I Think We Stayed Too Long

We ended up staying at our first French host's place for nearly 3 and a half weeks. I'm not sure how the time sped by so quickly especially since there were moments of exquisite agony in which the only recourse was to retreat to our spacious, but freezing bedroom.

But there was also quite a lot to keep us satisfied...the freedom of setting our own work hours and doing mostly pleasant work on a property that was really special.  (I never knew that I got so much enjoyment out of clearing brambles or setting bonfires).   We got to practice our rusty French with an entertaining Parisian transplant who was renting a room in the house but was also engaging in a budding romance with our hostess.  Additionally, the free use of the owner's old VW campervan on the weekends was a great incentive to stick around. Without it, we would have been stranded in a rather remote spot.  In retrospect, I guess this was enough to allow us to bear the insanity which swirled around the new-agey artist who inhabited some kind of parallel universe in which one hour til dinner really meant two and a half hours and priorities were based on whims of the moment ("could you help me set the privacy options on Facebook so I don't get so much email?" or "can you help me find a program so I can put smiley faces on my emails?") or whatever she was trying to "manifest" in her life (usually money).   

We shared the chaotic lifestyle of someone constantly on the edge of financial ruin, who didn't have enough money to pay for the heating oil hemorrhaging out of her poorly insulated home and who ran her van only in the red reserve zone of her fuel tank. We endured (just barely) her questionable table manners (would clipping fingernails and swabbing ears at the dinner table be included in Ms. Manners' Guide to Dining Etiquette?) and her strange eating habits. We lived through the constant noise-making and ever-changing "great ideas" and even survived the steady flow of quirky friends (healers, gong musicians, etc.) and small children. In return, we enjoyed the magic of the surrounding woodland and empty pasture next door, the cuckooing of the cuckoos (and not just that of our hostess) and saw a great deal of the Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne, and the Lot departements.







That's the honest truth with a bit of biliousness held back for propriety. It's taken a long time to decide to write this in the blog because we never sat down and talked to our hostess about our irritation...but you just can't do that.  So though she was very kind, generous and extremely grateful for our assistance, it would have been better if we had left after 2 weeks -  feeling less negative about her... and better about ourselves.

Did we make the right decision?

On the day before we left for France, we received a urgent email asking us to phone the Emigration Fair representative for Lunde, Norway with whom we'd discussed a possible live/work opportunity (see this blog posting for the whole story).  Apparently, the three other couples they'd been working with had dropped out for various reasons and now they wanted to offer us the chance.

We had a long telephone conversation and several detailed emails in Dutch (the representative is a Dutch expat) discussing the somewhat unconventional business arrangement being offered by a Foundation.  In greatly simplified terms, the bottom line was that we would run the hostel as owners, using our own money to make interior improvements and keeping all profits but paying rent to the Foundation, which owns the building.  That sounded great...jumping in on a going-concern that was managing to provide a reasonable income with only summer guests and minimal effort.  An additional plus-point was that the municipality was enthusiastic about getting new blood into the business who would expand the offerings to guided tours, winter cross-country skiing holidays, etc.

There was a catch, though.   The previous owner-managers had put 100,000 euros into building improvements and wanted to be reimbursed by the new owner-managers.  We couldn't understand why the Foundation wasn't responsible for repaying and how it made sense to pass this debt on to us and the representative we were working with couldn't explain it sufficiently.

Here is the website for the hostel: Lunde Hostel

It's in a lovely location and looks like it's in good condition.  Additionally, as it was originally a home for elderly people, each room has a kitchenette and bath and there are no bunkrooms - so it's more like a ComfortSuites than a hostel.  We could do a lot with proper marketing and websites, even if it required mastering Norwegian. 

After a week of cogitation, making lists of pros and cons, stressing,  contemplating travel costs from Toulouse to Oslo and, in the end, enjoying our time in La Belle France, we informed our contact that we are going to pin our hopes of finding our dream place in the Pyrenees.  I don't think she was too happy with us as we haven't heard back from her but if this sounds like your dream future, let us know and we'll get you in contact!

Cheers!

Updates coming soon.  I promise.  But in the meantime...

Here's to all of us old ladies!

Le PLUS beau des plus beaux

Perhaps the most beautiful of the most beautiful villages in France is Saint Cirq Lapopie.  Aside from a name that's fun to pronounce, it has lots going for it...a dramatic siting perched on a 100 meter (330 feet) cliff overlooking the river Lot, well maintained traditional architecture, impressive 12-14th century fortress, church and castles, lots of blossoming fruit trees, an abundant selection of eateries and galleries and a convenient (overnight) parking area within easy walking distance.

We visited on Easter Sunday and got a taste of how these charming villages might feel in the height of summer (which is a kind way of saying that there were LOTS of tourists and campers/caravans).  Despite the hordes, St Cyrq Lapopie is so attractive and the weather was so dramatic that we took loads of photographs.

Even though this isn't our perfect place, we were glad we spent the day and were further rewarded later on our route homewards by a lovely drive along the Lot river and a short visit in the town of Cahors.

  






Le Pont Valentré in Cahors

Out and About

We still have a few days to go before we leave our first HelpX host in France and I don't think it's a great idea to write about our host while we're still beholden to her, so here's a glimpse at some of the journeys we've taken with the use of her old Volkswagen van.

We are staying in the south of France in the département of Tarn-et-Garonne which is part of the region called Midi-Pyrenees.  It is a region of rolling farmlands and bastide towns.  Bastide towns are fortified villages built in the 13th and 14th centuries in the Southwest of France for purposes of colonizing the wilderness and allowing the land owner to extract taxes from the new inhabitants and farmers.  Nearly 700 bastides were built between 1222 (Cordes-sur-Ciel, photo below) and 1372.


 Cordes-sur-Ciel

Many of these villages are now classified amongst the 152 Most Beautiful Villages in France (Les Plus Beaux Villages de France), an ingenious designation which brings tourist revenue to these picturesque little settlements, which might otherwise be on the verge of dying out. 

 
Two of the Beautiful Villages:  Najac and Cordes-sur-Ciel

  
Najac and Albi, a large town with an impressive brick cathedral from 1282


Albi on the river Tarn

We've spent our weekends visiting some of these lovely villages but there are tons of them and one can easily get "cute, little village fatigue".  So we've limited the number of bastide towns we've visited and tried to take lots of back roads to see the countryside. Though we can often say of the landscape, "This is pretty," we don't have the feeling that this area is one in which we'd like to settle down...which is why on Wednesday we are moving south - closer to the Pyrenees.


Natural granite boulder sculptures of the Sidobre