Slow living in France

I'm often asked why did we chose to live in France? The answer is not simple, so many reasons really. For inveterate house restorers like us France gives the opportunity to buy beautiful buildings in stunning locations. The food was a major draw - who can resist a French market? The people are delightful and have taught us so much, but above all it was the opportunity to try and live more slowly that made us want to move here.

Regular readers will know that I've touched on slow living before. It started in Italy during the 1980's as the Slow food movement, promoting an alternative to fast food with the emphasis on preserving traditional and regional cuisine. Since then it's developed to embrace a slower way of living but that doesn’t mean doing everything at a snail's pace but rather defining what is important to you, concentrating on that. It's doing things at the right speed, treading gently instead of charging about. It's not an easy thing to achieve, habits formed from decades of living a hurried life are hard to lose. So how are we trying to make it work for us?

Andrew and I like to do things together, it's just how we are, and sometimes that means getting up just a little bit earlier to achieve this. We still set a working week so Monday to Friday I'm usually up at 6 ish so we can breakfast and walk Mortimer together. Sitting at a table for meals, all meals, is really important to us, as is setting it properly. Friends know I have a bit of a table linen obsession so even weekday breakfasts involve a laid table with the requisite napkins.

Set for breakfast

Our renovation project is big, and we really want to be open for business next year. We would achieve more if one of us leapt straight into action while the other walked Mortimer but we rarely do. For us, the morning dog walk is important, we get a chance to breathe before the day really starts and we get time to observe our surroundings. The Santiago de Compostela route goes through Corrèze and most days we walk some of it, reflecting on the centuries of pilgrims who have trod these paths.

Santiago de Compostela route

Hydrangeas in the village

The village is full of hydrangeas, I hadn’t realised quite how varied in colour they were all before and capturing the different varieties has become a morning challenge. It’s this awareness of where we are that makes us really appreciate the life we have here.

Once we’re back home we sit and have a coffee before work, no rushing to start. We always break for lunch and it's usually for an hour. Our finish time will vary depending on the tasks we've been doing, if one of us wants to get something completed then occasionally it's a solo dog walk but that's not often. The evening walk is a good time to reflect on what we've achieved and our plans for the following day. If we stop and have a chat with friends, or share a bottle of wine with them well, does it really matter that much if supper is delayed by 20 minutes?

Talking of supper it’s quite often a joint effort. I defy anyone not to be inspired by French food shopping. We both find cooking relaxing and like to try out new recipes. These are usually not overly complicated, spending hours in the kitchen type of dishes, but trying out a different way of cooking with familiar ingredients. We're now coming into peak soft fruit season so I've started jam making again. Our local shop had 5 kilos of apricots for 8 euros last week - that was a lot of jam! It's certainly something that can't be rushed.

Moving to France and the changes we have made meant we could lose a car, we only need one now and if I'm honest we can go a week without using it (longer if I didn't insist on Emmaüs runs!) We chose to live in a village with shops and amenities that we can walk to, it certainly made life under lockdown easier. Our supermarket shop is fortnightly and we buy fresh food locally. We try to be more organised so that when we do go out in the car we do several things in a journey rather than a lot of mini-trips. I feel quite guilty when I remember how in the U.K. I used to get the car out just to buy a couple of rolls for lunch.

We're not perfect at this, we still get stressed when we try and pack too much in a day but we're learning to relax more. We still have goals to achieve, we still have to work hard but sitting down  enjoying a cup of coffee together isn't really going to make much difference to the schedule but it certainly makes a difference to our wellbeing.

If you would like to enjoy snippets of our slow life in Corrèze then feel free to follow/friend us here on Facebook or on Instagram

A special spot on the Corrèze

A slow Saturday in Corrèze

An often asked question is "what made you move to France?" and if I'm honest it's hard to give an answer as there's not just one reason. First let's get the whole house thing out of the way. For the British, French houses are cheaper and beautiful renovation projects are much easier to find, so if you're serial renovators like us then France is paradise. But the decision to move to France was much more complex, a large part being to live more slowly and make less impact on the planet.

We chose Corrèze village as it has everything we need for day to day living within walking distance, we only need one car. On average we make three journeys a week in it (and one of those is my Friday trip to Emmaüs!) We have beautiful dog walks from our house and friends within strolling distance, which has the added benefit of not having to toss a coin to see who gets to be 'designated driver' on an evening out.

So what about slow living? The concept of slow living came with the emergence of the slow food movement in 1980's Italy, a reaction to the growing fast food market. It doesn't mean we spend our time loafing about, we've finished the barn conversion and have just started work on turning the Old Notaires House into a bed and breakfast, but we appreciate the need to prioritise and take time over things that are important to us. Yesterday was a perfect 'Slow Saturday'.

The boulangerie was the first port of call to buy bread for scrambled egg and toast. It was a beautiful day, cold but sunny so a long Mortimer walk was a definite. We were just on the home stretch when we heard a disembodied "bonjour" from behind a hedge, peering over the gate we saw it was a French friend sitting in the sunshine, de-eying potatoes. We spent a good hour chatting with her and her son, catching up on village politics, discussing the merits of different mushrooms (apparently cèpes are cooked with garlic but girolles are definitely not - they need parsley). We left with a bag of potatoes, a jar of preserved girolles, bunch of parsley for said mushrooms, two pots of jam (myrtille and plum) and a large pot of apple purée. I'm pretty sure she still doesn't trust me, an English woman, to cook as I was given strict instructions as to the use of the purée. I certainly cannot have it with yoghurt for breakfast, nor in a sponge cake, it's definitely for apple tart.

We could have left feeling a bit antsy, after all we had 'wasted' an hour gossiping and our to-do list is quite long, but we didn't. We felt pleasure at spending time with kind and generous people, learning more about our village, and the country where we have chosen to live. We added a few words to our vocabulary and the realisation that we understood a lot more French than we did a year ago. And when we did get home we took a mug of coffee out into the garden to enjoy the sunshine and the view.

Coffee in the garden

The rest of the afternoon was spent outside, Andrew digging out a drainage ditch and planning the new steps to the kitchen doors and me, well pottering really. I relocated a few rose bushes and lavender plants, dead headed some hydrangeas and planned. A friend popped by and we discussed our newly discovered old water pipes (the excitement of village life!) Weekends are also a time for us to try out new recipes, and remember some old ones. Nearly 18 months without a proper kitchen really limited our repertoire. Yesterday I spent an hour or so making aubergines with a sweet and sour tomato sauce, which proved a hit.

Aubergines with sweet & sour tomatoes

I appreciate that this is winter and life is naturally slower, and I know when our gîte and bed & breakfast are up and running we will be busier. I really hope though that we can continue at a pace that suits us, I feel more balanced and more appreciative of the small things. A full life not necessarily a busy one.

If you would like to know more about our life in Corrèze then you are welcome to follow/friend us here on Facebook