Progress – and an island of staggering beauty
For the French, the second week in July is officially the start of the annual holidays, but to me, it seems as though summer has been going on for months.
It must be the latitude or the quality of the light – once the dark, chill days of February are behind us, Spring begins in the Cotentin. The skies lighten, the evenings stretch out, and – when the clouds hold off – we get 12 good hours of sunshine every day and if we’re lucky, a bit of warmth.
I was glad of the clouds earlier in the year when repointing; now, every day of good weather means faster and faster progress. First fix plumbing and electrics have been installed, and we’ve broken up the courtyard and laid the necessary pipes and cables to serve the needs of a contemporary home.
Inside, we’ve poured concrete on the ground floor so it feels less like a cave and more like a habitation. The whole house seems to lighten somehow – a damp-proof membrane has been laid over the grit and bedrock, and the residual damp from years of neglect will disperse slowly from the inside out, now that Nettie’s façade is fully breathable.
Clean and clear (relatively speaking)
In the attic bedroom, work has started to insulate the roof, and a mechanical ventilation system is in place to ensure that air circulates around the house drawn from the outside; essential now that Nettie will have double glazing. While all that insulation is a wonderful thing, French building regulations insist that modern houses are also properly aired so you’re not living in a hermetically sealed box.
One day, we'll watch the Bastille Day fireworks from here
One of the problems of this wonderful weather, is that everyone wants to play, including me. I’ve allowed myself a couple of forays on the water at the local sailing school, but really I’m longing to pack a rucksack and take flight.
I can feel it from Stéphane too and his charming daughter, Eva, who is working as his stagière (or intern) this summer. Eva’s a rider, and an extremely competent one too, by reputation; she won’t be loving this endless summer spent on a building site.
Still, she and I are making progress in the roof; it’s been insulated with Rockwool and we’re installing tongue and groove in the gaps between the rafters; it’s hot work up there under the eaves but the room is taking shape.
It’s not all been work however; this week we allowed ourselves a few days off to visit Alderney, one of the Channel Islands.
I’ve long planned to visit. An artist I admire, Andy Goldsworthy, used it as the setting for an installation of “stones”; ephemeral clay sculptures that are dotted around the coastal path. The works were placed there around five years ago and they’ve duly decayed, but we tracked around the shoreline on a blisteringly warm day and admired the remains.
An Alderney stone
I’d visited Jersey and Guernsey before (and wasn't sure I liked them, natural beauty aside, too much conspicuous wealth) but Alderney was another thing entirely.
I was completely unprepared for the staggering beauty of this island, hanging just off the French coast like a jewel.
As we left Dielette, a thick mist cloaked France and the Atlantic alike; a chorus of foghorns heralded us into port at Braye. Yet within a matter of minutes of our arrival the cloud lifted and what a sight; mile after mile of pure white sandy beaches, half-moons of loveliness lapped by sparkling turquoise sea and littered with exotic shells (and not a trace of plastic), a cornucopia of wildlife from oystercatchers to gannets, butterflies and bees, wild flowers and all around the sights and sounds of deepest summer.
Not motorbikes or cars or noisy pubs but just summer like it used to be in England, before summer became just another commodity; an Aperol spritz here, a music festival there, a four-hour traffic jam to visit a beach jam-packed with other tourists or a hideously expensive Michelin-starred lunch, gobbling down lobster, no doubt caught elsewhere.
A little mist lingers over strands of lovely beaches
Just some weeds...
No-one papped here but the wildlife
For supper, we feasted on fish and chips down a cobbled alley – a treat for our Parisian companion – before heading back to the ferry and home to France.
As we left, an Indian woman in a pink sari wafted past, clearly at home, yet oddly incongruous in this British island that time forgot. Perhaps she feels as we do; Brexit Britain is no longer home, and we’ll live, from now on, exiled, anchored on the coast of France or marooned on a fabulously beautiful island, strangers in a foreign land.
