Reach for the stars

Having figured out how to make the roof work, the walls needed to be constructed out of tongue and groove and the roof covered.

I painted the roof in a rubbery paint, and Ian and Nigel started cladding while we waited for the roofing felt to arrive. I was amazed at how quickly it all came together.

Now to explain, the walls go together by slotting one board on top of the one below, which is simple. That's easy when you can reach it, measure it and just hold it up to slot it on, fixing it with a few nails, but… when you have a pointy roof, you need to cut the boards to fit with tricky angles, each one slightly different to the next. Trickier, but once you have the angles right, still nice and easy. But then you come to the back wall, where you can’t stand next to it to measure, nor can you easily reach from inside.  

This is the point that Nigel had to go home (he’s a canny one that Nigel :-) ) so I offered to help Ian. We did OK measuring the longer straight boards by feeding them along the fence, and marking them, then with one of us inside, and one outside, we could slot them on, hammering in the nails from the edge. 

Then came the pointy bit. Once we got here, it was too tall to reach from the inside and we struggled to reach from the outside, so ever the optimist I said, I think I can fit in the gap, so I could hold and nail them… Oh, how wrong I was. This is the gap…. 

I managed to wiggle myself in, bending to get under the counterweight of the roof. So there I was, sideways in, one raised arm and a leg in the gap, with half my body wedged in, but on the floor. How do you stand up when you can’t lean forward, can’t grip hold of anything and are firmly wedged? The answer is you can’t, but nor could I wiggle out! Ian tried reaching me from the inside, but it was my dodgy arm that was raised, so pulling hard really wasn’t a good idea, and he could only just reach my fingertips! He tried pulling from the side, but nope, that wasn’t working. By now I was laughing so hard I had no strength at all, and Ian was getting worried. Can you imagine the response when you ring the fire brigade to ask if they can extract your wife from the gap between the fence and the observatory you are building?

I’m not sure how, but eventually we both stopped laughing, had a rest ( a slightly uncomfortable one for me as by this time my legs were numb), and Ian managed to free me, with one big pull!

Having decided I didn't fit in the gap, Ian found a way to complete the task. I have no idea how, as I was reeling from my squishing.

Once the roof felt arrived we nailed that on, clad the inside, oiled it all to preserve the wood, and fitted the telescope.

Fitting the telescope actually involved a lot of measuring, screwing, taking things apart, electrics and fiddliness, so in fact took hours, but it went in and fitted (phew).

The final job was to Polar Align the scope, which needed a clear night, so after a bit of a break due to dodgy weather, and it being far too cold for us to contemplate spending hours in the garden late at night, we did just that using the Pole star as our reference.

Here it is, watching the night sky, bringing a whole new word into view. 

What's next?

When I shared the blog about Secara, several people commented on how crazy we are (thanks!!) and others asked what’s next? Well this is what’s next. The delivery of a very exciting box. When it arrived, I had no idea what was in it. Ian had ordered it and not said a word.

I have always loved looking at the stars and since we moved here, the sky is so much darker than anywhere we have lived, which means we can see so much more. The night sky is just stunning.

Those of you who know Ian, know he doesn’t do birthdays, but he does surprise me with incredible gifts once in a while, and this time he has surpassed himself. He’s bought me a telescope, a beautiful big one. One I can really see and learn about the night sky with. He is amazing, and I love him.

Ian being Ian, wasn’t content with just a telescope, because that would mean Polar Aligning it every time we use it (basically making sure it is pointing in the right direction, so what you think you are looking at is what you see, and you can search for objects in the night sky). Ian decided we needed more.

This began with a delivery of wood and some concrete blocks to stand them on. Our good friend and neighbour Nigel joined Ian on the next mammoth build. First steps, plot the dimensions and pop in a post that’s free standing. Then start constructing a tiny house (well that’s what it looked like).

Much wood chopping, measuring, drilling and discussion took place.

Big armoured cables were laid and Nigel, being an electrician before retirement, wired it all in.

The thing is, when you are building a tiny house, or a shed, roofs are simple, but if you are building an observatory, they are not! We watched lots of YouTube videos, considered our options, thought about our available space, where we would be able to see the sky, and came up with the decision that a roof that pivots open, rather than slides back would give us the best outcome. Perfect, now we needed to make it happen, which is easier said than done, but we found a way!

If you are wondering why the post was one of the first things built, when there isn’t even a floor, well that’s because when you mount a telescope you want it to be very still and steady, not to move and wobble if the floor moves, so it needed to be completely independent of the floor once we put that in.

Canfranc... to France

In July 1928 a remarkable train station opened just south of the Spanish French border in the Pyrenees at the end of the Somport railway tunnel which had been completed 13 years earlier. The small, previously isolated, village of Canfranc was at once transformed into an international hub of activity. It was also dwarfed by the monumental scale of the building and its sidings where standard gauge French trains pulled in and wider gauge Spanish trains departed toward Madrid and beyond.

During the Spanish Civil War Franco ordered the Spanish side of the Somport tunnel to be sealed but because of the Franco-Spanish international convention under which it was built, the Spanish station itself remained open It was also extensively used by international traffic during the second world war when it was known as the Casablanca in the Pyrenees. Freight trains carried tungsten ore north and French grain along with Swiss gold headed south. Passenger services continued during the war providing an escape route into Spain for Jews and Allied soldiers.

The station remained a major hub for cross-border railway traffic until 1970 when a train derailed in France damaging a key bridge severing the line. Subsequently it remained in use locally with the occasional Spanish train stopping, but its cross border days were over… or so it was thought.

In February 2020, funding for both the relaunch of international services and the station's rehabilitation was made available by the European Union and it’s currently undergoing major restoration. The opening of the railway involves the owners of the station; the government of Aragon, to work with the government of Aquitaine. The station building is being transformed into a hotel and conference centre. From what we could see workmanship is very good, and it would truly be an incredible place to host a conference!

Canfranc is set high up in the pyrenees, on the border with France with a river running through it. If you ever get the chance, do stop off, have a look, before heading towards the tunnel into France.

                                   

We did exactly that although the road to reach Canfranc wasn’t quite as expected. We knew the tunnel was still a major crossing for heavy goods vehicles, so we were expecting the motorway to go all the way there, but it didn’t! There we were driving along admiring the scenery when suddenly we noticed huge concrete barriers across the road, totally blocking the motorway. With no warning, the motorway ended and we were diverted off down a small steep road wiggling its way through villages, around lakes and over rivers. For a good few miles we pondered what was happening, but the lorries occasionally came the other direction so we presumed we hadn’t gone wrong. Just as suddenly as it started the road shot up a slipway back onto the motorway and we realised the bit to join the two ends hadn’t been built! Such a Spanish way to deal with a problem! No road, no problem, send the juggernauts through the villages, it’ll be fine!

                                     

However leaving Canfranc was simpler, follow the signs to the Somport tunnel and off you go. We’ve been through a fair few tunnels on this trip, but this was the big one. At 5.3 miles long (opened on 7 February 2003) this one takes a while to get through! We’d heard it can get really busy, but as you can see, we were alone for most of the journey. It curves, undulates and goes on and on, it’s an eerie feeling being along driving under a mountain for so long.

As you near the end of the tunnel you see a speck of light getting bigger and bigger and you pop out into the sunlight and a very different place. On the French side the road narrows, winds, and cuts through gorges and the temperature dropped, significantly.

We were able to spot some of the train lines and tunnels being restored to enable the cross border trains. We had intended to stop soon after the crossing to visit a bear sanctuary, but having seen the gradient of the road, we didn’t! Maybe in a car it would be fine, but we weren’t keen to put Agy, or us, through that!