Who are we?

Noëlle and I are getting on for retiring age, she younger than I.

There she is in our living room.

We both have children, she has a boy and a girl who have taken their place in the world and I have two boys and a girl all grown up.

I think joy is the way we would describe our relationship, very happy with our lives together.

Our aim with this Blog is to talk and show pictures of our collection, "The Goastalan Collection". We have been collecting for some time, I really started when I was living in England with Steam Road Vehicles, buying a steam roller from a scrap-yard and completely renovating it rivet and bolt by bolt, including major boiler work undertaken at home.

This engine was sold to buy a house and collecting became a small hobby with the occasional tractor or stationery engine as a passtime. Life was stretching out in front of us with work as a major part of my life. Noëlle was here in France building and tending her smallholding with all sorts of farm animals and a self sufficiency regime

Five years ago, not really thinking anything about collecting and machines again I came across, purely by chance a bloke called Colin who was looking for a house. A young friend had one for sale and I was showing Colin around.

He went out of the front door to see a large barn and just casually, off the cuff, said "Cor couldn't you get a lot of tractors in that!"

Pat's ears pricked up asking "Do you have tractors then?"

It turned out that he was a collector and shows tractors in the east of England. My curiosity and his seemed to run on the same paralel and we got chatting, I saying that the first tractor I drove at 7 or 8 was a Fordson E27N in the fields around Ripley Surrey.

As often happens things came to a head when Colin phoned me and said he had found me a Fordson, and if I liked to find transport over the water it was mine!

Six weeks later it was delivered, I will tell you a bit more about it next post, it is not an easy story unfortunately.

Pat