The Doldrums

Week 9 in France 9/28-10/4/2025

Welcome to the 37th weekly post of our Baby Boomers Move to France blog. We are starting our third month of full time living in France.

The weather most of this week has been cool in the morning and warms up to the 60s and 70s over the course of the day. Beautiful and sunny on Monday night so we went to Cafe de la Paix and sat outside for a glass of wine. We met a very nice British couple that has a very cute long hair chihuahua called DG. Rosie didn’t like her much. Things cooled down on Saturday with a gray, overcast sky and drizzles most of the day.

Things on the agenda this week:

• Follow up coordination of adequate funds for the house purchase
• Continue researching wood and pellet burners for heat. These tend to be more energy efficient than electric heaters but do have some maintenance cost associated with them, including annual inspections and chimney sweeps.
• I need to find a self-serve car wash too.

Why a Blog?

If this is your first visit to our blog, we will try to keep the story of our move to France interesting enough to bring you back each week. If you have questions about our adventure, please feel free to ask in the comment section below. Long story short, we are a couple of “Baby Boomers” that have moved from Venice, Florida to the French countryside as retirees.

As we shared our move plans with friends and family, we were asked questions about who, what, why, when and where, so we figured that there is enough interest to share the experience. So, we started this blog. Our plan is to publish a brief update on our life in France every Sunday. Hopefully we answer some of those questions and keep answering more as we work our way to our new life. We will also include thoughts on the lifestyle and culture of our new home.

After a little over a year of planning and fretting we moved to France on 1 August 2025.

This Week in General

The Doldrums

While Elizabeth and I were sitting outside at Karl’s restaurant having a beer in beautiful sunshine and a light breeze. I was wondering what to name this week’s post when I asked Elizabeth if the weather can be characterized as balmy? She said, “I call it gorgeous”. After double checking what is meant by the term balmy weather, I was reassured that balmy weather is “warm and pleasant” according to Collins English dictionary. Therefore, we are both correct!

How did we get from the name to the weather to the name again? I’m not sure. LOL

Regarding the name, EB suggested, “The Doldrums”. You will remember that the doldrums is a band or belt around the earth near the equator. I have heard this term in regard to the Pacific Ocean where winds are very clam and at times the prevailing breeze disappears altogether, such that a sailboat is left without wind to power the boat. The boat is just stuck waiting for the wind to pick up. It is an atmospheric phenomenon. This week we are in a kind of doldrums as we are waiting for administrative winds to pick up so we can get on with the purchase of the new house. You have probably been in similar hurry up and wait situations. During the waiting period it seems time sort of stops.

Working with the foreign exchange company

We had a zoom call with SmartMoney on Monday morning and committed to have them buy 200,000 USD worth of Euros for us so we will be ready to pay for the house. The exchange rate was about .83. That means $1 buys about .83 euros or 200,000 dollars buys just over 167,000 euros. Ugh……thanks government.

On Tuesday we set up a test transfer and sent the deposit of $11,000 so will have about 9,160 euros in our transfer account. Should arrive in the account on Wednesday. Done.

By Thursday Sean had transferred money from our Money Market account to our B of A account, and we then transferred it to the foreign exchange account (Smart Money). Whew, what a pain, but it is done!

Elizabeth coordinated with Smart Money to confirm that they can send euros directly to our notaire. I would rather have the money go direct to the notaire rather than having to go through our French bank. Just one less stop along the way, one less potential snag.

Zoom with Lou and Kim

After a little technical difficulty, we had a great zoom call with Lou and Kim. Kim is a high school friend of EB’s and they live in Pennsylvania but would often travel to Florida as they are Disney fanatics. They haven’t been following the blog so weren’t aware that we had found a house to purchase in Chabanais. They are doing well, and it was good to catch up.

Cindy and Don medal at the last Dragon Boat regatta of the California season

CONGRATULATION CINDY AND DON!!

Cindy’s team won Bronze! Don competed in 3 divisions and took 2 Bronze, 1 Silver and 1 Gold! Very impressive. That is some serious paddling.

Cindy will compete in the international event in Aix la Bain, France next year. EB and I are looking forward to attending that regatta and meeting up with Cindy and Don then.

Issegiac Market

EB had heard that the market on Sunday mornings at Issegiac is a must visit so we took Sunday to check it out.

First you should know that Issegiac is a really pretty medieval village with a population of 748. Like so many towns and villages in France it dates back to Roman times. It is located in the Perigord in the Dordogne department. You may remember from earlier “babyboomersmovetofrance.com postings the story of the Perigord and our affection for the Dordogne department and river valley. The village features many buildings of the medieval half-timbered style with many of the 13th century walls surrounding the town intact. I took so many pictures. I wish that I could share them all.

The picture below shows an example of the half-timbered building construction in the background. Notice the roof line of the building on the right that is so typical of the Perigord area. We were blown away at the really good deals on clothes too. The white puffy clouds and blue sky make me happy.

The market truly is awesome and crowded with shoppers. I’m so glad EB got me out of the house to experience it. The drive was only about 40 minutes through farmlands of rolling hills and is part of the Bergerac wine growing region as it is only about 20km southeast of Bergerac. For such a small population the market was really great. We had a lunch of meats and cheeses and a beer and topped it off with a cafe au lait for me and expresso for EB.

Table for two at the Issegeac Sunday market.

We did buy some really good sausage from one of the many vendors. The town has some artist shops too including painting, pottery, photography, sculpture and stained glass that we enjoyed browsing through.

French Lifestyle and Culture

Clothes dryer

As you know we are starting to get a feel for the furniture that we will need for the new house. As I mentioned one of the many things we will want to get is a clothes dryer. The French like to line dry their clothes or dry the clothes on a rack which is fine, but we want to have the dryer machine option. As we were looking at dryers, we found that many have a plastic reservoir in a drawer that you access from the front of the machine. This was very confusing until we found out that because a lot of the old French houses were built with 3-foot-thick walls, cutting a hole in the wall for the dryer vent is not an easy thing. Instead, you have this reservoir to collect condensation from the drying process. I guess you empty it after each load. Something new for us to get the hang of. I’ll update you when we find out more details.

Wood burner heaters and Pellet burner heaters

The use of wood or pellet stoves for heating is pretty common in France (in all of Europe I guess). Many homes have used wood burning for heating for centuries and thus are set up with chimneys. New improved heating systems can be retrofitted so it makes for a good option. Wood and pellet stoves are made all over the world. In our neck of the woods, France, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, and Belgum are some of the countries to choose from. There are also combination wood and pellet stoves. So, I have a lot of research to do.

My motivation for researching these optional methods of home heating is cost. As I understand it, pellet is the most efficient mode as the fuel usage is over 80% and produces very little air pollution. They are the cleanest solid fuel residential heating appliance, and the installed cost is usually cheaper than a wood stove. Depending on the house layout the stoves generally do very well at heating one room and to a slightly lesser extent an adjoining room or rooms above. Since the house is so small, I think 2 small pellet stoves will be adequate for the house supplemental heat. Maybe only one will be needed. This would have to be verified by a professional. By the way, these stoves typically last 10 years and up to 20 years with proper maintenance.

So, the downsides include:

• Since the pellets are fed into the burner from the hopper by a screw mechanism the heater does require a small amount of electrical power. Backup power is recommended. A battery backup is common and typically can last up to 20 hours.
• Heat can be regulated by adjusting the speed of the screw mechanism. This can be done manually or automatically by a thermostat controller.
• If a power outage occurs, heat stops if no back up power is available.
• Pellet stoves are more complex than wood stoves and have expensive components that can break down.
• Weekly cleaning maintenance and annual professional inspections and chimney cleaning are required. We will be able to say we have our own chimney sweep!

Upsides:

• Pellet fuel appliances are almost always less expensive to operate than electric resistance heating, oil and propane fueled appliances.
• Pellets are easier to purchase and store than heating oil fuel and wood
• There is potential for financial incentives from the French government
• Pellet storage is easier than wood and other fuels although a typical bag of pellets can weigh up to 40 pounds.

What about a traditional wood burner

Upsides:

• Catalytic wood stoves can be up to 83% efficienct
• New advanced noncatalytic stoves can have efficiencies up to 75%.
• Fuel is relatively cheap.

Downsides:

• I read that there are reports that the French government might add restrictions to the use of wood burning heaters.
• Storing wood for this purpose can require a large storage area.
• And even if you don’t have to cut and chop and split the wood you still have to stack it and protect it from moisture.
• As with pellet stoves weekly cleaning and annual professional maintenance and chimney sweep is required.

Next Week (la Semaine Prochaine)

• Continue researching wood and pellet burners for heat.
• I need to find a self-serve car wash too.
• Get ready for our trip to Lyon to meet up with Leif and Lisa on the 10th.
• Our visit with Leif and Lisa in Lyon (afternoon food walking tour)
• Segway tour of Lyon

Weather

Weather forecast for next week in Duras is cloudy without much chance of rain with highs in the upper 60s and lows in the 50s. Sunny and 70s over the weekend.

It should be nice in Lyon during our visit. Friday the 10th is forecasted to be in the 70s and mostly sunny. It will start out a little cool in the morning though.

Signing off for the week

As always, we sign off wishing you all a good week and remind you to take care of yourselves and your family.

Keep in touch and leave questions, suggestions and comments below. We really enjoy hearing from you. Your kind and encouraging words remind us that we can do this.

A bientot (see you soon)

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley

Babyboomersmovetofrance.com