With the way the weather has been lately the grass has really started to grow and needs cutting.  I got my John Deere back yesterday, from Delpuech in Castillonnes, after its service and running repairs. Three new cutting blades, bearings, main belt plus service came to 317€.  Its running like a dream now. 
But it has [...]

Last night (Friday 23rd February) I watched the Money Programme “Dream Commuters cross borders”. It was interesting on a number of levels. It highlighted the large and growing numbers of people working in the UK and living abroad. It featured France and Spain. 
On a 6pm ish flight, from Gatwick to Toulouse, about a quarter of [...]

Some  of you may have noticed that some of the links on Aquitaine Diary were not working. The problem has finally been resolved (I think) so that all links work properly. That is until I break them by adding more functions I suppose!

I took Cathy, Georgia, Aine and Finn to Bergerac airport this morning. they were catching a Ryanair flight to Liverpool. They are visiting friends who live near Shrewsbury. Oh well, peace and quiet for a week. Ryanair really came up trumps with this flight because it only cost 120€ for all 4 including taxes and [...]

Due to a change of direction in our project we have 73 square metres of 36cm x 36 cm floor tiles for sale.
There are 40 boxes each holding 1.84 square metres.
We paid about 7.50€ per sq m so we are selling them for less than half the price we paid.
For the lot 295€
There is a [...]

Finn was very poorly last night. His breathing was stertuous and shallow. He kept waking up and was distressed with his discomfort. Cathy and I had a poor nights sleep. I ended up downstairs trying to sleep on the sofa next to Finn where he was propped up. This morning Cathy got a 9.30 appointment [...]

Got the quittus fiscale in Villeneuve sur Lot, got the van registered in Agen, got the new number plates in Castillonnes. My Mercedes van is now french registered. Hooray for French bureaucracy.

In the spirit of looking after the van a bit more I took it to Roady in Saint Pardoux near Miramont. I just can’t stay away from the place can I? It was due to be 80€ give or take depending on how much extra oil above 5 litres was needed. The boss acted like [...]

At 7.45 a.m. I went for the contra-visite at the Securitest place, having changed the offending headlight bulb (6.50€ from Roady in St Pardoux).  It passed.  So fresh from my spectular win here I went to Marmande to finally register the Mercedes van in France.
I had my certificate of conformity, my brand new CT, a copy of [...]

Cathy, Finn and I went to the optician ‘Optique du Dropt’, in Miramont today.  First of all we found that Miramont is now operating a new parking scheme wherby to park in the centre in he blue bays you must have a ‘disque bleu’. At least two of the people in the speak good English which is [...]