My name is Jo, and in 2020 I moved to France with my husband, Brian. From our move to France, to running our B&B, my blog, which you can read below, is a diary of ‘Our French Adventure’. I share short stories about the Champagne region, and its people, and the life we have embraced here.
Seeing more clearly
This morning we visited the optician’s in Chatillon to have our eyes tested. We have not had them tested for probably three years now, so we were both in need of a check up and some new glasses. The whole process of the eye test seemed very normal. We had brushed up on our pronunciation of the french alphabet on the way in the car, which was a good idea as we did need it. However they didn’t do any of the normal eye health checks.
We both had our eye tests which hadn’t changed that much, and then had the fun part of choosing some new frames. We’ve picked two sets each, plain glasses and a pair of prescription sunglasses.
However, what we hadn’t realised is that to benefit from the 70% discount that your health cover allows for we need to have an ‘ordonnance de lunettes’. This is an examination by an ophthalmologist to confirm the health of our eyes and that we need glasses. So we need to book that first via the ‘Doctorlib’ app. The process does seem more clear to us now, it was just a shame that when we booked the appointment with the optician they had not asked for the ordonnance de lunettes then, or maybe they had, our French is still developing. It is not a big problem though, it just means we need to return with the paperwork before the order is placed.
Oh well, I suppose we just needed to buy some pastries from the delicious patisserie ‘Serge Barbier’ to sweeten our afternoon. Don’t you just love how they package them up so you come away feeling like you have a present to open when you get home. Such care and delight in every morsel. I was very pleased with my present.
Word spreads
In 2021 we were able to experience how it feels to share part of our world when we opened the doors to our Chambre d’hôte. It has been so rewarding welcoming guests into our home, sharing our local knowledge and enjoying chattingf over dinner with them. We are confident that over the coming weeks, as restrictions start to lift, people will start to plan their travels for 2022. For those that choose to stay with us, whether they are looking for a weekend away, or a summer break, we know we will help create beautiful holiday memories for them.
When we opened our chambre d’hôte we decided not to use any of the big booking sites like booking.com, but have worked on sharing our offering via social media and word of mouth. We are keen to make sure we can look after our guests properly, not just fill our rooms. After all, if our guests want to dine with us we need time to prepare a delicious meal for instance, which starts with a trip to the local markets.
Once experienced our beautifully styled maison de maître in southern champagne is hard to leave. It’s a place where you can relax with the family by the pool, or sit back and enjoy a quiet glass of bubbly overlooking the vineyards. The route du Champagne runs directly past our door, so you can hop in a car and easily find the best Champagne has to offer. Or if you are up to it, go for a stroll, or a hike, exploring the village and countryside to build up that appetite before dinner.
We are very thankful for people supporting and continuing to share our links and photos with other like-minded people - so please feel free to share our details with family and friends and ask them to pass them on, it really is very much appreciated. We hope that with the current challenges with travel this more exclusive choice will be valued by our guests.
This year we still have a few jobs in the barn and atelier to do and will prioritise a couple of projects we need to start in the house, which will not interrupt the Chambre d’hôte. It’s a bit of a balancing act, but it adds to the enjoyment getting things ticked off the list. In addition to this we want to continue to map more walks to make available to our guests to follow. We so love getting out walking, and we know this will be of interest to our visitors also.
I think it’s going to be an exciting year, and we do hope that some of you will be able to share it with us, and please keep spreading the word.
I’ve got it covered
I received a text from Orange earlier this week to let me know my phone was ready to be collected from the bar in Merry-Sur-Arce. I’d had no communication on whether or not they had been able to fix it, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Straight after our French lesson on Tuesday I drove to Merry-sur-Arce to collect the package.
A letter was enclosed which explained that they were unable to fix the phone, so therefore they had enclosed a new one of the same model, which was great. Brian has spent a few days reloading this new phone and I am back now working with it. So glad to have it back, it was great having the loan phone, but its slowness was quite frustrating and at times unworkable. Today we went back to Chatillon-sur-Seine to hand back the loan phone.
On the way home we popped into the Auchan (supermarket) to get some groceries, and as we were driving out of the retail area, I noticed an ‘Action’. “Hun, there’s an Action here, shall we take a look” . We had heard that it is a good budget shop, so I parked up and hopped out, keen to see what it was like. As we went in I said, “we won’t need a basket, I’m just looking”. We were not in there for more than 3 minutes when Brian went back for a basket. Best purchase I’d say was a screen protector for my new phone for just €2.49.
Walking route
As forecast it was a beautiful day, the sky was a gorgeous rich blue and the air was crisp. Brian found our route on the outdooractive app and we set off in the direction of Loches-sur-Ource, heading up through the vineyards opposite us.
It was a bit icy under foot to start with as the vineyards this side had not had the sun on them for very long.
The valley looked stunning though. The vines, dormant for the winter, waiting to be clipped back before preparing to bud - but not yet.
We soon glimpsed the first view across the valley of the Ource, again stunning. There was something about the clear, crisp winter air that was making the view look like a painting
We made our way windingly through the vineyards, down to the tiny village of Loches-sur-Ource.
From Loches we walked through some woods, running parallel with the river, that took us to Landreville, where we walked up through the village to the track that would take us back into Viviers-sur-Artaut. It took us about 3 hours to complete the walk, and we stopped for about 20 minutes near the bridge in Loches for a coffee and piece of quiche, which I’d taken with us.
It was a gorgeous day, enjoying the beautiful scenery, chatting about the little sights along the way, and just soaking up the stillness of the peaceful area we live in. I am always surprised by the tranquility.
Outdooractive
We’ve had some very cold nights this week, it was -4°c last night. The days though have been bright and sunny, so the air does warm up during the day, ideal for going for a walk. So I thought I would map out a walk for us on the computer in ‘Outdooractive’, then we can walk it tomorrow following the route on the app.
All the IGN maps of France are available on the app, which are similar to the OS (ordnance survey) maps in the UK, and it’s very easy to use. I can see the paths I want to use, so have marked some points along the route which the site then automatically joins together. It tells me how far the route is, how much is on footpaths, and how much is on roads, also the elevations.
Once I’d mapped the route, I then converted this into my hiking route, which I could name and provide a short explanation for. This then enables others to find the route on the website or app.
Time
It’s been 18 months since we left the UK and arrived in France on that hot sunny July day with no idea how life was going to change for us. Those later months of 2020, the time after we’d just arrived shortly before confinement, seem an absolute age ago. But time is flying by now, in fact where has the first week of January gone? In contrast, 2021 felt like time stood still. I think the general challenges of the pandemic have created ‘the time standing still’ feeling.
2021 was most definitely a tough year, but despite everything we continue to enjoy and embrace our life in France. Dad, and Brian’s mum Hilda, both love catching up with us on FaceTime, and we continue to stay in touch with friends and family through social media and digital technology, although it really does not replace being together.
Since arriving in France I think we have both definitely changed. Apart from the physical changes from being active and fitter, no longer sitting for long periods of time at desks (which has massively helped our well being), I am also probably 2 stone lighter, and Brian is definitely stronger. Mentally we have more time and space to be more inquisitive, more calm, and are able to have time to be more creative. We are far more patient and relaxed in our approach to things, and have time to treasure and feel delight in the little things. Gone are the days of the urgency for next day delivery, or parcels arriving every five minutes. There’s now excitement again when a parcel arrives, and a chance to speak to the post lady. All this, we know, comes down to the time we have recovered from changing our pace of life.
I think our french studies are starting to pay off too, we are understanding and talking french much better. It’s nice when even the man at the Renault garage tells you your french is improving. Meeting and being able to chat to different people, hearing different things and experiencing different traditions are all part of the enrichment of living in another country, as is enjoying new foods, delicious new recipes, and finding great wines. We get excited learning new things about the area we live in, and love it when we discover somewhere new to visit, whether it’s a restaurant, an idyllic white stone village, one of France’s many amazing museums or maybe just an unspoilt, tranquil picnic spot with a beautiful view, where we can enjoy a cup of coffee and a chausson aux pommes. We truly value having so much rich and stunningly beautiful countryside right on our door step.
What we are learning, more and more, is that there really is no need to rush through this time of our life. We are enjoying this time together and looking forward to sharing it with family and friends when it’s possible again.
Repurpose
In between doing some ironing I nipped out to the barn to see how Brian was getting on, and also to check on what receptacle he had used to collect the soot from the exhaust, thinking to myself ‘I hope he hasn’t just used one of the usual yoghurt pots’, the ones that we seem to be able to repurpose for most diy jobs, but in this case might not suit hot soot. But no, of course not, he had a better idea…what else could he repurpose?
On his other job, he had finished boxing in the left hand side of the staircase, and just had the trickier right side left to do. He’ll try and finish that tomorrow.
A Tricky position
Brian has started boxing in the staircase. It’s a bit of a tricky job, purely because of where it is, and that the wood needs to butt up to the stone wall on the right hand side, which doesn’t give much wriggle room. There will be a small gap, which we are thinking we could use some chaux to fill up. We will make a decision once he has fitted all the wood, which we are hoping will get completed today.
On the left side it’slightly easier to reach, and it’s simply boxing the stair off. It will be a good job done once finished.
Dust
We had noticed in the atelier that since we had been up there painting our Christmas cards it had become very dusty. In fact the dust had built up quite heavily all down the stairwell as well. I thought it was quite an unusually fast build up, and actually quite sooty. Brian had noticed a small exhaust in the back of the pellet boiler that he felt might be responsible for some soot buildup around the floor at the back. We hadn’t really paid too much attention to it previously, but now that he had mentioned it we thought that maybe that was responsible. Brian had boarded up the area where the boiler and silo were fitted, to held keep the atelier warm, and he thought maybe that had prevented an airflow that help the exhaust work, and that the fine dust from the the back of the boiler was now making its way up to the atelier rather than out of the chimney.
our first intervention was to put a container under the exhaust to try and catch most of the dust. We then allowed a small hole back in the opposite wall to allow some airflow back in. Then we decided we needed to board off the edge of the stairs, so as not to allow the dust to have a clear line of access to float up to the atelier. This is what Brian has started to do today. It’s great that he has been able to go out to his work area and find all the wood he needs in his wood store to complete the job.
Galette des rois
The start to the year seems to have whizzed along, and Epiphany is with us already. The Christmas decorations are down, and I’ve already bought our galette des rois. I do love this lovely little french tradition. A galette des rois is a pastry case stuffed with frangipane (almonds) and a small fève, which is a little charm hidden in the tart. Careful not to break a tooth, or worse still choke on it! If you find the fève then you get to be king and wear the crown. All in all a bit of fun and a very tasty and delightful little treat to enjoy after the Christmas festivities.
Brian found the fève this year, which is a porcelain cat, so he got to wear his crown. Next year, I am definitely going to make my own galette. I think I will see if Brian can make me a fève.
Stack of pics
I had mentioned the stack of pictures we still have to put up. Gradually we are deciding where we would like to hang them. A few are destined for the salon and library once, we have completed them, but there are some that we wanted to put up on our floor.
We have a framed print of an Earl Moran lady diver ‘one to watch’, which I thought would look good in our bathroom, the plum colours of the print pick out the plum in the chair.
We also had a couple of framed posters we had brought back from Vietnam when we traveled there about ten years ago now. We have a huge wall on our landing which I think we can create quite a gallery for some of the artwork we have collected over the years from our travels. I’m looking forward to how this will look over time.
Planning to study
It was another beautiful day to wake up to this morning, with the sun shining through a few disparate white clouds and the air feeling warm and almost spring-like. But it felt like there was a change in the air, and we know the forecast shows that temperatures will be dropping over the coming days, so we are bracing ourselves for a cold spell.
We took the Christmas decorations down earlier so the house is now looking quite bare, however, it has energised us to start planning our next projects.
We have two main projects we want to complete before spring arrives. One is the salon, although we think this will be done in small chunks of work, and the other is the library, which I think we are now both quite excited to get started on. We call it the library as that is what it was when we bought the house. It’s a small room at the side of the salon, which you can access the outside courtyard from, or you can access the cloakroom we created from the larger bathroom/laundry room. We insulated a couple of the walls when this work was done, so the old bookshelves of the library had to be removed. We now plan to replace them and to create a study/office area, to include a desk and storage area for filing.
We have always had a sofa bed in there, which has been used by family and friends when there’d been a lot of us in the house. It has proved quite useful in the past, so we are planning to keep it, and will work this into the room. The pictures above are sketches of our early thoughts.
Slightly off piste
We decided to walk on the other side of the valley today. It was a glorious day again, although there was a really strong wind whistling around our ears as we left the house. We were soon among the vineyards though and becoming more sheltered from the wind. As we walked higher, and turned north slightly, the wind calmed and once again we were enjoying a really pleasant walk. We were not used to this area, and although we’d seen where we wanted the walk to go to from afar, and also seen some paths on the map, we were not sure how they would join up.
Anyway, we continued to explore to see if we could find a suitable route that we would want to share on our website. Before long it became apparent that this was not a walk we would be publishing .
That said, we’d had a great day hiking around our local area, traipsing up and down through forests, trudging along muddy paths and jumping, not so elegantly, across newly formed streams. All in all going a bit off-piste. Now I understand the lie of the land a bit more, I will replan the route and we will be revisiting this area.
Walks
There are some beautiful walks that start just from our house and also within a short drive away. The walk we chose to do today is one of my favourites. You literally walk up the lane, across from our house, and you’re in the vineyards, with their regimented rows of vines that reach up to the top of the valley, where the forest begins.
Behind the forest is a plateau of stony fields, which we always remark on, saying how it must be so difficult to cultivate. The vineyards start again on the other side, with a beautiful view of our neighbouring villages seen from a spot surrounded by a woodland of pine trees. I just love the magnificent stature of the pine trees and the smell of the pine wood, it’s so fresh, and I don’t know why, but it makes me smile. This path is just a local footpath, called a Promenades et Randonnées (PR), and these appear all across France.
It is marked along the route not only with signs marking the village names, directions and distances but also with yellow flashes. The below examples show what you would be looking out for - straight on, turn left, turn back.
The other types of walks that are marked all across France are the longer distance walks. These are either Grandes Randonnées (GRs), a long distance path, or Grandes Randonnées du Pays (GRPs), which are paths that loop around through a particular area. They are distinguished by different coloured markings, however they can have some local variations. Mainly you would look for;
Two parallel flashes, one white and one red for the Grandes Randonnées (GR)
Two parallel flashes, one yellow and one red for the Grandes Randonnées du Pays (GRP)
Then the local footpaths (PR) marked with a single yellow flash (as seen above)
We are planning, over the coming weeks/months, to start to map some of the routes we walk, and add some links to our website of the paths we walk. This is so visitors to our Chambre d’hôte can easily find a suitable walk, be it a stroll before dinner, to enjoy a sunset or a glass of bubbles at a point de vue, or a full day out with a tasty picnic.
Happy New Year
Good morning all, and a Happy New Year.
Yesterday we woke to glorious blue skies and warm sunshine, and I was keen to get out and do a walk. So we enjoyed a light breakfast and started to collect our bits together to take. I then realised my phone had frozen, and I couldn’t do anything with it. Brian had rebuilt it a couple of weeks back when it was playing up, but now we were not even able to get into it…nothing! “I will make a quick call to Orange and see what they say”. We were both frustrated as the day seemed to be taking a different turn. About 30 minutes later and following my conversation with Orange, we decided we would need to drive to Chatillon-sur-Seine to visit the Orange shop. It is about a 35 minute drive.
Although it was a very long and tiring afternoon trying to sort it out, we finally came away with a loan phone, and a boxed up broken phone which I need to take to a pick up point in Merry-sur-Arce, which isn’t open now until Monday. However, I do have a functioning phone, although it has taken almost 20 hours to update…it is a very old model. Once Orange have received the broken phone I will know what they plan to do, but that could take 4 weeks.
We returned home around 5pm, and were ready to start our evening with a very welcome G&T.
Today the sun is shining again and the sky is blue - so we will be doing that walk.
Cocktails
Brian loves mixing cocktails and wants to get better at making them. His biggest challenge is he can never remember the recipes but he tells me that’s all down to practise, so he keeps practicing. What we find is that a long glass of something tasty fits well into our evenings. We normally like to sit down around 6pm in front of the fire with a refreshing drink, and maybe a few nibbles, to set us up for dinner. Although we generally love a gin and tonic it’s nice to try something new now and then. My second favourite go-to cocktail is a Bloody Mary, which I have to say Brian is getting better at. His latest recipe is;
2 measures of vodka
20 cl of tomato juice
5 decent splashes of Worcester sauce
6 splashes of Tabasco
The juice of half a lemon (medium squeeze only)
A sprinkle of celery salt
A good sprinkling of salt (4 turns) and pepper (5 turns)
and 4 ice cubes - shaken for 10 seconds and poured into two glasses chilled in the freezer.
His G&T is simpler;
1 measure of Bombay Sapphire
A slice of lemon
The juice of a ¼ of a lemon
4 ice cubes
and finally pour over 15cl light tonic water
We both prefer the infusion in Bombay Sapphire, so that tends to be our gin of choice, however there are quite a few french gins on the market which we are keen to try out. I’m looking forward to that bit.
Also, once the mint starts to grow back in the garden, he will be trying out some mojito’s. But I think his next one will be a whisky sour, not one of my favourites, but one he enjoys.
Food and wine
Something I love over the Christmas period is having a well stocked fridge at the start of the holiday. Then gradually over the days the meals all get eaten and the fridge starts to empty. We have enjoyed some absolute delicious meals throughout Christmas. Adopting the french tradition of eating seafood on Christmas Eve. They will often eat oysters, which is not something we would choose, but we really enjoyed the Noix de Saint Jacques - scallops cooked with garlic, shallots, wine and cream, followed by turbot. On Christmas Day we had our traditional prawn cocktail, but served on a plate as opposed to in a glass followed by Pintade - guinea fowl. Then on Boxing Day we enjoyed our côte de boeuf, smothered in a mustard rub and cooked on a bed of vegetables, which helped make a delicious rich red wine sauce.
And to accompany the food, we delighted in opening some beautiful french wines. All perfectly matched to the meals.
We are now both feeling very well indulged, and it’s encouraging to see that the fridge is emptying. Some long walks, followed by bowls of hot soup and the odd mince pie will be a welcome change of pace over the coming days.
It’s a frame up
We have a large selection of framed and unframed pictures. They take up a fair amount of space where they are currently stacked, so during our time off for Christmas we took some time to consider where to hang them and put a few up.
As you would expect, Brian used it as an opportunity to get his laser out and make sure they were straight. A couple of food related signs made it up in the kitchen.
The two magazine prints, which we had framed in a couple of gorgeous old black and white, tortoise shell frames, look absolutely fabulous in the Jeroboam.
Brian was also happy to finally hang his birthday present I had bought him a couple of years back. It is now on display in the hallway.
Boxing day!
Brian has not been able to resist fixing the two hat boxes we bought in Paris. I wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do to cheer them up, I had thought they just needed a light clean, but he has kept disappearing over the last week, and because it’s that time of year, I hadn’t asked him what he’d been up to.
Yesterday he surprised me, with the two renovated hat boxes. They look amazing. He has carefully cleaned them, and meticulously glued paper and card inside the lids and walls of the boxes to strengthen and reposition them. So they now retain their shape.
They look perfect up on the top of the old armoire we bought. I love them.
