"With Distance in Mind"

LOU`S NEWS FROM FRANCE JULY 2008

Well another month has passed and the Barcelona yearlings have had their last race of the season. It was Angouleme on the 5th July and again it was another stinker. As most of you know, it was our Sophie-Lou's 1st birthday on 4th July and we had a party for her with about 35 people here with their children, most of them pigeon fanciers, so obviously the race for the next day was on the agenda. Our French fancier friends said we would not get a lib due to bad weather - how wrong they were. Saturday morning came and we had an early phone call saying the birds were up at 07.30. We had torrential rain and thunderstorms - the works - but the birds pushed on and we had 51 on the day out of 87, then on Sunday morning another 21 worked back so we are well pleased at their sheer determination and courage. Since then the weather has hardly improved very much and we have only had 1 more drop in - on the 7th July.

On the 6th July a bird dropped in belonging to our good friend Brian Wall of Gem Supplements. She has been missing since Race 1 from Chateaudun so this shows great promise that more will work back home and what a great team we will have for next year's Barcelona International.

We have been training the ybs and we have them up to a 25 mile radius of us. We have been able to go every day and, weather permitting, will continue to do so, then hopefully we can get them into their first race in 2 weeks' time. Bricon will be out on Friday 18th with our pads for the yb loft then we can update all our 2008 entrants of their progress.  I will be e-mailing everyone with training toss results etc and while I am on that subject, those of you who have pigeons with us and did not forward an e-mail address, if you have one could you mail me on john.mcgee320@orange.fr then I can add you to my mailing list.

Today Thursday 10th July John and our son Connor set off for Germany to Geraldy to collect our long awaited trailer. From here it's about a 4 1\2 hour drive each way so they set off at 03 .30 this morning. My life will be a lot easier now as before we only had our 4x4 so I was humping baskets in and out of the car. I`ve got muscles like Arnie now!!

We have had a few visitors out recently with our partner John Tyerman and his wife Linda who came across for the weekend and bought some more birds across. We have also had some interest via e-mail from Belgium for next season so we really could take off with our new venture and with birds promised from Canada and America also we really could be flying all nationalities of birds, which we are really pleased about. Also to visit us was Tracey and Mark Collins of Portsmouth who came over for 5 days. Mark has fallen in love with the bread here so when the bread lady appeared in her van, as she does daily, Mark said he'd get it but I soon had to rescue him as he tried to pay with English money!!! For their first visit they got the ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe and John drove down to collect them.

Then for Sophie's birthday Mark and Tracey came back again for 6 days, this time with their friend Kev who kipped in the garden in his tent. As it was also Mark's birthday on the 3rd July, a massive thank you to them both as they brought all the party food across for me and on the Friday morning Tracey was sweeping floors, cleaning windows, whatever she could to help me out. She was an absolute star. I tried to get her to stay as my au pair but sadly she had to go back home. Also a big thanks to Mark as he painted Connor's room. It really was kind of him so thank you both.

I wasn`t going to mention this BUT I just have to as they have been getting so much stick over it at home. They had 2 Sat Navs to guide them here. They got off the ferry at 6.30pm so they should have arrived at about 7.30- 8.00 pm at the latest. The time whistled by and they still did not arrive so at about 8.30 we gave them a call. I think by then they were on the wrong motorway heading the opposite way so we got our map out and tried to redirect them, but get this bit, they still had the sat nav set up for UK and according to it they were in Hayling Island. They then sussed out they were in France and changed it. More and more time went by so we rang them again and by this time Tracey was in hysterics - she thought it was hilarious. I asked where they were and all she could give me in between fits of laughter was names of roads. I said what town are you in and she said I don`t know. We even had our neighbours trying to help then Tracey rang me back and they were only back at Calais!!! So we told them the roads they needed to be on and eventually they turned up just before midnight. The irony of this was that I had spoken to Tracey that morning and just joking about I said I'll see you about midnight then!! How right was I. Anyway they got here in the end and we had a real laugh. I spoke with Tracey yesterday and they are coming back out in 3 weeks. Perhaps they should leave now - just kidding

Next to come was my mum on the 3rd July. She flew from Shoreham airport and went back on the 12th with Connor as he is on summer holidays now for 9 weeks. Also to arrive on the 3rd July were our very special friends Paul and Janet Rennison. As you may know Janet, has suffered two strokes since February and has spent more time in hospital than out of it so it was extra special that she made it here for Sophie.s party. I'm so pleased you are on the road to recovery and we are all rooting for you. Then we had a phone call on the 9th July from our good mate Taffy. He is popping over this weekend to see us so as usual it`s all go go go.

I would like to mention the president of our long distance club, Marcel Loquet who won the Tarbes French National and was 4th International this weekend 11th July so congratulations to him, also our good friend Jerome Dhelin who races in our club had 12 out of 12 on the day from Tarbes and what with Robert Ben's results from the Barcelona International 3rd Open you can see just what a fantastic location for winning these big races our lofts are set up at.

I thought I should include our results from our club for the Barcelona birds so you can see just how well they have performed for us

Race 1 Chateaudun 8th June

 4th GB07N74924 Richard Withall,9th GB07N87399 Crammond & Langstaff 10th GB07N74965 Andy Wilson,14th GB07N74912 Richard Howey 21st GB07J23706 Terry Peart 27th FR07392075 Mathieu Buret 28th SU-07-P734 Dale Newcombe 35th GB07N37382 Steve Radcliffe 36th GB07J07247 Paul Rennison 39th FR07392099 Mathieu Buret 40th GB07B91076 Ray McElroy 45th GB07N74925 Callum Tyerman 46th GB07N87351 Crammond & Langstaff and 51st GB07J19238 Brian Wall

Race 2 Mantes-le Jolie

2nd FR07392095 Paul Vine,3rd GB07N87362 Crammond & Langstaff 4th GB07N74925 Callum Tyerman,5th GB07B91075 Ray McElroy 7th GB07J07247 Paul Rennison 10th FR07392099 Mathieu Buret,12th SU-07-NW4026 Gauld & Morrison 13th GB07N87351 Crammond & Langstaff 14th FR07392136 Terry Fuller 19th FR07392077James Nicholson 20th FR07392085 Mathieu Buret 22nd FR07392088 R Yates 23rd GB07N71800 Trussler Bros 24th IHU-07-S111746 Liam `o Griobzin  25th FR07392090 Kevin Rennison,32nd FR07392065 Kevin Rennison 34th GB07J07266 Paul Rennison 37th GB07N74924 Richard Withall 40th GB07N87390 Crammond & Langstaff

Race 3 GIEN Groupment de st pol sur ternoise 918 pigeons

1ST FR07391675 R Yates,2nd FR07392079 Paul Vine,5th FR07392075 Mathieu Buret,7th GB07N74912 Richard Howey,10th FR07392114 Kevin Rennison,15th FR07392112 R Yates,17th FR07392113 Paul Vine,22nd FR07392068 R Yates,23rd GB07N87399 Crammond & Langstaff,26th GB07P05023 Phil Rawson,31st GB07N87410 Crammond & Langstaff,32nd FR07392177 Terry Fuller,35th GB07J07247 Paul Rennison,39th GB07N87394 Crammond & Langstaff,42nd GB07N74938 John Tyerman,48th GB07A08750 Fulton & Dickson,and 50th FR07392195 Fred Hall

RACE 4 ANGOULEME

I haven`t got this result yet so I will publish it when I  have it but I can tell you that out of 3557 birds in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region we were 75th, 89th and 143rd, and out of the females which is a separate race within the race we were 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 32nd and so on so we are extremely proud and thank you for sending us some top class birds to race

Most of you know that John has not bothered with sprint racing for some time but whilst we were preparing the Barcelona team we bred some of our Janssens to race in the vitesse (sprint) club and out of the last 7 races we have won 5, taking the top 6, the top 3 and so on so again we are well pleased only racing 12 cocks and 8 hens

That’s about it for now as always take care of each other

Lou

Ps

We paired up the Barcelona yearlings last weekend for another yb sale, proceeds to be raced for Barcelona 2009, again another chance to get some quality youngsters. Also congratulations to Crammond & Langstaff for winning LSECC Bergerac and also congrats to our good friend Lee Sullivan & partners for winning the National

Bye for now