Road trip

My husband suggested a few months ago that we take a road trip to Switzerland and Italy. As is often the way we did little prep until a couple of weeks before we set off. The original idea was to go via Grenoble to Lake Lugano, taking in Como then heading home. The reality was that our criteria for locating places to stay ruled out Grenoble as we struggled to find accommodation there that included both car parking and breakfast (why so difficult?). So Grenoble will wait another day for us.

Our first night was in the French Alps close to Gap (no one had written ‘mind the’ in front of the town name) and it was beautiful, such a lovely area with stunning scenery.

The next day we headed to Italy and based ourselves at a rather lovely hotel close to the Swiss border. From this base we were able to easily get to Lugano and Como as well as exploring the local area.

Our final destination in Italy was a couple of nights in Genoa staying in a rather unusual B&B (our private bathroom was through the breakfast room and reception; a tad interesting for my night-time trips to the loo) but which did fit the car parking and breakfast criteria.

So what were my biggest learning points from this lovely getaway?

Switzerland:

• Beautiful countryside.
• Clean.
• Drivers who stick to the speed limit but who expect you to let them out of side roads without a thank you wave or acknowledgement (rude).
• Car park attendants who let you out of the car park without paying because you’re too stupid to locate the pay station before you try to drive out.

Italy :

• Appalling driving. Italian drivers drive as fast as humanly possible and a hairs breadth from your rear bumper.
• Few speed limits identified on any roads, so it’s a guessing game what the limit is.
• Road surfaces almost as bad as in the UK.
• Cars parked on pavements so there is not even room for a fag paper to slip through in safety.
• Pedestrians who wait until the little green man shows before crossing the road even though there are no cars for miles around.
• The rudest café owner I’ve ever met who pretended not to understand a basic order of coffee and chocolate spoken in good Italian by me then insulting me to a fellow customer (I walked out, gesticulating wildly, telling him to forget it and giving him a classic Wendy withering look).
• The majority of other Italians we dealt with were absolutely wonderful, helpful and very friendly.
• Incredible ancient buildings left to deteriorate but still looking beautiful (please protect your heritage Italy).
• Beggars everywhere in Genoa including a rather large (overweight) man with a sign saying hungry next to his begging bowl whilst he sat reading a book.
• Canolli is delicious but different in every single patisserie. (Thank you Montalbano for introducing this delight to me).
• Every other person on the street has a gorgeous dog with them.
• Pizza is as cheap as chips and sometimes cheaper and about three times the size of pizza everywhere else.
• The most churches per square mile as well as every church being huge and overly ornate.

But overall what I learned was everywhere we go there’s lots of new things to see and learn. Travel definitely does broaden the mind.

Here’s a few more photos from our little jaunt….

Bunions Oignons

I have bunions. Not grossly gnarled toes yet but they’re definitely beginning to wander in the wrong direction. A trip to the GP confirmed it and he gave me a letter to give to the specialist and I was to phone and make my own appointment with him. All very simple. 

Appointment made but was told to bring a recent X-ray with me. Back to GP for X-ray referral note. We chose to drive to the clinic to arrange an appointment. We arrived at the clinic at 4:30 on Friday afternoon.

Me: I’d like to make an appointment for a foot X-ray please

Receptionist: Do you want it done now?

Me: Yes please

Receptionist to Radiographer sitting next to her: That’s ok isn’t it, you can do it now?

Radiographer to me: Yes but only if you’ve got me a box of chocolates 😂

15 minutes later I walk out of the clinic clutching my X-rays (honestly if I thought my feet were awful with skin on, the bone view is disgusting) and without having to hand over any chocolates.

Oh and I get to choose which specialist I see.  At the 2nd visit to the GP to get the X-ray referral I asked him if the specialist he’d first suggested was the best one. He said he was very good but his specialism included knees and thighs as well as feet but if I just wanted a specialist who only dealt with feet he would give me the details and it was entirely my choice who I saw.

All this done without managers setting targets, monitoring workloads, producing meaningless reports, interfering in medical staff time-management……..

Quite refreshing.

Cauliflower ‘ere

  Buying fruit and veg in France is a joy, everything is fresh and more often than not local. What’s on offer is seasonal and therefore our meals are dictated at times by what we can get rather than what … Continue reading →

Long lost strangers

There is an interesting camaraderie amongst the British in France that we’ve discovered. General rule of thumb is that if you’re British and you hear another Brit close by you either smile or more often than not start chatting to them. So we have found that complete strangers who we bump into in supermarkets and DIY stores suddenly will stand and chat for up to half an hour.

The conversation usually follows a theme:

1. How long have you lived here?

2. Is it a holiday home or do you live here permanently?

3. Where are you living?

4. The weather.

Within a short space of time you find these people know your life story and you theirs. The most recent encounter resulted in an invite round for drinks whenever we are passing.

It certainly made me think how different it is to living in the UK where I’ve often never known very much about neighbours let alone stepped over their threshold. There seems to be a need to be able to speak to others in your native language; not having to worry about grammar, tenses or inadvertently offending someone by saying the wrong thing.

We certainly have, and had, no intention of not integrating with the french and we certainly do not actively seek other british people it’s just what happens without any planning. 

We had an interesting discussion with our french bank manager about using local workmen. He was both surprised and delighted that we were going to do that, even offering to make recommendations if we contacted him. His reaction was similar to other french people we have chatted to when they find out we have moved here permanently. They are clearly delighted that we are embracing their country. 

But that won’t mean there will be times when a chat with a fellow countryman/woman won’t be just what the doctor ordered. 

 

Oooh la la

It’s been 7 weeks since we finally got the keys to our place in France and it has in some ways gone very quickly but when I look back at all we’ve done it doesn’t seem possible to have fitted so much into a short period of time.

Christmas was amazing. Both my daughters were here and I had the best Christmas ever, and that’s not an easy thing to do as they are always wonderful. It was great to have them around to get to know their new home from home, to help us settle in and just to relax and enjoy the lifestyle. We were even exceptionally lucky with the weather, it was warm enough to eat Christmas lunch outside!

Apart from having the family over we’ve been very busy getting settled in, dealing with french bureaucracy and discovering the area. There are definitely treats to see and do at every turn.

LIfe is certainly very different here and definitely different in a good way. Of course the compromises we’ve had to make is the distance from family. Technology helps and the very generous telephone  we have that means calls are free, so there are no excuses for restricted contact. There will be challenges I know and days when the distance will seem longer than other days but we will find our way to keep the distance as short as possible.

One thing that we have had to ‘force’ ourselves to do is to join a local group to embed a social life for ourselves. This is not something I find terribly easy, more for the unnatural way of forging relationships than for any other reason. However it’s a necessity in the short term and we shall hopefully soon be attending quiz nights, improving our french and hopefully meeting like-minded people.

We have met lovely local people, from the kind central heating engineer, to the lovely old lady at the boulangerie. Everyone with just one exception has been helpful and patient with us. That one exception is my challenge, I am using all my years of experience at disarming unpleasant people and I’m determined that one day soon I’ll get a pleasant smile from her.

Keep reading for further updates……..in the meantime here’s the view from the top of our garden 

Gorgeous George and the pair of knees

After a fabulous 11 days in France in the most atrocious weather imaginable for the end of May we returned happy, tired and still full of all the excitement that we set off with nearly 2 weeks ago.

The scenery in the Languedoc even under leaden skies was amazing

with clouds sitting below the peaks looking like someone had set fire to the hillside. And the most stunning rainbows virtually every evening as the rain decided to take a break for the evening, to recharge the clouds ready for the next day.

We visited the beautiful town of Ceret, home for a short while to Picasso and met a man who as a young toddler used to sit on Picasso’s knee. We saw the beautiful, awe-inspiring sight of Canigou in the Pyrenees (the pair of knees).

We drove the scary hairpin bends round by the Gorges de St Georges (Gorgeous George) and over the Pyrenees to the where the wind was wild and snow was on the ground and we froze as we posed for photos with snowballs.

In between times we ate the most wonderful meals for ridiculously cheap prices and drank delicious local red wines.

On one memorable day we took the One Euro train to Carcassonne, from a train station that looked neglected but was part of an amazing network of clean trains,  to revisit the town that had so many memories for us, many, many happy ones and some life-changing ones.

We visited the old city and wandered round with the many tourists and marvelled again that such an amazing site was open and free to all to visit day and night.

In the lower city I had the best ever Chocolat Chaud Grand Mere, which was like drinking molten chocolate. Pure unadulterated heaven.

We strolled down innocuous streets and found the most incredible architecture

In other places we saw wonderous ceilings in churches

and flowers that made you smile

Then there were the days when we spotted more ludicrous road names to add to our collection which started with Rue Barbe and was swiftly joined by Rue de le Gaffe. A mistake if ever there was one 🙂

We met delightful people, the lovely old lady who sat on the seat behind us on the train with her tiny dog. The best bus driver ever, a very funny woman, who chatted with all the passengers and who even let 3 people travel for free as they were unable to get a ticket and she couldn’t take money. A rare generous and kind gesture.

It was a wonderful time especially seeing Gorgeous George and the pair of knees.

A giant leap

The dream is taking a step closer. It’s been over 20 years since I knew that moving to France was what I yearned to do and now we are closer than ever to doing it. It’s exciting, a bit nerve-wracking and a giant leap.

I feel at home in France, I don’t know why, but once I am over the Channel a sense of calm and belonging comes over me. My ex-husband and I owned a house in Brittany for a few years and the plan was to do it up and eventually live there, but our marriage broke up and eventually he sold the house.

I visited the area recently and drove down the lane to our old house and was horrified at what had happened to it. It had become someone else’s dream, but looked like my idea of a nightmare. It had lost it’s character, it was now a gleaming house with no reference to it’s former self. That day was the day I could finally start to say goodbye to that part of my life.

We had bought the Brittany house when the children were little and it was romantic, a gorgeous little house and longere, fairly run down but with lots of potential. The previous, British, owners had tried but not very successfully to make it a home. There were poor attempts at DIY, the house was overrun by mice, the electrics we discovered were dangerous, the plumbing poor…..the list was endless. But we could see beyond this disaster and could visualise the home we wanted it to become.

We found one person who was keen to oversee works for us whilst we were back in England, but once he realised that we had higher standards than he was able to offer he put us in contact with another Brit, Gavin.

Gavin was a builder by trade and he turned out to be a good friend over the years that he did work for us on the house. Under him the house became a home and he helped us realise some of the dreams we had.

The mice problem, which I thought was just a few little ones who made it into the house when it was closed up, turned out to be a whole town of them living beneath the wooden floor. This was what Gavin discovered when we asked him to take the flooring up and set a more permanent floor in its place. As he lifted the floorboards he was greeted by a swarm of mice happily going about their business under our feet. I was so glad I was not there on the day that was discovered. It made me laugh that my poor attempts at humane mouse removal, accompanied by huge personal anxiety had been so futile. I was reminded of the time when I was on at the house with just my two small children for a week or so. I had got the humane mouse trap set up in the kitchen and one morning discovered a mouse firmly trapped in it. I got the kids dressed and put the humane mouse trap in a carrier bag in my car and drove furiously for 3 miles with said bag, trap, mouse and 2 small children, before releasing it into the wild. How it’s little mouse mates have been laughing at me, back at the house, as they continued to party under the floorboards.

We had some wonderful times in the house, whatever the weather, we always had fun, found lots to explore and the children had plenty of time without distractions of television to indulge in imaginary play with tea sets, dolls or playing in the vast garden.

As is always the way wherever I go on holiday, local dogs seem to find me and we temporarily provide food and company for them. Our French neighbours did not seem to mind that their dogs, suddenly renamed by us, became fixtures in our family for a couple of weeks. And that is how we came to be foster parents to Molly, a scatty, lively mutt who bounded in the house as soon as we awoke in the morning and spent the day racing around the house and garden. She terrified my youngest daughter as she had a habit of leaping up at everyone but thankfully that did not put her off dogs for life.

During our recent visit to the area we decided to look up Gavin, we had been sending cards every year to him and up until 3 years ago had always had one in return. We couldn’t remember where exactly his house was and as anyone who knows Brittany will know that addresses mean very little in the middle of the country, so we headed to his 2nd home, the local bar. Sadly we found out that he had died nearly 3 years previously. We wanted to pay respects to him and were advised to visit the Mairie, which we did. They were delighted to see us as they thought we were family. As they had not been able to contact family immediately after he died the Mairie’s office had arranged for him to be cremated and his ashes stored in the paupers building at graveyard. His relatives back home had decided to leave his ashes there, which we found absolutely heartbreaking. If they had known where the ashes were being stored I felt sure they would have at least wanted him to have a more pleasant final resting place. As friends we had no rights to do anything and so all we could do was leave flowers in his memory at the graveyard. A sad end to a visit to an area that held so many happy memories and a definite closing of that chapter in our lives.

Now we are ready for the new chapter and in a couple of weeks will be heading to a different part of France in the search for our new home. I hope we find as much happiness there as well as good friends like Gavin to help us on our way.