When people buy a property in France to renovate, they are usually obsessed with authenticity. Period features are all important, and must be kept at all cost. Anything added in the last hundred years should be discarded. Old stone should be carefully restored, and left exposed for all to see. But sometimes it is interesting [...]
With the onset of spring the amount of cycling I’m doing is ever increasing. Completely against my will, but as I have described before, all of us who cycle together on a Sunday sneak off on other days of the week for a bit of quiet practice. There is no choice, since as soon as [...]
Yesterday I managed to have the second ‘near-death’ experience of my life. The fact I am here to write about it suggests, correctly, that I survived unscathed, but it added a bit of excitement to the day all the same.
Unfortunately this is a tale of panic and stupidity rather than seeing white lights in tunnels, [...]
This morning I discovered a rare and interesting thing in the woods near us, a strange shaped rock covered with curious engravings and carvings. I am sure I can see the outline of a primitive rounded cross, carved on the flat edge, and in the woods nearby there are a series of mounds and burrows [...]
I am going to give a bit of publicity to the people that run www.francethisway.com today. Bear with me, because there might just be something in it for you at the end. France This Way is, you might have noticed, the site that holds this blog for me. I am sure they work very hard, [...]
We survived the ‘people arriving for a holiday’ period - which all went very well, as we basked in glorious sunshine, the garden was looking good, the barbecues had been scrubbed, and everyone was happy. Then, disappointingly, on the day that the holidaymakers arrived, the temperature fell about 15 degrees, and the rain arrived.
This is [...]
As part of my life here in France, I have had to renovate some old buildings - a barn, a cottage and an old farmhouse. Sometimes I have got in the professionals - more often than not, in truth - and other times I have had a go myself. Sometimes, by watching a professional on [...]
I haven’t had much time for writing recently, because it is our busiest two weeks of the year. As you can guess, living in the south of France and running a couple of gites (holiday rental properties) is not always the hardest job in the world.
It is harder than you think - it must be, [...]
