Lonely-not a chance

I had a subject planned for this week’s blog post but an event this morning changed my mind.

Correze town

Despite all our planning and research there was one issue that really concerned us, would our move to France prove socially isolating?  During our house hunting there was one thing on the list that was non-negotiable, we did not want to be in a remote location. It was easy to be tempted by gorgeous properties with stunning views and we'd say to each other ‘3 kilometres isn’t that far to a boulangerie ‘ but we remained resolute. For practical reasons we knew a village or small town would be better, Andrew needs a reliable internet connection to work. But primarily we knew that we had more chance of integrating and improving our language skills if we could talk to people everyday.

We officially arrived on 1st December last year. Within a few days we met an English couple who took us under their wing, through them we met the Belgian owners of Le Parc de 4 Saisons who, even though they had only met us once, invited us to their New Year’s Eve dinner party. Daily walks with our labradoodle Mortimer meant villagers became familiar with us and there are daily small conversations.

When our part time neighbours arrived for a holiday break we were immediately asked to join them for aperos (and thanks to FaceBook group French Focus Friends for all their help on that one!). They spoke no English but we spent a lovely evening with them. Last weekend when we celebrated Andrew’s birthday with an apero soirée, there were 18 guests, French, Belgian and English (only five) and none of these people we had known on the 30th November.

Of course we have been making an effort as well. When I saw a neighbour receiving a log delivery I knocked on their door to get an introduction to their log supplier. I met a sprightly 70 plus gentleman who now visits every couple of weeks for a coffee, and always brings us a dozen fresh eggs. Conversation can be tricky but we always get there, and there is always laughter. At Christmas I took mince pies to the lovely staff at theMairie and the bank, both of which still have the snowflake that I decorated the parcels with, hanging on their respective noticeboards.

So what was the event this morning? At 10.30 an unknown lady rang the door bell. We had noticed that the detached house which had remained shuttered since we've been here had become inhabited over the weekend, it sort of backs onto our garden (you can see it in the photograph). At our front door was Jo, the occupant, who had come to introduce herself and invite us to aperos tomorrow. So are we lonely? Certainly not!


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The garden

I haven't really shown you the garden have I? Just the odd snippet and glimpse of it in a photograph. It's quite a nice garden, what the French call a 'parc' which really means it has a lot of trees in it I think.

Most of the trees appear to be specimen conifers, I can identify a monkey puzzle, swamp cypress and possible a sequoia. The other trees and shrubs are slowly revealing themselves as the weather improves. I'm pleased to see three laburnums, there used to be a lot of these in English gardens before people got nervous about the poisonous seeds. I think I also have some philadelphus and a tree peony. There is a small rose border by the house, we'll see how they get on.

The house is sideways onto the road with the wooded garden to the front and an ancient potager to the side (with a lovely village view), the back has only a couple of metres. Everything has got out of hand with some of the conifers way too tall and the limes in desperate need of pollarding. Fortunately there is more moss than lawn as mowing is hard work, we're on a slope and there are tree roots everywhere. It is a tranquil space though with the sound of the river Correze always present. When the sun is out there are tantalising glimpses of sparkling water.

Our sitting room is on the first floor and has large doors onto a balcony, it's almost like being in a tree canopy. Each day there are new surprises, I've discovered masses of lily of the valley growing, and primroses/primulas are everywhere. But most interesting are the 'lumps' of granite we have which are apparently Gallo-Roman stones used to hold funeral urns. One is now the temporary home of our weather station and it's lid my herb garden!

Barn - lighting & electrics

We have spent far too much time this week in front of the computer working out the lighting and electrics for the barn. We had a charming electrician visit on Tuesday, who was really helpful. Andrew has done the electrics on all our past renovation projects but is still getting his head around French norms. However our electrician has deemed him competent enough to pull all the cabling ready for connection to the new consumer unit. He can also get all supplies cheaper than we can so we needed to get our lighting and electric schematic drawn and sent across so we can get this phase underway.

We have also decided to change from the existing three phase to mono phase. I thought I could get away with this job as EDF have a really good English speaking section. Andrew made the initial call and all seemed well until I heard him say that his French wasn't up to much but it was no problem as his wife was much better. After the call was finished I asked him what this was about. It turns out that I will be taking a telephone call next Friday morning answering technical questions that I'm not sure I could do in English let alone French!

Ground floor

First floor

This took us several days to do. I had to finalise the kitchen design, and as mentioned before we both have strong design ideas that don't always coincide. Although we already had scaled floor plans we made several trips between office and barn to draw chalk lines on the floor. But finally we got there.


Next will be choosing the fittings. More marital negotiations!

Now that's more like it!

Correze forecast next week

Easter week

Our first French Easter was a little confusing. On Good Friday our friends and family WhatsApp group was chatty because everyone in the U.K was on holiday, but we weren’t. It led to a discussion as to national/bank holidays, would it be greedy to recognise both? Probably but we’ll see if we can get away with it! Secondly was the weather, Easter Saturday it snowed yet a few days later we were sitting outside in 23 degrees eating ice cream, having had a picnic by the Dordogne river. Between the two we had experienced intense thunderstorms.

On Easter Sunday we went to Egletons, it’s only a short drive from us. We’re now regulars at the Sunday market but we had the addition of a vide grenier as well. As you can see from the photographs it was very busy, I can be spotted in the bread queue at the boulangerie. We were also treated to a some regional dancing which was great fun and undertaken with great enthusiasm.

We have been working as well, on the barn and the temporary guest room. Andrew has put flooring down in the barn so we can now walk on the first floor instead of balancing on floor joists. It was nice to see the view from the windows for the first time. What wasn’t so good was one of the roof joists. At some point during the barn’s history two dormer windows were put in. Unfortunately whoever did this just cut through one of the A frame roof trusses, probably to stop it putting pressure on the new external wall but without giving any thought to problems that this might cause. We now have to put a 6 metre support in to spread the load.

Work in the guest room has been slow, nothing is ever a quick job here. I wanted to give a facelift to one of the bedrooms so that it would be nice for guests, however one thing has led to another and there is still no paint on the walls! Fortunately no guests are imminent so I’m okay at the moment.

We’ve also had an electrician in to give some advice, particularly in regards to the main house. We’re not ready to tackle this yet but since I melted a lead fuse Andrew has been a little concerned. It’s not as bad as we thought (despite our fuse box dating back to 1959) and we do have circuit breakers. We now have to do electrical plans for both floors. Just as well that I've done the furniture and kitchen plans.

Barn downstairs

Barn upstairs

Still have to do the lighting, power sockets etc. overlay but the basics are there.