will come back at 2 or 3am for a f*rting contest prior to lapsing into obliviion and snoring loud enough to set off the fire alarm.  

Don't get too confident. While staying in our caravan while converting the barn a few years ago in October the temperature dropped to -4 overnight and the butane most definitely did stop gassing off. These were 4.5kg cylinders rather than the larger ones normally used so ours would have cooled more rapidly. We had to resort to warming one bottle up inside while using the other one to run the heater until it cooled and stopped working and then swapping over.

I too thought the term "meet up group" was inelegant but it seems that there are "meetup" groups for all manner of activities www.meetup.com including Ghost Tracking Meetups, Pagan Meetups and even Beppe Grillo Meetups. I was wrong to label it a "meet up" group in the original post it should have been "meetup". It worked well for those of us who attended so we were content to put up with the name.

We've just been out to a "French Meet Up" group in the UK which was surprisingly enjoyable. It was held in a pub, The Oak in Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire. Good beer as well - a Fullers pub. I'd never heard of these groups before but they seem quite popular in London www.french.meetup.com . Looks like an American idea that has migrated to the UK. A local guy who has recently started to learn French has started the group and 10 people turned up on the first night ranging from beginners to near bilingual. We saw an advert he'd posted and as we had nothing else to do on a Monday night decided to go along. The idea is that people trying to learn/maintain their French get together and practice on each other with the more advanced helping the beginners and each other. It went surprisingly well - probably helped by the beer and the special French wine the landlord had put on for the event. A lot of grammatical errors no doubt but better than no practice at all. The organiser is hoping to build the numbers up so if anyone is interested the venue is advertised on the web site or PM me.

Catherine I've just looked at your pictures. That work is truly awful. Even worse is the fact that Lapeyre tried to tell you it was OK. Thanks for posting this - you give your location as  Normandy, can you give a general indication of area or even just branch of Lapeyre that you use as we purchase from the Lapeyre in Bernay and I had considered using their fitting service. AFter seeing this it would take a lot for me to do so but I guess that these fitters only work in their own locality.

Coppi You are correct - the FD lenses (manual focus) that you use on the F1 will not fit the EOS digital cameras but the EF auto focus lenses introduced around 20 years ago when Canon first brought in auto focus will - although there may be the odd exception. I still have my A1 and a range of FD lenses that I kept when I moved to digital but they just don't get used. The sensible thing to do is to sell but I can't bring myself to part with them. There are third party adaptors available to mount the FD lenses onto EOS bodies but they either don't allow focus to infinity or have a correction lens fitted which in general means quality is poor.  Canon made an adaptor when the EOS system was first introduced but it was for long focal length lenses and is very expensive (and hard to find) second hand.

I bought a pre-paid SIM in France - it seemed that as a non resident the monthly contracts were not available to me although I didn't press the point hard. These are also available on e-bay for below cost price and are presumably OK as the same sellers seem to flog a number of them over a period. Whichever option you go for make sure that you buy a SIM for a network that is good in the areas that you will be using the phone most often. Obvious I know, but we missed the fact that the Orange network was a bit iffy in the area of our house. A UK phone on roam will generally roam to any available network so you tend not to notice that one network is weak in a particular location whereas the French SIM will only use its home network. If you are using a phone from a UK network you will need to ensure that it is unlocked before you can use a French SIM. Someone told me that I could just put a French Orange SIM in my UK Orange phone - not true (at that time anyway) although I've found recently that very low cost phones from Orange UK may not be locked at all. The other thing to beware of if you go for a pre-pay option is that the credit expires quite quickly, sometimes after 1 week although generally a longer, depending on the value of the vouchers purchased.

If you already have a range of Canon EF lenses then I can recommend the 350D which is still in production despite the release of the 400D. I use both EF and EFS lenses on my camera with good results. There is a slight tendency to flare on the older lenses due to reflections from the sensor due to the sensor being much more reflective than film. The more modern lenses are designed to cope with this but I have only found this at all noticeable when shooting into the sun to take sunsets. Over time the magazine reviews seem to see-saw between Canon, Nikon, etc depending on recent releases but one of the UK Digital SLR Camera magazines has just reviewed a whole range of SLRs and basically made the point that you won't go far wrong with any of the cameras from the major manufacturers. If you are looking at something more upmarket then a colleague has the EOS5D and is also very impressed with it - she is a far more accomplished photographer than me and her photos are amazing. If you want to review a selection of pictures from different cameras then on www.flickr.com it is possible to select images based on the camera model used. Some of the pics are available at full resolution.

Yes I have to confess that it was. [:$] I'll avoid the obvious comment about the light at the end of the tunnel being that of an approaching train as I see that some of the creditors who did not agree the re-financing package are taking legal action.

If you are planning to source from Brico Depot I would suggest you buy the doors now and store them - BD will quite possibly change the line before you come to fit if you are planning an extended project. Alternatively BD will let you measure doors in stock to get the exact size if your timescale isn't too long.

Ford Likewise - if the page continues to be unavailable drop me an e-mail and I'll forward the document to you as I managed to save it.

I'm hoping that now Eurotunnel seem to see the light at the end of the tunnel as far as their finances are concerned that they will be able to make the investment needed to speed up clearance on arrival and perhaps even run a few more trains at busy periods.

This is my first attempt at posting a photo - so here goes. This is the view out of the window in St Come D'olt in the Lot Valley. [IMG]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/60/393141498_630b0177a6.jpg[/IMG]  

bjsliv Thanks for posting the link. A bit of a shame really but as other posters have said, on such a short route the ferry/tunnel is probably nearly as quick, except for those who live near Stansted and Deauville, and no opportunity for bringing across the toolbox, step ladders, planer-thicknesser, furniture, chainsaw etc in the hand luggage. Consequently it's probably not that surprising that the demand isn't very high. I know from my own thoughts that I'd seen it as being an option for visitors who we could pick up from St Gatien but not really much of an option for us.

I've heard that Ryanair have dropped the idea of flying to Deauville and the route isn't featured on their web site but I can't find any statement on the site one way or the other. Does anyone know what the situation is? Perhaps the Upper Crust in Deaville and surrounding area managed to squash the idea.

tj Many thanks - document found, saved and printed.

Simon I would be happy to complete the questionnaire.  

tj Do you have the link for the download please? I couldn't find it.

My father in law always said that France smelled of drains - the last time he visited was summer 1944! I need to put a vent pipe up through the roof - has anyone got any information on what the zinc/lead tiles are called that the pipe goes through and if they are available with the vent already attached - if that makes sense?

I still have the Pye transistor radio my parents gave me as a Christmas present in 1964 - or was it a Christening present? It still works and I listen to it in the garden although perhaps not for much longer if the proposals to phase out AM radio come to anything. I also still use a Quad 44/405 stereo amplifier set that I bought in the late 70's.

I found the tools for one man handling of boards from Screwfix invaluable - although I've not seen them in France and I'm not sure if Screwfix will deliver there now. One is essentially a hook with a handle for carrying and the other is a device which held lift the boards in place. Difficult to describe but links here - http://www.screwfix.com/app/sfd/cat/pro.jsp?id=82374&ts=38225 http://www.screwfix.com/app/sfd/cat/pro.jsp?cId=A335464&ts=38264&id=14453 Probably not for the pro but very useful for moving and placing boards singlehanded, or even double handed into a difficult location.