Taking up residence in Brittany

 Monday 29/01/24

This New Year marked our fifth since leaving behind our jobs and our home and heading off on an adventure. We've settled down into a nice rhythm of travelling, broken up with house sits.  Our plans to take up residence in France are going well, albeit very slowly, and we are learning to be patient with bureaucracy.

A frosty morning - it's actually been quite mild (so far)

Becoming residents has meant that we could do the full winter sit at La Basse for the first time since Brexit took effect and we're really enjoying the time here. 

We've also made the decision to scale back our financial reporting and tracking a bit and to convert our monthly cost tracking into Euros, rather than to keep converting back to pounds, as we were doing.

We've been raising Lily, she's been raising the roof.  Don't be fooled by that cute face!

Jasper has had his hands full with her as well.

There's only one place for a cold morning.

You never know where the danger will come from...

Our record keeping has been key for the first period as we need to keep track of our little retirement experiment as there were so many unknowns.  Now that we've built up a good record we feel we can relax a bit on the detail and just keep track of the important stuff.

The markets have been good to us this year, seemingly starting to emerge from two slow years but we are happy with the way our portfolio has held up.  We still managed to live off income (interest, dividends and the odd little bit of online work) which means we have been able to leave our investments intact.  This is in spite of 2023 being our most expensive year so far.  Some of this was planned - an extended trip to SA and extra costs of taking up residency, and some of it was not, multiple trips to the UK, mostly to get Bokkie sold.

We've seen an unusual amount of fire salamander this year.  A good sign for the local environment.

 

We love it when a mass of mushrooms appear overnight.

Another unusual visitor to the garden.

All-in-all we're comfortable with where we are at, and have another two months at La Basse before we'll set off in Orthos, our magic caravan, and Dassie - to travel through the summer.  We've got a house-sit in St-Puy (south-west France) to start us off and will make it up as we go along from there.

Hope everyone who still reads this has had a good start to 2024!

Caravanning in Saumur

 Wednesday 06/09/23

We're camping on an island on the Loire and have this wonderful view of Saumur

We've been busy since our last post; we finished the house-sit in Les Pilles just as the heatwave broke and drove back to Brittany when the French holidays ended resulting in very busy roads and even busier motorway services.

On our trip back, we spent a night near Tours in Hotel Troglododo, where the rooms are built
into old caves.  We had a magnificent breakfast in this lovely cave.

We stayed at La Basse Cour (Brittany) for four days, looking after Jasper and Lily while B&T went camping.  We also collected our caravan so that we could start kitting it out with the essentials.

Toni and Lily dwarfed by the sunflowers at La Basse

Lily looks clapped but so were we - she is a handful to look after!

After a few hectic days we had the caravan registered and more or less habitable with the idea of picking up items as we see exactly what we need.  

We'd driven through the Loire valley on our way back and decided we would book a campsite in Saumur to spend the next three weeks before our winter sit starts.  It gives us an opportunity to get used to caravan life, iron out any wrinkles and see how we manage a bit of heat.

Set up on our pitch shortly after arriving.
Luckily we have now bought chairs so we aren't confined to the ground any more.

The imposing chateau keeps watch over the whole of Saumur.

The campsite is very popular with tourists with a mix of Brits and Europeans from all over, which is not our usual type of stop but it has a fantastic pool, is walking distance to loads of shops and has a beautiful chateau we want to visit.  

The heat, in the mid-30's since we arrived is quite exhausting in the afternoons but it should cool down over the weekend and we are enjoying long morning walks and lots of swimming.

Balloons rising with the sun!

All-in-all we're thrilled with the Duster and the Caravelair's performance so far and are enjoying our settling-in period, in anticipation of more camping next year.

Enjoying the summer heat in Les Pilles

 Sunday 20/08/23

This area of Europe is being subjected to a 'heat dome' where stable, hot air is being held under a high-pressure system - a technical event translating into very hot days.  We've been having daytime temperatures in the 30's for more than a week and the week ahead is more of the same - until Saturday.

It's hot, hot, hot!

We're helped somewhat by the river running past the house as the overnight temperature drops enough to cool the house down and we keep all the shutters closed during the day.  

The sun rises before 07:00 and only sets after 20:30 so the days are long and the temperatures only peak late into the afternoon.  It's a nice, dry heat and we're fortunate not to have to be very active while here.

The area is full of evidence of the formation of the Alps.
Rock sediment layers folded over when continents collided millions of years ago.

Sooty is a walking, running machine - completely indefatigable.

Early morning and late evening walks with Sooty work well, with a river swim added in sometimes during the heat of the day if we're all up for it.  

We took a lovely drive up the valley yesterday and some of the views are amazing; it really is a beautiful part of France that we are currently in.  It can be busy in the touristy areas but as soon as you take a walk or drive off the beaten track you can have the area all to yourself.

We found this stowaway in the kitchen

These bumblebees have to be quite acrobatic to hold onto these pom-poms

We only have a short time left here so are packing in as much walking and sight-seeing as we can - this time next week we'll be on the road back to Brittany.

Bonus pic - Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched?

Nyons market day

 Sunday 13/08/23

The beautiful single-arch bridge was built in the 1300's and sits 18m above the river Aigues.

Our closest large village is Nyons, which was first populated by a Gallic tribe in the sixth century BC.  It has a lovely ancient Roman bridge across the river into the old town and, in summer, has market days on Thursdays and Sundays.

The lovely chapel built on the keep of the medieval castle

We had already seen how busy the markets can get so we made our way in, bright and early, and had a lovely walk around the narrow lanes before the market was in full swing.

We're really enjoying having a car and the Duster is great fun to drive.  The SatNav is still taking some getting used to...

Although the Duster is a very capable 4x4, we thought it
prudent not to follow the Satnav route up the stairs...

One of the routes we took into the mountains - we would have struggled in Bokkie

The weather remains glorious and sunny - long may it last!

Les animaux de Les Pilles

 Monday 07/08/23

Ola spends most of her time in the garden but found this 'very comfortable' spot for a nap.

Rumi chilling as only a cat can

Old girl, Hilda in her favourite spot - the basket where the spare packets are kept.

Sooty is always ready for playtime

Hilda has a habit of intently watching one - Crazy-Eyes

We're almost half-way through this sit and I have been on my own for almost a week.  Toni managed to break a tooth quite badly just as all the local dentists went on their summer holiday so we decided it made sense for her to fly back to the UK and have it repaired.  She was able to get it repaired by Richard, who has looked after out teeth since we moved to the UK.  She's been spending a few (cold) days with Charmaine and Nathan and I think she is looking forward to returning to warmer weather in France.

Sooty and I hiked up part of the Autusche mountain trail

Sooty basically pulled me all the way up and all the way back down - my legs were stiff for days...

It's fairly boring on my own although I have been kept amused by the animals and have enjoyed many a long walk with Sooty.  We took this house-sit with the intention of finding out out what summers are like in the area.  Many Brits find it unbearably hot here so we wanted to see for ourselves as we still are trying to find where we want to settle down.  We've been captivated by the area, the scenery just to the South of here is very similar to the Cape winelands and the weather is fantastic, certainly not too hot for us.  

The river water is the ideal temperature for swimming in and the inexhaustible Sooty absolutely loves playing in the water, chasing sticks and trying desperately to catch the trout we see hiding in the deeper water.

Evening walk in Les Pilles

 29/07/23

We went for an evening walk yesterday (those of you in Africa will find it hard to believe this was at 9pm and still sunny) and were treated to the most fantastic views.

It really is stunning here!

Heating up in Les Pilles

 27/07/23

    

A lot has happened since we last blogged, the most notable being the sale of Bokkie.  We moved to our house sit in Huntingdon and by a quirk of fate, managed to find a buyer around the corner from the house.  Although it was very sad to see her go, we're excited about new possibilities.

The house sit was just what we needed at the time as it was so easy to do the delivery of Bokkie, and we could manage without a vehicle for the rest of the time as the house was close to many shops.  Looking after DC, the cat,  was an absolute pleasure.

DC loved tummy tickles

Once done, we spent a few nights in hotels before flying back to France.  We had booked to fly to Nimes as we were getting no response from our car salesman regarding our vehicle and Nimes was close to the next sit that we had booked in Les Pilles.  

No sooner were the flights confirmed and we were told the car was, in fact, ready.  We scrambled to change our plans and flew into Nantes, spent two nights at La Basse Cour, picked up our new (to us) car and drove to a campsite near Menat.  We stayed in a cottage on the campsite which was in a lovely location and meant we could unwind for a couple of days before driving on to our sit.

View of chateau ruins from our gite

We are now in the warm south of France, in the middle of a tiny village in the mountains.  The house was built in the 1700's and is really quirky, spanning 5 floors.  It is the first time we have done a proper village sit and we are finding it quite a different experience to our usual rural locations.

Les Pilles nested between the mountain and the river

Walk time with Sooty

We have three cats and Sooty the dog to look after. There are lovely river and mountain walks from the bottom of the garden so we think we'll enjoy our time here. Also, having the car now means that we are not just limited to how far we can walk in terms of exploring the area - quite a novelty for us!

Bonus pics

While in Brittany we met Lily, a new kitten for us to look after during our winter sit. 

It's going to be a tough job - looking after a cute kitten, 
but someone has to do it.