Days on the Claise

Track Inspector's Draisine

2026-07-10T09:00:00.000+02:00

Here's a "what's that thing" that surprised me and it's a real curiosity: a zoomorphic track inspector's draisine from about 1845. I can't quite work out how you balance it on rails, maybe you always keep your feet on the ground? Why didn't they put another wheel on the other track? Wolf or dragon? So many questions.

The word "draisine" traces back to Karl Drais, the German inventor whose 1817 pedestrian "Laufmaschine" — pushed along by foot, with no pedals — became an unexpected fashion craze in Paris and London under the name vélocipède or dandy horse. The fad faded within a few years, but the name stuck.

The rail version came later and separately: in 1837, Franz Aloys Bernard in Vienna adapted the draisienne concept to run on rails. Both the road and rail versions honor Drais's name, even though the rail draisine was really a different invention built for a different purpose — track inspection and maintenance rather than recreation. In French all track inspection and maintenance rail vehicles are still called draisines.

A Pochette

2026-07-09T09:00:00.000+02:00

This is a much smaller "what's that thing?" than the past few days.

This is a pochette, a pocket violin from 1680 (ish). It was used by dancing instructors so that they could play a tune, and then pop the instrument in their pocket when demonstrating complicated steps.

The fiddle players amongst you may be interested to learn that it is tuned a third or fourth above standard, although the information sheet didn't say what the standard was likely to have been. You can bet it wasn't A= 440Hz.

This one is in the Bach Museum in Eisenach

The Pyramid of Couhard

2026-07-08T09:00:00.000+02:00

As we were driving into Autun two weeks ago we literally had a "what's that thing?" moment when we spotted something on top of a hill. The next day we drove up the hill to investigate.

What we had seen was the Pyramid of Couhard, also known as the Pierre de Couhard, a Gallo-Roman monument likely marking the tomb of a wealthy or prominent citizen of Augustodunum. Rising in a sort of pyramidal form, it was built using a core of rubble and mortar, and originally faced with cut stone. Much of the cut stone has eroded away over the centuries, leaving the rough inner masonry exposed. It stood within a larger necropolis that once extended along the slopes of the area, though most other traces of that burial ground have since disappeared.

The pyramid's unusual shape sets it apart from typical Roman funerary architecture in the region, prompting long-standing debate about its exact function and inspiration. This puts it on equal footing to the more local (to us) Cinq-Mars-la-Pile.

Canal Sans Eau

2026-07-07T09:00:00.000+02:00

A second "what's that thing?"

When we were travelling to Germany we spent a night in Troyes so we could visit the stained glass museum - we'd missed it in 2023 on our way up to Amsterdam.

I booked a Premiere Classe hotel just south of Troyes in an industrial area in the village of St Thibault. Looking at it on the map I spotted something. It needed investigation.

The Canal de la Haute-Seine was built in the 19th century to link Troyes with the wider French waterway network, and it had a short, difficult existence. Its planned extension upstream from Troyes toward Bar-sur-Seine was meant to eventually connect with the Canal de Bourgogne, but it was never finished, leaving a stretch known locally as the "canal sans eau" (canal without water). At Saint-Thibault, the unfinished Villebertin lock is a relic of this abandoned ambition.

As you can see, it's incongruous.

The Landungsbrücken Pegelturm

2026-07-06T09:00:00.000+02:00

I may have to start a new series of blogs called "what's that thing".

The Landungsbrücken Pegelturm, part of Hamburg's St. Pauli Landungsbrücken pier complex, is a tower which features a striking green copper dome and a clock. It also has a numerical display to measure and show the Elbe River's water level. It was constructed in the early 20th century and is a recognizable landmark along the harbor promenade. The tower historically served a practical maritime function: sailors and dockworkers relied on its readings to track tides and navigate the busy Port of Hamburg safely, since the Elbe is tidally influenced despite being a river. Today, the tower is attached to what is a rather good restaurant serving traditional German brewhouse food: appropriately, because it's Hamburg's only brewery.

We had a good (and, huge) lunch there, and it wasn't until we were leaving the restaurant I noticed the tidal gauge.

Planning a Route

2026-07-03T09:00:00.000+02:00

For the past goodness knows how many years I have been our household's "Officer in Charge: Holidays". As OIC:H I take my role seriously.

I have written previously about Organic Maps*. It is my first port of call when planning a trip. When I watch TV, listen to a podcast or read a book my phone is by my side, and I mark on Organic maps the locations of places I want to see. If Susan mentions somewhere, that goes on the list too.

Places I want to see - not an exhaustive list

When I need to go somewhere I check the "Places to visit" folder on my phone and check what I might be passing on the way. I then sketch out a route, plotting deviations to interesting places along the way. For instance: Joigny was not too far from the route I was plotting to Hamburg, so my route was tweaked to make it a point of interest and lunch stop. I then split the route into daily sections of not too far.

My planned route to and from Hamburg, colour coded for each day.

So that we don't deviate too far from the plan, I then bookmark overnight stays, lunch stops, and waypoints. These might be picnic areas, motorway junctions, points of interest, or public toilets that get good reviews. These get plotted as lat/long into the madwoman in the dashboard (the GPS in the Cactus) as and when they're needed. As the maps in the car are now 5 years out of date, this is important. We occasionally find ourselves on roads the car doesn't know about, and this could lead to serious gettinglostedness if not planned on an up to date map.

All the other places now added in.

Then it's just a case of following orders (except when I don't) and not making too many "Hey! There's a brown sign, let's follow it" decisions. We usually manage to restrict ourselves to one or two of those a day. The only time this fails is roadworks: we then follow deviation signs until we're either back on our planned track, or the car GPS comes up with a better idea.

No domestic arguments, very few as hoc discussions about what road we should be taking, and just the right amount of randomness. That's my idea of a holiday route.

*The first link is why I use it, the second is how.

https://daysontheclaise.blogspot.com/2023/12/mapping-on-go.html

https://daysontheclaise.blogspot.com/2023/12/using-organic-maps.html

The Return of the Vicar

2026-07-02T09:00:00.000+02:00

Four years ago I bought an electric bike. I rode pretty consistently for a couple of summers, then in 2023 I received my cancer diagnosis. I continued riding, but less, because I was worried about aggravating it. Then I had the operation and it all stopped.

So the bike went away for a couple of years, the battery was put to sleep, and I tried to ignore the fact that I even owned it. There was always "next summer" which almost instantly turned into "it's too hot", "it's raining", "it's too windy" or any number of excuses.

On Monday evening I looked at the weather forecast and it was none of those things. In fact, it looked like it was going to be a day made for cycling. I messaged Tim B, he said he be here at 8:00am, and then I couldn't wriggle out of it. I charged the battery a located all the cycling accoutrements: helmet, shorts, bag of bits, phone holder, and the like.

True to his word, Tim was here at 8:00 on Tuesday morning, and guess what? I really enjoyed it. It was a very social cycle, not fast or far, but about the distance I needed to go for my first ride.

Ignore the "longest ride ever" thing. Strava has forgotten I used to go further

Yesterday I rode alone, and rode just a little too far, so today I will be taking it easier. I cycled almost to Tournon St Martin, looking for a convenient way of getting onto the Voie Verte to come home

It was only when I started writing this that I discovered that Tuesday was exactly the fourth anniversary of buying The Vicar. What a coincidence.

The Vicar at Chaumussay this morning

Jean Fouquet, 15C painter and illuminator

2026-07-01T09:00:00.020+02:00

Jean Fouquet was born, we think, around 1420, and died before 1480. Where he spent his youth and where he trained as a painter is uncertain. He may have frequented Parisian workshops. We do know for sure that he travelled to Italy. This prolonged trip put him in contact with the most innovative artists of the Medici's Florence, and profoundly influenced his artistic style. On returning to France around 1450 he set up in Tours, putting his talents at the service of the City, and working for the local high clergy, and the most high ranking members of the Royal Court, such as the Treasurer, Etienne Chevalier, and the Chancellor Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins.

Pieta by Fouquet in the church at Nouans les Fontaines.

His relationship with the King, Charles VII, is not clear, but he does paint a remarkable portrait of him. Later, in 1475, under Louis XI, he became the official royal portraitist.

Copy of a portrait of King Charles VII by Fouquet. The original is in the Louvre.

Famous in his own lifetime, Fouquet then fell into obscurity, until his rediscovery in the 19th century with the resurgence of interest in medieval art by the Romantics. In France and Germany his work as a painter and illuminator is brought to prominence and he features in a Paris exhibition of 1904. These days he is considered one of the major figures of his time in European art.

Verdant Preuilly

2026-06-30T09:00:00.000+02:00

I am amazed. After a week of extreme temperatures (we're talking temperature not dropping much below 24°C, or 75° in the old money) Preuilly-sur-Claise is looking really green.

We've had some storms the past 2 days, but I wouldn't have thought it was enough to freshen everything up this much. Of course, it helps that the first photo is taken on the river.

These photos were taken on a 3km walk yesterday morning. I'm pleased to discover that my walking strength appears to be returning, at last.

Added Insulation

2026-06-29T09:00:00.000+02:00

Although we now have double glazing on all our windows, we don't have shutters on a couple of them. This means that although outside heat doesn't make it into our house, direct sunlight through windows can cause a rapid increase in temperature. This is called solar gain and is not a good thing.

In 2019 I wrote about hanging my old beach towel over the back door, an approach that works well, and which we still use. This still leaves the problem of the windows in the kitchen.

I now have a new approach, which involves aluminium kitchen foil. All you need do is tear off a suitable length of tinfoil, wet the back of it, and apply to the outside of the glass. And that's it. Works superbly, and if you're a little careful you can remove the foil at night and reuse it time and time again. The water tension holds the foil in place in even quite high winds.

Even this slipshod application was massively effective, but by the time I had got outside I had already spent too much time in the heat, and couldn't be bothered making it look good.

Of course, as soon as I worked this out it has cooled down for a couple of days, but I have no doubt I'll be applying it again within a week.

Autobahn

2026-06-26T09:00:00.000+02:00

While we're suffering from the heat (42°C is enough to stop all activity) I thought I'd look back at our recent holiday, starting with some reflections on driving on the Autobahn:

Of all the things that concerned me a month ago, top of the heap was how I would cope driving on a road where everyone is doing a million billion kilometres an hour. I need not have worried.

Despite their reputation, our experience of the Autobahn is that people tend to drive at between 110 and 120 kilometres an hour. This is slower than their French counterparts on the Autoroutes, and comes without the obligatory French tailgating and cutting in. We saw a couple of high speed heroes, but we usually caught them up at the next traffic jam. I was only hooted at once for not getting out the way quickly enough (i.e. not cutting up a truck), and that was by a Belgian car. Otherwise it appears to be that the slower cars hold the moral high ground.

The place where the French roads score is road surface: some of the Autobahns had decidedly ropey surfaces, lane closures, contraflows, and there were a lot of roadworks. Many of the roads we travelled were only two lanes each way, with trucks restricted to the right lane. This meant that if we wanted to just cruise along we tucked in behind a truck doing our preferred speed and stayed there.

They are boring, though. Real concentration is necessary to avoid drifting off, especially when it's hot and there's nothing to look at besides the road surface. Although good road surfaces were pretty rare, so even then there was quite a lot to look at.

One novelty we encountered was the electric highway system. We travelled beneath the wires on the experimental stretch just south of Lubeck. Unfortunately we didn't see any vehicles using it, so you'll have to content yourself with this video.

The Tree(s) of Jesse

2026-06-25T09:00:00.000+02:00

Because I did a lot of research before our recent Jaunt up to Germany I was able to plan in a number of surprise stops for Susan.

The Tree of Jesse is one of Christian art's most enduring images — a genealogical tree rising from the belly of sleeping figure of Jesse, father of King David, bearing the ancestors of Christ upon its branches, crowned by the Virgin and Child. There are Trees of Jesse all over the place, including two in Issoudun that Susan wrote about eleven years ago.

We stopped in Joigny for lunch, but also so we could look at a 16th-century (1530) half-timbered house which has a Tree of Jessie on its wooden façade, with sinuous branches spreading up to the triangular gable, adorned with grape clusters and fifteen figures.

In Troyes, the Cité du Vitrail (stained glass) museum has a 16th-century Tree of Jesse from Laines-aux-Bois as a centrepiece of its collection.

They're like London buses. You wait ages for one, then two come along at once.

Home to the Heat

2026-06-24T09:00:00.000+02:00

We arrived home at about 5pm on Monday evening, and home was like an oven - close to 40°C. Sleeping was difficult, the minimum temperature overnight was 26°C, which is far too hot to sleep properly. At midnight last night it was 30°.

Yesterday we got 42 ° at about 6pm, and one again it didn't really cool down overnight. It doesn't look like we're getting real relief any time soon.

The weather has been described as a "widespread, lasting and intense" heatwave. Hundreds of heat records were broken yesterday, with temperatures exceeding the 43°C mark. It was the hottest day ever recorded in France since records began in 1947.

Météo-France announced that 58 departments will be on heatwave red alert today, four more than yesterday.

I'm starting to miss the cold and drizzle of Hamburg.

The Great Flood

2026-06-23T09:00:00.001+02:00

Because we are surrounded by rivers, including major ones like the Creuse, this area has been subject to some significant flooding over the centuries. One such was the flood of 23 June 1848, which prompted Charles Mourault to compose a poem and inscribe it on a stone in a wall overlooking the river at Baratière, a hamlet outside of Yzeures sur Creuse. Here's my rough translation.

The Creuse at Baratière.

"Here is where the dreaded scourge stopped that God made us go through in these deplorable days. The water rose without end and everyone left their refuge. Which in that moment look like islands. The fertile plain, the most precious treasure, offers us nothing more than the shadow of death. The people gather on this sad shore, lamenting their fate, saying what slavery. The river ressembled the foaming sea which in its expanse had become so threatening. Oh peoples who are the successors of this century may God protect you from such a great misfortune."

Flooding like this is relatively rare, but when it comes, causes significant damage. Nowadays the municipalities involved will declare a disaster (Fr. catastrophe) and everyone affected is guaranteed cover by their insurance.

Thanks to Bruno Guitton who showed me the inscription, and to Alain Chartier who sent me a transcription and details of the inscription's date and author.

2026 Holiday Day 20

2026-06-23T09:00:00.000+02:00

Autun - Preuilly-sur-Claise

A strange day full of bittersweet memories.

Our accommodation in Autun was a convent that is now a retirement home - that rents out appartements.

Autun has a lot of very old buildings. Even if the facade looks newish.

The church is enormous and obvious.

More Burgundian roofs. This was the military college.

We stopped for a roadside picnic lunch, but it was so hot (40°) that we sat in the car. My dad loved custard tarts, so this was the obvious choice of dessert.

Distance travelled 316km, Cumulative totals:

2026 Holiday Day 19

2026-06-22T09:00:00.000+02:00

Mulhouse - Autun

A hot day: 28°C in the shade before 9:00am, reaching 38 by 2:00pm. There was a nasty road accident just outside Besançon which added a very hot hour to our day.

TGV001, beside the autoroute just outsides Mulhouse. The shape may be familiar, but this was gas turbine powered.

Burgundian roofs

The Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senons. We didn't stop, it was too hot and it appeared there was a special event on

Vineyards just south of Beaune

Distance travelled 336km

Cumulative total 3349km @ 56km/h

Ernest Brand 1932 - 2026

2026-06-22T07:28:19.047+02:00

Ernest Thomas Brand, was born on the 21st of November 1932 at Hackney Hospital, London, England, the son of Robert Percy Brand and Marie Therese Brand (nee Schlitt). He was a twin, but his brother died of meningitis in 1937 as a result of a fall.

Dad was an inspiration to me, a brave man who took his young family from London to Australia, an absolute optimist and not afraid of really hard work. His willingness to put himself in that sort of situation with good cheer and enthusiasm gave us the belief that we could also make changes in our lives, and his encouragement in our various mad projects and ability to understand what we were trying to do gave us the confidence not to give up when the going got tough.

Ernest Thomas Brand 12/11/1932 - 22/6/2026

A good man.

2026 Holiday Day 18

2026-06-21T09:00:00.000+02:00

Eight years ago we were in Mulhouse and visited the Cité de l'Automobile. This year it was time to do the train equivalent.

We stayed a couple of hours at the museum, but even though it is air-conditioned it was still mighty warm. We retreated to our accommodation which is smaller but really effectively air-conditioned.

2026 Holiday Day 17

2026-06-20T09:00:00.000+02:00

Rothenburg aub der Taber - Mulhouse

We started with stuff on a stick at the Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim, but only in the car park. It would take 6 hours we didn't have to do the place justice.

MIG23

Foreground: Hunting Percival P.66 Pembroke

Middle: Martin MGM-1 Matador, the first operational surface-to-surface cruise missile

Background: Concorde

Vertol (VFW) H-21C Shawnee

It's not all aircraft on a stick in the car park: U 17 German submarine, 1973.

Neuf-Brisach is a fortified town in Alsace. The town was intended to guard the border between France and the Holy Roman Empire and, subsequently, the German states. It was built after the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 that resulted in France losing the town of Breisach, on the opposite bank of the Rhine. When that happened the french speaking population voted with their feet and moved to the new town designed by Vaubin.

Distance covered 417km

Cumulative total 3013km@ 56km/h

2026 Holiday Day 16

2026-06-19T09:00:00.000+02:00

Rothenburg - Shrozberg - Rothenburg

The church my great grandmother was baptised in, Shrozberg.

The St. Anna Chapel in Mulfingen

The brightly painted altar is designed as a family tree style piece dedicated to Saint Anne.

The Protestant parish church of St. Bonifatius located in Oberstetten. It was locked when we got there

The Herrgottskirche is in Creglingen. We didn't photo the outside. It contains multiple altarpieces.

The masterpiece is the Marian altarpiece which stands in the middle of the nave and is one of Tilman Riemenschneider's best-known works.

The altarpiece is 9.20 meters high and 3.68 meters wide. It consists of the predella, the central shrine, two side wings and the tracery.

Distance covered 100km

Cumulative total 2596km@ 54km/h

2026 Holiday Day 15

2026-06-18T09:00:00.000+02:00

A big day: cold war borders, a huge music shop, and one of the prettiest towns in Germany.

Point Alpha overlooks the Fulda Gap, which is where it was expected the Soviet invaders would come. You can see an Easy German observation point in the background, facing off against the more obvious NATO observation tower.

A restaurant for a music shop. Excellent food, excellent value

(Photo from Thomann's website)

Temptation

Rothenburg aub der Taber. The first photo is the pension where we are staying.

Distance covered 336km

Cumulative total 2496km@ 55km/h

Reedmace versus Bulrush

2026-06-17T09:00:00.005+02:00

Reedmace Typha latifolia (Fr. Massette) is the plant with the brown cylindrical seedheads that grows on the edge of ponds. It is called Cattail in North America, Cumbungi in Australia, and often, everywhere, now called Bulrush. But it is a reed, not a rush. Rushes are a different family.

Reedmace on the village pond (Fr. plan d'eau) in Preuilly.

The 'bul' of Bulrush means 'big', and true bulrush is exactly that -- a gigantic rush.

Bulrush on the edge of the étang (dam) at le Louroux. This is a nature reserve.

The confusion started in the 19th century, with mass produced illustrated Bibles. For some reason Moses was depicted amongst the reedmace. Ironically, the plant the illustrators should have been depicting was actually a Papyrus.

Reedmace.

In prehistoric times the rhizomes of Reedmace were eaten, in hunter-gatherer societies over 30 000 years ago. The plant was abundant and full of starch. In the 19th century there are accounts of it being used as low quality forage for horses in France, and pigs apparently adored the rhizomes. The leaves could also be dried and woven as chair seats. In modern times they are sometimes grown in natural water purification systems and the plant can be seen on the edges of many fresh water ponds.

A variety of plants, including both bulrush (left) and reedmace (right), in a phytopurification water filtration station at the Moulin de Malicorne (a private home).

Bulrush Schoenoplectus lacustris (Fr. Jonc des chaisiers) was once abundant and much valued as the raw material for cords, woven or plaited mats, wall coverings and chair seats. Harvesting the plants, processing and transforming them was an important artisanal skill. Nowadays, those skills are lost and the plant is rare. Where it is present it is generally protected.

Rush matting at the Chateau d'Azay le Rideau.

Today the buzz word you will see associated with bulrushes is 'paludiculture'. That's when peat wetland is used as a cultivated carbon sink. Drones are used to distribute the seed of reedmace, bulrush and other plants that can be used commercially if peatbog is exploited. The fluffy reedmace seed heads are harvested to be used as insulation in 'down' jackets, and the bulrush is being used in construction materials. Unfortunately both plants are being referred to by journalists as 'bulrush' so it can be confusing.

Bulrush on the edge of an étang at Chambon, on a ZNIEFF (site of special scientific interest).

2026 Holiday Day 14

2026-06-17T09:00:00.000+02:00

Hamburg to Eisenach. Bach and Eeemers. (I could have said Bach to Beemers to be alliterative, but that definitely would have been wrong, and the first car is a Dixi, anyway.)

Distance covered 374km (plus about 200km in Hamburg & Lubeck)

Cumulative total 2160km@ 55km/h

What To Do With a Colony of Bees or Wasps

2026-06-16T09:00:00.007+02:00

We have honey bees Apis mellifera living in a crevice between our attic and bedroom, and another colony living above our garage. We have social wasps Vespula sp living in a crevice in the wall above our back door. What are we doing about it? Nothing. And here's why:

The wasps and the bees don't have an amical relationship. When individual bees get old and start staggering around the courtyard the wasps are right there to 'clean up'. But neither wasps nor bees are interested in us, and they rarely venture inside the house. In both cases they installed themselves before we realised what was going on. Then it's too late. Ours is a very typical situation, and luckily in both cases the insects have chosen places where they can just get on with things undisturbed by us. Really the only time social insect colonies need to be moved on or eradicated is when they move into awkward places like chimneys and the space between windows and shutters. Fortunately bumble bees rarely make nest site choices that bring them into conflict with man, but social wasps (paper wasps, 'yellow jackets' and the like), hornets and honey bees quite often do. It doesn't help that people are scared of them, a few people are dangerously allergic to them, and your idea of an awkward place might not coincide with mine.

A swarm of Honey Bees moving in to the gap between our bedroom and the attic.

Removing colonies alive is possible, but messy and expensive. Your house insurance might cover it if you are lucky. So most removals are done at the expense of the lives of the insects and they are poisoned before the nest is removed. To do this legally in the case of honey bees you need to establish there is a genuine safety risk for people. A good professional pest controller should mostly refuse to eradicate colonies.

My apiarist friend Bernard removing a colony of Honey Bees Apis mellifera (Fr. Abeilles domestiques) from a window.

So now you are asking 'Why remove the nest if the insects are dead?' Well, a colony of dead larvae is an easy target for other predatory insects. An abandoned store of honey is easy work for other honey bees to rob. They don't know it's poisoned, they will be poisoned, and their colony that they take the bounty back to will be poisoned in their turn. It is not legal to contaminate the food chain and so the entire nest needs to be removed to prevent it being robbed.

European Wasps Vespula germanica (Fr. Guêpe germanique).

You would be mistaken to think that blocking access to the nest is sufficient to protect the food chain. It's virtually impossible to identify and effectively block all the possible access holes. I know it would be at our place, with its crumbling mortar, decaying timber and worn stone walls. Added to that, with the current cycle of drought and flood the building will move and gaps will appear. Once one bee or wasp has found the free food, the whole of their colony will arrive to collect it within days.

One of the wasps preying on an old dying Honey Bee in our courtyard.

For what to do about a swarm of honey bees ie when the colony is out in the open looking for a new home but not yet installed, read my blog post: What to do About a Swarm of Bees.

2026 Holiday Day 13

2026-06-16T09:00:00.000+02:00

The Hanseatic city of Lubeck. They did like their bricks.