Nimes and Carcassonne

 Wednesday 03/04/24

A stunning morning for our final walk!

We finished off the house-sit on Monday evening and headed to a nearby hotel for the night.  As we were close to Nimes, a city with a Roman history, we decided to drive in and visit, something we could never do with Bokkie.

The Roman amphitheatre

The city centre had a lovely feel, with the amphitheatre and many other beautiful buildings in the central area.  The fact that it was a sunny spring morning and all the trees were breaking out in leaf helped make it a lovely visit.

The Pradier fountain

After lunch we headed onwards to our next overnight stop, just outside of the UNESCO heritage site in Carcassonne.  The drive gave us wonderful views of the Pyrenees capped in snow.  

We booked into the Good Knight hotel, right outside the chateau walls, a truly stunning location.

The Saint-Nazaire and Saint-Celse Basilica - records of it first appeared from 925 AD

The huge stained-glass windows in the Basilica are magnificent

Although 'touristy', the buildings are wonderful

The chateau is fantastic and well worth the visit even though, like many of these ancient sites, it now survives off the tourist trade.  Almost overwhelmed by the sheer number of restaurants on offer, we eventually found a tiny (reasonably authentic) place serving good food, and had a lovely regional meal.

I love an ugly gargoyle and the Basilica was covered with them

Today we're heading off to Toulouse for a couple of nights before our next house-sit.

Sitting in Rochefort-du-Gard

 Saturday 30/03/24

We woke up in the hotel in Murat after a very comfortable sleep to find it was snowing!

We had a lovely, typically French hotel breakfast of croissants, cheese and coffee, before setting off on our final leg before our sit.  Although the snowfall was light and not really settling in the village, the scene we drove through was absolutely beautiful.

We had made a last-minute decision to change our route and rather take a slightly longer but quicker route using some of the toll roads, as we were under a bit of time pressure.  It really paid off as I hadn't realised this took us over the Millau Viaduct.  In April 2019, some of you may or may not remember, we went to try and catch a glimpse of the viaduct in Bokkie and we got thwarted by mist so thick we could hardly see the road, never mind the impressive bridge.  Anyway, we finally got our chance not only to see, but also to cross one of the tallest cable-stayed bridges in the world.

Approaching the viaduct

The scale of it becomes evident when up close - it is HUGE!

An unintended consequence of our last-minute change of route was that we were following Dassie's sat-nav without having checked the route first so we were treated to a short-cut right through the middle of Montpellier, instead of skirting around on the bypass.  oh well, one has to take the good with the bad.

Walking around Rochefort

We are now staying Rochefort-du-Gard, where we have a house-sit.  It all seems so familiar, it could be any wine-growing village in the Boland.  While the weather is definitely warmer than Brittany (and definitely much warmer than the Auvergne), it has been very windy and rainy today with a large amount of dust being deposited with the rain, presumably from the Sahara.

We are looking after an adorable dog, Orca and a very pretty but stand-offish cat called Frodo - a lovely way to spend the Easter long-weekend.

There are fantastic walks from the house and we are all loving the scenery

We were fascinated by the tiny Iris plants dotted everywhere.

This is Frodo-speak for 'I want a treat, please'

Orca can't understand why Toni doesn't want to help catch a mole

We're here until Monday and will then head off for a short break before our next sit.

Toni still insists she's not a dog-person...

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.