21. Farewell to the gite

I’m glad my stay in hospital is behind me.. I’ve just got to go back on 28th January for a final check-up. The staff were really friendly and a cut above the staff in NHS hospitals.. (in my experience)

I remember going to visit my Mum who'd been taken into the Accident & Emergency (A&E) Unit at a NHS Hospital (that shall remain anonymous) in 2006. As I arrived, an ambulance was parked outside the entrance to the A&E Unit and its crew were cleaning out the inside of it – one of them was holding a bloodied stretcher that looked like it had come from a chainsaw massacre while the other chap was hosing the blood off it. I wouldn’t have minded but this was in the entrance to the A&E Unit and everyone walking in or out had to walk through these pools of bloody water..!! I couldn’t believe it..!

1st February 2008. We’d settled on 1st February 2008 with our Hereford-based removals company as the date for the delivery of the bulk of our possessions which had been in storage since the summer of 2007. The New Year came and went and as we neared February the last few jobs in the house neared completion. We had to seek permission from the Town Hall to block the traffic in the road while the removals lorry was unloading.

On the day, we were at the house at 7.15am ready for the removals lorry which was expected at 8.15. We turned the heat on and waited. We cordoned off a part of the avenue with some barriers that the council had kindly dropped off for us. I was half expecting a call from the lorry asking me to direct them here but nothing. Madame was getting increasingly agitated as the witching hour approached with still no sign of them.

At 8.15 I was pacing up and down outside when suddenly the big lorry turned into the avenue on the dot of quarter past.. (with the “Dambusters March” playing in my head!) The driver was the same chap who’d moved us from the cottage into their storage facility in Hereford - so we knew him. Anyway, he and his mate soon got cracking and despite regular pit-stops for cups of tea on the hour every hour (unlike our Basque boys!) they soon had everything unloaded. Where did all these boxes come from I asked myself..? Boxes and still more boxes appeared. I opened one and found they’d packed half a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits we’d left out for them to have with their tea in the cottage five months earlier. I resisted the temptation to offer them to the men..

We managed to position most of the boxes in the right rooms and then we went back to the gite where we were staying for our last night. It was reassuring to see that our old things had emerged safe and sound not only from storage but also the long trip down. I was desperate to read a book other than "Out of Africa" - great though that is.

The next morning we were up early to fetch the rented camionette (light van) from nearby Ustaritz which we were going to use to transport all our things from the gite to the house.. In the end this evolution took 2 trips. We said our final goodbyes to Monsieur and Madame D who in turn invited us for a coffee in a few days time. Then we returned the van and headed off to the house. In the meantime, the last touches were being applied to the kitchen and the bathroom.. When we’d finally created a bit of space around the sofas, we opened a bottle of champagne that a friend from work had kindly given us - with a few bits of smoked salmon.. It felt good to be reunited with all our things again.

On the Friday morning, our new TV was delivered and connected up. We’ve now got hundreds of channels of TV from around the world – including Al-Jazheera which I don’t think we’ll be watching. They also brought round the new dryer and fitted that on top of the washing machine.. Before long Madame had most of our stuff put away and we were starting to see the walls again.

On the Saturday morning at about 8am I was putting together Madame’s old armoire (wardrobe) when I tripped over a piece that I’d put down on the floor and I went down like a sack of spuds - a sack of pommes de terre doesn't have the same ring to it does it? I landed on top of the attachment fittings for the electric radiator which hadn’t been put back up and whose edges were razor sharp. On getting to my feet I found I had a sliced cut across the back of my fingers on my right hand (across the first joint) which I hardly felt but then they suddenly started leaking blood.. Madame patched me up as best she could with what we had to hand and then I drove into town to find a pharmacy that was open because here in France, pharmacists will dress a wound for you as well as - here's a surprise - identifying edible from non-edible fungi.

When I found one, the woman took one look and said “’Opital!”.. When I got there I was whistled through to the Urgent Dept and where we found to our astonishment that the doctor there was a young Welshman.. His parents live here for six months and the other six months they spend in Welsh Wales so he grew up speaking French.. I had my hand x-rayed in case some foreign body had got into the cuts and I got a tetanus jab.. and they tied my hand up like a parcel and said no work for you this weekend. A result!

However, after a few idle minutes though, I started carrying on with the million and one jobs that needed doing, of which one of the most time-consuming was changing 20+ plugs on everything electrical from the familiar old British 13 amp to your basic untrustworthy foreign jobbies.. (I jest) And so the days of that week passed.. each day we’d open a few more boxes and put things away, downstairs in the basement or out in the garage to go to the dump.

One morning we went to the gite for the coffee as promised.. and as 12 o'clock approached Madame D brought out a few nibbles.. then it was time for an 'apero'.. at which point Monsieur D came in from the farm - then a bowl of soup appeared.. next minute, there's a roast farm chicken on the table, wine glasses, and we're having a real farm lunch.. cheese.. then a tarte and then coffee and a glass of Basque liqueur.. When we finally came to leave, they presented us with a porcelain Basque pattern coffee service.. Words failed me at this point. They are two of the most generous people I've ever met - we'll never forget them.

12. Heavy date!

In mid-October we went to Biarritz for another lunch at Bar Jean, the place by the market in Biarritz we like very much, but when we got there, it was closed. Think it only opens between Thursday and Sunday now. So, we found another promising looking place ("Le Bistrot des Halles") also very close to the market that we’d been to once before and we dived in there as it was raining quite heavily. Luckily, it was still only just past twelve and we had our pick of where to sit but within minutes, the place filled up. There was a table of raucous "Angliche" women who were clearly on a mission to drain at least one European red wine lake.. and, judging by the noise, I reckon they were going to finish in the medals!

Here's the Buena Vista Social Club singing "Chan chan":

While the £8.50 fixed price menu of 3 courses was astonishingly good value (confit of duck) we decided to go 'off piste' and try the à la carte.. Madame had a collation of seafood to start with – mussels, thinly sliced raw fish, squid and some shellfish while I had a terrine of foie gras with some crusty country bread. This was just about the best I’ve ever had.. absolutely superb. Then for her main course Madame had monkfish with squid cooked in squid ink – she was given a huge piece of fish - while I had a similarly generous thick slice of tuna..

A revelation occurred one early morning as I was taking the dog out for his constitutional. I was just pushing up the steep lane when I had one of those epiphany moments (they don't happen often!). I suddenly realised that I was no longer answerable to anyone – I didn’t have to worry about finishing a report on time within the costs set by the customer, or worrying where the next piece of work was going to come from.. and that, after a lifetime of sometimes crippling mortgage payments, we were now mortgage-free. It was quite a moment.. I said to myself out loud, “I’m free, I've made it, I've retired..”

A fragment of a visit to St Jean de Luz in mid-October - wandering down through the town which looked beautiful in the strong sunlight – people sitting outside in cafes and no endless throngs of people on the pavements as there are in July & August. And not a cloud in the sky. After looking at the shops, we found our way to the front and we walked along there for a while before we stopped to have a coffee. There were people on the beach and even a few people swimming.. We sat back in our seats and felt the warmth of the sun beating down.. I think St Jean is really the place where we’d like to end up. It’s compact, level and there are all the shops you’d need plus the beach is just yards away. So after dinner, you could put a jacket on and go for a stroll along the front and watch the sun go down. We might look for a small flat there one day.. Think St Jean is the most expensive place of all though down here – but as always, there’s a reason. There's everything you need within a small radius there.

St Jean de Luz

We had one slightly surreal occurrence when we came home to the gîte one day - Madame D was outside her back door – in a touching tableau (!) – holding an entire dead chicken (complete with head, neck, legs, wings) by the feet over a portable gas ring burning off all the remains of feathers.. The chicken’s head was sitting in the flames while she had a conversation with us.. It seemed slightly shocking to me at first but then I realised that this is the unvarnished reality of country living. Just up the lane on the farm there’s a dung heap – and I haven’t seen one of those for a long time - that her chickens are always picking around. The cock is always standing on top of it. It must’ve been one of these that got the chop..!

Think this calls for a vat of wine..

5. Life in the Gîte

The windows open wide in the gîte so in the morning fresh air breezes in and we can hear the sounds of Madame D conducting a conversation at Force 9 with a friend who’s stopped by. There’s a fenced garden so our cocker, Chibby, can run around to his heart’s content. The farm faces south and along the edge of the garden are three tall palm trees mixed in with a few Scots pines. The Pyrenees provide a misty blue backdrop.

The farm is about ½ mile outside the village and it lies in a dip at the bottom of a winding single track lane. When I take the dog out for a walk up the lane in the evening, all I can hear is the sound of a church bell, M’sieur D calling from the fields to the farm in Basque or his heavily accented French and Madame D calling back to him over the sound of a passing tractor.

Madame D stopped by one day and offered us an omelette that she’d made using home-grown sweet green chillies and at least 6 fresh eggs from her chickens. It was the most unbelievably delicious yellow omelette. A few days later she came by with 6 more eggs – still warm from the production line - and some more of her green chillies. This time Madame made an omelette from them… sublime.. mmm, the taste of an omelette cooked with fresh free range eggs.

Food does have a different taste here. Occasionally in England we'd buy tuna steaks but they must have been a few days old by the time they reached us because they usually tasted like cardboard. Madame prepared some the other evening that were chalk and cheese compared to what we could find in England. There, she found that it wasn't easy to cook à la française - finding the right ingredients and produce - the fruit and vegetables that she was accustomed to, not to mention the cuts of meat, poultry and game, fresh fish, the variety of cheese etc. And the wine.. Another difference I noticed between life here and in England is that when people are sat around the table here, they often talk about the meal they're currently enjoying, one they've had or perhaps one they're going to have - or, as is often the case, all three! In England, it's definitely non-U to appear to enjoy food too much. Or at all. As one dear colleague said to me once when I was describing what Madame had prepared over the weekend, "But it's only food.." And therein lies the difference..

The temperatures were just about perfect for the first 3 weeks. The skies were blue from horizon to horizon almost every day and the temperatures were stable at around 24C, although one Sunday it was up as high as 32C. We'd always heard that September was the best time to visit the Pays Basque and so it proved. The madness of July & August is no more as the vast majority of families have gone back and parking in Biarritz or St Jean de Luz isn’t much of a problem anymore.

The light in Biarritz is amazing – it must be something to do with its location right on the sea and the fine spray/mist that is lifted up by the surf. It’s dazzlingly bright and very sharp. Just by the indoor food market in Biarritz (Warning: a place to avoid if you feel peckish) we had lunch one day in a small café/bar – Bar Jean - that was very authentic, very Basque/Spanish and very busy.. Gypsy guitar music swirling through the buzz of conversation, tiled tables, bullfighting posters on the walls and lots of animation..

First we ordered some grilled sardines and, to fill the gap until they arrived, we had some tapas and a tortilla. An icy cold bottle of rosé kept us going while we waited. The sardines came with a baked potato which was one of those waxy yellow ones that they have here. This was the second time we’d been to Bar Jean and it appeals to us both very much. It’s rustic and simple and the seafood is as fresh as you like – it comes straight from the fish market which is just across the road.

We were in there one lunchtime and an elderly couple from Bordeaux shared a table with us. Within minutes we were chatting away - she told us she was 85 and her husband was slightly younger. They were both so much fun. (and when did you last say that about a brace of octagenarians..?) He ordered a dozen oysters (hoping, optimistically perhaps, that one might work!) and his wife had grilled tuna while talking dix-neuf to the douzaine... They both seemed so alive and vibrant.. and gave me renewed hope that being eighty need not necessarily mean the end of everything we enjoy.

Now where did I put my cardy..?

2. Arrival in the Pays Basque

Two days later on a sunny Saturday afternoon we found our gîte just outside Villefranque, a very Basque village that's about 8km inland from Bayonne, the nearest major town. Bayonne is the unofficial capital of the French Basque country, which can be found deep in the far south west of France. We were met by the owners - Monsieur & Madame D - who farmed the property. Our gîte (below right) was in an upstairs section of their vast white-painted Basque farmhouse, situated in a hollow at the end of a valley lined with an eclectic mix of Scots pines, old oaks and strangely enough.. palm trees.

Monsieur D looked every 2.54cm the Basque farmer with his broad Basque beret and his face a deep mahogany red colour. I was later to find out (the hard way) that his nose was the original location and inspiration for his spectacularly rosy hue. Madame D was a friendly woman of sturdy stock and she was blessed with a powerful voice that could be heard echoing all over the valley. They were a geographically close family in a way that we in England are no more; their son’s house being 100m up the lane while that of her daughter was 150m up the lane in the other direction. Madame D had herself been brought up in the neighbouring farmhouse just 50m away. They had a few animals – 5 cows, 2 giant pigs, around a dozen chickens and several hutches, each of which held a fat rabbit or two – all of which would make their contributions to their kitchen in one way or another. I would guess that they are fairly close to being self-sufficient.

As soon as we’d unpacked the van and I’d had a day off to unwind, I set off alone at 7am on the Monday to return the van to England. I made good time – hitting the Périphérique (or, in more prosaic Anglo-Saxon, the ring road) around Paris at ~3pm so I decided to push on to Calais. On arrival there, I still felt fresh, so I took an earlier crossing than I’d planned and, before I knew it, I found myself back in our Herefordshire village again at 11pm where I spent the night with a neighbour – 16hrs later and 900 miles (1450km) after leaving the gîte. (Health Warning: Don't try this at home)

After a short but satisfyingly deep coma, I returned the van to the rental company early the next morning and taxi'ed back to our village to pick up our left hand drive Golf that we‘d left at the neighbour’s before setting off for Dover and France again. I arrived back in France at about 8pm that evening and thought I’d drive until I was tired before stopping. In the end, I didn’t get tired and so I drove on through the night with the traffic-free autoroutes all to myself. At 7am on Wednesday morning I found myself outside the farmhouse again trying to get back in. After throwing gravel at Madame’s window with no joy, I was finally let in by a sleepy eyed Monsieur D in his underpants! I’d driven 1800 miles (2900km) in 48hrs.. and I still felt fine. However, I doubt that I’ll be making a habit of it. (how wrong can you be!)

The next few days blurred into weeks. We started on an interminable round of visits to various French government offices, car insurance companies, and health insurance companies as we engaged with the great well-oiled bureaucratic machine that runs France. And most of these had acronyms. For example, there was CPAM (aka French Social Security), MGEN (the Health Mutuelle for teachers that Madame belonged to) and MAIF (a car insurance company specifically for teachers).

In England, we’ve opted recently for made-up names that attempt to capture the core values of the target company. These are dreamt up by glossy agencies that are paid frighteningly large lumps of money to do so. I seem to remember the short-lived Consignia, then there’s Exxon, QinetiQ, Expedia, Excellerate, Xafinity and Capita and zzz-zzzzzzzzz........

1. Moving to the Pays Basque - the countdown

Tuesday, 1st September 2009. I realised this morning that it's two years to the day since Madame and I finally moved to the Basque country. However, before you start scrolling down the page in a frenzy of excitement, I think I should start off by telling you a little about us. We met in the sixties when the French Ministry of Education dispatched Madame to the North of England (to a city not generally associated with a fine English accent) as a French 'assistante' for a year to improve her English as part of her English degree course – thus proving that they do have a surreal sense of humour. Madame's father had his roots in the Pays Basque and it was an area we'd always been keen to visit together. We had our first holiday there shortly after we married and the place fitted us like an old pair of shoes.

We took to the region so much that we started planning our next visit in the car at the very moment we left it to return to England. It sounds hard to believe but it truly is difficult to think of any one thing about the Pays Basque that we dislike. And each year when we would pull into 'our' village for the first time after that long drive from the north, it was like coming home. But don't just take my word for it - here's Orson Welles in a 6 part travelogue he made in 1955:

After taking early retirement from the military in the late 90s, we moved to a village in bosky Herefordshire where Madame and I shared a black and white cottage with two cocker spaniels (or was it the other way around!). For the final sprint to the finish - the last eight years – Madame taught in a local school while I worked as a defence consultant. My work was enlivened by regular trips to Stockholm – cool in summer, dark and arctic in winter - which convinced me more than ever that the Pays Basque was the answer. While we both greatly enjoyed this penultimate chapter very much, the clock was definitely ticking and the time was fast approaching when we could finally retire and live out our dream of living in south west France.

I kept a diary for the first few months after we'd moved here and what follows is a more or less chronological account - interspersed with the occasional rant..!

After leaving our cottage in Herefordshire for the last time in late August 2007, we drove down to Hythe, just outside Folkestone, for an overnight stop in a Bed & Breakfast. This was a fairly depressing experience. A quote from Woody Allen springs to mind - he was winding up an after dinner speech somewhere when he said that he always liked to end on a positive message but in this instance he found it difficult. He asked his audience if they’d accept two negative messages instead? So here goes:

If you’ve ever read (and laughed till you had to look away from the page) Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island, then you’ll understand perfectly if I said that our B&B in Hythe appeared to be run by a close relative of his fabled Mrs Smegma, Bill's landlady in Dover. It was a perfect 1950s time warp - and our landlady provided food with a lavishness that suggested that she thought rationing had just been re-imposed.

Looking around, you could be forgiven for thinking that Hythe was 50 miles inland rather than sat squarely on the English Channel coast. There were no seafood restaurants, cafes or terraces overlooking the Channel and most of the town had all the concrete charms of a NCP car park. Or so it seemed. And walking along the sea-front in the evening, I couldn’t help but be struck by the contrast between the bleak English interpretation of sea-side as portrayed in Hythe compared to the exuberance of votre actuel French version that lay just a few miles away across the pewter-grey cold waters of the English Channel...

And with these two cheerful thoughts neatly counter-balancing our excitement at finally being on the move, we called it a night.

We'd rented a gîte on a rolling contract which would serve as a base until we found our home. We left England via the Channel Tunnel in a hired Transit van containing all the things we’d need for a prolonged stay in the gîte – clothes for all seasons, bottles, a computer and a multi-function printer/copier/scanner/fax machine (later to be worth its weight in gold), various food items, a handful of CDs and a tie. Everything else had gone into storage (including, by mistake, the camera). Chibby, our golden cocker, had ceased caring at this point as his tranquillisers took effect. This was to be a long trip for him and he lay on the front seat between us looking as mournful as only a spaniel can.

It felt unreal and strange to be finally on our way after thinking about it for so long. We felt like a couple of gypsies with a van-load of possessions on our back and, the real kicker, without a home in France to call our own or to return to in England in the event that it all turned to worms.

We had no idea how long it would take us to find our house in the Pays Basque - or if we could find one at all. Madame thought that we should prepare ourselves for up to 12 months in the gîte. I wish I’d known then that we were to be very pleasantly surprised.

Remember those WW2 POWs who escaped from Colditz..? Once in England, they would send a postcard back to the castle announcing their ‘Home Run’. Think of this as a very long “Home Run” post card!