Life amongst the chestnut groves

From the photo I think most of you will be able to tell where I’ve been this week – yesterday (Friday) to be precise. Yesterday was an early start for Pat and I as we awoke at 4:30 am and were in the car by 5:00 am on our way to Limoges to catch the 6:04 am train to Paris. Thankfully we had made ourselves some coffee and brought a couple of croissants which made the just over 3 hour journey a lot more tolerable (and cheaper than buying from the cart on the train).

We arrived in Paris to then figure out the ticket machine for the metro, a dash up to the platform and jumping on the train that was waiting to discover it was the wrong train – so off at the next station and we backtracked and then got ourselves on the correct train.

We were heading over to the 7th arrondissement for Pat to do some of his Australian Visa medical things and for me to explore the Musée Rodin and then for the two of us to have lunch and then head to the Eiffel tower – something I actually haven’t done before. I thoroughly enjoyed the Rodin Museum. It was a gloriously sunny day and even though part of the gardens were closed (the museum is housed in Rodin’s home and gardens) I started with a wander around the parts of the gardens I could get to and enjoyed it alot.

Then into the museum itself, which is a wonderful building with work by Rodin and some works by other artists he owned – I came across a painting which I loved – L’ete (Summer) by John Lavery painted in 1904 – it is a big painting but something about it really spoke to me (maybe because I’m in the middle of winter?). He was an Irish painter and after googling him I don’t recall seeing his paintings before, but I do like them. Please note that this photo does not do the painting justice.

I then met up with Pat once he had finished with the doctor’s, we headed over towards the Eiffel tower near where the laboratory was for his blood test – this didn’t take long and off we went to lunch. We both decided to have just the plat du jour and a glass of wine – however after watching some of the desserts passing us by to go to other tables – dessert was ordered – we both felt incredibly full after our lunch of bread, steak, chips, salad, red wine, water, cheese cake and coffee! We then walked our way to the Eiffel tower. My original plan had been to go to the very top of the tower and have a glass of champagne but we had discovered that the top was closed during January for maintenance. So we thought about having lunch on the 2nd level, but because we didn’t know what time Pat would be finished with his medical stuff we just decided that we would chance it and see if we could get a ticket when we got to the tower. Unfortunately with it being a lovely (but cold) day the line to get the lift to the 2nd level was too long. So we just explored around the tower, and even just doing that was worthwhile.

So we then had to do the journey home, a stop at the train station for picking up a sandwich to munch on the train journey back to Limoges. We eventually arrived back to our house just after 8:30 pm. A sit down and a glass of wine before crashing into bed and sleep at around 10:00 pm. This morning we slept in and then headed off to get Siena from our friend who looked after her while we were in Paris.

While I may have another trip to Paris before we head back to Australia but if we don’t, and this was my last trip to Paris – I’m more than satisfied.

For now, à bientôt, from our wonderful part of France – Delia

Things do seem to be accelerating. I went over to the place we were considering to rent to check the internet. Its twice the speed we have here! So now that we have a definite place to go once the final sale of our Beaulieu house goes through, we seem to spend much of our time at the tip or loading the car to go there. Hoarding is an issue – I had at least a hundred different power supplies. Yet in the past I have given up trying to find the exact one in the pile… voltage and amperage might match but the plug to go into the device is wrong. In such cases I have given up and bought one from China – perhaps 4 weeks away but at least it usually arrives. Anyway Delia was quite impressed with me just tipping out the whole pile into the “little electronics” recycling bin.

The tip (or decheterie – sounds like a French dish) isn’t very photogenic and the only photos I have been taking are of things to sell. So by popular demand I am not posting pictures of our dented chest freezer or our nearly new petrol lawnmower.

My Franco-Brittanique Rencontre group had a post Xmas “bring a plate” (they call it a ‘repas espanol’ or spanish meal – I guess its like tapas?). Lots of French spoken but a lot of English too. An Aussie couple have come back recently having been back and forth as visas permit. It was reassuring to me to speak to an Aussie male with no interest in any sport. But then he was Tasmanian!

The food was varied – slices of melt in the mouth beef fillet, sausage rolls and scotch eggs too. Mostly flans and cakes (along with wine of course). We spread our news around those who hadn’t heard of our plans and received much regrets and good wishes.

So as not to disappoint here’s a shot of our garden in Feb 2018 hopefully not what we have to look forward to!

Well it is cold! Silly cold, but the sky is blue and we have been out and about on some lovely walks over the Christmas/New Year break. However, it was back to work this week. Always hard to get back into the routine after a lovely relaxing time off.

Pat and I have spent the last couple of weeks madly trying to find a place to rent. Looking at if we want furnished or unfurnished, if the place has internet or not. We think we have found a place – not that far from where we currently live which has 2 bedrooms and internet. Pat is going to do a final check of the internet on Monday and if that is fine, we’ve a place to move to. We’ve also started the dreaded clean out – getting rid of things that aren’t needed (large amount of clothes off to the clothes bank today) and getting rid of those items that just haven’t been used in a long, long time (cocktail glasses!).

I am trying to make sure that this blog doesn’t turn into a “moving house” blog as I don’t think that would be of interest to many people, but you never know. I am looking forward to our trip to Paris later this month and also I’ve started planning my other trips. We are heading to Prague in May (I’ve always wanted to take Pat there) this will be a romantic long weekend away for Pat’s birthday. We then have to factor in Berlin and Amsterdam – 2 places high on my list to visit. One friend has also suggested joining her in Dublin at the end of May (long weekend as bank holiday in UK) so that may also be happening – there is just so much to see and do!

Our Christmas tree will be coming down tomorrow, I’ve really enjoyed our tree this year, it has so many items on it which hold memories – the wooden fish from Contis Plage, the bauble with water lilies (Monet’s garden) the Viking ship from York and of course the Venetian mask from Venice. It is lovely to have these reminders of the places we have been. I’m willing to take any suggestions of places that you think are a must do in Europe.

For now, à bientôt, from our wonderful part of France – Delia

I uploaded my last blog to my old site patblog.patbell.co.uk d’oh. Anyway, today we went to Site de Peyrassoulat to see the “original” of the artwork we have bought as a souvenir of our time in France. So when we get to Australia, probably in November 2019 visa permitting, we have something other than all the various  christmas tree decorations we have bought on our travels. No we aren’t hanging the picture on our tree next year!

I was up in Paris this Friday getting my biometrics done. Finger prints and digital photograph to accompany my visa application. It was a 6am train from Limoges for the 3 1/2 hour trip to Gare d’Austerlitz.  I had planned to walk along the Seine past Notre Dame, then across past the Louvre and north towards Montmartre. But it was bitterly cold and all I really wanted to do was get on the metro and then find a warm café before having lunch at a Brasserie. Which is what I did and then spent 40 minutes queuing with all the others (who were actually applying for UK visas at this joint UK/Australian visa handling centre). Two minutes for my appointment and I was done.  I am next due on 18th January for health check. Delia’s coming then and we’re squeezing a trip up the Eiffel Tower into the day trip.

I shall miss France – Europe in fact. It shouldn’t make any difference to my work – a digital nomadic life is all the rage now! Plus I will be available anytime before noon (European time).

As for Peyrassoulat – it was quite magical. The sun came out and the sky was blue. Autumn leaves covered the floor the ancient woodland and two huge 200 years-old plane trees were kept company by four over-500 years-old yew trees. 

On the 22nd March 2014 I wrote the following in my blog (back in the early days!)

“…I’m looking forward to never moving again, well at least hopefully not moving for at least 20 years!!! So what number move does this make, well it will be house/home number 29, but move number 31 – as I’ve been back home a couple of times – this also includes 3 overseas moves.”

Guess what, move 32 is now going to be happening! This will be a surprise to a large number of you. But to let you know what is happening, back in October Pat and I had a big discussion about our future and where we wanted to be and what we wanted to be doing. We ended up coming to the conclusion that for me being near my family and saving for my retirement were 2 very important things so we made the decision to pack and up move to Australia.

This was not an easy decision to make, as I really do love being in Europe and travelling to all the wonderful places that are here. But it is time. With the decision made we put our house on the market and Pat has started his Visa process. We figured that the hold-up would be the sale of the house. We were wrong! The average for selling houses in our part of France is around 2 years and with all the Brexit stuff happening that really has extended out to 2½ years. We had an offer in around 8 weeks, surprise to us but a good one. We’ve signed the first part of the paperwork which is good; the 2nd part should be signed in early March.

So we are now madly trying to decide what needs to be packed up and what we don’t need to keep. We have started to sell some items on-line – like our cement mixer, scaffolding, yesterday we sold my bike (I’ve had it for 5 years and the guy buying it asked if it was new – sort of shows how little I’ve ridden it).

We’re now need to find somewhere to rent, (consider France or UK if you know of anywhere). Why? Pat’s Visa is now the hold-up, this can take over a year, but we are hoping that it will be simple as nothing needs translating and we have been married for over 10 years. But we will see, Pat has to head up to Paris next week for his biometrics and then in January for his medical tests (I’m heading up in January with him – just for the day – so that I can go to the Eiffel tower – which I’ve not yet been too).

We would like to be back in Australia for Christmas 2019, however – there are also a large number of places that I want to make sure that I get to in the next 12 months. We also need to do all the paperwork for importing our pets – yes Siena and Wallis will also be making the journey as-well. Not sure how much they will like it, but I can’t live without my fur babies.

One thing I am doing is putting together a list of places within Australia and nearby that are must visits – so far we’ve got Queensland (to visit Pat’s son), Singapore (it’s changed so much since I last visited), Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and the Adelaide hills, Tasmania, might even get to New Zealand finally. Would love suggestions of places that are worth visiting.

So for now, à bientôt, from our wonderful part of France – Delia

The Christmas tree is up and our Christmas stockings are out and there are already a few presents under the tree. I do love Christmas, though it does feel strange to have it in winter after growing up in the southern hemisphere and having Christmas in summer. Our newest addition to the Christmas tress decorations is this small Venetian mask – which we both loved and I feel does a good job of representing Venice. I really like our tree decorations now as they do all represent places we have been which is lovely and as we got to reminisce about the places we have been to together.

I loved Venice and it was hard to get back into the swing of things back here at home once we got back, especially as it has been wet, cold and grey for most of the past two weeks. Work has also been very busy, which sort of spoils the holiday feeling.

Back to France, today I met a friend for coffee and we then went to the local Christmas market, I was looking for stocking fillers for Pat, not a lot there really, but I did get a couple of items. Pat and I are only doing stocking filler gifts this year as we want to put our money towards travel next year. So far Amsterdam and Berlin are on the list – I would like to add Prague as Pat has never been and I’ve always wanted to go back. However, there are so many places I want to see and to do too many returns just seems a little silly, but when a place is amazing and a deeper exploration needed then one must return. But as all this travel costs money, things may have to wait a little while.

So for now, à bientôt, from our wonderful part of France – Delia

One from Delia’s must-see list. Like Rome two years ago, I was amazed how much I enjoyed the visit. Venice is unique, the atmosphere so… atmospheric. No cars, bicycles, not even skateboards; only feet and boats – I can understand the person we saw on a recent documentary about Venice, who asked when Venice closed, as if it were a theme park.

The airport bus felt like a prison transport, the windows semi opaque due to the layer of plastic on the outside to advertise. Inside was dark and until we got off the bus we had seen nothing of Venice itself. My first surprise was the colour of the “canal” water – light green and not a shopping trolley or old tyre in sight – the Grand Canal was not like the Grand Junction Canal in North London.

Our walk to the apartment we had rented was short, Delia had planned well and guided us straight there. We spent the afternoon wandering before and after meeting with our friends Kate and Heather from Aberdeen for a delicious lunch. The lunchtime cafe was pricey, I had read that eating out in Venice was going to be expensive anyway. Everywhere else we found to eat, we found the costs similar to France, however the pizzas were more delicious.

Its impossible to detail the experience: the wading through the aqua alta (especially high (neap) tide), the Grand Canal by vaporetto (water bus), the churches, the food. For all the day trippers, who experience Venice by crowd shuffle only, you miss a truly immersive experience (perhaps rain and colder but worth the difference) – and Venice by night is truly not to be missed. Here are some of the multitude of photos.

Its now mid-November and we have had some pretty autumnal weather, cold
and rainy. But most days manage some sunshine. Especially today.This
week has been busy. Delia has had a lot going on and I currently have
four websites in various stages. Well… two are mostly finished, just
some final checking by the clients. Another one for a gîte in
Gers (way south of here) and another website just about to begin. This final one
came to me by virtue of them having seen one of the other websites which is nice!

I had been thinking about how sparse the population is here and its
seeming age bias leaning towards the retired. It means I have a small
local potential clientele but also fewer competitors. In fact it really
makes little difference, referrals and local advertisement seems to work
fine (eventually) and I can work anywhere.

This lunchtime we have been invited to lunch at a restaurant we haven’t
been to before. Its fish and chips are great apparently, and whilst we
usually avoid the expat bias towards expat cuisine – what the heck! And
Delia can have pulled pork. So because we’ll be out for a few hours,
Siena has had a nice long walk in today’s glorious sunshine, through the
banks of autumn leaves and down to the river (avoiding the hunt that
seems to be about).

Hello all, it is sunny but cold in our part of France and I’ve just switched the heating on. We’ve had a nice but busy week. Pat is getting more business and I’ve picked up a couple of new clients so I’m also busy. I’ve come to the realisation that, being that busy is actually my new normal. I came to that conclusion while in art class on Friday afternoon – when I said that I was busy, I realised that is the way it is most likely going to be now. Can’t really complain as it does mean I’m earning more money. Which would be good as Pat and I want to do a bit more travelling next year, short trips.

This week we haven’t done that much, but we did get out to lunch on Wednesday, which was really nice, got to catch up with quite a number of people that we haven’t seen for a number of months. We also went to a restaurant that we are having a Christmas lunch at (for Pat’s camera club). This is also a restaurant that is open for Christmas lunch on Christmas day. This is an unusual thing in our part of France, and we have been looking for a place to have Christmas lunch, but I think it may be a little bit far from our place to actually travel to on Christmas day. The search continues. We had been thinking about doing something a bit different this year for Christmas but we just haven’t got ourselves organised enough.

I’m coming to the end of a painting this week and realised I hadn’t taken a photo of my last painting – so here it is. This was from a photo I took on a beach in Cornwall back in 2010 – such a long time ago.

So for now, à bientôt, from our wonderful part of France – Delia

Last fortnight has been glorious sunshine. Admittedly the mornings have been chilly but then its dawn and even in the height of summer dawn is often chilly (though a damn sight earlier of course). Later dawns mean that Siena and I can enjoy some beautiful sunrises, Siena often stops and gazes into the distance giving the illusion that she is having deep thought, when as evidenced by her suddenly sprinting off, she actually thinks she can see a bird. For what its worth, if it is a bird its long gone by the time Siena gets even halfway towards it, but usually its just a tuft of darker grass or even a cow-pat – neither of which are especially perturbed by her approach. Friday was mostly wet, but today, suddenly its winter. 3°C and sleet. In fact as I sit in the kitchen, there are a few flakes of snow.

Last Monday I became a great uncle to Frank. Suzannah my neice (ie one of my brother’s daughters d’uh) is the first of my nieces to have a baby. I sent a card with his first Peter rabbit toy.

This week was Delia’s birthday. No surprise presents from me this time though; at Delia’s request I had ordered a handmade messenger bag from one of my recent website clients – she’s not selling live yet but weebaglady.com shows her stuff. Delia was pleased with how well-made it was. Val (the weebaglady) has a house over in Lageyrat across the valley from us. Her website sprang from when we had met her and Graham, her partner, on the Voie Verte walking Siena. Delia also got a book from me (again not a surprise) by the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. She had made a special request for her birthday breakfast and I happily obliged – long slow cooked… creamy scrambled egg, bacon and toast. Her day was spent just relaxing and that evening we went to our local Italian. For a week day evening it was crowded, we had to sit by the door, which wasn’t so bad. The food was, as usual great. We enjoyed a carb excess, me with a veal escalope and chips Delia with a tagliatelle carbonara. Nothing very exotic but just what we wanted. We had a three chocolate entremet for dessert.

The food theme continues with yesterday. Two friends came to lunch, Jayne, who looks after Siena in return for any computer work they need doing, such as, this time, getting google to stick to English. We had slow cooked leg of lamb with assorted vegetables. Jayne had never eaten lamb so I figured rather than traditional slightly pink slices, it would be better to have the lamb equivalent of pulled pork. Our friends also enjoyed the handful of roasted chestnuts we served with other titbits before the lamb. For the veggies we had swede, sweet potato, cabbage, parsnip, carrot, peppers, courgette and tomato all roasted in garlic oil. Cheese and then orange and lemon sorbet for dessert. Jayne was so taken with the chestnuts she went out with Delia and Siena and gathered a bag of them. Even though they have already been harvested, there are still plenty around the edges of the grove. Its a pity Delia doesn’t like them or we’d be having chestnuts with everything!

Here’s the birthdy girl last year, the seaside a bit later than this year.