LisaJ
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Posts posted by LisaJ
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There are some very nice beaches to the east of the canal. We like Villers-sur-Mer the best and the beach is right in the town, Cabourg is good too, but the cafes can be expensive.
regards
Lisa
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It wasn't this particular owl who used the space to enter the building as it has been blocked off for about 20 years as far as I know, more like her umpteenth great-granny. Do the roosting / nesting places get handed down? How do the babies know where to roost? Does anyone know how large the individual territories are?
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Lisa
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It faces due west Chris. What I find interesting is why the owls keep wanting to nest in the house despite numerous empty and semi-derilict barns around. Did they nest in the grenier generations back and develop an instinct to nest here? One actually got in to the house one day and perched on the washbasin (I have a photo somewhere.) Another house in the hamlet has a barn owl that perches on the window ledge. Whilst they are obviously totally wild creatures to be treated with extreme respect and caution, I do wonder if they have got used to their human neighbours to some degree.
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Lisa
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Fine to put up the photo Chris; the cavity is about 10cm by 15cm, but I am not going up with a tape measure!
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Lisa
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Have PMd the picture, but yes they have a ledge to land on outside. The walls of the house are of double thickness and the ledge and gap were originally (I think) to get air to the grain store before it was converted into bedrooms, long before we moved in.
I think she is in the gap between the stone walls, she looks as if she constantly has to duck her head to fit in. We therefore have a stone wall, insulation and plasterboard between us and the nest, but on a still night you could hear snoring, wheezing and that distinctive barn owl noise like the spin cycle of a washing machine!
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Lisa
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This was the site I found Chris - 70mm by 70mm is what they say!
http://www.barnowltrust.org.uk/infopage.html?Id=5
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Lisa
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Have a look at your PMs Chris, I have been trying to send you a photo. The hole might be 10cm by 15cm, but believe me, they are not little owls, they are barn owls.
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Lisa
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Definitely nested in a small hole ( I read on a barn owl site that an entrance 7cm by 7cm is what they need and that is about what they have got), 3m off the ground in the outside wall of our house, Chris. First we found the eggshells, then had a good view of the two babies, (we watched from behind a fence, so as not to alarm them). Guests in our gite saw them fly the nest and then one of the babies was out in the garden at night at low level perching on the garden furniture and tapping on the lounge window. One of the babies is now roosting in the barn and the female is back in the nest. She seems quite happy to watch us in the garden, but we try not to eyeball her too much. They are definitely barn owls (we have been RSPB members for 35 years) and all the neighbours know that our house is a long-time home for them.
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Lisa
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Our owls are tucked in a niche in the wall of our house. I have put a litter tray on the terrace for the pellets, but they are not very accurate yet.
Today is very hot in Normandy (27c) and La Dame Blanche keeps sticking her head out to get cool.
If we build a nest box do you think they might move into it? How far from the house could we go? I would prefer it if they moved into the barn, but they don't seem to know that they are barn owls.
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Lisa
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Yes you definitely should. There is another very good book by Stuart Hills "By Tank into Normandy" (from memory) that describes pretty much the same route. When you see how narrow and steep some of the valleys are, you wonder how on earth they took them.
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Lisa
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You could describe it as depressing, Cassis (though I can think of more depressing landscapes in France and would nominate the A10 through Les Landes as top of my list). I certainly think the bit round the Falaise pocket still has a certain atmosphere and I don't think I could live there. If you turn off to the west of the Falaise to Caen road however, you are fairly instantly in an exquisite landscape of woods and rolling hills, which leads across to the even more beautiful Suisse Normande. I am biased, though!
And to go even further off topic, does anyone know what caused the enormous bang that shook this bit of Normandy at about 9.15 this morning? I know it was heard across at least a 15km radius.
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Lisa
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If you are coming from the Argentan / Falaise road, then it is signposted round to the east (I checked this morning) and you pass the shopping centre at Mondeville, the Paris motorway, the speed camera and then cross the bridge before the turning.
Yes, I did know about the Poles and strangely enough OH was showing some friends that very memorial yesterday. For a detailed and incredibly vivid account of the fighting down from Caen I can recommend "The Guns of War" by George C. Blackburn who was in the Canadian Artillery. Was it really bocage over to the east of the N158? I have had a look at some of the photos in our local history books and it looks like the same sweeping series of ridges across open countryside that you see today. I agree that the development round the périphérique is a mess and don't let me get started on the pavillons down the Thury Harcourt road!
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Lisa
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If you are going to the port then the turning to Ouistreham is after the big bridge; it seems pretty well marked to me! If you think the landscape on the Caen to Falaise / Argentan road is grim, then you need to read your history of World War II; it took weeks of intense fighting by the British and Canadians to get from the landing beaches (which start just next to the ferry port) to Falaise.
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Lisa
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I use half mascarpone and half Normandy crème crue with a touch of lemon juice; it works a treat. Have just harvested the blackcurrant crop to make our annual blackcurrant cheesecake, we can only risk the calories once a year!
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Lisa
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Well we certainly don't have an English address now and were able to open the new account with no problem. We have been customers of the bank for about 30 years though, including when we lived in England.
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Lisa
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Is it really a problem to have an English bank account BaF? We opened a separate one for our gite business which means that we can take and return deposits / damage deposits in sterling (opening the account cost nothing though we are existing account holders with the bank). We have stuck with a euro price for rental costs, but most of our guests have taken up the option to pay by internet banking in sterling at the rate of exchange current at the time of the transaction.
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Lisa
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We take a deposit of 100€ or £70 for the booking, then keep it as a security deposit and return it after their departure. This seems to work OK.
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Lisa
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Think Tinabee has got it in a nutshell here, but why re-register the car? We sold ours in the UK and bought a French car when we got here, to the obvious approval of the people in our village. Buying the car was a very easy process and the garage did all the paperwork, all we had to sort was the insurance. I agree totally about trying it out for a winter first, BTW.
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You can get work (though it is not easy to find) teaching English as an "intervenant" in primary schools (strictly speaking you don't have to have been a qualified teacher in England, though I think most of us are). You do need reasonably good French as some of the children are as young as seven and you can't always stick to the target language. This pays about 10€ an hour after deductions and normally you have to fund the cost of travel. I also spend a fortune on printing and laminating etc as in my experience there are very few resources in school. Teaching adults is a bit better paid, but all the work is patchy and contracts are short. I think it is a good way of becoming a part of the community, but not really anything you could rely on to make a living.
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Lisa
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We have found and eaten lots of these in England, but have never found it here in lower Normandy. We always found it on chalk in England, usually from St George's day until mid-May.
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Lisa
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With all the gloom and doom about the housing market, we have been thinking up some titles for new TV programmes. So far we have "Property Snake", "Limited Designs", "Escape from the Country" and "A Place in the Rain". Anyone got any more ideas?
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Lisa
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You can get health cover by renting out a gite if you register as a small business. You have to offer a service as well, so we included bicycle rental. We get our health cover from RSI.
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Lisa
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I think The Discovery of France by Graham Robb is a brilliant book; it is hard to summarize but is basically a history of la France profonde, human migration, the impact of change in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the spread of the French language etc.
I am currently reading Arthur Young's Travels in France and Italy. He was an English gentleman farmer who travelled in rural France in the years leading up to the revolution. I have just been reading his comments on how the midday lunch wastes so much time from the working day!
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Lisa
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We had a six hour power cut on Friday - was that the local contribution do you think?
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Lisa
The Discovery of France.....
in Books and Literature
Posted
I recommended this earlier as my best Christmas present last year. It is a brilliant book and a fascinating history of rural France. We also bought some of the books he quotes from as source material, such as Arthur Young's travels in rural France, at the time of the revolution.
regards
Lisa