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Thursday, 15 November 2007 |
Dave and Helen Mansfield: Dordogne, mobile fish and chip van.
Dave: “We met in a pub. I used to
run the place sometimes when the
manager was away. I was actually
teaching at the time. When we first
moved to France, we had a bar in the
Vendée for four-and-a-half years.”
Helen: “Then we wanted to move to
the Dordogne; we’d been there on
holiday and fell in love with the place.
We’ve also got some good friends
here.”
Dave: “We wanted to do something
with food. So we thought where’s the
gap? When we told everyone our idea
there was lots of enthusiasm. The first
thing we did was find a trailer; e-bay is
a wonderful invention. We wanted to
learn to cook fish and chips properly,
so we went to the national federation of
fish friers in Leeds and took a
short course.”
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Thursday, 15 November 2007 |
Jo and Ronan McIntyre: near Thiviers (24), Irish-style pub
Jo:“We were living in London,
and one day I decided I’d had
enough. So I decided to sell up
and move and Ronan decided to
come with me. We got married
this April (2007) in France.”
Ronan: “We’d always wanted
to open a wine bar and we’d
thought about doing it in
Ireland but it was too
expensive, so we looked to
France. We thought an Irish bar
was a good idea, as we didn’t
need to get any qualifications or
speak good French. We spent a
year looking,
and eventually
found The
Fiddler’s Rest
through the
internet. “
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Thursday, 15 November 2007 |
Carol Adair and Dominique Grabas: Sévrier (74) business and language centre.
Carol Adair and Dominique
Grabas are a Scottish-French
couple with three children. They
jointly run Alpine Rainbow, a
business and language centre that
they launched three years ago. The
centre teaches languages for
business and management. It works
mainly in English, offering other
languages on demand – such as
Spanish, German and Dutch at
the moment.
Carol: “I think the business came
about by force of circumstance. We
had the skills and the makings of a
business, with people asking us why
we didn’t open up a school. We
wanted to be independent, and we
had to find a structure to put all the
elements together.”
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Thursday, 15 November 2007 |
Wayne and Cécile Barratt: Tourrettes-sur-Loup (06)
Married for 22 years and
running a successful
business, Wayne Barratt and
his French wife Cécile met
backpacking many years ago
in a Bedouin village in
Egypt. A romantic start
maybe, but not half as
romantic as their meeting
again through a series of
convoluted circumstances
nearly two years later; a
meeting that finally clinched
the relationship.
Being young and as
Wayne puts it, in “travel
mode”, they set off again,
this time landing in Cyprus.
They looked around for land
to develop and build, but it
was Cécile, a PACA native,
who finally decided against
it, preferring French wine,
cheese and culture.
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Thursday, 15 November 2007 |
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Pigeon lofts are often left to the
ravages of time. Lindsay Woodster
has a look at rescue work on an 18thcentury
pigeonnier.
If you are into the odd and
outstanding in the
landscape of France,
phone Laure Mouttet and
arrange to see the restoration
being done on the Moulidars
pigeon loft, just 15km west
of Angoulême.
Standing high above the
vineyards surrounding the
Domain d’Ardenne,
Moulidars, built in 1715, was
originally the right of
Musketeer Pierre Méhée
d’Ardenne.
Inside, the pottery
nesting ‘boxes’, the boulins,
each fitting into a wall niche,
could house 700 nests. Many
of these pots are broken, but
will be replaced. Wondering
how on earth dinner would
be collected if you could
only catch the birds within
arm’s reach, we were shown
the rotating ladder, pivoting
around a central post and
going high up into the airy
reaches of the roof.
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