The Small-Leaved Lime Tree In the UK, the Small-leaved Lime Tree is associated with ancient woodland and so is, unsurprisingly, becoming increasingly rare and yet deserves wider planting and encouragement. It was used as avenue planting in the 17th and 18th centuries – famously in Berlin’s Unter den Linden but shares few of the qualities […]
by Heidi Smith
Some of you will now that we kept bees back in England and that we want to start beekeeping again here too. So I have been keeping an eye out on potential fodder for our bees and seeing how I think they will do. Two trees have stood out for me in the four months […]
by Heidi Smith
We’ve been running a Facebook competition for the past week. The prize was a 3 night stay in on of our 2 person gites. We had 162 people enter the competition and were blown away by the interest on Facebook and elsewhere. It was great fun and we met lots of lovely new people. In […]
by Heidi Smith
Easter has kind of snuck up on us here at Le Moulin de Pensol. Good Friday is not a bank holiday in our part of France, so Maya went off to school as normal and everything proceeded much as usual with us preparing the gites and working on the grounds ready for the coming season. […]
by Heidi Smith
The war is everywhere in France. And by “the war” I mean World War 2. From the countless road names like “Rue de la Resistance” to the many memorial days – there is no getting away from it. We have our first memorial day next week. May 8th is Victory day. (la fête de la […]
by Heidi Smith
Exciting week this week in our journey from desk jockeys in the UK to gite enterprise owners. Our first guests arrived! The preparation for this big day has been going on for weeks, and as part of this we gave the bedroom a lick of paint. This is not as easy a it sounds as […]
by Heidi Smith
I’m writing this while back in the UK for a short trip to see loved ones. This means travel has been much on my mind lately so I thought I should do a blog on the best way to get to Le Moulin de Pensol. I flew back this time. It took 7 hours in […]
by Heidi Smith
We are all interested in wildlife, and I worked in nature conservation for 25 years in England before coming to France. So one of the great sources of excitement for us has been discovering the abundance of wildlife that lives at Le Moulin de Pensol. When we first arrived, the winter was still retreating and […]
by Heidi Smith
One of the great pleasures of moving to a new place, particularly in France, is discovering the local places to eat. Our most local restaurant is just 5 minutes away at Marval, and is called Les Feuillardiers. Everyone kept telling we should go there, so two weekends ago we did. They gave a us a […]
by Heidi Smith
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