Where to begin?

This is my second blog. The first one - La niche Priout - was going to be the original name of our chambre d'hote. There is a little niche high on the wall of the house with the virgin Mary standing inside, and not far away a lintel above a window is proudly emblazoned with "L.Priout 1854", which I hope explains the name La niche priout.

Our niche

L. Priout 1854

The blog for La Niche Priout started off with our decision to leave the UK to live in France, but then as we settled into moving mode, the blog sort of went out of the window. We finally moved here in May 2018 and we have now been here for two years.

Our last day living in Kent and the UK

The next day - our first day living in France (well, my first day anyway

We live in Le Hameau Durand, which is a small hamlet of eight houses including ours, one of which is currently empty. Our house is meant to be the oldest house in the hamlet. There is a map which helps to date the house to between 1785 to 1806, although we are sure that parts of the buildings are older. We live in a traditional Normandy "corps de Ferme", which is essentially a farmhouse with stables and barns and we have about an acre of land. Le Hameau Durand is in the village of Montpinchon, in the department of Manche in Lower Normandy.
We are an Anglo/French couple and we have been together for 15 years. We have one dog, Poppy, two cats, Coco and Kishka and four chickens, Quiche Lorraine (named after our old neighbour in Kent) Omelette, Scramble and Benedicte.
Why is this blog called La Bicyclette Bleue? well you see, Priout is still a name in the area and after thinking about it and asking other people, La Niche Priout didn't seem such a good name after all. This area is very popular for cycling and so La Bicyclette Bleue seemed like a better name - afterwards Freddy said it was the name of a book and subsequent tv series, but I didn't know that, so I'm not guilty. Sometimes after you've moved somewhere and found out about it, your views on certain things change, you live and you learn and I suppose that is what this blog is going to be about - our discoveries about the area, the house, France and running a Chambre/table d'hote, I discovered yesterday that d'hote means of the host and so chambre (room) d'hote (the French name for a bed and breakfast establishment) means room of the host and table d'hote (yes, you've guessed it) means table of the host - isn't that nice - my French improves slowly every day.