Sunday 29 January 2012

Salon de l’Habitat, Chinon

For our Sunday afternoon outing this week we went to the Salon de l’Habitat held in the Espace François-Rabelais at Chinon. Basically a Good Homes Show.


The Espace François-Rabelais itself was an impressive building and stages various events throughout the year including many live concerts. Some of these can be found here.

Today's exhibition is an annual event and had stalls offering many services aimed at home improvements including such things as New Gates, Doors, Windows, Bathrooms, Insualtion, Roof and wall finishes.etc etc.

One stall featured cooking utensils and some food samples, unfortunately ALL of it contained Gluten even the peanut brittle, so Elizabeth missed out!! The stall holder said he usually made it with Almond flour but had run out so he had used ordinary flour. Better luck next year.

It was a good show and well worth a visit. We picked up a leaflet on solar water heating, but unfortunately we could not speak to anyone as the stall was unmanned whilst we were there. I suspect he was in the restaurant / bar having some lunch. Something for the future perhaps! It really depends on what the payback would be - several years I think will be the most likely answer.

On our way back Elizabeth took this stunning photo of the Fortress out of the car window. They certainly knew where to build it those days...


From Chinon we returned via Pouzay and visited an exhibition of paintings by the local Cré' Artistes Association held in the village hall. Elizabeth has very limited competition there.

4 comments:

Diane said...

Interesting Day out, but from your photos it does not look like many people are there. Well done Elizabeth that last photo is stunning. Diane

Susan said...

Beautiful shot of Chinon. You can see why they decided to rebuild it.

Anonymous said...

How usefu to be able to see products and talk to some one who actually knows about them.

In our part of France it just about drives me crazy when I'm told that the shop does indeed stock what I need, but then shows me a picture in a catalogue...I always feel like showing them a picture of some money when it comes to paying.

SP

Tim said...

The payback on Domestic hot water is incredibly quick. In this region, a couple of vacuum-tube panels will give you all the domestic hot water you could use from late March to the end of October in this region. In Winter, it will give good hot water on a mildly sunny day... and the same amount as you would expect in Spring and Autumn on a clear, crisp sunny Winter's day. A good DIY kit is around £2000 and you can mount the collector on a shed roof if it is next to the house. And don't worry about getting a kit in the UK... plumbing fittings are the same until you get to the outflow of the tank, and those fittings are UK too, so the adapters are on the brico shelves. [Done the research as this'll be the final project if there's enough cash left... re-roof and conversion of the longere comes first!]