In 2010, the big “R”, i.e. retirement, was in the not-too-distant future. A Welshman married to a Canadian living in The Netherlands. Retire? But where? A place where the nights are dark and clear, the weather is mild and where it doesn’t rain or snow most of the time.
Well that takes care of Canada, Wales, the UK, The Netherlands… We decide to look in the South West of France. Richard always liked the Toulouse area where he had to go hundreds of times while working at the European Space Agency (ESA). We added a light pollution layer to my Google Earth: Huguette had instructions to find a dark blue area, not far from a village (and a village had to have a restaurant and a boulangerie, at least). After a while we decided to concentrate on the department called Le Gers , which turns out to be the most sparsely populated in France. We found a lovely village called La Romieu. It felt good. We felt welcome, thanks to Marie and Francis from the Gîtes de Pellecahus. And finally, after two years of searching, we found our place, an old farm called Le Bourdieu.
We bought the place in October 2012, though retirement was still a few years away, so that meant frequent long drives from The Netherlands: about 1200 km each way. Nevertheless, we spent every vacation and some long weekends at Le Bourdieu. And during a long summer visit in 2013 the observatory construction started.
It all begins with an idea…and a hole or two.
Close to an old farmhouse near a small village in south-western France stands an astronomical observatory. Deliberately, it looks more like an agricultural building, but closer inspection shows some unusual characteristics: beams to support a roll-off roof, a weather station and so on. It is informally called ‘The Gutter’, since a visiting artist friend decided to paint a quotation from Oscar Wilde on one of the roof support beams: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Richard’s dream, the Gutter, otherwise called Le Bourdieu Observatory, was designed and built by him, with the help of friends and neighbours. Now retired from the European Space Agency (ESA), Richard spends much of his time on astronomy, on astrophotography and of course on improvements to the observatory. His wife, Huguette, doesn’t have to look far to find him. If he is not in his workshop/office, he is at the observatory.
Huguette, also retired from ESA, is a welcoming host for those evening events spent under the night sky. Huguette’s pastime is dabbling in calligraphy, photography and crafts of all sorts but her main interest is cooking.