But compared to a year ago we are currently having weather that is a lot warmer and drier compared to this time last year. Our heating hasn’t come on at all for over 6 . . . → Read More: One year…]]> So Thursday 26 May was one year since we arrived. Time flies fast when you are having fun as they say….

But compared to a year ago we are currently having weather that is a lot warmer and drier compared to this time last year. Our heating hasn’t come on at all for over 6 weeks now I would think. And although they forecast rain we barely get enough to dampen the grass, or what grass there is left!!

We swim most days the pool temperature has stabilised at about 29 degrees which is very comfortable and the solar heated shower works very well we often need to add cold water to the hot because it is too hot.

We are now getting the garden sorted out gradually it’s been rotovated and Alison is clearing stones and weeds from the ground.

For the last three weeks or so we have been gradually unpacking, which as yet we haven’t finished, but we are making good progress. We have . . . → Read More: Our first month]]> Well we have now been here a month. It doesn’t seem like it, the time has flown by. Although I guess that’s because we have been keeping ourselves busy.

For the last three weeks or so we have been gradually unpacking, which as yet we haven’t finished, but we are making good progress. We have had a few minor difficulties due to having too many things!!

Well merging two households this is bound to happen. So we are doing the equivalent of a car boot fair in a weeks time to see if we can get rid of some of our unwanted items. For instance I don’t need two suits, both with two pairs of trousers! One suit is hardly going to get warn out here!! I also had quite a lot of clothes here as well as in UK so finding space for all of our clothes has proved interesting!! One of my jobs last week was to convert the wardrobe in to having two rails rather than one. It has worked out quite well. But I still need to sort through my shirts. We have also made some changes in the kitchen to increase the storage capacity in the cupboards. We are just about ahead of the game now.

But it’s not all been work and no play. I’ve enjoyed getting my own desk back again and getting set up with all our computer stuff in the basement office which is working well. I don’t think it will need much heating in the winter, the walls and ceiling are all well insulated and with all the PC stuff running it is quite cosy in there!

We have both been adapting to a different style of life out here. Our waking hours are definitely more relaxed, no alarms to wake us up unless we have an early morning appointment to get to, which is rare!

George the cat has settled in well, although he’s not quite plucked up the courage to venture outside yet, even if we leave the door open. He seems more than happy to sleep on one of the dining chairs or on our bed or hide under one of the beds in amongst all the linen bags.

This weekend on Sunday is the Pique-nique du quartier, sort of a gathering of all of our neighbours in the 30 or so houses in our small estate. We have attended most of the previous ones and you can see pictures of the events at our sister site Criox de Chambre I will take some photographs of the event for the site.

I’ve also revamped/built a new website for our property business LTPS. Work on this new site is more or less finished although I might add some different photographs to the site to change it about a bit.

We have quite a lot happening over the next few weeks so I will update the blog soon.

We woke early and got out. We had a couple of urgent things to attend to, including a late bill to pay which was due to a mis-communication/mis-understanding, so we wanted to get . . . → Read More: Day 1 of life in France]]> So this was day 1 of our new life in France, it was slowly starting to sink in that this now home!

We woke early and got out. We had a couple of urgent things to attend to, including a late bill to pay which was due to a mis-communication/mis-understanding, so we wanted to get that sorted quickly.

The grass had grown quite a bit with all the warm weather, so I was itching to get the mower out. I set it to it’s highest setting and gave it a cut. I almost got it finished before the mower ran out of fuel, oh well, it looks a lot better. So I will get some fuel in the next day or so and give it another cut on a lower setting and hopefully it will start to look less like a meadow!

A quick visit to SuperU to stock up the fridge and freezer and then we were ready for lunch.

George is settling in well, we have let him explore the living room this afternoon and he enjoyed sleeping on the sofa.

I’ve altered the home setting on the TomTom and on various on-line accounts to France. It helps to get accustomed to the idea that this is now home..

Our furniture and belongings arrive next Wednesday so I will try to add some pictures to the posts here in the next few days.

It was a sad moment in some ways. We had . . . → Read More: The day of the move – 26 May 2010]]> Well after what seemed like a month of packing, our last day in Pembury finally arrived. Our removers collected our final things in the morning and we just had to finish tidying up the house and getting the car packed before handing over the keys.

It was a sad moment in some ways. We had lived in that house for 24 years so lots of memories and friends of course, that will always be associated with it. But the moment we drove up the road with a very full car including George the cat, was also the start of a new adventure.

Because George was travelling with us we opted to travel via the Channel Tunnel, not the shortest route, but the most flexible one and we would be with George all of the time. We got the 14:55 train from Folkestone and we headed out of Calais at about 16:30, quite a late start really. Heading south from there towards Rouen, a part of the route I never really enjoy that much we had a few rain showers. So we didn’t disappear in to the sunset!

We got through Rouen quite quickly and we were back on the motorway for the next 200 or so miles to Saumur. We had quite a few stops to stretch our legs. We tried feeding George but he wasn’t interested. He travelled in the back of the car in a medium size dog cage so that he could stretch out and sleep if he wanted to.

We left Pembury with grey skys and about 13 degrees C, by the time we got near to Le Mans at about 10pm it was just starting to get dark and the outside temp was up to 15.5 degrees C.

Having done this journey more times than I can remember, it seemed like only a couple of weeks ago since we last did the journey rather than about 6 or 7 weeks ago. A sort of deja vu feeling to it. But the oddest feeling was that we wouldn’t be doing the return trip in a week or two’s time. This was it… well sort of…

We eventually arrived at the house after about 7 hours on the road including stops. We got George up in to the kitchen before getting him out of his travel cage and then got the car unloaded. And then bed… it had been a long day.

To close we would like to thank all our friends in Pembury for a great send off on Monday evening and on Wednesday.