Tony F Dordogne

Out of interest I've looked at our deeds and there's nothing in there about the woods being protected at all, just about the ownership.  Whilst I was in the Marie this morning I looked at the cadastre and the woods all around are shown as being protected so the cadastre would seem to be a good place to start. But that doesn't detract from management which is, according to my locals, a given, especially when there are so many regulations about controlling woodlands in case of fire. Polly, it's the Huguenot Cross.

Sorry Leo, badly written, should have put a paragraph spacing between the first sentence and the rest of the message.  People on here who actually know me will tell you I'm neither patronising or insincere and I do wish the OP all the very best when they return to the UK.  Like DA, personally, I wouldn't go back there to live, I much prefer the life I have here but if people want to move back to the UK, it's their decision and I do - sincerely - wish them well.

Polly I think that protected in this instance is covered by a national law but there may be some local ordanance which covers that particular woodland.  Instead of a paying visit to the Notaire, perhaps the OP should just visit their Mairie and ask there?

Best of luck when you go back to the UK.  I don't know this French culture where you get bombarded by paperwork, perhaps it's a different life style that we live here but apart from a bit of official stuff and political flyers from the Consiel General and Assemblee National, we only deal with the day to day utilities and our personal post - and nobody's chasing us for anything so we must be doing something right - or nothing wrong. 

I may be able to help without seeing the paperwork.  I actually live in an area which is protected woodland and own a large protected wood and I'm also responsible for the protected woodland in my commune as a councillor - it's an interest of mine. You are allowed to manage the woodland without getting permission from the mairie.  Therefore cutting and thinning trees is allowed - recently a neighbour of mine has cleared his patch of protected woodland to use the wood domestically and there was no need for him to get permission at all. The protected status usually means that CU will never be granted for that plot.  I coppice and cut wood in my woods regularly and don't have to get permission to do so. Hope that helps.

I think this is all about perception and prices.  I know that plant prices here are much cheaper than they are in the UK and on the flower/plant fairs, they are considerably cheaper than places like Jardiland.  Noticed that a lot of the bricos have had expensive tomato plants in for a couple of weeks now, forced and looking a bit leggy but crazy prices. Our local plant fairs have locally grown plants, expecially veggies, which I buy for the basics and now concentrate on seeds for the less common types of veggies, like the greem tomatoes and white aubergines (and my rare breed/endangered seed scemes)  which you don't see but they're great (and cheap) for toms like marmande or the yellow pear type. And for things that I like to grow like graminees, not a problem to pay a bit for them tho some of the brico places are way expensive, like a fairly small phormium for €48 when I bought one locally for under €20 the same size a couple of weeks ago.  Joy with having such a large garden and liking to 'specialise' is that if I buy graminees or plants like day lillies, I can split them, gro them on in pots and then have multiple plants the following year so the initial outlay is minimised by multiple plants from the same stock. One of my fave places to buy plants is a veggie stall on St Cyprien market where they gro the veggie plants bio and then sell them on for a very small amount.

[quote user="NormanH"] "It's a disgrace to punish those who contribute actively into out social security system. Start by throwing out those who only take  from it. We don't need le Pen to clean up France, it's enough to stop benefits from those who are only here because they live off the system (the English included)." [/quote] Perhaps they mean the people who registered as AE when the health care rule changes came in with no intention of actually working, just using it as a device to get health care in France and to make France their competant state?

You have to be practical about this and I would suggest, a tad less ambitious.  Getting a fully operating potager up and running doesn't happen that quickly, there's soil conditions to understand and all the techy gardening stuff too and even if it is rotavated, it still may need digging to clear any roots left behind. What I would do is hit places like France Rurale and the other brico places, even if it means paying a few cents over the odds in your first year, buy the small barquette of plants and give yourself a flying start - and it's likely that there will be growers/greengrocer farmers on your local markets selling them also. Do the easy stuff first, give yourself this year just to potter around with the easy stuff - toms, aubergines, courgette - and just a few seeds, get the soil sorted and think about planting up stull properly in the autumn, like onions, leeks and garlic to overwinter and then start properly in 2011. 

[quote user="Joe"]How about Runner Beans.If you sow in pots now you could bring them with you.Leeks would be good.Sow them now as well.Same goes for Broad beans.You cannot buy either bean here,certainly not runners.I bought mine in UK on my last visit.Hope this helps.[/quote] Sorry Joe but you can buy both runner beans and broad beans (feve) here but I agree, bestest time to get some in.  Mangetout are good also but mind the mice, they love to eat the tips.  And all the salad things too, if you're here now, look for the local plant fairs which should be coming thick and fast until mid May. I'd be wary about rotavating the plot tho, one of the reasons that Joe Swift, the guy from UK's Gardener's World is giving up his allotment is that he rotavated the plot (against advice) and he can't get rid of the weeds that he generated by chopping up the weed roots.

14 May 2010 is the 400th anniversary of the murder of Henri IV, arguably the most important and influential of all the French Kings.  He was stabbed to death on 14 May 1610 by a Catholic zealot and to commemorate the event there are a large number of events happening across France. French television has just shown a superb series about him and in Pau, where he was born, there is a major exhibition between 1 April and 30 June at Musee National du Chateau de Pau.  Our local ACIP Association is showing 'La Reine Margot' and I'm going to be giving some information about Huguenot history and may even do a few searches for names on my Huguenot database. For those interested in French history, well worth looking out for things in your area because Henri IV was and remains so important from an hisorical point of view.   

Does your neighbour own the road, if not I'd have thought he can't restrict access anyway? But being pragmatic, two Gendarmes, in their blues and carrying guns, would I argue with them about walking/driving along the road - bit of a no brainer that one - or a no brainser if you try to stop them!

[quote user="Judith"] Church in Soho Sq (NW corner) is definitely French protestant (but whether Hugenot I don't know).  [/quote] Huguenot is a generic name applied to those French Calvinists/Protestantes that left France for various points of the compass between 1544 and the French Revolution - there never were Huguenot Churches per se, they were Protestante Churches used by those French Protestantes who followed Calvin and who, in England, remained Calvinist or slowly made their way into the Conformist and Non-Conformist congregations.  Realistically, the word Huguenot is used as a generic description, in the USA as a social cache but for the rest of us, it's much more a sense of worth and recognirion of 'other'. And regardless of what some people have said, unlike Protestant/Protestante, the origins of the word Huguenot still isn't known and there are many conflicting theories as to its origin.

Snd me the names privately Will and I'll have a look on my database.

Will, they have a very interesting - if not badly skewed - version of religious history.  Nice to see that Catholic (historical it has to be said) bigotry against the Protestantes has been turned round, some of their material sounds like a 'No Popery' speech from the Blessed Dr Paisley, ah the understanding between the various branches of Christianity warms the heart. Where the Orange Street Congregation meet was the old French Church - to be accurate there was never a Huguenot Church in London, they were all French Protestante in various guises (conformist, non-conformist) - of Leicester Fields, for which the French refugees records and their descendants have been transcribed and published by the Hug Soc of GB & I, previously of London. For those with a particular interest in this Church's history whilst it was still a French/Huguenot Church you may want to look out for "Lux Benigna, a History of thé Orange Street Chapel " (R. W. Free, London, 1888) and " History of thé Orange Street Chapel " (Isaac Hartill, n.d. cir. 1917) both give considérable information and were both written by the Congragational Ministers in charge of the Chapel at the time. A lot of information also in the records of the Chapel.

I can only speak from experience.  I've been to services at the French Church in Soho Square where they also have a very private Library and Archive and which is the direct descendant church of the mother Church in Threadneedle Street, like Canterbury French Pasteur, and in all the Hug Soc of GB material that we get circulated, it's the Soho Square Church and Canterbury Chapels that are mentioned, never seen the other Church mentioned at all.

[quote user="Swissie"]BTW the most famous Huguenot Church is underneath Canterbury Cathedral- and is still active today. [/quote] Sorry Swissie that's only half right - the Church in Canterbury was originally a Walloon Church which moved over to Protestante/Huguenot but it's not the most famous tho it is still used today.  The mother Church in the UK was in Threadneedle Street, where the Bank of England is located (founded originally by Huguenots and their families) and was always the major French Church in England until the centre moved to Soho, where the main French Church is today in Soho Square.

I'm descended from a Huguenot family from Nismes and still seem to spend all my spare time researching and writing about Huguenot families, have three research papers on the go atm and have just been asked to write more articles for UK genealogical mags on Huguenots and French research.  Just joined a local Protestante research group - like I really need to belong to another one - and I'm organising a visit for my WDYTYA group to their library later this year. And that's the Huguenot Cross on my id on the left btw :)

Best news I've heard all day!

Claim tax back for having a hedge cut?  I wish, I have two hedges that are both over 80metres long and I'd be more than willing to pay somebody to cut them if it reduced my income tax bill!

They kidnap, assault, falsely imprison and generally terrorise somebody and they deserve sympathy?  Yeah, right, no difference between kidnapping a younger person and holding them for ransom, because that's what they did with this guy.  If the money was truly undeclared for tax purposes and they were trying to 'grow' their hidden gains, why should anybody have any sympathy for them? So what's next, an upper age of criminal responsibility, because they're old don't prosecute them or don't send them to prison because of the offences they committed?  Yeah, right, recipe for chaos, if they can't do the time, they shouldn't have committed the crime!.

Looks like the bridge over the Dordogne taken from the battlements at Domme? I'm also curious about the second bad news story from here.  Surely not the contradictory froth from whatnot Booth? 

I caught the end of the F1 yesterday having spent a couple of hours on election duty which was, on balance, much more interesting than the F1. Overindulged, overadvertised, overpaid people commenting on other overpaid and overadvertised people driving a car round and round in complex patterns. Boring beyond belief like all the Facebook sites about F1 and whose widget is bigger, smaller, slicker, more legal/illegal than the other company's.  

If it's too cold to pee onto the compost heap, it's too cold for sure to stick your bum on the ground - would be interesting trying to explain to the Pompiers why you're a**e is stuck to the ground - honestly Jean-Pierre, I read about it on the Internet, old English tradition - yeah, right, round the commune grapevine in 10 minutes that one!

We did some gardening last weekend - mainly cutting down old large grasses and digging up stuff to move, but currently we're colded off, very frosty overnight and far too cold during the day, the ground is still hard in the afternoon and far too cold for seeds and stuff except in a heated greenhouse I think. 

I watched it too, just to see if it had improved after the last series.  Generating lots of discussion on the Uk gardening fora and the concensus seems to be that it's a sort of gardening 101, ok for new gardeners but there's nothing for any experienced gardeners around now. And as for standing out in falling snow talking about snowdrops, well each to their own but seems like a seriously minority sport that one, like the garden gnome guy in the last series. Carol Klein and Monty Don or the guy from Harlow Carr Gardens for me, Alys is as patronising as Toby, yes I do know know to grow tomatoes (he should have mentioned that thre seeds are F1s which would mean something to some of us who don't want to use F1s) from seed and how to sow sweet peas - interesting that she didn't mention nicking the cases or soaking them first so ease germination, still, bit advanced that I suppose. I'll give it a whirl on Friday but if it's not a bit more grown up, that's me out too.