France This Way...the blog!!

One downside of getting English TV, apart from the difficulty of choosing what to watch from 100 channels of unwatchable rubbish,  is that I have discovered that one channel seems to show a lot of re-runs of Grand Designs.

I always was a ‘Grand Designs addict’ and now it seems I have nine years of missed episodes to catch up on, which should keep me busy during the winter. This includes a sprinkling of episodes set around France, which are especially interesting to me.

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The last Saturday in August is a strange day when you live somewhere popular with tourists. It is the day when the towns start to regain their ‘normal’ personalities, the roads become quieter, and the numerous events, fairs, medieval days and street parties that carry on through the summer come to an abrupt end.

This gives the whole region – perhaps much of France – a slight ‘end of the party’ feeling – everyone’s had a great time but they have to go home eventually.

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When we moved to France we had big ideas of self-sufficiency – harvesting nature’s natural produce, growing our own vegetables, eating fruit from the orchard…

…but I have to admit, many years later, we have failed dismally!

Mrs B has very green fingers when it comes to plants and flowers, but she won’t mind me saying her vegetable garden is a complete disaster. Actually I should say ‘vegetable gardens’ because we have had several, and all have been utter failures.

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Older daughter is working at a local ‘adventure parc’ this summer and has lots of fascinating stories to tell about how people behave on holiday. Most of them I can’t repeat because the people involved might recognise themselves and not be very flattered, but one thing we have learned is that there can never be European harmony because people from different countries can never eat lunch together.

Not because they don’t get on, but because everyone has a completely different view on what lunch is, and what time it should be enjoyed.

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(subtitle: installing Freesat in France without getting hot and bothered…)

After eight years eight months and 27 days of living in France we have given in and installed English TV. It would have been a few months sooner but I’m pretty slow at getting on with things, especially when I don’t know what I’m doing.

So in case anyone else is as slow as me, and because when I was doing my research I couldn’t find it explained clearly anywhere, I thought I’d give a quick user guide to how we did it. Of course, as with so many things, it’s completely straightforward and pretty inexpensive when you do know how to do it, impossibly complicated when you don’t.

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During the summer months a lot of towns in France spring into life with festivals, night markets, and various events laid on to amuse both locals and visitors alike.

One popular idea both near us and in several other places in France is ‘medieval re-enactments’ where everyone in the town dresses up in ‘olden-days’ costumes, paint gruesome wounds on themselves, and march around waving wooden swords and making small children cry.

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One curious phenomenon about expats in France, at least the ones we know, is that their children reach a certain age – typically about 13 to 15 years old – and then start talking about ‘going home’.

Not all, but a pretty high percentage, seem to like the idea of going to university in the UK or just moving back anyway.

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Too much doom and gloom with all this talk of farming in crisis and Brits who can’t afford to go on holiday, or expats who have to drive thousands of miles to buy their croissants in Tesco? We have the antidote!

I’ve mostly given up looking at videos of France on the internet because there are just so many amateurish ‘lets make a video out of a few blurred holiday snapshots’ efforts to wade through, so when Marco Aslam suggested we take a look at his video of ‘France travels’ I didn’t get over-excited.

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From our property here in south-west France we can see a very wide range of types of agriculture: sunflowers and wheat, nut trees and a vineyard, plum orchards, a field of cows and open meadows among them.

This small scale agriculture is a part of what gives France its beauty and part of the reason why so many people, both from abroad and within France, love to visit the French countryside. Farming in France is also held in very high regard by the population as a whole, because even many city-dwellers come originally from the countryside and consider their family roots to be in farming.

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I haven’t mentioned cycling for a long time, my own rather poor efforts to cycle short distances at slow speed not being very interesting, but I thought I’d give a special mention to the Tour de France 2010, which is turning out to be one of the best for years and is about to reach it’s most exciting stage.

The most startling thing about the Tour this year is the number of French contestants who have done very well. For years they have, to put it politely, struggled a bit, but this year they have had numerous stage victories and are generally trouncing the competition.

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Things must be tough in Britain at the moment – it was reported that in 2009 the number of foreign trips taken was down 15% on 2008 (worldwide, not just to France which ‘only’ suffered a 10% drop) and  seven million people from the UK decided to forego their annual holiday. (Previously the biggest drop in foreign travel was 2.1% in 1985.)

It seems certain that 2010 is sure to be worse than 2009 – visitors that arrive tell us of empty ferries, and the markets and attractions are certainly much quieter than normal for the time of year. Likewise, the percentage of Brits staying in our own gites is lower than normal – Dutch, Australians, Canadians, Americans and others are still travelling but the Brits are becoming a rare species.

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When we bought our house in south-west France nine years ago people seemed to talk of little else but termites and the dangers they presented to house and home.

Tales abounded of armies of termites creeping underground and devouring everything in their way, with a special preference for house foundations and woodwork. It was said they would eat a house (or at least the timbers within a house) from the inside out, so that the unfortunate owner wouldn’t even realise their was a problem until a strong wind came along and blew their house away, it now having less strength than a pile of dust.

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A few weeks ago someone rang me from the UK press asking for my opinion on the new trend for people in France to get a lot of their shopping delivered from the UK, to take advantage of the fact that many things now cost much less in Britain.

‘That can’t be possible’, I boldly said. ‘Who would do such a thing, and how can it work out cheaper? ‘. Ah well, I can’t be right all the time. Or even much of the time, come to mention it. Since then I have learned that even down here in south-west France you can place an order with a supermarket in the UK, and there are vans that will drive all the way there and collect it for you. What’s more it’s said to be a booming business for the companies concerned.

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Last month I posted photos of some lovely places in France but completely neglected French villages, curious because I spend more time exploring villages than big towns. Time to put things right.

It’s a tough choice – I tend to always visit classified ‘most beautiful villages’ when I visit somewhere, but there are lots of villages that aren’t listed and are none the less beautiful because of it – although they will often be a lot less visited without the classification. Mostly I have tried to think of villages that are not the ‘very famous’ ones so you can see something different.

I am aware that the villages shown below are all in the southern half of France – nothing personal, I’ll get to the north in due course…
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Growing up in south Wales my school’s  ‘preferred’ sport was rugby.

Not preferred by me because I was always a bit small and pathetic and didn’t particularly enjoy being thrown to the floor by lads twice my size, but perhaps it taught me something that prepared me for life ahead – such as the wonders of teamwork, or how to get mud out of my hair.

So I’m often jealous when I’m out and about in France and see children setting off for their school sports activities. Some of the sports I’ve seen them racing off to do include:

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