• Published on 08 Aug 2019
• Tags: france, nightsky, photography

Writing up my PhD thesis would never be a fun task for me but to ease off the pain I have relocated to the calm, quiet atmosphere of Limousin, France for 2 months to try and get it done peacefully. I packed up my flat in London and moved myself, my things and my bike up and took a plane to Limoges. I am tremendously thankful to the wonderful Paul and Caroline (masterminds behind Le Jardin Créatif) who very kindly agreed to put me up. Coincidentally, it’s the same place I cycled toured to in 2016.

Packing up and pushing the weight limits of my luggage was horrendously stressful but I won’t bore you with that. I arrived on the 1st of July and so as I write this post now I’ve been here a little over a month. Have I finished half of my thesis, you ask? Well, no.

I haven’t just been lounging around in the sun like tigga the cat. There are two major reasons and many, many minor reasons why things haven’t gone quite to plan so far.

Major hiccup 1: I'm creating more work

My most recent work in my PhD has focused on modelling solutes in liquids computationally (you can read more about this here). We only recently had my first paper from this project accepted and I’m really quite proud of it since it is some of my most independant work. However, I feel like I’ve only just started and have so much more to try! Initially, I had intended on stopping research in July to focus purely on my thesis but I’m not ready to drop this project and it will be some time before anyone would pick it up again so I’m finishing what I started. I have no regrets about doing this at all. If I was to leave it to dry up and die, it would be like leaving a parenthesis open “(“ but never closing it. Eugh.¹

I am able to continue this work remotely and I’ve already managed to get so much more done out here without the noise and distractions of the office in London. I’m excited about this project and keen to see it through. But yes, this is just adding to what I need to write in my thesis… Sorry, future Alice!

Major hiccup 2: heat waves and being a giraffe

Giraffe’s have extremely high blood pressures to ensure enough blood goes from their heart all the way up to their brain. In that sense, I’m not like a giraffe at all. I’m fairly tall though (178 cm), have quite low blood pressure, cycling muscles in my legs but the arms of a t-rex. So I get bad head rushes and faint sometimes. In the “50 shades of grey” climate we have in UK, this is managable but this summer Europe has been hit with record high temperatures and out here in Limousin we’ve had several days of >40°C in the shade. For reference, internal body temperature is around 37°C.

My precious British skin can’t deal with it! So I’ve had many days where I can’t do much at all, delaying the write up even more so. This got me really quite down, to be honest. Can’t work, can’t bike ride, can’t do anything :(

But the weather has cooled off a bit since and I’ve felt a lot better - I’ve never been so happy to see rain!

The minor factors

I may have harped on about how I have fewer distractions over here, but it’s not fair to say there are none at all…

Of course there’s the 4 cats that get lots of fuss from me. Then there’s the sourdough bread I’ve been working on, the tortilla press I’ve built and with it a recipe to tweak. There’s helping about with Paul and Caroline’s businesses wherever I can. I’ve been taking photos of nature and camping in the garden attempting astrophotography. There’s the occassional bike ride when it’s not too hot, finding new courgette recipes and this miffed-off owl I made (with lots of help from Paul!)

However, I’ve been making decent headway into my calculations. I’ve done some work on it almost every day and I’m still making progress. C’est la vie!