Maurice's Blog

Well, as if running out of excuses, I think I have at last found the perfect spot to write those four books on four quite different subjects.

Imagine, just a quiet Brittany country lane outside your door that only runs a few hundred yards to a farm and the great ten mile forest of Hardonnais. Across the road is my large fishing lake stocked with Brochet, 2 feet long or more, gurt Tench, great Crucean and Mirror Carp and many others? The field behind, tucked between forest and wood that will take a twin, for sure, Mike’s sideways and the farmer is already looking after hunters for the locals as the Breton hunt, great curly horns and all ,meet right here.

Now the house is just post war with an enormous ‘cave’ beneath to store the wine and cider still (alambique et distillerie) or four cars, if you are that way inclined. The outhouses hide further accommodation for at least six or eight for fishing/shooting/fox hunting holidays and a cider press, a bit dilapidated. A job for Dad, next time he’s out here. Of course there is a well of water tasting like nectar, a pigeon loft, numerous apple trees, large garden, ancient old trees on all sides and the ancient bread oven, all on its own, in the field.

Down the road is a steady supply of pork and beef from a ‘Porc Blanc de Ouest’ prize winning herd, wild boar and deer from the forest, all sorts of vegetables from the farms around with an auberge on all points of the compass, varying from the strictly local culinary delights, to the Breton array of fish and crustacea, the coast being only forty minutes away. But what is this breed of cattle doing, living here, so far from the Switzerland, if not winning nearly all the prizes in Europe?

Lunch at Madeleine Hotel for 9.5 Euros, including an hors d’oeuvre of fish pate, a scrumptious steak, cooked French style, to follow then with a wide selection of cheeses, gave little room left for my bottle of wine, all included and a pudding of apple tart from just under the grill. I finished off with the standard black coffee, a French cigar and chatted with the locals who seemed to know, already, Wales played rugby.

Ah yes, ‘Le Rugby’. I just had to be down to the Irish Pub at Langourla to support Wales’s chance to get ‘that damned illusive Grand Slam’. Then, if that was not noisy enough, it was drinks with the neighbours and then off to ‘Couscous’ in the village hall where there must have been nearly two hundred locals with kids running round and under the dinner tables, singing, dancing (properly) and enjoying the company over a glass or two. Back to the Irish Night where I was caught on camera wearing the WRONG HAT, in between the dances. 2 am and it is time for home to a small ‘calva’ and my lovely log fire ‘incerre’ in the cottage.

But enough of this, it is time my pre flight diet came into force of abstinence as the flying, from now on, is going to be a damned sight harder than the little doodle around the Antipodes.

Awake at six from the ship’s horn as we enter St Malo harbour in the thickest of fog. I lug my baggage round to a back street to find my aging Ford automatic, literally dumped there as we had dashed on to Caen after last weeks birthday festivities.

There’s a problem. The accelerator cable has broken and I am in a hurry to meet Albert about buying a fishing lake. Boy Scout initiative is called for - a piece of fencing wire strategically moulded to fit the carburettor levers, a piece of bright green rope threaded through the window and I am airborne. I set track for Dinan Aerodrome where I am ordered to give a talk, once I have mastered the language! I thought pilots in Europe had to be conversant with English to obtain a flying licence? So I put down, again, to the Battle of Crecy or Poitiers perhaps, as they obviously want to get their own back!

Smash, crash! Who put the lights out? Twenty kilometres down the road and the bonnet flies up, cracking the windscreen in several places and totally obscuring my view. Earlier, in the suburbs of St Vran, my wire lever system on the throttle linkage had snagged (engine failure RAF chipmunk checks?) on the under side of the bonnet causing the engine to be stuck on full throttle. Driving on the key worked for a while but I later decided to raise the bonnet 4 inches and to just drive on the safety catch. With much aplomb, I again screeched to a halt, rectified the matter by lashing down the crumpled metal with more rope and screamed away, before I attracted undue interest.

Aeroclub de Dinan was an old stomping ground in the 70s as a staging post for export of my elegant French ladies. Ah, the memories of each passionate relationship together, travelling up from deep down south to cross the English travel, trying to avoid all adversity, they being scantily dressed for the Bureau Veritas, let alone the CAA with their demand for forests of paperwork. Since when did a piece of paper improve an old girl’s performance? Was it safe enough for one flight, that’s what mattered? The former had warned me, if they caught me, it would be ‘les menottes et le prison (red wine with lunch)’. Both authorities, rumour has it, put their heads together and conspired. Both falsification of evidence and a blackmailed witness caused my Egon Ronay’s Guide on the culinary delights to be experienced of no less than 6 UK prisons in 6 months, for which I am still very, very bitter.

Francis, the chief pilot, with his four month Yorkshire Terrier greeted me with his usual ‘French actor’ English and posed for the photo before showing me round the old Armee de L’air Fouga Magister CM170 with the characteristic Beech Bonanza tail.

Later, down at the lake near Merdrignac, surveying the fishing potential, I swore I heard a hunting horn and hounds speaking. The farmer soon confirmed they were hunting ‘le renard en chevaux’, a subject currently under threat in England, should a self centred power crazy government be re elected in a few weeks. Sadly they had ‘gone on’ by the time I had trekked through the forest with its incredible flora, deer and wild boar.

Back with ‘le notaire’ and Albert, sorting out the lake, the latter told us of his trip,in 1945 in a wooden Jodel low wing monoplane, made just up the road at Dinard. They were flying 10 to 15 feet along the breaking waves, as one does, but along the Utah and Omaha beaches of the June 6th 1944 D-Day landings. All of a sudden an enormous explosion and a great water spout blew up in front of them causing the pilot to pull hard right on the joy stick, as it was called in those days, to avoid certain catastophe. The army and French navy were still clearing the battle scarred beaches and sea of mines and were destroying them under ‘controlled’ explosions!

At 6pm in my village, I was collared by Eugene from outside his bar, whilst I was trying to get a photo of the kids and ‘Le Tricolore’, flying outside the Mayor’s Parlour to help load thirty 50kg bags of phosphate fertilizer that has now crippled me for a while due to my 8 broken or seriously damaged joints. In consolation though I was, at least, rewarded in the bar with a generous serving of Ricard! Then it was the little village of Laurenan for supper and so to bed.

Well I should have known better…. Turning up to a French Port at Caen, Normandy, having not shaved for 3 days and without a tie, rambling on about where the locals should come back with me and learn that oval shaped ball game called rugby. (Wales beat France, last week, after a spectacular come back in the second half). Les Authorities did their little bit.....

Les Douanes (Customs) took me to the cleaners….tipping out all my belongings from each piece of luggage, but not my own pockets which I thought curious? From that experience I spent a fascinating hour with a Gypsy Major expert, on board the ferry, having now recovered from the ordeal parrying off such comments as, “do you have a problem with courts and Authority?”…..and where did they get that if it was not off Big Brother , the European Computer , designed with stealth by Blair and his trade mark of deceitful lawyer tactics? A system, for which I strongly approve to combat crime but already a day to day example of how it wil be abused when identity cards finally arrive.

But let us not again slip into the gutter on such matters but let me tell you how retired Roy Gardiner, a life long aero engineer with De Havilland, witnessed so much history in Aviation. I met him on the ferry, over supper and was soon totally absorbed into his stories.

Geoffrey DeHavilland bought out the Rhone engine factory in France in the late 20’s and took the whole lot back to Edgeware, Stag lane which meant Roy spent much of his life converting petrol and Avtur engine designs between metric, American and UK imperial measurement! He was "the man" on gypsys.

It was the gypsy that had me on first solo in an RAF Chipmunk , in 1964, but that did not interest him, it was his stories such as, his colleagues who designed the first 2 strokes and Fairy’s boat designs, first used slung under an RAF aircraft, to be dropped for air crew recovery.

And to think I had just spent 2 hours at Pegasus Bridge and the Museum to remind me just how close the battle of “Overlord” had been, fighting to get a foot on Europe.

Now, in 2005, I wonder whether the loss of life and its principle was worth it, now we are dominated by such a corrupt legal trade, dominating both government, our courts and now even officious little french port customs officers?

Awakened by the 7 am church bell after a night long into the small hours, of sorting out the cameras, projector and laptop. A bag of spaghetti, in the form of numerous tangled leads and cables are now at last into separate piles. Now what on earth are they all for?

I have instruction books strewn every where as I toil away, having forgotten how to edit, move, store or plain delete movie and still digital records since I did it for the New Zealand leg of the journey. It was so much easier in the old days; an old bellows camera and a few rolls of black and white film, to be turned into the chemist on your return!

There’s two inches of snow on the ground and I’ve just bought a new toy, a chainsaw engine. The birthday dinners start on Friday and will go on right through to Sunday night so, it is out of bed, cut the logs, visit 2 restaurants and the hotel with the final numbers crossing the English Channel.

Then it is back to the UK to shuffle a few court papers on my Judicial review against the RCVS, pick up a booster Rabies and Typhoid shot, order the Malaria pills, sell an aircraft, block a repossession order on my house by Nation Wide and fight it in court.

Three hours later - Change of plan, now stuck in snow drift without a jack handle!

1. Old abandoned chariot down the road.
2. The counter at the local bakery.