7) Last day house hunting this trip

12thC church built by wayward monastic brotherhood?

We found this lovely little 12^th century church in an isolated valley, just outside Figeac.  I can only imagine that a particular group of monks fell out with the Abbot in Figeac and decided to set up camp down the road.  Unfortunately the door to the church was locked so we were not able to glean any of its history (we therefore had to use our imagination instead).  There seemed to be some remains of old monastic buildings, but there was no village anywhere to be seen.  Instead there was a large cemetery next to the church, and thus we imagined that a similar fate had befallen the villagers as those of Bruniquel, except that the buildings had all disappeared as well (presumably they were not particularly well built, or they were built of mud and they now just blended into the landscape).

A not very monkish representation

 On walking round the church we found a very un-churchlike looking object that we haven’t quite been able to work out yet (some French version of a Sheela na Gig?).  Given a lively imagination, there were all manner of interesting possible explanations for this rather wayward and erotic little carving (and none of them compatible with the supposedly celibate life of a monk). Perhaps this was the reason the monks had to move out of the monastery in Figeac, and the stonemason was having a bit of a laugh.

Our viewing today (Remy assured us the owner would negotiate on the price)

 Just one house to view today, and again snow and sub zero temperatures.  This time, though, our (French) estate agent, Remy, had no fear of snow at all.  We arranged to meet outside the church in the nearest village (so we wouldn’t have to be given directions to the house itself).  He asked if we wanted to follow him or leave our car in the village and go with him.  Thinking it would save us some fuel, we decided to go with him.  BIG mistake.  Although his car was only two wheel drive, he drove at breakneck speed down the middle of the road, clearly oblivious of the most basic laws of physics.

Remy tries to find the right key

 At one point Remy did remark that it was very slidey, with a wide Gallic grin.  “Slippery” Georgi and I corrected in unison, then we both shut our eyes again. Eventually, somehow we managed to get there without sliding off the road down a ravine or colliding with an oncoming vehicle, and the house was enchanting.

We then proceeded to go through the ritual of find-the-right-key-while-the-clients-freeze-to-death-outside-in-the-cold.  I don’t know whether it is that there are so few people visiting houses in France or whether agents have some sort of collective key dyslexia, but they never seem to be able to get into the house when you arrive.  There are then numerous mobile phone calls back to the office or to the owner asking which key goes where and which way to turn it.  One poor girl couldn’t get one of the keys out of the lock, and wrenched it so hard she managed to break the fob.  I was able to do a gallant rescue job on this occasion because we had come across the same problem at one of our Gites – the key only came out in the horizontal position not vertically (presumably a subtle confusing tactic against burglars who happen to get hold of a key).

The monstrous church in Decazville

 We realized we weren’t far from Decazville, which was one of the larger towns in the area which we hadn’t yet seen.  As we had no more properties to view we decided to go and check it out.  Before we came I had looked at it on Google earth and it had seemed very uninspiring.  When we got there and saw it in reality, it was very uninspiring.  Having seen a sign for a Mining Museum, as well as what looked like the peak of a slag heap in the distance, we came to the conclusion it had probably been a mining town.  I always think it is very sad the way mining towns are always so sad.  It is even sadder that they seem to remain sad long after all the mining has gone.  Sadly, Decazville was no exception.

It did have a most enormous and (unusually for France) ugly church.  It was not very old, quite un-monk-like, and I imagine was built by the mine owners who made vast quantities of money.  Presumably it was a sort of penance for the misery they inflicted, as well as a tool for ensuring the workers were subdued and God fearing rather than Bolshie and revolting.  Not only was the church ugly, but the good Burghers of Decazville must have thought, soon after it had been built, that it was not imposing enough.  In not-quite-matching brick, you could see they had added several more metres to the (already enormous and quite out of proportion) tower.

Blood stained Christmas tree in Decazville

Continuing the theme of the town, even the official Christmas decoration was sad.  They seemed to have first sprayed the perfectly good (real) Christmas trees white, then with the delicacy of a graffiti artist, sprayed bits of them red so they appeared to be bleeding.  Not very Christmassy, unless there was perhaps a subtle reference to the passion in there somewhere.  We decided Decazville was probably not a place we wanted to make as a base and set off back for the gite.

The ultimate dream house - Southfork a la francaise

On the way we spotted what your average modern French couple apparently dream of as the ultimate home.  Southfork,  a la francaise.  The thing that you really have to be careful about is that planning permission seems to be entirely in the say of the Mayor.  If one of his chums wants to build one of these in the middle of a green field site, slap bang in the middle of your stunning view over the countryside, it will probably happen.  Moral of the story – make friends with the Mayor (and buy as much of the view as you can afford).  Another answer is to buy a house without a view, so that it can’t be ruined.

Airfield near Villeneuve for Biggles enthusiasts

On the way back to the gite we also noticed a handy airfield for those wanting to visit us by light aircraft.  My knowledge of small aeroplanes is quite limited, but I did think that the grass looked a bit long.  On the positive side there do seem to be various hangers where the plane could be stored to prevent it being stolen by some intrepid thief with a pilot’s licence.  Note the wind sock on the left, which the pilots might just be able to spot when they are halfway down the airstrip, and the clever planting of leylandii to hide the rather ugly hangers on the right.  Quite how one would distinguish this from a farmer's field at 2,000 feet, I'm not sure.

Pere Noel abseiling from an upstairs window

Somebody has obviously made a fortune selling miniaturised Santas, as they are found hanging from windows all over France.  They do look slightly strange and, in some cases rather desperate, as they hang precariously on the side of houses in a kind of state of suspended animation.

We, though, are off to join in the festivities with a couple of nights in Chartres, visiting the Christmas market.  We are staying in a B&B and so may well not have internet access.  Updates  will therefore continue as and when circumstances allow.

6) Viewings in the snow

 

A very cold looking Charlie (in the long coat) outside the fist house with the owners

Today we had arranged to see three houses found for us by the scary English estate agent with the Machiavellian cat.  We were to meet at the first one at 10.00 am, which was only about ten minutes from where we are staying.  About 9.15 am we got a call from said estate agent’s husband who had been dispatched to meet us and take us round.  He informed us that there was lots of snow where they were and did we still want to go?  Now I always regard snow as a challenge, and from a glance out the window, there appeared to have been only a powdering overnight.  I told Charlie (the  agent) that we were quite willing to try if he was.  I really don’t think he wanted to go traipsing round obscure (hilly as it turned out) country roads in the snow a few days before Christmas.  However, learning from his wife’s devious cat, I had now put him in a position where he couldn’t really refuse.

It turned out that he had a rather smart Audi A4 convertible and plainly did not want to risk driving it into a ditch, or being forced off the road by a cousin of the barmy Renault Espace driver (female) we met on the way down.  We were able to surmise this with some certainly by the way he drove at 15 miles an hour most of the way (unless this was just to get us back for having made him turn out in the first place).

Serious equipment for countering the cold

The first house we saw was really nice, owned by an English couple who were hoping to buy a house around Kirkby Lonsdale (one of us must be wrong).  Everything had been done, and it had been finished to a very high standard.  It even had what appeared to be a Vorsprung durch Technik type boiler that looked as if it was capable of heating the Terminal 4 building at Heathrow (this had huge appeal having been freezing cold all week in our igloo cottage).

Talking of igloos, we were rather surprised to see outside the Marie in Figeac a Christmas decoration, presumably sanctioned by the Mayor, showing two penguins, a polar bear and an igloo.  Well, surely every schoolchild over the age of about seven knows that Penguins are only found in the South Pole, whereas polar bears and igloos (built by Eskimos/Inuits) are only found in the North Pole.  It is thus quite wrong to show these as part of a tableau, and potentially confusing for young children who are taught that teacher is always right (and at the same time that the Marie, like the Pope, is infallible).  It could be, of course, that the Mayor is trying to make a point that, at Christmas time, even creatures which are poles apart can be brought together.  As I didn’t have the courage to knock on his door and ask him, I fear we will never know whether the Mayor of Figeac was simply an ignorant, failed Geography student or a far sighted visionary.

Official Christmas decoration outside the Mayor's office in Figeac

You may be thinking how could anyone worry about such a trivial matter, but just this morning, on French breakfast TV, there was a discussion programme about whether it was harmful for parents to lie to young children about Pere Noel.  They even had a psychiatrist (though I couldn’t understand what he was saying), as well as parents, one of whom appeared to be breast feeding her baby.

Mas de something or other

Getting back to the smart house we have just seen.....  Having seen so many scruffy and bizarre interiors, with eccentric plumbing, homicidal electrics, kitchens from the French equivalent of B&Q, and taste in interior decor that would make Liberace seem subtle, as we walked round I could see Georgi reaching for our new Credit Agricole cheque book.  I gently pointed out we had others to see and we all agreed to move onto the next one.

Wood store seen from the second house, with Charlie's silver Audi beyond

This too had a lot to offer.  Again it was lived in by an English couple (why is it, I wonder, that they all seem to be returning to the UK?).  He told us he was very upset and rather angry that they were taking the Harrier jump jets out of service early (apparently he’d designed them or built them or something), but as he pointed out resignedly, they were very expensive to fly, because they used x thousand gallons of fuel a minute, and who was going to pay for them, what with the recession and all?  We all enthusiastically agreed with him and swiftly continued our tour of the house.

After viewing this house, which was rather out in the wilds, it was quite impossible to persuade Charlie and his Audi convertible to go on to the final house (and we later found out why), so he suggested we all went back to his office and found somewhere to have lunch.  When we reluctantly agreed to this, you could visibly see him glow with relief that these unnecessarily keen Francophiles had finally seen the advantage of lunch over finding a place to live (which there was plenty of time for after lunch, or indeed at any other time).

Charlie treated to us to a delicious lunch in a restaurant where we were the only customers.  When we arrived he had gone through to the kitchens to find out if they were still serving, and we were waited on by a very attractive young French girl who kept smiling every time she came to the table.  Although I am sure we do make a certain impression on young attractive French girls, it did strike me as just a little bit weird.  When we visited St Antonin before we noticed that practically everyone was speaking English (even the Dutch and the Belgians were speaking English).  It has since occurred to me that perhaps this attractive young French girl was in fact English also.  And perhaps when Charlie had gone through to the kitchens, he had asked the girl to speak French to us in order to make things appear more authentic.

After lunch we went to the office (Machiavelli was nowhere to be seen) and Charlie quite happily gave us directions to the third property we were due to see.  Estate agents in France generally keep the location of properties a tight secret from their clients, and I am sure there have been occasions when the agent has driven us around in circles as a deliberate ploy to disorientate us.  This is because they are terrified that their clients will go round to the house and do a private deal with the seller, cutting out the agent (the French seem to dislike estate agents even more than the Brits).  Having got though a litre of wine with lunch, of which Georgi and I had had very little, Charlie seemed very relaxed about the likelihood of us doing the dirty on him or, indeed, anything else.  

The road Charlie had warned us about

Soon after we set off for the final viewing on our own, we realised that Charlie’s anxiety was not as whimpish as we had thought.  The snow started to come think and fast, and as we climbed higher and higher the temperature started to plummet, and the road became more and more narrow.  There were several moments when we considered turning back, but once we had gone so far, we felt we ought to complete this latest adventure what-ever-may-come.  The road seemed to go on forever, but eventually we got there. 

Very intriguing, but all closed up

It was all locked up because the (Dutch) owners had gone back to Holland for Christmas.  All the shutters were closed so we couldn’t see inside, and it was built round a courtyard to which all the gates were securely locked.  As a result there was very little we could see and we were just beginning to think this could be the "one" when we spied a coiled hose on a drum stored in the barn opposite.  This could mean only one thing – SLURRY.  Having been downwind of this at Gressingham on occasions, we decided to give this one a miss.

Superior spending power of the large supermarket chains

On the way back we called into Leclerc to buy some supper and were greeted by our most extravagant Christmas decoration to date.  Even ignoring the geographical inaccuracies, the Mayor could not compete with the super market giants when they had resources like this.  A sad comment on the balance of power between commerce and state (but at least it was a French supermarche, rather than American)

5) Cafe lunch

Continued from our stop at the spectacular hillside town of Bruniquel....

Another view of Bruniquel

Just outside the village we noticed a ramshackle series of buildings that seemed to incorporate a garage, a breaker’s yard, a bar, a cafe, and a restaurant.  This was all in stark contrast to the beauty of the stone built citadel nearby, and it was difficult to imagine how each could have been constructed by the same species, let alone descendants of each other.  It did, however, hold out the prospect of lunch, so we suppressed out aesthetic sensibilities and went inside.

Bastard's cafe outside Bruniquel

We have come to realise in France that often it is the most scruffy restaurants, and those with the worst possible taste in decor, that will offer the most delicious lunch – and this was no exception.  For 12.50 euros a head we had a delicious rich brown beef and vegetable soup, an entree of smoked fish salad, a main course of lamb chop with frites ,and then plum ice cream with prunes soaked in Armagnac topped with squirty cream (they don’t really seem to do cream, unless it is part of the cooking process itself), followed by coffee.  To accompany this we had half a litre of red wine which set us back just 3.50 euros. 

French restaurants certainly can be very pricey, but it is still possible to get amazing value for money, especially at lunch time.  Not only was the food good, but the patronne (who was just like the one in the cafe in allo, allo) was most welcoming and friendly.  You wonder how on earth they can offer such good value for money, but I think the answer is they don’t have any paid staff.  All members of the family get press ganged into service, and presumably they might get their board and lodging, plus a little pocket money for their work.  It was clear to us that, although Madame clearly saw welcoming guests to the cafe as her metier, the rather overly-large and somewhat grumpy son did not.  Charm school had clearly passed him by, and you could tell by his reluctant demeanour that what he really wanted to be was a test pilot, a pop star, or perhaps a prop forward in the French rugby team.  I am convinced that what he really wanted to be was famous, and being a waiter, playing second fiddle to his mother in a cafe on the edge of a village where all the inhabitants had died, was not in his life plan.

Before we left, I made a special effort to say how much we’d enjoyed our meal, and not only did we get sort of grunt, but I am sure I saw the beginnings of a smile.  Total satisfaction.

4) Christmas approaches

Happy Christmas to (all) our reader(s)!

This interestingly red version of a Christmas tree was spotted outside a Beauty Parlour in Villfranche (note how well the red goes with the purple decoration in the window).  I'd imagine even Gary Glitter might appear normal in comparison to the sort of clientele you might find emerging from here.

St Antonin Noble Val

Yesterday we went south to St Antonin.  It was Monday so practically everything was shut.  The only agence immobilier that was open was run by a rather scary English woman with a very annoying and rather anemic looking cat.  I have never really liked cats, mainly because of their homicidal tendencies, and the way they seem to like toying with, and then torturing animals smaller than themselves.  To give them credit, though, they also seem to enjoy toying with, and then torturing me.  Despite the fact that I am a good deal larger than a cat and could easily give it a good thwack (or even, dare I say, kill it), they only play their evil games when in the presence of their doting and protective owners.  As they jump up onto your lap and then subtly dig their claws into whatever soft parts are to hand, they purr as if innocently befriending you.  Actually the evil little creatures know exactly what they are doing, and one day I will distract their owner's attention for the split second needed to sling one out of a top floor window and see if it really can land safely from 70 feet up.  Unfortunately on this occasion we were on the ground floor, there were no open windows, and the lady estate agent clearly had far more potential to inflict pain than the cat.

Evil little pale cat

Eventually the lady estate agent realised the cat might be annoying her (rare-cash-buyer) clients and put the little shit outside.  As it was minus 4.5 degrees (plus chill factor), a warm glow of triumph swept over me as I wondered whether some kind soul might add to its misery by throwing a bucket of cold water over it from one of the charming and beautiful medieval overhanging balconies nearby.  To my utter dismay, barely a minute later, some do-gooder English cat lover with floppy hair and a plummy accent brought the damn thing back in, saying he'd heard it meowing outside and thought it might be cold.  As a result of this unsolicited intervention, now even the owner couldn't throw it out without seeming cruel.  This cat could clearly outwit even the Borgias, let alone me. Instead it was taken upstairs to a nice warm room by the fireand I am sure, as it disappeared round the corner, I detected a horribly human smirk on its evil little round furry face.

Official Christmas decoration tied to the branch of a random tree

We decided that, apart from the cat, St Antonin was just too full of the Eeengleesh.  It was actually a lovely place, with all that you could want - bars, restaurants, bistrots, cafes, hotels, and there was even a wine merchant in case you ran out of drink. Obviously we are just as much part of the English invasion as the next angle or saxon, it's justwe  felt there didn't seem to be ANYONE speaking French there, let alone smoking a Gauloise or playing boules.  So we moved on to Bruniquel.

Random beautiful buildings at Bruniquel

Bruniquel was stunningly beautiful, perched high on a hill overlooking the Aveyron valley. It is extraordinary how every little town or village in France seems to have buildings that would be regarded of special interest to the National Trust in England, yet here they everywhere.  Almost every little street and building was beautiful, but we came to the conclusion that perhaps Bruniquel had been hit by the plague as all its inhabitants had apparently died.  It was completely silent, even its cats had apparently (happily) died.  There were no shops, no bars, nothing (not much call for them I suppose).  The cemetery, however, we noticed was overflowing, even to the extent that they had built another one next to it, which was already pretty full. Not knowing how long the plague virus survives, even at cold temperatures, we decided to look for lunch elsewhere.

3) Market day in Limogne en Quercy

Limogne Sunday market

Sunday in France is a time when all things modern close and they revert back to life as it used (ought) to be.  The ENORMOUS supermarché was closed (it didn’t even mention Dimanche on the opening hours), the main petrol station was closed and the roads were deserted of cars.  The church bells were ringing for all they were worth and we assumed, like apparently everyone else, this was a call to get out of bed and head off to the market (the only people we saw actually coming out of a church had been to a christening).

Basket case at Limogne market

Inspired by all the fresh produce and the magic of French markets, we decided to support the local economy by buying what we needed for a coq au vin.  Shallots, which you can search hours for in England, were found on a stall run by an old man with an impossible accent selling just (the most wonderful looking) shallots and enormous strings of garlic.  Having made our purchase, we moved onto another stall manned by an Olivier Martinez lookalike who could clearly sell honey to bees.  He seemed to take rather a shine to Georgi (actually I think he recognised a sucker) and kept offering her little morsals, along with what were presumably little witticisms (he obviously thought something was funny).  Georgi's humour, however, vanished rather quickly when she realised she'd just bitten into some rather hot crystallised ginger.  M'sieur, needless to say thought this was hilariuos, and who was I to argue on such a wonderful sunny day so near to Christmas.

Festive dress code for market day in Advent

[I've just realised why my spell checker has gone mad.  It seems to think because we are in France we should be writing in French.  As a result, it thinks practically every word is spelt incorrectly, but is struggling to guess what each word was meant to be as an alternative.  As my spelling is atrowshous I am now désolé 

(at least I could check that one) and until I can work out a cunning way round this little glitch you will have to forgive the errors.]

2) Round-up of first week

Swanky hotel on our first night in France

After finding ourselves in rural France on a cold snowy Sunday night when EVERYTHING was closed and the place where we were supposed to be staying was all locked up and completely deserted, we took ourselves off Chatres, where we booked ourselves into, what for us, was a relatively swanky hotel to lick our wounds and drink away our sorrows in the bar (where according to the hotel blurb ...our staff will always have a smile for you).  Just what we needed and it was the best hundred quid we have ever spent.

Our first gîte called La Nouvelle Vie (fate?!)

Our first stop was in the Limousin, which was beautiful.  The place we were staying in was owned by an English bloke called Mick.  He reminded me rather of Norman Wisdom, only with a moustache.  He was really nice and had actually lived in the place himself, so everything worked, and it had a wood burning stove so was WARM (minus 10 outside).

Limousin cow

Limousin is, of course, famous for cattle.  We heard, though, that they only raise them for meat and not for milk.  This has the advantage that they are kept outside and shit in the fields, relatively small pats at a time.  This is in stark contrast to the Lune valley where they are kept inside much of the time and then the enormous quantity of shit that is slushed down from their stalls is allowed to fester in tanks for a few weeks before being sprayed (once it is really rank) all over the fields right next door to your garden.

Near where we were staying the first week

We saw several houses in the Limousin, as well as a few further south.  Nothing quite right amongst those we saw, but the main point was to check out areas we didn't know.  Certainly, it looks as though you could get quite a lot for your money if you found the right place.

This 4 bedroom house had an enormous barn as well as outbuildings all for 285,ooo euros

As well as beautiful scenery, the Limousin also had some very attractive towns and villages.  Treignac was one we particularly liked, but Beaulieu, a bit further south also had much to offer.  We are not quite sure when in France a village becomes a town.  They seem to refer to almost everything as a village unless it is pretty much what in England you would call a city.

The old church at Treignac

Christmas is, of course getting closer, and although the French don't seem to do things quite so over the top as they do in England, they certainly take their decoration seriously, or at least the Mayor does.  Le Marie is, of course, all powerful in France and they apparently issue edicts as to how you must decorate the streets.  In order to ensure obedience and consistency, Le Marie organises the supply of the regulation Christmas decorations to each shop, bar etc.

Tastefully  decorated street bollard in Brive

At this point, however, the system seems to break down.  It appears there are no insrtuctions issued as to HOW the decorations should be put up.  This leads to some truly bizarre displays.  Some people have great taste and make the best of what the Mayor has supplied, others haven't a clue, and some are clearly taking the piss.

Drain pipe with Christmas decoration in Villefranche - Tracy Emin

The other somewhat bizarre thing we love about French public adornment is what Georgi and I refer to as crap sculpture.  You find this all over the place in great abundance, and I can only think that it, again, has something to do with Le Marie.  You also find it all along the motorways, though, so perhaps central government  is involved in some way as well.  In the villages and towns they obviously try to out do each other and I am sure there is a money making opportunity here as a crap sculptor.

A rather subtle piece of crap sculpture cleverly placed so as to block the door of a bar   

I am beginning to make a photographic record of their crap sculpture and perhaps one day it will be published as a book.  I might also put together a group of examples of how to ruin a good building.  There are, in fact, probably more of these in England but perhaps in France some of them are more extreme.

Strange red and pink painted concrete phalluses in front of an hotel's mediaeval facade (Beaulieu)

Signage can also be a little confusing, sometimes with potentially disastrous results (particularly when one's been searching for a loo and you-just don't-have-the-time-or-inclination-to-start-working-out-what-their-fucking-stupid-signs-are-supposed-to-mean).

Hommes? Dames? Who gives a damn. When you gotta go, you just gotta go.

Gardens are another intriguing subject in France.  It is well known that in the country people regard gardens as a source of producing food for sustenance, rather than places simply to sit in and enjoy.  I remember a Belgian girl I was once rather fond of saying she would never marry an Englishman because they were more interested in gardens than women, and when they got older they gave up sex in favour of gardening (she was rather advanced for her age).  If one takes her observation as accurate, one may surmise that les gentilhommes in the houses below certainly know what is most important in life (and presumably their womenfolk are enormously satisfied).

Low maintenance French garden to leave time for the more essentials of life

1) We have arrived

There's snow in France too

We have been in France just one week but have already nearly been killed by a crazy woman in a Renault Espace who obviously had a death wish (ours as well as her own), turned up at our first night’s stay only to find no-one there and the place all locked up, battled with blizzards and snow drifts, and discovered £134,000 from the sale of our house had simply gone missing in the ether. 

We are, though, still alive and already we have looked round six different properties.  Several have been pretty derelict but full-of-potential (as well as mice, bats, rats, hibernating hornets, enormous araignées, and even termites).  Yesterday we went to a house lived in by a plainly barmy woman from Spain who had decided to live like Barbara and Tom in The Good Life.  It was freezing cold and the place was full of apples, dried beans, jars of brown gooey stuff, dark grey shrivelled things and bottles of liquid that even Oliver Reed would think twice about drinking.  But, as our charming estate agent, Barbara, pointed out, it did have much potential, ...but pher’apse eet eese not quite right foure yu M’sieur Keenge?

Plenty of potential