Bonne année everyone. After our last long-overdue catch-up, something a bit more up to date and, hopefully, interesting, if still a bit long - sorry!

Our family continues in good health and thriving, fortunately, after last year’s trauma. We are probably the weak ones at present, as our age continues to gradually take its toll and we are less fit and healthy than we used to be. However, we still manage our essential moving, though a little more slowly than hitherto. Our Monday walking group is a bit short of participants at this time of year but a core handful of us keep it up.

We found it interesting last year to find, by way of one of my cousins, Anita, a couple of ‘new’ family members in the USA, with their own growing families, as a result of DNA ancestry testing. My (Rhys’) family has a well-travelled history with origins in Wales and the USA on my father’s side, Derbyshire, Spain, the low countries, and the USA and Canada along the way on my mother’s. Time to get my own DNA done, perhaps. Jeanne also has widely scattered forebears so we’re planning to see what comes out of our respective DNA. More surprises expected!

On our summer holiday this year we drove to Barcelona for a cruise around the western Mediterranean, which I mentioned last time, but we stopped off in Navarre in northern Spain on the way, first visiting Sanguesa, where one of my ancestors, Sebastian, was born about 1550. We found there a lively town on the eve of their week-long fiesta, full of lovely people having fun with music and dancing in the streets. Then on to Fustiana, where another one of my ancestors, Joanna, was born about 1558 and she married Sebastian there in 1579. They moved to what was then the Spanish Netherlands – we don’t know exactly why but it may have been religious persecution with the inquisition going on in Spain, or he may have been posted there if he was in the Spanish army. Unfortunately, we hadn’t done enough pre-trip research to find records resources or to get into the church at Fustiana, but we may well have another trip before long. Also it’s not provably certain that the connections and dates are all true, as so much time has elapsed, but there is a very large family community descended from these two, many of whom have been studying the family history longer and more thoroughly than us, so there’s a good chance it is correct.   

We stayed in a couple of Paradores in northern Spain whilst there. These are amazing ancient Spanish castles converted into good hotels with lots of history, and well worth visiting. So we’ll no doubt use them again.

I had kicked off a higher pace of work on the old walls through the autumn, bringing the end of the present phase into sight. I’ve been getting through bags and bags of chaux – lime for mortar – and trailers-full of sand, but have only about a foot of height to go over the biggest 10 metre-long wall still to do. Unfortunately, the weather collapsed with weeks of rain through autumn into winter, followed now by severe cold and frost. Lime needs to be about 15°C to set properly and once the wall is high enough it needs roofing in the local style, and the outside rendering. Never ending…

After our difficulties getting someone to do heavier garden work we eventually found a local French chap who came to do the 100metre long laurel hedge that was getting out of hand; he and his partner completed the work in about 4½ hours (not three days as previously quoted for by a Brit) very well and tidily, taking away the debris, all at a very reasonable cost. We often feel that we (and other Brits here in general) are targets for rip-off pricing for work by other Brit tradespeople and a small minority of French ones, so it is worth the effort of seeking out good locals who are happy to work for sensible prices. We and others have suffered quite a bit from this, even from Brits who live close by. However, we’re very happy with our new-found French one and have asked him to come back later this month to cut down a decaying Ash tree. Since we’ve planted around a hundred new trees and two hundred shrubs and hedge plants we’re still very ‘green’.  

On the subject of ‘green’ we bought our firewood supply for our log burners for the winter in the autumn. Now that we don’t get the winter fuel allowance from the UK anymore, which used to pay for each winter’s supply, we have bought cheaper wood in the form of off-cuts from French sawmills that are suppliers to cognac barrel-makers. This is beautiful oak wood – much of it almost too good to burn, really – but only half the price of wood from the usual wood-fuel suppliers and it burns really well, hotter and with less ash and virtually no smoke. In France tree plantations are managed well and wood counts as a ‘green’ fuel as woods and forests are replanted continuously, so there are even tax breaks for installing modern high-efficiency wood burners, as ours are. The forests are important to France's economy and if people burning it and  wine and spirit makers did not need it all in vast quantities the forests would likely lose their protection. 

Our potager is now mostly bare, with all the summer’s fruit and vegetables harvested and stored and only some cabbages, sprouts and broccoli left whilst most of it has been rotavated for the winter. Most of the apple trees produced small crops this year, as we kept better on top of the irrigation, and a couple of pears from our first pear tree, but our first ever crop of apricots were ready while we were away and disappeared, to our great disappointment. Our fig tree has produced a great crop this year – its first proper big crop – and Jeanne made fig jam with it.

The hens re-started laying, eventually. We’ve been researching why they’ve been off lay for so long, and it seems to be a combination of a long period of very hot weather in late summer coupled with too little fresh water while we were away on a couple of occasions during that time. Apparently it can take them many months to come back into full production. 

We’re delighted that our family of miniature sheep (‘Moutons d’Ouessant’) are thriving as well, though they’re not denuding their field of grass by any means. So we probably need a few more and intended to rent a ‘whole’ ram to give our ewes some lambs rather than buy more. Our ram was castré before we got him so as not to be mating with his own offspring. Two of the ewes are his daughters, the other two are the mother of the two young ones and her sister.

Unlike the UK government, the French seem to have been well organised for some time for whatever happens due to the Brexit farce tragedy, and we have pretty clear information from the French government about what we’ll have to do, whichever potential outcome eventually actually happens. We know from them that we have the right of permanent residence and they will give us the appropriate documents to prove it in due course, following our application last April and a likely further application in due course. At present, however, we have no such documentation as Britain has moved the goal posts so often that our département now won’t do anything until it finally gets settled, most likely a 'hard' exit in December this year. The end of this month seems unlikely to make any difference to anyone. (Except many British businesses, who will see the way to collapse and bankruptcy opening up for them, as even the government has admitted!)

A great many people with second homes here who stay for far more than three months every year will lose the right to do so, becoming limited to a three-month maximum stay unless they get long stay visas, and new arrivals will find it much more difficult to live and particularly to work here. And we’ll all have to pay more for our health care. The French and the rest of Europe are very brassed-off with the UK government for a myriad of reasons, not least the staggering costs that have been forced upon them all, the perfidy of the UK government and the reduction of Europe’s status in the world, and security. They are fortunately, however, much more tolerant and understanding of us – the people affected who are resident in their countries – and want us to stay. 

However, in the meantime we’ve been continuing life as normal here, with a different Christmas break this time. We went to Maastricht the weekend before Christmas for André Rieu’s 'Christmas at Home' concert in the exhibition centre (MECC) there, followed by a few days in Amboise, on the banks of the Loire, over Christmas itself. We had a great time at the concert and the associated events that were put on with it. We stayed at the Kruisherenhotel in Maastricht, a former abbey, amazingly converted and where we had a welcome lunch, then a tour of André Rieu's studio, where the orchestra rehearses and all the videos and CDs are produced, then off to the MECC for a gala dinner followed by the concert itself, and back to the hotel well after midnight. Tiring but well worth it. Our few days in Amboise were much quieter, but we visited a couple of the local chateaux. One, Le Chateau du Clos Luce, was Leonardo da Vinci’s home during the last three years of his life, with a park with lots of models of his inventions, the other, , a royal chateau spanning the Cher river nearby. 

Anyway, back to reality and trying to keep warm and keep up with the daily demands of this new year. We hope all our readers have a good year and that we’ll see many of you as possible.  

Best wishes all.