A Year at the Chateau

by Dick Strawbridge

  Angela’s plan was for a fairground-style ride that children climb to the top of and then slide down on a coir mat. I knew it was not a trivial build and so to keep things simple I produced an octagonal structure with posts sticking out that the slide would attach to. The construction was so heavy it had to be built in situ and that meant cutting out and bringing the elements from the cellar. Day one finished with lots of bits of wood cut and arranged in the playroom.

  We love spending time with friends, and eating and having a glass of wine is an easy way to pass time. However, with the wedding looming, we didn’t have time not to be productive, so after a day’s work our aperitifs were all contenders for the wedding, namely our sparkling wines. Accompanying the meal, we had a selection of wines, to see what we liked rather than being decadent (covert wine tasting). Even our meals were usually test dishes for the wedding. So Johnny and Nadine had a taster of what was to come.

  Johnny and I were happy in the kitchen while the girls sorted the children and did whatever they had to do before supper. I’d done a lot of the cooking on our survival show and Johnny loved trying new things so he was keen to see how I made my rabbit stew. Rabbit isn’t very popular in the UK or the US, whereas it is available in most supermarkets over here. One rabbit was enough for a main course for the four of us. The meat is tasty and quite lean. You can buy it jointed but normally you just get a whole carcass complete with head (you also get the kidneys and heart so it’s good value for money). I’d eaten a lot of rabbit and even cooked it when I was competing on Celebrity Masterchef. It needs to be cooked enough but not too much. In the stew the legs get a lot more cooking than the saddle as it is a shame to let the small tender loins dry out. The kidneys we cut in half, seasoned and flash-fried as an additional amuse-bouche.

  Johnny helped prepare the carrots and parsnips and carved them into torpedo shapes. Then we cut the larger back legs into two pieces and gently sautéed all the legs portions in butter (this is a northern dish so none of your olive oil) with onions before I added the vegetables for a bit more cooking. Then we added the loin and the ubiquitous garlic. Cider was added next – dry not sweet (the carrots and parsnips are sweet enough). Twenty minutes later, in went the salt and white pepper, cream was stirred through, and the dumplings were floated on the top. After another twenty minutes, the dumplings had risen, their bottoms were soggy and their tops were crispy. The stew was ready to serve. Johnny and Nadine gave it the thumbs up. The dish is surprisingly sweet so enough salt is essential but the cider and cream sauce just shouts out for a bit of fresh baguette to dip in and there is no excuse for leaving any of it on the plate.

  Day two was the day of the helter-skelter’s erection. We had two octagonal frames: a large one for the base and a smaller one for the top. Each corner had a ‘vertical’ post so after a fair amount of balancing and swearing in Irish and American we had a frame that was far from solid (the rigidity was always intended to be provided by the sides). We added a couple of sides to reduce the wobble and started to screw on the slide supports. A couple of hours later, we had something that looked a lot like a helter-skelter that was just missing its slide. You could see where it had to go but it was far from finished. Nadine had finished painting the room and she and Angela between them had decided on the itinerary for the rest of Johnny and Nadine’s trip. The long and short of it was I had to finish off the slidey bit myself …

  First, I spent another day cutting out cardboard and fitting templates. Each section of the slide was different as the supporting structure was tapered, so the slide went down, round and out – it was a pain in the proverbial ass! Having cut out each a piece of ply, it then had to be attached and a guard rail fitted. The curve of the slide was far from a perfect but it was very helter-skelter like and even unpainted it was impressive to look at. It’s just a pity it wasn’t on my to-do list so I could cross it off after three long days’ work!

  It seems ridiculous that we had been living at the château for seven months before we discovered the Fromagerie du Bois Belleray, a cheese factory right at the end of our road. We had seen the occasional milk tanker go past but we’d never actually turned right out of our driveway to continue to the end. We were still sourcing things for the wedding and hoping to keep it as local as possible. And suddenly the penny dropped – at the roundabout where we had turned off the main road hundreds of times, there was a sign that said, ‘Vente Directe’. They had a factory shop! We went to explore.

  We discovered that the family-run business had been going since 1912 and had 130 employees, turning out over 100,000 cheeses a day from the milk from over 200 farmers from the département. For months we had been going to the local supermarket, but they were making thousands of cheeses at the end of our road. Since we discovered the little treasure we had right beside us, every menu for every event we have ever put on has featured butter and cheese from the fromagerie. No food miles at all so everyone can have as much as they want.

  As September came to a close, there were lots of areas of the château nearly ready to finish off, but lots of chaos too. With just over six weeks to go until our wedding, it was all hands on deck. Grandma and Grandad had been our mainstay when it came to looking after the children, but they also wanted to get involved so we asked if they fancied getting the orangery party-safe and ready for action.

  After years of neglect the orangery needed some love. Insects of every size and shape had taken up residence and the wonderful wisteria had grown in from every angle: through the eves, the missing windowpanes, even the roof. The first job was to reclaim the orangery from wilderness. This had been on our ‘to-do’ list since we first saw the château, but now it was urgent. With the growth cut back, next on the list was cleaning, then removing broken glass panes and measuring for new ones. Fortunately, all the arch-shaped windows were intact, so it was a matter of measuring lots of rectangles.

  The glass in the orangery sits in metal frames with one sheet on top of another, all held in with putty. Most of the broken panes were low down, which was convenient, but did beg the question what would happen when the broken glass and old putty was removed. We had visions of all the glass above cascading down. With gloves, safety glasses and a selection of old chisels and wire brushes, Mum and Dad soon had the old glass and putty dug out and thankfully there was absolutely no sign of any of the other bits moving. So when the replacement panes were delivered, the most difficult part of the whole task was matching the correct size glass with the correct hole. With more than twenty panes replaced the orangery was no longer draughty, so it was time for them to start making it beautiful.

  Some basic patching was required of the wall and ceiling, but the main objective was to refresh it and the answer for that is buckets of white matt emulsion. After months of sending DIY shopping lists to visitors who came out to see us, our paint store had an admirable supply of white emulsion. So armed with rollers, dust sheets and a set of steps, they set to work and the orangery received a couple of coats of white emulsion. It made a huge difference.

  The brick troughs round the ‘window sides’ of the orangery are rather unusual. We debated tanking them and turning it into a water feature but ultimately common sense prevailed and we decided to convert them into plant pots. They were huge and filling them with compost was going to be expensive, so we lined the bottom of the trough with all sorts of polystyrene packing that had been congregating in the outbuildings awaiting disposal. Several carloads of compost later, it was just a matter of a couple of well-placed palm trees to finish the look.

  The days were drawing in but our first September quietly slipped into autumn without us really noticing it. The trees started to change and the horse chestnuts on the far side of the moat seemed to lead the way. After a little breeze, we would notice leaves on the water but rather than it feeling messy, the colours changing seemed to make it even more beautiful. Even now we still pinch ourselves when we look out at all the trees that are ours. They are special at every time of the year and
we love them – but, just to be clear, that doesn’t stretch to full-on tree hugging …

  We had made a start on getting ready for our wedding – the orangery was ready to open for business, the menu was coming together and we had the refreshments sorted. The playroom was done and we had a helter-skelter. But there was still so much more to do …

  chapter ten

  OCTOBER

  After the equinox on 21 September there is less day than night and we really have arrived in the season ‘of mists and mellow fruitfulness’. Keats’ argument that autumn is every bit as beautiful as spring is very difficult to disagree with when you look out of the window of the château and see so many amazing colours: from golds to reds, deep greens to yellows; even the trees that have lost their covering are striking. The château has the most beautiful views from every window and the higher you go, the more the surrounding trees dominate. By the time you are four floors up you are level with the treetops and in October that means you can see for miles and the amount of woodland surrounding us is very apparent.

  The horse chestnuts are one of the earliest to come into leaf and also one of the earliest to lose their leaves, but by early October it is the sweet chestnuts that are the most obvious. It’s hard to remember seeing sweet chestnuts at home that produced ‘nuts’ worth eating but everywhere we went in the Mayenne there were large fallen sweet chestnuts nestled in their very spiky husks. A pair of stout gloves were essential for collecting them or you risked leaving the majority of the bounty behind.

  The biggest tree on the north edge of our land is a lovely sweet chestnut and it marks the boundary between our plot and Jacques and Isabelle’s. Having seen the debris of the chestnuts that had been run over on the road outside the château, we couldn’t wait to go and collect our own. Suitably dressed and with wellies on, we set off for a family expedition round the moat to collect our own marron, which is the French name that describes the fruit of the chestnut (the châtaigne). That first autumn, we were too busy to fully appreciate all the wonderful things growing around us but we were determined not to miss out on everything, so we made sure we would have a bag of chestnuts to roast and nibble on.

  Having collected a decent hoard, we pierced them several times to avoid them exploding while they cooked, soaked them in water for half an hour then popped them in the oven for twenty minutes. They were so tasty and smelt wonderful. They were so enticing that you ended up burning your fingers in the haste to peel them. It was a little sad that there were so many chestnuts around our land but we only had time to collect a few, but the beauty of moving to a new life in France was we knew they would be there every year for the foreseeable future and whatever we didn’t eat was food for the abundant wildlife.

  Hunting is very popular in France in the autumn and I was invited by Jacques to join his family and friends for a hunt on their land. All around the château the land is still owned by the Baglion family and Jacques has several hundred acres. From what we could see he did not farm, instead he had planted trees and set it aside. We had spotted deer from our windows but had yet to see the wild boar everyone talked about. That was probably due to our tendency to look inwards during that first year and not outwards, combined with the fact that Arthur and Dorothy were a little too young to join in spotting wildlife. I decided that I would indeed join them but I would not shoot on this first occasion so I could observe the traditions before participating. Having been in the army for over twenty years, I am a reasonable shot, and being a country man at heart I have enjoyed shooting and fishing for most of my life. In France there is a lot more game than we have in the UK so shooting is popular and the land husbandry appears to treat the game as a resource to be looked after.

  Before the day of the hunt, I popped to a local hunting shop and bought the regulation fluorescent orange camouflage waistcoat and a pibole*. We met on Saturday morning. First on the agenda was a drink and a briefing on the day. There were to be a number of drives, with half the hunters beating and driving the game, and the other half taking positions at the end of the drive to shoot what passed them. There were different horn signals for the end of a drive, for deer and for boar.

  It was a beautiful day and a truly French experience. There are very few pheasants in our part of France and, from what I could ascertain, the birds that were flushed were woodcock and snipe, both of which are not easy to shoot. So by the end of the morning there were only a couple of birds bagged despite some enthusiastic shooting.

  After the morning drives and flushing, lunch was very welcome and we were treated to Isabelle’s game terrine and a lovely vegetable soup. The main course was like a hotpot and dessert was an open apple tart glazed with apricot. Wine was served but I think people were a bit reserved as there was still an afternoon’s shooting to come and the drives for the larger game. Still, as we congregated after lunch, everyone was feeling rather mellow and the half-mile walk to the start of the drive was probably very well planned by Jacques. When large game is driven the size of the shot in the guns is changed and there is significantly less shooting. I never saw a boar that day, which was disappointing, but several deer were taken.

  We made our way back to Jacques and Isabelle’s where there were drinks waiting for us. I joined Isabelle and helped with the skinning and butchery and everyone who participated was offered a joint of venison. As I had not shot, I declined that time.

  After months of waiting for the étude* and then the challenge of finding a contractor to install our septic tank and filter beds, the day had finally arrived. Jean Betram and his team were going to install our new septic system. Inside the château, the pace was picking up as the very real deadline of our wedding was galloping closer. It didn’t matter how many hours we worked, there was always lots more to do and, even though progress had been made on lots of rooms, nothing was quite finished.

  The installation of the septic tank cost more than £10,000 as we had opted for a system with lower annual costs and a slightly greater outlay. We had confirmed with Jean Bertram and his nephew, Jean Betram (no chance of confusion there!), that the price was a fixed and they reckoned it would only take a couple of days. When the plant turned up on Monday morning before 9am, it was all looking very promising. We confirmed the plan on the étude and they were all very chilled about the fact that the waste post-settling-tank (where the filter beds would be) was going across the moat so we were relaxed and looked forward to being spectators rather than workers.

  I made time to watch the first hole being dug as it was for the septic tank and near the château itself, and I was a little worried about the proximity to the walls and their foundations. We know our château is on the site of an earlier château but we didn’t know anything about the foundations and whether they were original or new in the nineteenth century. The digging started and some really huge boulders were excavated. It was possible to see the massive rocks that were below the walls and that was reassuring. More interesting was the surprise that the French team had when the hole began to fill with water as they dug down. To place the tank at the correct level they needed the base to be down below the water level. After a cup of coffee and a little head scratching, a call was made by the elder Jean Bertram. Excavation continued, a pump was brought in, and sand and cement was emptied into the puddle at the bottom of the hole. Filling the tank with some water allowed it to settle on the floor of the hole.

  Day one had been fun but it was on day two that I was happy I had a fixed-price contract. The trench for the pipe that carried the post-settling-liquid to the filter beds had to be laid across and under the moat but instead it floated … I was in the wonderful position of watching not doing, so I enjoyed my view. Obviously the water seeped back into the trench as the sludge was removed. It was like digging a hole on the beach down by the water’s edge – the more you dig, the more the hole will fill in from the sides. Some progress was made but it was never going to be a ‘trench’.

  Then Jean Bertram the younger came up with the idea of da
mming off one end of the moat. Water levels were down so the hope was it might be possible to slow the ingress of water sufficiently to place the buoyant piping into the bed of the moat. Jean Bertram the older had to be away for several hours and left the rest of the team to wrestle with a barque*, sheets of corrugated iron and tarpaulins. It was great spectator sport, but with lots going on, I was only able to pop in and out, and to be honest I don’t think spectators were very helpful as the team tried to manoeuvre on the sludge. All credit where it is due, with the digger shovelling the sludge, the boat moving the barriers and the pump working overtime, they managed to build a dam of sorts and pumped lots of water out of the end of the moat. Next thing I knew, there was no pipe visible and everyone was congratulating each other. Just then, as if by magic, Jean Bertram the older, and obviously wiser, turned up. While the automatic pump in the fosse septique* and the pipes in the filter bed were connected, we had a snap inspection from the SPANC lady to see all was well. It was her job to ensure regulations had been met and to sign off our sewage system. Our conditions of sale had given us eighteen months to do it. We were quite pleased that only nine months in and we were just about there.