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Harrassment


Angie
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sweet - thanks for that - I do love a 'healthy' debate, nothing wrong with it at all. Good for the spirit.

I freely admit that I would never be the first person to hold his hands up and say ' I was wrong' but - at least I recognise my faults!

Onwards and upwards - finished the strimming for the morning - too hot for outdoor stuff now, guess a long sieste after lunch is called for.....

Have a great day / Simon :-)

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  • 2 weeks later...
Having just returned from another 2 weeks in France I was quite upset to read some of the comments posted in response to my original posting. Thank you Quillan, Woolybanana and Virginia. c for your support and helpful advice.

To Bob T I would like to say that at no point did I say or suggest that the villagers should learn English "just for us". I was responding to an earlier reply and wanted to inform the poster that we had been trying our hardest to learn French which is not easy for us. We did not take the route of most retirees and just learn how to buy a baguette or order a coffee. As for Simon, is there something wrong with you? I shall say no more. However, in response to other posts:

1. It has not been six years since we last invited neighbours/friends around. We had everyone round six years ago to introduce ourselves and have had several smaller get togethers since.

2. Our rental property is listed with the Mairie and is all above board.

3. We had a geometre measure and mark out our land and we have a report from him to back this up. The hedge in question is 20 feet outside of this boundary so well inside our neighbours property. We cannot see it from our house only the neighbour who is complaining can see it.

4. The hedge owner who is very elderly was served a notice 7 years ago to lower the height of the hedge (I do not know or want to know the details of this as it is not my concern). However, a local landscaper told us he quoted him 2,000 euros at that time to reduce the height by 4 metres along its whole length and to trim the sides (100 metres). He told us it would take 2 weeks.

If the guy who is harrassing us is so concerned about his elderly neighbour then why doesn't he (i) help him out or (ii) stump up the money to have the hedge cut/reduced. Why on earth should we do it and spend our whole summer holiday working on someone elses property. We would have to buy long ladders, a petrol chainsaw (our electric one would not reach)and a vehicle and petrol to dispose of the huge amount of cuttings. Finally, I am not even sure the owner wants the hedge cut - he has certainly not been in any hurry to do it.

IN CONCLUSION after spending the past couple of weeks at our house we have now put the property on the market. France is obviously not the place for us as has been suggested and frankly it has caused us more anguish worry-wise and financiallly than pleasure.

The final straw came when once again we were enjoying a hot summer evening on our front terrace last Monday, a car pulled up about a third of the way up our driveway. The guy got out, lifted his dog over our small hedge and proceeded to watch while his dog used our front garden as a toilet. I walked down, asked him if he had a garden of his own and his reply was "yes, why"? I said that perhaps he could use his own in future - his reply was that our garden was bigger. I think that says it all.

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Hi Steve

Have been wondering where you had gone! Sorry to hear that you have decided to leave but, seems you have made the right choice when taking into account all your 'local' factors. I hope that you managed to enjoy your last holiday, notwithstanding the dog incident. Funnily enough, exactly the same thing happened to me before I had a hedge put in, but the boundary in question was nowhere near as long as yours and we were planning to do it anyhow.

I wish you luck in selling and hope that your next venture has a more successful outcome.
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Well Steve what can I say other that I feel quite sad that you have appeared to have been effectlivly driven out of your holiday home and have been forced to sell it.

If it were me I would ask a realistic asking price but should one of the locals make me an offer I would refuse it which no doubt will get right up their nose. I mean why should they profit from what they have done to you.

We have had one or two problems, with Dutch neigbours who are 'townies', with trees etc needing to be cut but nothing compared to what you have experienced. Anywhere you live there will be some minor issues, even in countries other than France. Anyway whatever you decide to do the best of luck. Don't forget that when you do sell it and if you take the money back to the UK you will of course have the last laugh what with the Pound being at it lowest for six years against the Euro, loverly jubbly Rodders. [;-)]

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Hi Steve – and welcome home! Nothing wrong with me, but thanks very much for your concern.

Naturally I’m flattered that, in spite of praising the support and helpful advice of Quillan, woolybanana and virginia.c (Ginny), you’ve actually decided to take mine – the easy option. I’m amazed! (20/08 - Sell up and move somewhere where the 'villagers' aren't so irritating for you.)

Just one further tip for you – if someone is letting their dog relieve itself in your garden – don’t ask them if they have a garden of their own, tell them to get lost! Generally, the French don’t get sarcasm……although that’s irrelevant for you now.

Oh and Ginny…Steve hasn’t decided to ‘leave’, he’s simply selling up his holiday home in France. Maybe he’d be better off living somewhere near you? – although, I suspect this isn’t the first time he’s had ‘neighbour’ issues……

Simon :-)

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It seems a bit robust to decide the whole of France is not for you on the strength of the behavior in one village, especially as you have put some effort into learning French.

 As Idun has said, Brittany always seems friendly, to me at least, and no doubt others could recommend different areas

Looking back, do we know the region Steve has his second home in ?

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I've never heard or seen anyone french or other nationality ever enter someone's property,even on foot, and let their dog deliberately do it's business ontheir garden.That to me feels like it is deliberate to annoy you to sell up and leave as the perpetrator must have come a distance to get his car out in the first place! Unfortunately some communes/small hamlets sometimes do not want foreigners of any nationality buying up their houses as they may have wanted them for their own relatives - this happened to a client of ours who bought a cottage in a group of three houses in a small hamlet.Two of them were the same family and at first all was great for the brits but then, because they were only there a few weeks per year, the other two families decided they wanted that house for the other daughter and her family to come for holidays so they very subtly started to cause mischief for the brit. Little things at first but then they started to ignore them, have loud late noisy parties to which they did not get an invite and generally made life hell. Eventually the old father came to our client and asked him to sell them the house back because they wanted it for family and the intonation of his voice was not nice.Chappy decided it wasn't worth the aggro andthere was still a lot of work to be done, so he agreed to sell for a decent price and bought a holiday home further away.

To be honest, if you want to sell and feel in that frame of mind, I would offer it to anyone who asks, regardless of who they are because at the moment property is not selling well at all and you could be left with it for years and not really wanting to spend time there.
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I'm with R/H.  Don't lump the whole of France into the same category.  I'm nursing a hangover from last night which we spent with two sets of neighbours.  We rarely socialise and have had very few people popping in any annoying us on spec. However, when we do see them we get well looked after and have great time.  What's more, the woman opposite has been so wonderful to me since I was diagnosed with the big C and has offered both practical and moral support which have been invaluable.

When we first got married we lived in a grotty neighbourhood in the UK where all the little terraced houses faced one another and the neighbours kids regularly played on our lawn and left their toys etc in front of our house.  And I have a serious child allergy!  There is good and bad everywhere.  So sorry you seem to have had such bad luck but please don't blame France.  Just blame human nature and a small minority of idiots of all nationalities, races and creeds who seem to delight in making life a misery for the rest of us - they are not confined to your corner of France but at the same time they are not the only people on this planet.

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What a sad little story. I can see both sides. As usual Russethouse has hit the nail on the head - you unfortunately bought in the wrong location for you. There are places in France where the locals don't want holidayhomers, and places where they don't mind them so much. In some villages the sense of community is still very important and the locals want to keep it that way and not let it get diluted, so everyone who chooses to live there is expected to buy into the community and do their bit. That's part of what gives the place a cared-for feel that adds to its charm - everywhere kept immaculate, flowers in all the gardens and communal areas, etc. Your neighbours may have felt that you were using 'their' well-kept village as a nice backcloth for your own holidays and to attract rentals, whilst refusing to have anything to do with local preoccupations or show any solidarity. Other towns have lost the community feel to varying degrees - probably as a result of having absorbed more incomers and second-homers - and in those places it is perfectly acceptable to simply pay your taxes and keep yourself to yourself. But looking at it objectively, if you don't want to be part of a community and you only spend around 6 weeks a year in France, I can't see much point in owning a house here. You can rent a gite and have none of the responsibilities that come from property ownership, no hassle from the neighbours, no taxes, no maintenance, just turn up and have a nice holiday and go home again.
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It took me several years to stop people pulling up in their cars and releiving themselves against my gable end wall, they had to walk 10 metres or so across my property to do so, parking their car in front of a stationnement interdit sign and blocking my driveway, in fact it only really stopped when I repointed and crepied the wall, the building was in danger of falling down as over the years all the mortar had been washed out up to 1.5 meters in height by people using it as a pissoir, the building was an abandoned café though so customers had been doing this for decades.

People still block me in or will park on my drive when they stop for lunch (there is a great bistro é doors along) when confronted they seem to think that when they say its just to eat that I will understand and accept their selfishness, maybe a french person would, I have wheelclamped several and refuse to release them untill the Gendarmes come happy in the knowledge that they wont respond, at least till they have finished their own lunches, they use my parking to set up their speed traps and process the miscreants with my blessing.

I also had a problem with dog poo that was regularly outside my front door but nowhere else, this confused me as no-one walks a dog around here, they were always the same calibre and eventually I found the culprit, a young single mum in a vetust upstairs apartment had a pit bull type dog, she would let it out at 10pm, watch it from her window,and when it got to my house she would shout for it to stop, he would then dutifully do his business.

I repaired a poop scoop that my UK tenant had thrown away and took to returning the crottes to her own doorstep, once after a long stay in the UK I had quite a cargo of putrefying turds to return, that did the trick and she then started to walk the dog and let it crap on the verge adjoining my property, not the one adjoining hers of course, not long after she was expulsed like most of the tenants of that building and I found that someone had laid a cable in my goods trailer which I had just emptied and cleaned out, definitely human as dogs are not acrobatic enough and they dont feed them on merguéz around here!

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good luck with selling then, sounds like you don't need the hassle.

We had problems with a neighbour of ours and their dog, just before we left. Complicated story, but it did get heated. None of us should have to put up with people who behave so badly.

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[quote user="Chancer"]

I found that someone had laid a cable in my goods trailer which I had just emptied and cleaned out, definitely human as dogs are not acrobatic enough and they dont feed them on merguéz around here!

[/quote]

Had the same thing after throwing an angler out of my garden, nice little present outside my gate. [:P]

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[quote user="Chancer"]

People still block me in or will park on my drive when they stop for lunch (there is a great bistro é doors along) when confronted they seem to think that when they say its just to eat that I will understand and accept their selfishness, maybe a french person would, I have wheelclamped several and refuse to release them untill the Gendarmes come happy in the knowledge that they wont respond, at least till they have finished their own lunches, they use my parking to set up their speed traps and process the miscreants with my blessing.

[/quote]

I usually agree with most of what you say Chancer, but not today.  

 

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[quote user="idun"]

CA what don't you agree with? Their using his parking for speed traps?

From what I remember they tend to stop drunks, so is that a bad thing?

[/quote]

I agree with CA, that is of course until 'one of mine' gets run over by a speeding drunken driver either killing or maiming them for life. Then of course I would demand to know why the Gendarmes had not done anything about it in the past, likea speed trap or control, to stop this from happening.

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It is a form of "denouncing" others which is not on and probably understandably not appreciated by the neighbours.  Usually we all help each other by flashing headlights when they are seen hidden in such places.

It would be easy just to put a chain across so they cannot park in his driveway, wouldn't it?

 

About the speeding, it may be possible to ask the mairie about having one of those "humps" to slow the traffic down.

 

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[quote user="Christine Animal"]It is a form of "denouncing" others... [/quote]

No it's not. If they aren't driving above the speed limit there's no problem.

[quote user="Christine Animal"]...which is not on and probably understandably not appreciated by the neighbours.  [/quote]

Still, it's probably appreciated by all families and friends who've had people killed or injured by drivers going too fast to react appropriately to problems.

I never understand why some feel speeding is acceptable and just a game with the gendarmes / police / cameras. I'm occasionally guilty of exceeding speed limits: I was too busy gossiping the other day to notice my speed had drifted to nearly 60 in a 50 and yes, there was a gendarme with his radar. Entirely my fault and I will remember the incident - and watch my speed - far longer than if some misguided twonk had flashed me to warn me.

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[quote user="Christine Animal"]

It is a P> <

About the speeding, it may be possible to ask the mairie about having one of those "humps" to slow the traffic down.

 

[/quote] The process for getting these installed is horrendous, takes a long time and much consultation locally as they are very expensive and not liked by agriculteurs and their trailers loaded. They don't even work half the time either from what we observed one afternoon when many drivers didn't even slow down.
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If they didn't put a speed trap there they 'd find somewhere else to put it.

I know that there are times when I speed. I never mean to but it happens and I do it infrequently. However, if the gendarmes go to a specific bit of road, it is usually because there has been a history of accidents on that road. The Maire will often ask them to do it and they will put the speed trap up somewhere.

Anyway, I really don't believe that you are against denouncing, I would jure that you would if you saw someone hurting and abusing an animal. I reckon that  you'd  straight onto the proper authorities without batting an eyelid.

Just cars are lethal weapons, and drivers are supposed to obey the laws of the road and be responsible and sober. I've gone past many a speed trap, why would it bother me, it really wouldn't.

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