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So true. Yesterday, on my way back from the Dentist in Montignac, the return road I normally take had decided to become a one-way (the wrong way for my return home) since my last travels there (no idea when or why). So, I took a different route (Rte de l'Escaleyroux); seemed to be going in the right direction (no GPS). Tiny, winding road heading uphill (what a shock round here 😉). After a km or 2, I came upon a parking turn off and wondered why the heck would anyone want to park here in the middle of nowhere (no houses, no businesses). Just after the parking spot, there was an observation point built out on the left (cliff side) of the road. I turned my head to see that I was WAY up a small mountainside and the sweeping view from the observation deck was jaw dropping. I have a dreadful fear of driving on tiny, mountainous roads, so I would have been better off never looking towards the view point... However, it was so incredibly beautiful and in the middle of nowhere, yet I've driven around it (yet not taken this particular road) a dozen times. So many hidden beauties. And yes Menthe, we too managed a walk yesterday around 17h00. Only got slightly sprinkled on. Came across a beautiful, very large hare, that jumped into the surrounding fields once he saw us coming. Also enjoyed the gorgeous, green rolling hills all around us. So pretty. Don't know if the google map view will copy over, but this is the Observation point. https://www.google.com/maps/@45.0888531,1.2121814,3a,75y,349.31h,71.23t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sBmgLkzas-6XI9q4sApk3Tg!2e0!5s20210301T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

I use a spreadsheet to arrive at the figures for our tax return, so it is fairly simple to change the rates for foreign exchanges. All our UK income stays there, so I have no actual figures to use. This year I made one calculation at a £ to € rate of 1.138 and another using the daily rates from www.exchangerates.org.uk , which is quite compact to print out. I always keep a copy and a note of the source for my figures, in case of any dispute. The amount of tax payable was slightly lower using the daily rates, and more importantly, just below the next tax band applying to us, so I used those results for our return. This also has the advantage of probably being a more acceptable source than second hand information that is available.

Well not entirely happy, and my parents were capable of embarrassing beyond belief. But the country would not be in such a mess with more of their sort still around.... As to long journeys I'm with you Lori and menthe. Where we are in Devon is very very rural, and I think we've only set foot outside the county a couple of times in the last four years. Heaven forbid that I should ever have to go anywhere by plane - I haven't flown since 1997 - but I'd need someone with me to show me how all the new e-tickets etc work, and I have no idea what one is now allowed to take with one, or baggage excesses etc. TBH I don't *want* to know, I've never been further than Austria and 99% of my abroad time has been in France, as I failed ever to see the point of going any further than that beautiful country, with its (mainly) lovely people. Sadly since we sold the house in 24 we've not been back - in nearly five years now. It's not helped by the fact that we both still have paper driving licences, and part of the Brexit punishment beating has been that France no longer recognises them. And that makes me feel no longer welcome, or inclined to trouble myself to regularise my position. I'm afraid I feel that if they don't want me I'm not going to make the effort, particularly as I was one of the "victims" of Sarkozy's (illegal) policy of refusing residency to anyone below retirement age with a pre-existing medical condition (totally minor in my case).

YES, Lori, you are a woman after my own heart! We are lucky to live in such a beautiful and large département. You are right, there is always a delightful corner to be discovered, even if you just go on foot. I managed a walk yesterday evening and I really enjoyed looking at the land and crops, the contours of green and brown plus the swifts, ducking and diving they way they do.

I remember Wooly advising me to string up Cliff Richard CDs on our veranda to stop birds commiting harikiri by flying into the glass. Not sure they worked that well BUT they weren't Cliff Richard's as specified by Wooly....I was simply not a CR fan and did not have his CDs. Eventually, I put up voile curtains which were a better deterrent though I appreciate that, in an open terrace, that might not be possible.

You are not alone and no you are not pityful either. I find traveling long distances these days to be very stressful for a great number of reasons. So I generally avoid it. There's a lot of very nice scenery within an hour or two of our house. I'm happy with that.

Martin, I could see you have very fond memories of your parents! I say "lucky you" because parents were people who mostly embarrassed you at school and stopped you doing things when you were young. It's strange how some things remain in the memory and some completely disappear into a dark hole. I have missed a flight once while on holiday in the far east and my flight was around midnight THEIR time. It was mega confusing, what with the heat and everything else. Cost me a bundle to pay for another flight and even then it was a 48 hour wait. Also missed the ferry once in Brittany and had to go all the way to Ouistreham to take another ferry home. While these things might seem funny in retrospect, at the time they were extremely distressing. Increasingly, I am not so keen to go too far from home, pityful object that I am.

Actually I wonder if I've misled you a bit over card freezing. You can do it from the Barclays app, but having looked at the Barclays on line banking system (ie from a computer rather than a phone) I'm not sure it's possible.

We put up old CDs on string to discourage birds from nesting under our "upstairs" terrace, as we sit underneath it .. seems to work, I can see the terrace as I type and there are no birds evident, nor have been ever since we put the discs up. Bits of aluminium foil would work as well if you don't have old CDs.

I have that problem too, Menthe, as I can touch type too .. yes,you need to learn to type with one finger only, sadly!

I am using 1.139 (taking Banque de France average between 1 Jan 2023 and 31 December 2023).

Writing frrm what seems to be the only place in France still under extreme drought conditions, and being no gardener either, plus being in the UK for most of March, all I can say is, that this year has been totally untypical ... one minute so warm I can put a T-shirt on, the next week, I'm back in winter woollies, and that has been happening all year! My drive both ways to the UK was wet, wet, and even wetter, I did manage a few nice days on and off whilst in the UK, but it has been just the same here, except for the rain, we just get grey skies, which are neither use nor ornament to anyone, since I got back. Winter woollies today, 3 days ago, T-shirt!!!

Re Martins mum & dad and tickets, years ago when the shuttle used to issue tickets our friends came to visit us in France, they also bought our daughter in the car. They got to the shuttle booths where the wife said to hubby got the tickets, no was the reply the last time I saw them was on the mantel piece. They were still on the mantel piece. They had to buy new tickets there and then, they told us later that by having our daughter in the car saved their marriage. Our friends usually had these kind of adventures, missed their flights back to the UK while on holiday in Africa etc. Martin I do actually do online banking at Barclays, didn't even know that I could freeze the card, was more concerned if someone had used it.

It makes forgetting where I put my glasses seem like child's play! But, yes, I suspect that more people than we'd like to think of have done some things similar ... and I must confess to checking passport location even when I know I have put in where it always lives when travelling! It's where I have put the house keys for safe keeping in the room, when I am away which I forget!

What stories Martin !!! You should write a book on your memories. 😀

PS Have to add this: my parents, whilst searching for somewhere in 05, drove down a couple of times with a caravan. My father would always wax lyrical about how good the French were at building roads, (to hear him swanking about the marvels of the Bouleveard Peripherique you'd honestly believe he'd built the entire thing himself single-handed). Anyway, their journey used to take them to Grenoble, but before the A48 had been entirely completed. On one occasion my father was rabbiting on about how wonderful this new motorway was, how the French anticipated traffic levels so early, and even my mother had to admit that there didn't seem to be a single other vehicle on either carriageway. They did a happy five miles or so totally on their own, before hearing "Ni-nah ni-nah ni-nah" becoming audible behind them. A police car overtook them, and signalled for them to stop. It turned out that my father had got the wrong side of some cones (he was colour blind, which didn't help, and French signage wasn't as comprehensive as it is now) and he'd managed several miles on an unopened section of the A48. Had he carried on another couple of miles he and the caravan would have ended up in a large hole. They were escorted back the wrong way (my father got in a total panic and it was the gendarmes who had to disconnect the caravan, turn the vehicles round, and reconnect them).

Reminds me of my parents. In my teens we went to France three times a year, and my father seemed to be under the impression that it was akin to going to the south pole. Apart from loading the car with butter and coffee and tinned ham, he himself would wrap himself in multiple layers, thick winter jerseys, sports jacket, raincoat, heavy winter overcoat. We'd scarcely be on the road before he'd yell "Ye Gods, the passports". If he was driving he would have to be persuaded to stop, as the search would entail going through the fifteen or so pockets of his sartorial over-complications. Eventually the passports would be found, a few miles would be achieved, then "Ye Gods, the ferry tickets". You can imagine, and this would go on throughout the entire journey to Southampton or Dover. Famously later on they managed to leave their picnic for the journey in the fridge at home; another time when they'd just bought a little chalet in 05 they managed to leave a cardboard box full of mugs, plates, chocolate etc in a layby on the N75 south of Grenoble (a little layby off the road and très delaissé), only to be able to pick it up three weeks later on the way home (and demolishing the chocolate there and then they were so pleased to see it, having no doubt left the picnic for the return journey behind; the box eeventually got the the chalet on the next run!). As my mother observed, France was still in back then like England in the 1930s, where you could leave your luggage on a station platform and it would be left undisturbed for as long as you liked....... Eventually they DID - on one of their last trips - lose their ferry tickets whilst in France in the eighties, and also managed to lose track of which day of the week it was, this was of course long before mobiles, and they weren't sure if the copies of the papers in the Librairies were today's or yesterdays. They eventually turned up at the wrong time at the wrong port on the wrong day to catch the wrong boat. As a result of such chaotic moments in my childhood I am boringly pretty well organised, but of course one never sees one's parents' good points, many of which I more than suspect that I am entirely lacking. Good luck finding another bank. They're all pretty useless, although generally I find Nationwide (and, suprrisingly, Tesco) quite good at picking up the phone. Opinions may differ of course. FWIW had you been able to log in to Barclays Banking you could have "frozen" your card, most of the banks allow you to freeze them until you find it again.

Talking of spring. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can stop birds nesting on my terrace? The problem is that I foster cats for a local charity and the terrace is part of an enclosed area where they can get some outside exercise. I'm afraid, if I allow the birds to nest they could be put off from feeding the chicks because of the cats or, heaven forbid, a cat might catch a bird. Currently I'm out every day dismantling the nests in the hope they'll go elsewhere but I'd rather stop them doing it in the first place.

Drought? Breizh Meteo rainfall records for Pontivy observatory - 12 km from us jan 2024 129.4 mm feb 2024 116.4 mar 2025 97.2 april 2024 57.4 I think it's possibly a long drawn out period of cold wet but not freezing weather, and the hedge dropped it's leaves to protect itself, our birch trees were very late budding and coming into leaf also. The hedge is fine now. You will note that https://temperature.global/ shows an average trend 2015 to 2024 of - 0.254 C cooling.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_de_glace I always understood from neighbours that it's just three days in May? Can't remember it ever happening here, though. I've always gambled on dismantling the temporary 'conservatory' in March and never had a problem until this year 🙄

I think it's the extremes that do for most plants here. There are very few that will withstand soggy soil all winter and then the heat and drought of most summers.

Now be fair, Harnser! There were at least three days in early April when we got all excited and braved the pool. The water was 20C. So there you have it....the planet's totally doomed 😁

or maybe they are just drought stricken. I've lost a cherry and a mulberry over the last 12 months.

Replying to my own post here:- Observing some signs of the variance of plant growth in our own garden, the fact that the variegated privet hedge some 25 metres long along the road boundary of our property lost it's leaves totally this last winter and was still bare in mid March, the first time this has happened since we arrived in 2009, no sign of any infection etc, and a large flowering cherry putting out the worst show of blossom again since 2009, leads me to think that the global boiling brigade are talking up their agenda, rather than telling it like it is.

According to the global boiling brigade:- "most parts of Europe experienced exceptionally warm spring temperatures between early March and mid April" So there..!! https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-updates/warm-spring-weather-benefitted-crops-most-europe-2024-04-22-0_en