Normandy - September 2010

Well – we’ve done it; we’ve moved. This is being written in Normandy. It is being written in long hand, because I can’t find my computer; it is undoubtedly in a box somewhere – along with most of our personal items.
The move was fairly painless. We found a firm called “The Moving Gentlemen of the Atlantic”. Their only fault, if fault it may be, was that they moved so fast that it became a problem – as it might be - a pause in the operation of teeth cleaning and by the time you returned to finish off the fangs, all the tooth brushing equipment would have been neatly packed away and has not been unpacked yet.
“The Gentlemen” took two days to pack our little house up.
We were a little sad. It has been our home for 5 years and by and large, we had been happy there. I worked it out that this had been my 17/18th move of house and we have firmly agreed that “THAT IS IT – no more!”
My most ‘interesting’ move was when I moved from Somerset to Yorkshire in 1975. Freddy Oram’s furniture van took the furniture. Johnny offered two horseboxes to carry the sundries – as it might be 6 horses, 4 couple of hounds, 2 goats, 4 terriers – and all the odds and sods that went with them. We were to set off at midnight and drive through the night – good idea, except that Lorry 1 sank to its’ axles beside the drive in Somerset. I had to rouse the next door farmer to haul us out with a tractor. That all went well until somewhere up the M1 when Lorry 2 got a puncture and we had to change a wheel on the hard shoulder in the black of night and streams of rain. I do not recommend this if you are seeking pleasure – and what is a new home if it not be a pleasure? I am pleased to say that over the next 5 years it did indeed become a pleasure and it became HOME.

Then we moved to France; well, it seemed a good idea at the time. We had had good hunting in France in the past. I have a weakness (one of many), in that I do not believe that things can change. France came as a nasty shock because things have changed and in some time – the last 20 years have seen a lot of changes. The biggest change in French hunting has been the Park system – large sections of woodland have been fenced off with animal proof netting – the result being that the animal of the chase is hunted round and round the interior of the fence until it is “taken”. I share the opinion of my neighbour who thinks poorly of fences, on the basis that they make it impossible to have a good hunt in the open.
When I first came to France there were no Parks and we used to have tremendous hunts. The Countess with whose hounds I used to hunt, had pretty poisonous opinions about ‘Park Keepers’, but as she and various members of her family owned most of the woodland where we hunted, the hunting was wild. That happy state no longer maintains. I can see the practical point of view for Parks. There is much more traffic than there was 20 years since, also bigger, faster roads for it to troll along. This does not make for better hunting. I remember making a 20 mile point with a pig from the upper Loire – 3 couple of hounds – 6 children and man who actually stuck the pig in a field of sugar beet. You just do not get hunts like that anymore, not with 15 foot of pig netting surrounding the hunting area.
All in all I found hunting in the Vienne, which is where we lived, very disappointing.
When it got about that we were moving to Normandy, people rubbed their noses with horny fingers and said “Ho! Ho!” I am still waiting to get a half decent hunt out of any of “them”, so perhaps I shall do better where there are not supposed to be ANY hunts – time alone will tell. Anyway here we are in Normandy.

We drove up here. It is a 4.5 hour trip. You go straight up the Paris motorway as far as Tours and then strike off through the flat land of Central France, where the traffic disappears until it drops you off into Normandy at Caen. Caen is not a place that I would want to visit again. We nearly had a nasty there.
We stopped for a bite at a Burger Bar. Mrs Poole took the Lucas terrier out for a walk and the little sod slipped his collar and had to be pursued across 3 lanes of Urban Motorway! Now this frightened all of us and the burger was a load of s...e anyway.
It was about an hour’s easy driving from Caen to France’s house where we were to be billeted. France is a lovely lady and is christened “France” because she was born in 1942 during the German occupation. Her father thought there was every chance that France would be ground down under the German occupation so he christened his daughter “France” so that the names would not be lost. She is a very jolly and kindly lady and it is a very comfortable billet – and from there we moved into our house.
Many people from the Vienne asked us why we should move to Normandy. The answer is very simple - the journey to England from Central France is a bugger. From Normandy there is a regular (and fast) ferry service to Southampton, Portsmouth, Poole or even Rosslare, all with good access to the family – not like the Eurostar Goat F..k that ruined our Christmas visit in 2009.
Normandy seems a pleasant spot to live and the house is also a pleasant spot on the edge of a village with all the mod cons that ancient persons like us need. The Viennese warned us that it would be colder here and wetter. “Edite” who runs the local taxi, says that much nonsense is talked about the Normandy climate – she said that it only rains twice a year – once in the Summer and once in the Winter.
“To Press” as we used to say in the Daily Telegraph, the weather has been very pleasant and equable.