After a few days of temperatures in the high 20’s and a pair of amorous kestrels spending all day screaming to other as they fly over the valley, we sincerely hope that spring is here. In fact yesterday was grey and drizzly, but no rain, no lovely green countryside.

I have been quite busy, actually doing a bit of business for estate agents drawing up floorplans and taking elevated photos. The only problem is that the really pricey properties that want this treatment are in the Dordogne, so I have had a few 4 hour round trips down that way – not exactly a penance! I have also tried doing some writing, although Peter Mayle probably need not worry. I have an article about (wait for it) floorplans and photography in April’s “French Property News”, with another article about Voutezac in June’s issue. I have interviewed some of the Brits who have set up successful businesses and hope to work this into another article.

At the start of March two of our friends from England, Rennie and Peter, came to stay for a few days. The weather was a bit variable, but I think they enjoyed themselves, and we certainly enjoyed having them.

As I have mentioned before I am a member of the Franco British Chamber of Commerce, and we had a very enjoyable meeting at a local hotel – brief talk on marketing, discussion, then networking over dinner. Very enjoyable.

A couple of weeks later we were given a couple of tickets for Brive Rugby Club – the FBCC get some as the club are a member. We saw an excellent game between Brive and La Rochelle – a real relegation dogfight which luckily Brive won. There was a crowd of about 11,000, and it was a very agreeable afternoon, with no animosity between the two sets of fans. There is lots of beer, some monstrous sandwiches, lots of passion and a good time is had by all!

With the nice weather we have stared exploring again. We have found an old slate mine outside a nearby town – they do guided tours and have demonstrations, sadly not actually open yet. The same applies to a Gallo-Roman site a bit further away – there are houses and remains of a theatre discovered in 2004, but not open until the summer. Now we both travel with cameras at the ready, so Judy has taken some really nice shots.

Last Sunday we went into Objat for the local market, and there was also the annual agricultural show. This is a real show – mostly lots of tractors and equipment for the farmers to drool over, and a huge marquee full of wonderful Limousin cattle, all just tied up and left quietly on their own. At the other end of the market is a livestock auction, and I have to say that in Carrefour in a couple of weeks there will be a large photo of “Champion so and so”, and lots of lovely joints of superb meat.

When we got home we were surprised to find a large group of people milling around outside our house. They turned out to be an Antiquarian Society from Argentat, a town about 40 miles South of us. Their day out was a tour of Voutezac. A few of the party were British, and when I offered to open up our cellars they passed this on. We then had about 30 keen historians looking around our 13th century cellar (and under cellar) and peering through our arrow slits. They seemed to enjoy themselves!

Once again it’s been a while since I last put finger to keyboard, but we have spent most of the time just keeping warm – we are saving ourselves for the sunny weather and our visitors. We have more or less recovered from the various coughs, colds and lurgies that we are convinced were given to us by our nearest and dearest in England over Christmas. Below - view of our valley.

In France they are only allowed to have sales in the shops twice a year for about 3 weeks at time – and the actual dates are specified. This means that we don’t have the DFS sale all year syndrome, but the shops are certainly a little busy for the first few days!

Judy got some lovely presents for her birthday – in no particular order a lovely jumper, a scent diffuser (fighting a valiant but losing battle with the Bertie diffuser), a digital camera and a necklace made from old Venetian trade beads. We also had a lovely Sunday lunch out.

My little business venture is starting to warm up again with the weather. I have spoken to a few estate agents who deal in premium properties, and have had some useful feedback and, possibly, hope of work in the future. For one agent I write a short article which she sends out to her clients with a monthly property update e mail. I already have one article in next month’s (April) French Property News magazine about how to photograph your property for sale and how important floorplans are (it’s called advertorial). I wrote another article on our village, which will be in June’s issue.

This got me thinking, and so I have contacted a few other magazines to see if I can interest them in articles from this area. Also FPN don’t pay – so someone who does would be good! Oh, and I got a photo in this month’s FPN too.

Judy is still enjoying her French lessons every week with Francois in Pompadour. When she asked if Francois knew of a cheaper dog trimmer (over €50 last time), she advised us to use an English lady in Pompadour. So yesterday, after weeks of doing nothing, became a little busy….

09:20 to Pompadour, drop Bertie off with dog trimmer at 09:45. Drive around for an hour until drop off Judy for her 11:00 French lesson. Try and think of what to do for an hour. Went to see friend who runs an art gallery in Pomadour as he always offers a cup of coffee! In fact I hope to interview him and a couple of others for magazine article.

Picked up Judy, picked up rather more socially acceptable dog. Went to Intermarché café for quick lunch. Had we booked ? For a supermarket café ? They found us table, reasonable lunch, place totally full about ten minutes after we sat down. High spot was next table with small baby in high chair. Parents and grandparents giving him little bits of food to eat, then granddad had bright idea of giving him something to play with – chose his (folded) knife and cigarette lighter.

From there a two hour drive (luckily it was a lovely sunny day) to the town of Ribérac in the Dordogne, to meet two British estate agents who deal with pretty high end property. Went well and will do a floorplan of their house first to show what I can do. Two hour drive home.

We are now getting ready for our first visitors of the year – and we are really looking forward to seeing them and all the others who have promised, half promised or just hinted that they might come and see us.
I just added this photo because I did some pictures for a couple opening a very high end B & B / Hotel - I think it's quite spectacular!

Seems quite a long time since I last updated this – meanwhile the quiet pace of life in the Correze has been disrupted by a flying visit to UK.

We have been much luckier (so far) with our weather here than in UK. We have had a bit of snow, but not more than a couple of inches and it has never lasted for more than a couple of days. The temperature here seems to go all over the place, 2 one day, 15 the next.

Although the roads haven’t been too bad, we have not been going out too much. A couple of exceptions were when Judy went to Church in the Dordogne, and we met a couple of friends for lunch afterwards, and a Christmas lunch given by the local branch of the Franco British Chamber of Commerce. This was held in a small hotel run by an English couple near Tulle, a large town about 30 miles away. The roads were a bit icy, and it was quite foggy, but we made it OK and lunch was very nice. What they hadn’t mentioned was that the hotel is at the top of a hill, and after last year’s event a number of guests couldn’t actually get away through the snow and ice they had then, and had to stay the night!

Tulle is actually the departmental capital, despite being much smaller than Brive. It’s not a very attractive town, but most people dislike it for the simple reason that it’s where you have to go to pay your taxes!


Voutezac takes Christmas quite seriously - the council put up some very nice decorations.

We made our final preparations for the holidays – most of the presents were from Amazon and went via Rachel – thank you. We have found a good boarding kennel for Bertie, so were able to drop him off on the way to Brive Airport.

We flew to London City Airport on Christmas Eve with City Jet. After all our worries about the weather we were only an hour late landing in London. The airline service is very good – helped by the fact that there were only 13 passengers on the flight! We hired a small car and set off to stay with Rachel in Tooting.

I have to say that Judy and I are now very much country mice. Although we have both lived in London, we now find the noise and bustle hard work! But it was worth it to see the family. Christmas day was spent with Nick, Lisa, Jake, Esme and Rachel at Nick’s in Essex – a really good traditional day right down to the totally unfounded accusations of cheating at the board games.

Boxing Day was at Martin’s (my brother) – again a really nice family occasion.

On the 27th we had a really nice pub lunch in Richmond, and in the afternoon Rachel took us to watch Harlequins v London Irish at Twickenham, along with, we soon discovered, 74,000 other keen spectators. Although the game wasn’t very good we had a great time.

The next day we met Nick and family again at Bluewater – the huge shopping mall in North Kent. Perhaps not the grumpy old man’s ideal day out, but it was really nice to see everyone again.

Our busy schedule continued with a visit to Priscilla and William Hedley, Judy’s friend from her nursing days at GOS, who had organised the reunion Judy went to in September. We had a very enjoyable lunch there, with Judy catching up on a number of her old friends. They live in East Greenwich, and, apparently, you don’t actually have to go through the Blackwall Tunnel twice to get to West Greenwich as we did. Whoops.

On the 30th we went with Rachel to Stevenage to see Judy’s family at her sister Carol’s house. Her other sister Gill was also there with her husband Phil, and her brother Chris. Sadly Peter, Carol’s husband, is really not well, and was not able to join in as much as I am sure he would have wanted. The girls all went to see Judy’s mum in her home – sadly she really didn’t recognise them. We had a very pleasant lunch and caught up on some of the family gossip and swapped presents. Gill seemed to do best.

In the evening we took Rachel to a French restaurant in Clapham (no I’m not sure why either), and we had a nice meal and picked up a £60 parking ticket. London just loves tourists doesn’t it?

Next day we stopped off at Canary Wharf on the way to the airport and had breakfast with Rachel, saw where she works, and met her boss. He didn’t seem to blame us at all, which was nice.

We got back to Brive right on schedule, and when we eventually found the car park ticket, we picked up a very happy Bertie and arrived home. We saw in the New Year with a call from the kids in UK, and a glass of wine. Since then the weather has been cold and a bit wet, and we have both got stonking colds which we blame on England.

Thanks to everyone who made it such a good Christmas !

Autumn came and went rather rapidly – we have just had our first snow of the winter, but it has almost all melted and it hasn’t caused us any problems. I am sure there is more to come…


I have “double-glazed” the house, that is I have fixed bubble wrap over all the windows – will have to do until we can afford new windows. With all the insulation in the attic it seems to be having some effect – maybe its wishful thinking but the level in the oil tank seems to be dropping more slowly than last year.

We have also survived the general strikes – in fact the only effect we seem to see is that the rubbish isn’t collected. As there is a recycling point in the village we only have one small bag a week of actual rubbish, so that hasn’t been too much of a problem.

Mostly we have stayed in and endured the joys of day time TV (English). However we have had a few enjoyable days out. We drove to Argentat, a lovely town on the Dordogne and had lunch in a café right by the river – late October but we were able to sit outside. A few days later we had lunch with a friend in Brive.

While Judy was at church one Sunday (the church is in the Dordogne) I had a drive around and found a couple of old chateaux still ripe for restoration – particularly this one…

After picking Judy up we met another friend for lunch.

On 11th November we attended the Remembrance Day service in the village – very moving. A couple of days later we did some shopping in the centre of Brive, and saw the new theatre area which will be opening soon. The city are really making an effort, and have rebuilt the façade of the old theatre with modern facilities behind, and a lovely square in the front.

Because our house is built into the old village walls it is floodlit in winter – paid for by the Commune. It looks pretty good too.

Looking over our valley there is something interesting in one of the trees – we think it’s a wasp’s nest, but have decided not to investigate more closely!

Last Friday Judy had her normal French lesson in Pompadour. I went for a coffee to a little café, where I had been told one of the staff was English. She is actually ex RAF, and her late husband was also a regular. They served at many of the stations we did, and her daughter was born in the hospital in Kings Lynn where Judy worked – although I don’t think we ever overlapped.

To give you an idea of what you can still get here we also had lunch there – the Menu du Jour. A tureen of excellent home-made soup with croutons, a visit to the hors d'oeuvre buffet (meats, pate, salads – good choice), main course of turkey fillet with mushroom and cream sauce and a huge bowl of chips, choice of 5 cheeses and chocolate éclair. €12, or about £10. We do like it here !

Autumn is approaching pretty fast, although we haven’t had to have the heating on yet. Only a few more days to go though I fear.

This morning we heard a loud honking and rushed outside to see large skeins of geese flying over in perfect V formations - wonderful sight.

As predicted we have had a very quiet time in the last few weeks. Luckily Judy keeps a diary, but even that hasn’t got much in it! Not complaining – we came here for the quiet life.

I got my birthday present a couple of weeks ago – an Amazon Kindle. Quite amazing to be able to order books and they just appear out of mid-air onto the reader. I am trying not to order everything in sight – there are quite a few good ones for free, so I have downloaded quite a few of those so far.

I am glad to say the car is running perfectly now, so we have been going on some very pleasant drives around the Correze countryside – even having the odd picnic. Judy has been trying to find a local church – a couple of weeks ago she tried one in Limoges, only about an hour away. Very nice people, but the service was not really to her taste. The following Sunday she went to the church at St Nathalene in the Dordogne again. I picked up a friend who lives nearby, and we had a very nice lunch in Sarlat.

I have had a couple more jobs drawing up floorplans – both large properties in the Dordogne, one a genuine Chateau, part dating back to the 13th century. Great fun, and fairly lucrative. I also used my elevated gear to take some shots of the apple fields here - all covered in netting not againts birds, but as protection from hail storms.

We have two walnut trees, which have produced huge numbers of nuts – we have 3 large boxes of unshelled ones, and there are still some to be picked up. We shelled a load, and have had walnut and basil pesto (delicious), made candied walnuts (OK) and frozen sveral bags. The rest will be shelled one day soon…..possible. We had hoped to find someone who made walnut oil in small quantities, but no luck so far.

That’s it apart from the rounds of Judy’s French lessons in Pompadour (she drives herself now), shopping, paying part of the rates bill etc. We are planning a trip to UK over Christmas – just trying to book the flights.

Oh, some new spaniels seem to have appeared around the place. Just don’t forget the original and best…….

Taking a deep breath after all our visitors had gone; we have had a pretty quiet time since.

Poor old Bertie had to have a trip to the Vet – teeth descaling and a couple out. He didn’t enjoy it, but we were pleased with a bill of only €76.

The Discovery carries on playing up – hopefully fitting a new radiator should finally cure it.

On the 5th September Judy popped back to UK for a few days. The main reason was to go a reunion of nurses from her days at Great Ormond Street, and she also saw Rae, Lisa and Nick and Vicky and family.

She got to see an exhibition at the Royal Academy, shop, lunch out, see Vicki and their new puppy, go to the top of the Gherkin with Nick, go to Lords, and nip over to Leigh on Sea to stay the night. A quiet week then…

The reunion seemed to go very well, and Judy says she knew quite a few of the people there.

She flew out and back on City Jet from our new airport at Brive, says it was very pleasant. Hope we can fly to UK from there over Christmas.

We have now reverted to relaxed mode – although we did test the Discovery by taking a long drive in the country and having a picnic lunch today – all OK so far!

The last few weeks have been pretty busy, but very enjoyable.

At the start of the month we had a visit from Jim and Angela, whose BMW Z4 sports car must have impressed the locals! The weather wasn’t as good as we might have hoped, but we took them on what is becoming our regular tourist trail – Collonges le Rouge, Brive, Donzenac, the wine tasting at Le Saillaint and they very kindly treated us to dinner at L’Auberge sur Vezere (more commonly known as Sarah’s). We also have a drive that describes a circle around the local countryside, and has some splendid photo opportunities.

Unfortunately our Discovery had some serious over-heating problems, and had to have some serious surgery. We were lent a rather ancient Peugeot 205, which actually did us rather well.

After seeing them in a car that can be safely described as well packed on their way to the Franco-Swiss border, we nipped up the road, dropped Bertie off in kennels, and caught an evening flight back to UK.

As we landed so late, we stayed in a hotel at Stansted. We had hired a car – a Chevrolet Epica, and no I have never heard of it either – and we then headed off to Essex where we saw Nick and family and picked up Rachel. Off from there to the Cotswolds, lunch at the pub in Filkins where we met a few friends, and a night stop with Rennie and Peter – lovely.

We then motored up to a hotel near Stoke on Trent, where we were due to attend a party to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary of Judy’s sister Gill and her husband Phil. We had a very enjoyable time, meeting relatives, and finding that some of the other guests knew the part of France we are in.

After a night in the hotel we drove back to Essex, where we dropped off Rachel, who was house sitting for Nick and Lisa. We then returned to Stansted, where the holiday was slightly spoilt when we were charged £584 as there was a tiny chip in the windscreen! We paid, under protest, and are challenging them….vehemently.

After a few days rest (and yes we did remember to spring Bertie), David had a very interesting job drawing up a floorplan for a really nice chateau. A big job, but really interesting. It’s for sale if anyone’s interested….

We then had Dave and Juliette to stay for a thoroughly enjoyable few days. They seemed to enjoy themselves, and we took them to all the nice places, and they treated us at Sarah’s – are we getting too predictable? Anyway, they were quite reluctant to leave, which is always a good sign.

Got the Discovery back, surgery wasn't quite as extensive as we feared, but I don't get the bill until next week. So that’s it for a couple of weeks, until Judy has a quick trip back to London all on her own.