Just another beautiful week in the French countryside

Welcome to the 61st weekly post of our Baby Boomers Move to France blog.

Week 33 in France 3/15-3/21/2026.

We have been in our home in the village of Chabanais in the Charente department of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region of France since the middle of December 2025.

This week, we will take some walks while the weather cooperates. I will continue working on French tax paperwork. I will play a round of golf at Ron and Michelle’s house, and EB will do a little shopping with Michelle. The electrician will be by to review our electrical projects. Ron and Michelle are coming over for dinner on Saturday.

Our home in Chabanais

Things on the agenda this week:

• Follow up French taxes
• Electrician
• Golf
• Garden work

Weather forecast:

Sunshine some clouds and a little rain is expected this week with high temps in the 60s and lows in the upper 30s.

Why this Blog?

Long story short, we are “Baby Boomers” that have moved from Venice, Florida to the beautiful French countryside as retirees. After a little over a year of planning and fretting we sold everything in Venice and made the move on 1 August 2025.

We publish a brief update of our adventures every Sunday to share our experiences, tips and mistakes.

If you are thinking about a move to France? We are happy to share our thoughts and answer questions. Just drop a question in the comment section below and we will get back to you.

If you are wondering what got into our head and inspired us to make the move, check out some of our earlier posts. Again, if you have questions about our adventure, drop your questions in the comment section below.

We are learning a lot about the French culture and lifestyle as we make our life here and each week, we include in the blog some thoughts on what we learn. If you have a specific question about France, let us know and we are happy to answer. Other folks probably have the same question. If we don’t know the answer, we will share resource information.

This Week in General

Sunday

Nice walk on Sunday. bright sunshine and a little cool. We saw some boys on their way to fish in the stream. I encouraged them by saying, “bonne chance” (good luck). Even I’m picking up some French. Rosie came too. She rode most of the way in her backpack.

We stopped for a beer at the Cafe des Sports.

This picture is of a little tree on the upper terrace of our garden. Brilliant yellow flowers are in bloom. I took this picture out of the window at the top of the stairs to our bedroom.

Monday: French taxes and Electrician

I keep going on about the French taxes. It is getting a bit tiresome I know. I did make some progress and sent some questions for clarification. I think I will get the paperwork done this week. It seems crazy that I have to complete a tax return since we haven’t had any income in France. I guess the French government wants to make sure. LOL. I’m sure it will be easier next year.

Electrical quote

The electrician called on Monday morning and had time to come to the house and review the projects that we have for him.

• Install a new electrical outlet for our pellet burner.
• Install a new light fixture in the hallway to the living room (remove the current flourescent light fixture)
• Install a new light fixture in the living room (remove the current flourescent light fixture). this will be a little tricky.
• Install a jumper cable from one grounding post to another. This was a big “anomolie” on the house inspection report that was done for the sale of the house.

He called to schedule the work on next Monday. Just in time for the pellet stove install. I will have to go out to buy a light fixture for the hallway to the living room.

Visa renewal update

Annabelle at French Connections HCB sent us an email alerting us that our visa renewal paperwork is perfect and it will be sent for processing soon. We are actually a little ahead of schedule. Thus, nothing can happen until the end of this month. We like being ahead of schedule.

Annabelle also confirmed that our ANEF (medical) account is fully accessible now.

Tuesday was a beautiful day: warm with lots of sunshine

Golf and shopping

Ron has his awesome golf simulator all set up. We are playing Red Rock Country Club. Wow, my swing tempo is way off. It was fun anyway. I can hardly wait to get back to it next week.

EB and Michelle drove to St. Junien and bought some plants. I’m a sucker for azaleas and EB picked one up for our garden. Very pretty. She bought some other plants too. We stayed at Ron and Michelle’s for wine and met some of their neighbors. It was all great fun and really cool to meet everyone. Ron and Michelle live in the hamlet of Grenord just a couple of miles from our house. There are a surprising number of folks from the UK there.

Wednesday: Another perfect day

We enjoyed a relaxing day and took a walk. In this picture you can see the Vienne River.

The sign on the way back into town

Neighborhood Watch sign. I bet you can guess what the sign says. “In immediate contact with the gendarmerie”. By the way, the Gendarmerie is a military force in charge of law enforcement among other things.

I just love taking pictures of “our” clock/bell tower.

Wednesday is our new day for our French lessons, and the class is in Chabanais now so we can walk to our lesson. NICE!

Ron and his neighbor, Deb joined the class. It was a lively session, and we learned some new stuff. The class is held at the local hall just down the street from us and across the street from the little square where a really good boulangerie is located. This boulangerie is next door to the Cafe des Sport. After class I ran over and bought a baguette.

I must admit that my back is a little sore from the golf on Tuesday. I will get back into the groove soon enough though.

Thursday EB has a knitting lesson and I’m going to Limoges

No jacket or sweater required today.

I drove over to Limoges for two main reasons,

• Make the final payment for the pellet stove and wood burning stove
• Stop at Leroy Merlins to purchase a light fixture, a shop vac, and a bag of charcoal.
• While I was out, I stopped at the Hyper U and bought gas and ran the car through the car wash

I went to the Aasgard shop in Limoges to make the final payments for the stoves. I’m really proud that I managed to communicate in French for the most part. Luckily the person I talked to knows a little English so I got the payment made and confirmed the installation will be March 24 and the log length that I will need to buy. I thought that our wood burner required 25cm (just under 10 inches long) max length but the person that I was working with explained that the correct length is 33cm (just under 13 inches long).

I have heard Total Energy is a good supplier. Luckily, I don’t need to purchase any firewood yet. The Aasgard salesperson assured me that they will bring enough to demonstrate and test the stove when they come to set the stove up. I’m pretty excited about the installation. They will also bring enough pellets to test and demonstrate the pellet stove.

EB walked over to her knitting lesson and got home just after I did. Pretty near perfect timing and we went up to the summer house to relaxed and opened a couple of beers. We opened the windows and got a nice cross breeze. It was so nice I didn’t want to get back to work.

Friday another beautiful day

We finished our chores and made time to relax a bit. We are retired after all.

We noticed the rose bushes are starting to show some buds and I couldn’t resist taking another picture of the Camillia. I love my smart phone. I can take a picture just about any time!

Saturday: All about Ron and Michelle coming over

We are so lucky to have met Ron and Michelle. Elizabeth likes to say, “We grew up on a parallel universe”. They are so comfortable to be around.

They arrived at chez Beiley at 5:30 (17:30) and after showing them around the house we all went up to the “summer house” for snacks and a drink. EB had everything all set up beautifully. I had the grill set up so when EB said, “get the fire going” it was easy and I didn’t have to miss any of the time with our guests. Elizabeth had prepared salmon and asparagus for the grill, rosemary potatoes (with rosemary from our garden) and her awesome salad. What a feast!

We spent the rest of the evening eating and chatting and of course, we had wine. I was so happy to share a couple of bottles of wine that we had purchased in St. Emilion while Cindy and Don were here. I also could share the story of the wine maker that grew up playing in the wine caves.

The wine was excellent!!

Good food, good wine and good friends. I love France! I really enjoy sharing our French experience with all of our good friends in the states.

So that was our week.

We had beautiful weather and took a couple of nice walks. EB learned some knitting techniques. I got to play golf, and we met more people from the UK. The highlight was having Ron and Michell join us for dinner.

French Lifestyle and Culture

Baguettes

It is no secret that I love croissants. Last week I talked about croissants and the fact that the French consume about 25000 tons of croissants. I mentioned that I would check out the baguette consumption in France.

There are about 32 million baguettes consumed in France every day. They are about a foot to 18 inches of fresh baked heaven. REALLY.

Did you know that the French bread law states that traditional baguettes have to be made on the premises they are sold and can only be made with four ingredients: wheat flour, water, salt and yeast.

UHT Milk

EB wanted me to mention something that she noticed in the supermarket. Milk mostly comes in plastic bottles not in American style cartons and is found by the eggs at room temperature. Not refrigerated.

The French use Ultra High Temperature (UHT) processed milk. This is ultra-pasteurized milk. This extends the shelf life 6 to 9 months at room temperature. You only need to refrigerate it once it is opened and this is what most French people buy.

In case you are wondering UHT milk and fresh milk are the same when it comes to the main nutrients.

UHT processing is also used for fruit juices, cream, soy milk, yogurt, wine, soups, honey and stews.

To be honest, we don’t drink much milk and have not tried this milk. I did have a little cream in my tea at Cafe Lillian. I didn’t notice any taste impact.

Next Week (la Semaine Prochaine)

• Wood burner and pellet burner install and learn how to use them
• electrical work completed
• Maybe a little yardwork
• Walks around town and more photos
• Golf with Ron on Thursday
• Continue work on French Taxes

Weather forecast for next week

We have a bit of a cooling trend this coming week highs in the 50F (10C) and nighttime lows around 36F (2C). Chance of some rain too. Looks like we will get to use our stoves. I’m kinda digging the four seasons thing.

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.

Wishing you a good week (Bonne Semaine)

Mark and Elizabeth Beiley

Babyboomersmovetofrance.com