I finished my last article in March of last year asking for suggestions for a name for our house here in the Combrailles, about 100Kms SSW of the geographic centre of mainland France. It has taken ten months, but we have now reached a decision - Bon Repos. What does that snippet of information have to do with supporting the Trust's web presence from this distance? Nothing whatever - but I thought I would tell you anyway.

A couple of weeks before arriving here in June of last year we received confirmation that our exchange had been ADSL enabled and that we were within the 3Km radius needed to give best coverage. It took a couple of weeks to set up once we had arrived, but in relatively short order we had a working telephone line and pretty good broadband (for the technically interested, 8Mbps downlink and 1Mbps uplink). The show could go on.

We are in a very rural area, our hamlet has four houses and a permanent population of seven souls. We had thought our house was built in 1879 (having found a stone lintel with that date on it) but we have recently seen a local map that was completed in 1833 that shows our hamlet exactly as it is now.

We have thunderstorms

We have thunderstorms. We are north of and relatively close to the dormant volcano chain that dominates and defines the highest part of the Massif Central and that is the controller of much of our weather.

Thunderstorms sometimes knock out ADSL, but experience tells us that ADSL modems are highly sensitive to surges and static bursts. Our first ADSL modem died before it was a month old. My computer died in the same storm and so it was necessary for me to go out and replace both. Time to learn how to use a French keyboard! Since then both my wife's computer and the small machine I used as a web server have both died and had to be replaced, and the hard disk on my laptop joined the party and also had to be replaced.

Through all this we have managed to keep both the main Trust web site at http://www.hawk-conservancy.org and The Accipiter maintained and updated, and keep on top of the emails that come my way.

Phone lines work better uncut!

The period at the end of winter and the beginning of spring sees a lot of activity pruning trees and harvesting them for firewood. One bright morning a neighbour was lopping a tree that was close to the telephone line that serves our hamlet and his chainsaw slipped and cut most of the way through the telephone cables. Within the stipulated 48 hours contractors arrived and did a temporary repair to restore service until the cable could be replaced three or four days later. That worked fine - except in our house. Three visits and two weeks later another temporary repair was done which gave us service and the cable was replaced a few days after that. We had been without telephone or broadband for 16 days. Thank goodness for mobile phones! Thank goodness also for people who are prepared to step in and help out in emergencies.

Durrington in early July

Beaugut in early July

That apart, there really isn't much difference between running the web sites from here and running them from our previous home in the UK - except the view from the study window. That and the difficulties that arise from not being there - from knowing only what I am told (and I can't expect the managers and staff to brief me regularly on everything they are doing), and from not recognising some of the birds of which people send me photographs.

We shall be in the UK for the late May Bank Holiday and I shall certainly be updating myself on what the Trust looks like now. I really want to see the fruits of all the work that was done over the winter.

Maybe you will see me there on Bank Holiday Monday. I'll be the one looking awe-struck, confused and a little bit lost.

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