Resting in Murat

 Wednesday 27/03/24

We were up early this morning facing a long drive across the French interior. We bade farewell to B&T and the cats and set off in the rain 

We were treated to a stunning rainbow as we left.

We’ve opted for the most direct route to our first house-sit near Avignon, even though it’s not the quickest route. We find that avoiding the highways usually offers better views of the countryside and today didn’t disappoint. 

The final stage of our trip wound into the Auvergne region and we were treated to views of snow capped peaks around us.  

We arrived at Murat just before 5pm and the temperature was 3°C with the odd snowflake.  It is forecast to snow a little overnight and we're wondering if we should have packed warmer clothes; we thought it was spring already!

Our stunning hotel, the family who own it live next door and their family 
have lived there for more than 200 years.

You can just make out the snowy peaks in the distance

Murat is a beautiful, medieval village in central France

Top left in the picture is the white statue of the Virgin Mary and her child looking over the village.

Tomorrow, we're heading on to Rochefort-du-Gard meet Orca and Frodo, a dog and cat who need looking after for a couple of days.

Spring cleaning in Brittany.

 Monday 25/03/24

The view from our bedroom - magnifique!

The past six months have flown by and it's hard to believe that it is almost time for us to move on.  

The garden comes to life after the winter dormancy.

Our hosts arrived here on Sunday evening and we'll hit the road south in Dassie on Wednesday morning.  

We have an eight week road trip planned and are heading off without Orthos, our caravan.  The main aims of this trip are to meet my parents for a short visit when their cruise arrives in Lisbon, and then dash across to the UK for Toni's dental appointments.  

We decided to do this trip without Orthos as the cost to store her when we fly to Lisbon and the crazy ferry costs to take her to the UK made us reconsider (also, the weather is still iffy in Europe at this time of the year.  Instead, we've lined up a few house-sits and will fill in the gaps with some hotel stays, seeing some of the cities we've passed by in our trips Bokkie.

For those who are interested in our itinerary: we plan to start off with a short house-sit in the South of France, near Avignon and then visit Carcassonne and Toulouse before a second house-sit, looking after four cats in Saint-Puy.  From there we'll visit Bordeaux and then fly to Lisbon for a few days before returning for another long trip to get across the channel.  

On the life-admin side - our battles with French bureaucracy has started to show results; we've both been accepted onto the social system which gives us access to medical cover without needing separate insurance.  I have also converted my drivers' licence into a French version and today we went to pick up our Cartes de séjour, which are needed to show our residency status.   

Jasper enjoying some Spring sunshine.

We spotted these processionary caterpillars on one of our walks.

The last three weeks have been a blur of sorting the garden, cleaning the house and packing our belongings in a sensible manner so that we can pack the caravan easily when we get back. Our summer plan (for now) is to head off in the direction of Germany by the end of May, and travel around in Orthos.  We also have a summer sit lined up near Hanover, which should be lovely.

Will keep everyone posted!

Bonus:  Some Lily videos

Lily could never resist climbing into cupboards and drawers.

I was amazed to see how close she could get over such open ground.

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.