WESconf

WES conference was good. So many people I haven't seen for years, and lots of lovely new people too. The talks I got to were excellent. Shame I missed a few because Surrey Uni is rather less wheelchair-friendly than usual at the moment, but huge thanks to the security staff who watched out for me and found routes through locked buildings (for the lifts) and opened barricades.

Reports of the talks will be in the Woman Engineer magazine and possibly on the website.

Julia King began her presentation on how to do well as a woman engineer (she's Vice-Chancellor of Aston, Chief Executive of the Institute of Physics, and many other shiny things) with explaining that her early role model was Lewis Carroll's Alice: enquiring, no-nonsense, and confident, and utterly dismissive of anything which prevented her achieving her potential (though in her case, the glass ceiling was a mirror). I'd never thought of Alice in this way, but it's very true. Perhaps we should support the books (not the Disneyfication!). Actually, Alice in Wonderland is one of the first books I remember, from when I was about 7. I think I tried to read Alice Through the Looking-glass a bit too young, though - some of the concepts were rather confusing and I didn't have the background to understand the White Knight, nor indeed the chess game. When I read it again at 12 it made much more sense.

When I was a child I listened to some of my mother's friends talking about their work on tidal-power generation. Eventually they gave up on trying to get the systems accepted in the UK and went to the middle east. Marvellous to see the trials around Orkney.

Wendy the futurologist introduced us to an excellent game. It's supposed to be a design and planning tool, but it's clearly a geek party game. And there's an online version! Sadly, it's Flash.

Engineers Against Poverty and Arup have produced another interesting tool called Aspire - a "planning, monitoring and evaluation model for assessing the sustainability and poverty reduction performance of infrastructure projects in developing countries".

Ah, and kettles. Amazing how many people still fill a kettle for one or two mugs of tea. Apparently using just the amount of water you need saves about £25 a year on electricity, based on 5 kettle-boilings a day. And of course it uses less water. So why do they fill up the kettle and wait ages?

Sun, sea, sand, and healing springs

Sunday in Saintes. I forgot that the Atrium would be closed, so C will have to experience that dainty teashop another time; instead we had pizzas in the café on the corner. Very pleasant place and Italian-style pizzas, none of that delivery-chain pap. It was hot and sunny, too hot for exploring the Roman ruins, so we looked at them briefly and listened to a rather good band doing a sound-check, and then drive slowly along the Charente.

On Monday morning we went to the beach at Meschers. It's very helpful that there are blue parking spaces next to the sand, but the sand itself is very fine and the Plage des Nonnes doesn't have the plastic mesh track. Chariot sank rapidly. There were a few people around, but now that school term has started everything is quiet and many of the seaside cafes have closed; it's a perfect time for a late holiday and still very warm (around 30C this week). The beaches here are very clean, and we saw a beach-sweeping machine in action. The only odd thing is that, at the end of each run, it's emptied into the sea. Surely the stuff washes back?

After rushing back in time for the bread and croissants delivery, we went to the Château de Beaulon in St Dizant du Gua. It was my first visit there, and not quite what I expected. The grounds are enormous and one wonders how they fit into the town; the fontaines bleues are very beautiful and very peaceful. A fontaine is a spring; the water bubbles up into pools from which flows the river which runs to Port Maubert. They really are startlingly blue, the effect of algae which is unexplained because the water comes from the mountains about 50 miles away and the algae doesn't appear there. There are several springs, some of them very deep (up to 18 metres). The water comes out of the rock at a constant temperature of 13C, which is much cooler than the spa waters of Jonzac. It quickly warms in the sunlight, so that the pools would be perfect for swimming: shaded by trees, clear, and quiet. Don't worry, I resisted the temptation to jump in. It is a wonderful place for thinking about life and people, and for imagining history; so easy to understand why Celts and Romans believed such sites had spirits.

Seeing the plants in the upper garden, I realised where previous-owners got their ideas for the garden here. One plant which grows quite profusely in the château gardens, but hasn't been planted here, is bamboo. I'd rather have bamboo than salt-cedar and some of the other plants in the Secret Garden; perhaps I'll investigate it for next year, as well as replacing the passionflower with an edible variety.

After wandering around the pools and woods, past a vast, tall old tree (Faraway Tree, possibly?) the path leads up around the side of the château to where the tasting of pineau and cognac is presided over by the lady of the mansion. C sampled several and decided that the 10-year-old white pineau was the best.

In the evening we had dinner at Le Cheval Blanc in St Ciers du Taillon. I had gorgeous salmon in lemon mayonnaise, and C had steak with the frites maison (you'd think this meant chips in the style of the house, but they appear to be chips in the style of A house). For dessert, of course, it had to be the celebrated crème brûlée. (NB: photos from last visit - this time the edible decoration was a pink flower.) The waiter demonstrated his celebrated flounce, too. There was no milk for coffee because they unexpectedly had 16 people in for dinner after only two at lunchtime, and having decided not to re-stock in the afternoon had run out. It was fortunate that we were first to order the crème brûlée.

Along the watch-tower

Today was a fairly leisurely day which nonetheless had many highlights. We wandered over the hills and went to see the fishing huts, where we met two very pleasant blokes who explained that there wasn't any fish for sale because the boat had broken down. A brief look at Port Maubert brought into view the curious edifice on the hill by St Romain. C encouraged me to try the unmade road to get closer to it, and up we went, Big Bloo happily negotiating the steep gritty and grassy swoops right to the top. The view is amazing, from the cliffs of Meschers to the north right down to Bordeaux; inland we could clearly see both the champagne cocktail and the chess-queen water towers; I knew my house was somewhere there between them, but it wasn't quite visible. Nearby was a hen harrier, circling in broad sweeps.

The structure is conical, with a protective layer of new white cement over old stones. It looks like a small brough, three or four storeys. There isn't any kind of sign or label to say what it is and why it's there. And we didn't have a working camera! No matter, the interwebs provided the information and photos.

Lunch at the new Creperie at La Daugaterie. Outstanding food. I had a small salad which included the best white asparagus I've ever tasted, delicately and perfectly seasoned (only a small one, to leave room for ice-cream); C had a big Bretonne galette containing Roquefort and walnuts. It wasn't a large or expensive meal, so we were rather surprised when, having already handed us the bill, the owner offered glasses of some strong liqueur. C accepted: she thought it was very tasty and probably made from honey, and we have no idea what it was.

This evening's meal was mussels and chips from 1000 Frais et Un Fred. They cook the food after the shop closes, and serve it from the back door, ladling it into pans and dishes brought by the punters. I don't eat shellfish, so they sent their son home to get a steak and cooked that for me. Delicious. While we waited, C was given a small cup of Pineau and I had lemonade. Only after we got home did we realise we weren't charged for the drinks! Seb and Fred's impromptu cabaret was free, too.

Hey ho, the wind but no rain

It's windy. Very windy. Nothing seems to have blown away, although there were bangs and clatters all night (as well as the frequent sound of the alarm on the swimming pool at the gite across the field). I was awake much of the night, worrying about the over-dry trees and disturbed by the faint rattling from the new shutters, which sounded like someone knocking on the living-room window. Consequently I'm tired and don't feel like doing much; I think washing my hair will be the main task of the day.

Yesterday I failed at building a piece of Ikea furniture! Usually they are so easy, but this one defeated me. It's now a Tate-Modern-style collection of metal tubes on the third-bedroom floor, and there is nowhere for the visitor to hang her clothes.

The sunshine is back and I'm going to spend a lazy few hours reading, while my hair dries.