The Return of the Vicar

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

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

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

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

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

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.