A Year at the Chateau

by Dick Strawbridge

  It started well, the drive was fine and I didn’t miss the turning. But when I stopped the car I realised that I was in a truly petrified state. It was so dark and without the lights and security of the car to calm me I was on my own with my babies … even the sound of an owl made me jump! I had a plan: to open the door while the kids were snoozing and then dash in with them both. So I left the kids in the car and, with my hands shaking, I put the key in the door, turned it and pushed. Nothing. Again I tried. Nothing. I started using my shoulder to push the door. Nothing. It is a huge door – to even think I could push it with my weight was hilarious. But I carried on. Full-body pushes. Nothing. Little body launches. Nothing.

  Then I started to hear Dorothy crying from the car. I can’t help but panic a little when the children cry. Then Arthur, who is a sensitive little soul and must have felt my anxiety, joined in and then he vomited all over himself and his car seat. I was at my wits’ end and grabbed the door handle with frustration. Finally, it opened. I dashed back to the car and, at this point it was one kid at a time because Arthur was covered in vomit. I ran with him first, with one eye on the car, just in case a wild boar tried to steal Dorothy, or something. Then I dashed to get Dorothy, keeping my eye on the château, just in case a wild cat, or a huge spider, tried to get into the house.

  We were all in – a bit smelly from the sick but in – and we headed upstairs to get clean and warm. Having the luxury of the new bath was unique. This was our forever bath, but like everything new I did not have everything to hand. Towels, bubble bath and cream were all needed – I even managed to find a rubber duck. Even though it was not perfect, it was very satisfying bathing the kids in their new home. It was still only around 6am, so after the bath I took the kids back to bed for some extra sleep. I lay cuddling both children in the darkness and tiredness took me through to first light. As we awoke, everything was perfect and our morning outing felt like a distant memory.

  I was away for over half of March on my first trip to make Dirty Rotten Survival for National Geographic. First I was off to the swamps of Louisiana, then it was to the wilds of Texas. After a childhood spent camping and exploring the countryside in Northern Ireland, twenty years travelling the world when I served in the army and a couple of decades of TV experience, I was not at all bothered by what I was about to do. I was much more concerned about the fact that Angela and the children were at our château without me. Throughout my train journey to Paris and after I checked in at Charles De Gaulle airport and was waiting to depart, I was writing in my notebook and trying to remember all I needed to tell Angela to make it a little easier.

  In the daylight everything is supposed to look better and it did for a while, until I rubbed my eyes and realised that the little heater keeping our room cosy had hatched tens of thousands of flies. Dopey flies that lingered making buzzing noises and then dropped and died. I had never ever seen anything like this.

  Luckily Dick was not on the plane yet, so he answered my call immediately. I could tell straight away that he had been worrying about me; family is everything to Dick.

  First, I told him about my troubles getting into the house. He went quiet – and to this day I’m still not sure if he was giggling or feeling guilty. After all, he’d forgotten to tell me that the door handle turns in the opposite direction. Of course, it made sense but at the time I was not amused. Then there was the small issue of the flies. He laughed. I told him off for laughing but I also knew partly it was my fault for insisting on moving into the house against Dick’s wishes.

  Told me off?! I got hell for not being sympathetic. To be fair, I was happy they were just flies – there are hornets the size of small birds in France.

  Dick said that they were cluster flies and they had been brought out of hibernation by the heat. There was no real solution as they were in our living space so we couldn’t use any sprays or fumes to kill them. I just had to be patient, wait for them to hatch and they would go away and we’d keep them out. So every day I would clear them up, but then the next day there were always more and more. I had convinced myself they were laying eggs that were hatching too. After a few days, I started getting used to the sound of buzzing as we slept, but it was not a nice experience.

  I did some research and came up with a plan: first I made a sweet sugar syrup solution, then I placed a bowl of it in the bedroom when the kids went to sleep, with a small side light plugged in a couple of inches above it. Every morning the syrup resembled fly soup. Then, slowly but surely, the number of flies started to diminish.

  The next problem was the temperature: it was the middle of winter and the house was bitterly cold. I knew how the heating system worked but I had never lit a fire before. Growing up we had radiators and one gas fire that was turned on with a button. The heating system was run off the gas-fired Rayburn and supported by the log burners. If the log burners produce enough heat to keep the thermal store satiated (it provides the hot water and the heat for the radiators), then no gas is used. I was to discover that we had a big problem – it was so cold the wood burners were not providing enough heat and the biggest bottle we could get (a measly 13 kilogrammes) only lasted a couple of hours.

  I foolishly took it for granted that everyone could light a fire. Is it not something we all learn as children? Actually, I grew up in an era when solid fuel (coal) was the normal way of providing heat and, as a youngster, it was unusual for the fire not to need some attention to stoke it up in the morning. The revelation that Angela had no idea how to rub two Boy Scouts together to generate heat and then how to use that heat to make fire and then how to harness it – well, let’s just say I hadn’t thought about it. Telling someone how to set and light a fire may sound trivial but there is a bit of a knack to log burners and that only really came to me when I was on the way to Charles de Gaulle as she told me about her morning …

  Dick had ensured there was lots of wood left for me. Putting the wood in the fires felt very exciting and then lighting it seemed rather easy too. I remember Dick saying, ‘Keep the door open at the bottom to ensure a bit of wind goes through to the wood.’

  The fires were not hot at this point, but I checked and it looked like a fire.

  ‘Once you are happy it’s going, close the door and add more wood when it gets low,’ Dick had said.

  It all seemed very easy, so I closed the bottom door and we went to get breakfast. Going to the boulangerie was still a novelty and a bit of an outing for the kids – I guess kind of like going to an old-fashioned sweet shop in the UK. It is just a five-minute drive from the château and is run by a lovely family that live in the village. It’s quite small and traditional in design with two counters – one for all the breakfast bits and another for all the patisseries. Then behind the counters there are stacks of baguettes and boules and a huge machine to coupe* your bread. It’s a feast for the eyes. On that morning, I got a fresh baguette and a couple of croissants, which would keep us all going – Arthur loved to suck croissants and if I tore a tiny end off for Dorothy it would keep her entertained for ages.

  After that it was back to the warm house, which was actually not so warm. To my disappointment, the fire had gone out. But I didn’t understand – there were still plenty of logs in there. A little scratch of the head and a search around for any clues later and I stood staring at a big bucket of what looked like rubbish. I realised then that this was my clue: Dick had told me to add something called kindling.

  For everyone that knows how to light a fire, it’s beyond simple. But for anyone who grew up in a city and didn’t pay much attention in Brownies, it’s not so simple until you learn. Dick was on his flight by now and I could not remember what he had said for the life of me, so I turned to the internet and discovered that kindling is quite an important part in a successful burn as it gives the logs enough time to light properly and to stay alight. My flames had just been superficial.

  I often say the best way to learn is to get things wrong, so round two was much better, so much so that
an hour or so later the logs were still burning. But it’s not a quick job. I remember thinking that the Bagliones must have had a full-time member of staff just to light the fires!

  That evening, I planned to bathe the kids as per our routine. If I’m honest I did not have a clue if enough heat was travelling up to the thermal store from the fires alone and it was cold so I turned a couple of radiators on hoping to take the edge off the chill. The gas bottles are an additional source of heat to the thermal store and a combination of this and the fires should be enough to keep us warm, assuming we only occupy a couple of rooms … But a few hours later, the radiators were still cold and, upon investigation, I discovered the gas bottle was empty.

  Changing the gas bottle was tricky. To do that I had to go outside, in the cold, with two-year-old Arthur and ten-month-old Dorothy in tow. And the full replacement gas bottle was very heavy. I managed to read Dick’s bad handwriting with instructions on how to change the bottle over but for the life of me I did not have the strength to get the new one on.

  So, it was back inside to the fire, and now I know it’s much easier to keep a fire going than to light a new one from scratch. There was enough hot water for a bath and a quick shower for me that first evening. I was just going to have to take every day as it came. I had thought that once the kids were in bed, I would be able to start work around the château but that would have to wait for tomorrow. For tonight, I would do some research for the interior of the house and that dream led me to sleep very quickly, well, at least until it was feeding time for Dorothy.

  Angela and I spoke a couple of times before I got on my flight and nothing was making it easier for me to go – from the flies that had appeared in biblical proportions to the struggles she was having lighting the fires. The fact that the gas bottles lasted a couple of hours rather than a day or two was a major logistical nightmare. We had a supply in but not enough, and how was Angela going to change the bottles with the children in tow?

  I was on the aeroplane and had just turned my phone off when there was a commotion at the front. The doors were about to be closed but a deputation of ground crew, security and an Air France flight attendant came down the plane and asked if I was Mr Strawbridge, and could I come with them please? I very quickly put two and two together. My hold bag was packed with all my survival kit for the series. In addition to the saws and half-dozen tools for making fires, including magnesium rods, waterproof matches and a fire pump, I had a collection of axes and knives a psychopath would be proud of. Plus a skinning set, including a bone saw, filleting knives, sheath knives of various sizes, a machete, lock knives and Leathermans. I even had a Ghurka kukri. It was going to be interesting talking my way out of this.

  So it was a real surprise when I got to the door to discover it was my other bag that was sitting there and it was making a humming noise. Everyone looked at me, and I looked at them. I then unzipped the bag and turned off my electric toothbrush.

  It was dawning on me, the way a light suddenly turned on in dark bedroom wakes you violently, that I should have given Angela a lot more information and briefing before I left. The saying, ‘To assume makes an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me’,’ sprang to mind. What a plonker I was. So, the first of my ‘how to’ notes were written. These were not just emails, because diagrams were essential, which meant writing them up in my notebook, drawing annotated sketches and then taking photos and sending them to Angela. That would spawn numerous questions and so the ‘how to’ ping-pong started. Being thousands of miles away, and seven, eight or even nine hours behind, really feels like a big separation. Apart from missing everyone, I felt guilty for not being there to look after them.

  The ability to see each other when we spoke was a lifesaver. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for my parents when my dad had to work away in Libya and the Middle East for long periods to help finance the family back in Northern Ireland. Communication was by letters that took weeks to get there and with a young family it must have been very hard for my mum. I’d never really thought about it before. As children, we had missed Dad but were safe and loved, so just accepted what was happening. It must have been the same for Arthur and Dorothy.

  The next morning was exciting as I could call Dick. It had been years since we had not spoken for a couple of days. I’d received a text in the night to say he was safe and we were to FaceTime him as soon as we were all up. So we called, all sleepy and snuggly in our warm room. I could see equal amounts of love and worry in Dick’s eyes. But after a while he knew we were fine and we laughed hard about the continued fly problems. But trying to look after the children, surviving the plague of flies and keeping the château at a living temperature with the very rudimentary system we had was taking all my time and Dick and I had plans for me to get on with the renovation while he was away. I really wanted to start seeing progress. I knew I had to get more help.

  Angela was so brave. She was a city girl who was scared of the dark, living by herself in a derelict château with two young children. I can think of very few people who, if taken so far out of their comfort zone, would have survived in a similar situation. If I was staying in a hotel or travelling, we would speak a couple of times a day. I insisted I get my early-morning phone call when the three of them were all bouncing around the bed and chatty. For me it was the middle of the night but it meant I was there with them. On one occasion, when Angela and I were catching up, I noticed an upturned glass on my pillow on the far side of the bed. I pointed it out to Angela, who was obviously very aware that it was there, only to discover that it was a spider that had freaked her out, so it was trapped under a glass until she could work out how to deal with it.

  Dick would send me pictures of diagrams in his notebooks and emails with instructions of how to keep things on track. I understood the soppy bits but sometimes the technical bits scared me as I wasn’t really sure what language he was speaking …

  ‘Gorgeous, I love you and am seriously missing you all,’ he started his email on 3 March. Then followed a list of jobs and warnings:

  Ensure front doorknob is attached

  Be aware sockets are live!

  Need to strip out as much as possible

  Break down walls within the new envelope

  Buy insulation and block off the major holes created for the pipes (corner of kitchen, downstairs WC, petit salon and grand salon, our room to honeymoon, our bathroom down to kitchen, fourth-floor bathroom to ours)

  Cover and lay on the pipes in the attic

  Looking at it now, it makes sense to me, which is even more worrying! But back then it was incomprehensible.

  We both agree that if something is painful it’s best to grasp the nettle and change it. We knew we had months ahead of us with long periods of separation, so we had to find a solution – and I knew I needed help. The first and most logical place to turn was to my family. Mum was still running her restaurant while waiting for the buyer to take over but Dad had closed and sold his jewellery business so I hoped he might be at a loose end. Plus I knew he and Mum were missing the children, so the cavalry, in the form of Grandad, was called in. It was such a relief when he didn’t hesitate and, within twenty-four hours, he was at the château where he became live-in nanny, chief fire-lighter and remover of unwanted insects.

  The Atlantic may have separated us but we still had to keep things moving. On 3 March, I sent a further email to Angela and a translation to our electrician M. Manceau. I felt it was self-explanatory:

  Dear M. Manceau,

  Thank you very much for coming to commence work on our electrics. Can you please tell my wife Angela how many days you will be working? Please find below a list of tasks. There is a significant amount of work, but the jobs below are in priority order, but firstly we need an earth behind the château.

  We need the power distribution to be organised in a more logical way. It would seem to make sense for the power on each floor to have its own fusing and distribution.

  We obviously need soc
kets and lighting on all floors and all rooms.

  The routes should use the same path as the heating and water pipes where possible.

  We do not want surface-mounted wire, it needs to be chased in or routed behind studding.

  Please start with the following (Angela will show you which room is which):

  More permanent sockets in the children’s room (near the corner where the pipes are should be easiest)

  Cables through the wooden stud walls please.

  Lighting and switches in the children’s room and our bathroom. Lights on the stud wall would be easiest – Angela, confirm you are happy?

  Lights and switches and sockets in our bedroom. (For our room you may wish to use the route down from the attic through the honeymoon suite – our radiator pipes come that way.)

  We will also need some on the other side of the wall in the adjoining room at a later stage.

  Sockets and lights in the service kitchen. The power cables to go down to the cellar and then up. Angela, where would you like the power sockets and lights (if just hanging in the centre of the room we can move if necessary)

  As I said, I thought these instructions were clear and unambiguous, but it seems talk of ‘earths’, ‘fusing’ and ‘distribution boxes’ is not widely understood. Angela and I ended up talking about it for some time. We couldn’t just leave it to M. Manceau to crack on; Angela had to be there nudging. However, in the end M. Manceau proved elusive, so Angela had to start searching for another electrician.

  Dad flew out immediately – Southend to Rennes proved to be an excellent route; both airports are small and well organised with friendly staff. I had to get my brave hat on to collect him from the airport. I can be quite nervous if the kids cry when I’m driving and I cannot soothe them, and although the local roads had become familiar, I had not driven this route before. Arthur and Dorothy were both still in nappies, so there was the normal organisation to do. The day started with no naps for the kids (my plan was for them to sleep in the car). Next I packed the bags. How do kids generate so much stuff? Nappies, wipes, changes of clothes, changing mats, toys to keep them entertained and, of course, snacks were all thrown in the boot. The weather was cold but the skies were blue and, as I drove out of the château, I remember having a sense of relief; when we returned everything would be that little bit easier.