French Life-expat France

Our older daughter is getting excited because it will soon be time for her to take a school trip to Bordeaux, and compared with our local towns Bordeaux is a pretty big and exciting place. Unfortunately it is a geography ‘field trip’ rather than a holiday, so they have to do some boring school stuff [...]

Great, we’ve finally hit the big time! A little blue sign has appeared opposite our house announcing that we are on the route of the ‘Circuit Bastide royal’. It seems that this is a 74 kilometre road route (I think perhaps it’s a designated bike route, but I’m sure it will be equally pleasant for [...]

When I took older daughter to school last week the circus was on the move, and we had to sit at a road junction while all the lorries passed.
The first lorry was very large, and marked ’serpents and reptiles’. The second was slightly smaller and apparently contained monkeys. Next was slightly smaller again, and claimed [...]

Cycling is out of the question for the next couple of days, since the summer weather of last week has returned to winter weather - very unfortunate because today our first holidaymakers of 2007 arrived.
They might not have expected tropical sunshine, but rain, hail, and a howling gale straight from the north pole probably wasn’t [...]

Yesterday evening I happened upon a TV interview with Segolene Royal, one of the two main contenders in the forthcoming French Presidential Elections. This did little to cheer me up, and while I am poorly placed to offer political commentary, I’m going to anyway.
Now as always my comments come with the proviso that I might [...]

The last few days have been a bit manic, what with visits to notaires and estate agents and a couple of other business type issues, but these are all solved (solved as in ‘we know what we are doing’ rather than ‘resolved’, since the outcomes are far from ideal)
We do now have a plan, which [...]

Having had the excitement of advertising our property for sale on the internet, having quite a few enquiries very quickly, and agreeing a sale price with a potential purchaser, it turned out we can’t sell (at least at that price) because of complications with tax and notaires.
No big deal I suppose, but slightly annoying. Especially [...]

Suitably dramatic headline, don’t you think! Lots of people do it, and move back to the UK or wherever they came from, for a whole load of reasons. Well, two really - running out of money, and the French language - but lots of different explanations are given.
Actually there is also a third reason. If [...]

Many years ago, before we were fortunate enough to have children that stop us doing such things, Mrs B and I had a fabulous holiday in India. A few weeks of backpacking and exploring around Delhi, Agra (Taj Mahal) and region, then off to the hill stations in the mountains to the north to cool [...]

Woo hoo spring has arrived (I think). We had a lovely sunny day today, with Mrs B singing and dancing in the flowerbeds because she could do some weeding after a couple of weeks of rain.
One job we tackled was ‘big pruning’. This involves Mrs B walking round the gardens pointing at dead branches, and [...]

The place where we live is quite close to the Dropt River, a tranquil river that spends eleven months of the year flowing quietly onward, as happy holidaymakers amble along its banks, artists paint pictures of ancient mills, and children play pooh-sticks on the bridges.
But then, each winter for a couple of weeks, everything changes. [...]

I’m looking for urgent help from any nature lovers out there. I have just received an email from someone who lives in SW France,with the following question:
“our squirrels are red and some have brown/black tails. Suddenly I have some that are total brown or brown with black tails. Are these the young or are [...]

Our tobacco barn has troubled us since we arrived. It is big, at 20 metres by 12 metres, and quite close to the house and barn. It is useful for parking and storage, and sometimes these old wooden barns are renovated into gites. So we have spent five years trying to decide whether to smarten [...]