Bastille day

Nice walk with dogs at 6am, no new birds but really missing my field guides. Lots of  wild flowers I can’t identify. On our evening walk saw a flying beetle which I think was a rhinoceros beetle but couldn’t get close enough, but as with most large  beetles it flew like a brick.

Sunday in France can only mean one thing, Brocante, these are the French version of the car boot but tend to be organised by the village or town, Éguzon-Chantôme our nearest town jaws holding what was described as an art brocante, so I had to go. Having parked up I wandered into the town centre which was packed with people hunting bargains..

I very quickly realised that there wasn’t a lot of art related items on sale, but that didn’t mater. As a Brit wandering around every stand has something novel to look at  and it wasn’t long before I found something I liked.

It is the French game Les petites chevaux an early version of Ludo. It has a green beige surface in a folding wooden box, it was only €10 so I bought it.

I returned home to watch the most exciting cricket match I have every seen, and once it was over we sat in the garden and listen to the fireworks in the distance, nice of them to celebrate England’s win.

Can anyone identify this for me? The flower looks like borage but the leaves are wrong, I don’t have my books with me, the soil is acid. 

My Birthday


13 July

Family of Black Redstarts in garden, also colony of tree sparrows. Driving to Eguzon this afternoon  a pair of Booted Eagles were low over the road. Saw a comma butterfly and a Beautiful Damoselle along with some unidentified insects, can't wait to get my natural history library out here.

As I am writing this sitting outside in shorts and tee shirt at 7 am (6 am uk) there are Turtle doves churring in the trees all around the gite and a hobby just flew out of the trees behind the garden.

Anyway I made it to another Birthday and thanks to everyone who wished me well on Facebook etc. My target was to get to France before my Birthday and I just made it.

I started the day taking the dogs for a walk around 6am, it is so peaceful here and we are lucky to have a dead end road right next to gite ideal for their morning trot, stroll or lumber depending on which dog you are watching at the time. we all managed to arrive back more or less together.

Mid morning Luc our landlord arrived, I hadn't met him before and a nicer more laid back person you couldn't want to meet. Basically he is more than happy for us to do as we like, even told me I can use his power tools to fix or change anything we need to. He also began my education on the workings of the Fosse (septic tank), these are no long just a pit in the garden but a very high tech item, in fact I think French Universities probably run degree courses on them. So I have learnt how to feed it enzymes and bacteria, how to flush it if it smells etc.

The most exciting thing I did today was to go and visit the house we are buying. This was the first time I was going to see it having put my faith in Sharron and my sister in law Debbie. I was going on my own as Sharron needed to stay with the dogs. Maison des Lis is about 35km from here so I put the address into the Sat nav selected shortest route (when will I learn!!) and set off for a exploration of the back lanes of the Haute Vienne, incredibly pretty but sometimes you felt you where driving through someones garden.

I have of course seen many photographs of the house along with live streaming video when they were viewing, however the day they viewed it was pouring with rain. So when I pulled up it was the first time either of us had seen it in its full glory. It was stunning, I will save the details for when we actually move in but as you arrive the garden is a mass of colour. I had a tour of the house every room is beautifully decorated. The kitchen is huge compared with what we are used to, you can easily feed 6 around the main table.

Outside the land is perfect; a meadow edged with oak and Chestnut, 2 wells, ponds paddocks etc. There is a huge barn and other outbuildings and a stunning swimming pool. We are also purchasing tractors and accessories with the house including this wood saw, which is slightly bigger than I expected.

I spent about 3 hrs there and had to sample Gill's excellent chocolate brownie, she is a great baker. When I eventually left I was laden down with a bag of Miribelle plums, Lettuces and Coargettes from the garden, along with lots of ideas for projects I can do when we move in, such as making a lot of nestboxes to place around the garden.

The drive back was much less eventful as I headed for Eguzon to pick up food for my Birthday meal, a nice Steak for me and some trout for Sharron. Also a very nice bottle of Cremant de Loire, nicer than Champagne and a fifth of the price.

After dinner we took the dogs for their evening walk and retired.

The Journey

10th July 2019, the great departure.

The house seemed remarkably quiet when we got up with only Harvey downstairs. Heidi, Bella and Warrior left ahead of us yesterday with a pet courier company. The idea of that was to make the move less stressful for all, but of course that would never actually be the case. Warrior had decided to stay out all night which wouldn't have been an issue if the courier had arrived at lunchtime as planned not 8:30 as they did, after delaying him with a cup of tea, searching the garden, outbuildings, street etc she marched in about 9:30.

So at about 8:30 the movers arrived; quite a lot had been prepacked over the last 3 weeks so we were confident that we would be out by 2pm. Our movers were great and very careful wrapped everything and as 2pm came and went I found myself sneakily packing boxes when they weren't looking, which speeded things up a bit, but does mean we will be playing guess the contents in a few weeks' time. 

Half way through the process I discovered that my GoPro and sound recording kit was somewhere in one of the vans, not on the 'do not pack pile' in the living room. After a frantic search of the van and the opening and resealing of five boxes we found it. Other useful items from the 'do not pack' pile are however now in storage:

Watercolours and pads

Sun hats

Large scale road maps of France (why would you think we didn't need that?)

Two bath towels left over the bathroom door for the last minute post cleaning, pre journey shower

While the packing was going on Sharron was continuously taking car loads of rubbish to the tip (obviously hadn't decluttered as much as we thought we had - or maybe we were just increasingly desperate for the removal to finish?) and trying to clean the house, the latter activity being frustrated by the random way the vans were being filled, almost everything was removed then left while they moved on to another room. The other issue that needed handling was Harvey; already confused by the absence of his mates he now had strange people removing stuff. For everyones' benefit we moved him in and out of the garden and isolating him from the workers.

Finally about 5pm the last van left, that gave us an hour to clean what we could, shower and get away, we did what we could but not as much as we would have liked.

The drive down to Folkestone and on to Le Shuttle went well; Harvey particularly liked the dog exercise area... so many unfamiliar smells.  

Now by the time we got to France we had been on the go for 18 hours non stop, so we probably weren't as careful as we should have been entering the destination in the sat nav. But we knew it would be about a 6-7 hr drive and the time and distance looked about right, so off we went. At about 2 am we pulled over for a couple of hours sleep. Trying to sleep in a car so full you can't recline the seat and vibrating for the snoring from the large dog in the back was impossible; I think we slept for about 30 minutes each. 

So on we went, reaching our destination at about 09:30 which was good, as we were meeting the owner of the gite at 10:00. The gite in the beautiful Indre countryside, not the equally beautiful Indre et Loire countryside - which was where we actually were. Who knew there are at least a dozen hamlets in France with the same name...

We were at least three hours from where we should have been. After several panicked phone calls to the gite owner and the notaire to reschedule, and the animal couriers who we we also meant to be meeting, we found out - thankfully - that the other two dogs and the cat would not be arriving til the next day

Three hours of driving later, we finally arrived. The gite is lovely and the location perfect; really quiet and green. However we didn't have much time to enjoy it as we had a 4pm appointment with the notaire in Bellac about an hour away, so off we went again. This was the first time I had met our vendors; I still haven't seen the house we are buying. Documents signed using an electronic signature pad, unlike the paperwork we'd had to initial every page of at home, we set off back having officially bought a house. 

Satnav hiccups meant a 1.5km off-road section on the way home;  not what we expected but it got us to where we wanted to be.

We got there via a stop for provisions in Eguzon. I actually managed to buy a loaf by myself only using what I think was French - I hate to think what the man in the shop thought.

Finally after a delicious bowl of pasta and a couple of well earned drinks, it finally felt that we have arrived.