Autumn

We have had some lovely weather here over the last few Summer Months but bang on time Autumn has arrived. Mornings and Evenings are definitely cooler and it won't be long before the wood burner is put on again.

The biggest indication for me is the leaves starting to fall. We have a couple of huge Acer trees in our front garden and a lovely line of Lime trees down the side of the drive, however the downside is the amount of leaves that come off of them all of which I shall need to rake and clear over the next couple of Months.

As you can see from the photo above they have only just started falling but even the few seen here on the driveway and under the Lime trees resulted in two full barrow loads of leaves, I estimate by the time they are all down I will have collected between 100-200 barrow loads.

At least it will all help for compost for the ground which we need!

I have just received my annual tax statement from the French tax authorities, this is always issued in August of each year and relates to tax due on income up to the 31st December of the previous year.
This is the second return that I've made since we moved here and I am pretty pleased that once again I have managed to complete the 8 or so pages in French and had them accepted by the authorities.

I think with even very limited French anyone moving here should with a bit of common sense be able to fill these out plus I have put together some notes on my Living in Brittany website which although fairly basic ie: relating to others in similar positions to ourselves being on old age pensions plus some private pensions and some income from investments should give anyone a good reference to start with.

The tax return is important to us as by proving our income to be below a certain level, and this is the only proof that is accepted, means that we get out Tax D'habitation reduced to zero and a hundred euro reduction on our Tax Fonciere. Tax D'habitation and Tax Fonciere together are the equivalent of  house council tax or rates in the UK.

By doing some reading up on the rules I was also able to reclaim nearly 300 euros of tax that I had paid on a wood burner that we had installed last year, It is worth noting though that this has to be installed by a professional  with a copy of the original paid invoice to enable this. This would also be reclaimable on other eco friendly installations such as cavity or roof insulation, double glazing etc. 

Two year anniversary

Unbelievable, but we have now been here living in brittany for just over two years. The time just seems to have flown by and we are feeling very settled here and made a wide range of good friends since we arrived.
I really do have to keep an online calendar as there is never a week where we are not doing something with someone or another and dread the thought of double booking!

This last few weeks has been a very busy time for us as a group of friends from an online forum I have been on for years came over to France to our house for the Annual BBQ we had every bedroom full and the rest stayed in a B&B close by, the weather was a bit spotty with rain that day but certainly didn't take anything away from the proceedings.

We then had my brother Roger and his wife Margaret arrive for a holiday with us, I think they would agree we had a very social time indeed while they were here with many BBQs at home, dinners out and vistis and meals with many of our friends here.

These are just a few of the photos I took whilst with friends over the last three weeks so a big thanks to

Steve, Majella, Andy, Carole, John, Sandra, Bob, Blanca, Roger, Lorrie, Roger, Margaret, Ron, Ethal, Roger, Anne, John, Sue, Alec, Dave, Jane, Malcolm, Maureen, Donnie, Rosie, Michel, Els, Richard, Katrina and others who I am sure I have missed out

Dental treatment update

Just a quick follow up to my last post, to give an idea how long these things take. I paid the bill for the treatment on a Friday and had the payment back from CPAM into my bank account the following Thursday.
The balance due from the insurance of 250 euros ( the maximum allowed under my plan ) was repaid into my bank 4 days later.

This is pretty consistent with other repayments with the CPAM payment always coming first. Both payments come automatically after showing my Carte Vitale card which is linked electronically to my insurance policy.

Dental treatment and costs

Many people moving to France to live are concerned about health costs and rightly so. The health service here in France is generally accepted to be one of the best in the world and it can come as a bit of a surprise how quickly you can get an appointment for specialists etc. I have recently had a course of dental treatment so I thought I would share with people what the actual costs are over here from a first hand experience

Photo attributed to Irina Patrascu

up to date as to July 2013  and also to show what can be claimed back from the health service If you are registered here.

I have had quite an extensive course of treatments involving 5 fillings one extraction and 3 crowns including quite a number of xrays.

The fillings extraction and clean came to a total of 798 euros and the 3 crowns were 327 euros each making a total of 981 euros so 1779 euros in all. I opted for metal crowns as they were on molars out of sight but If I had ceramic ones they would have totaled over 2000 euros for the 3.

At the end of the treatment I had to pay the full amount due on the spot, however as is normal once you are registered here and on the health system a percentage repayment is made direct to your bank within a few days. I received a total repayment of 784 euros made up of 558 euros being 70% of the 798 euros plus 225 euros off the crowns.

The 225 euros was based 70% of a figure of 322 euros rather than the 981 as presumably this is classified as being partly cosmetic.

In addition, I have a private health care plan which allows me up to 250 euros a year for dental work. There are many health care plans at a variety of costs and cover so this will change depending on what you take out.

So in total I will have been repaid a total of 1034 euros from the total of 1779 euros I paid.

I hope this is helpful to others to give some idea of what to expect

Busy, Busy, Busy

Well at last we seem set for some warmer weather, It has been a long time coming this year so not before time. I'm taking advantage of it and spending most days in the garden either on the vegetable plot or cutting down and logging up more trees.

As you can see from the photo, the potatoes are looking good this year but the broad beans are stunted, at least I seem to have the weeds under control this year.

We have been more than a little disappointed in our vegetable plots as a lot of things we put in don't do well at all. We have put this down to the soil and after a stilted French chat with a neighbough at the rear of us she confirmed what we thought. The main problem is that the soil is too acidic so that although some things seem to do OK such as potatoes, courgettes and most of the fruit such as raspberries, strawberries, blackcurrants etc.
The answer seems to be to apply lime to the ground to raise the PH levels and also to get some more compost into the ground. I shall be making sure that I use as much of the huge amount of autumn leaves as I can this year.

Our fir trees at the back of the house are gradually coming down, It is making a big difference, not only to the amount of extra sunlight that we get to our decking area but also gives us a lovely view over the garden which we never had before.

What a difference a week makes

We have just come back from a week's holiday in Florida, at £389 for the flight, car hire and Hotel it was a real bargain. It's a pity that there seem to be no bargains like that to be had from France so we had to go from Gatwick.
However the total cost including a Ryanair flight from Dinard to Stansted, a coach to London Victoria and the Gatwick express train to the airport plus a night at the Premier inn at Gatwick plus the holiday in Florida complete still came to just on £500 each about  the same cost as I could have got just a return flight from France!

We had a really relaxing holiday over there although probably to many American Breakfasts for the waistline.

Apart from going to the cinema a couple of times and a couple of visits to a Van Heusen Factory outlet store for some very reasonable and good quality clothes we spent most of the time around the pool, swimming and soaking up the sunshine. All in all a great week.

When we got home I couldn't believe how much every thing in the garden had grown, the grass looked as if it hadn't been cut in a Month and 5 new rows of potatoes had sprung up. Also while we were away the deer that we seen to have in abundance around here had helped themselves to most of the new growth on the roses! In fact they were devastated!