Clé France

Hi David,

All went to plan and organisation was good. Nothing suitable from the ones we saw. Some were ok but just too far out from our base. What it has done though is to make us revise our requirements and highlighted the optimum search area.

We are going back out in January / February and will be searching your website in great detail before we go in the hope we can set up some more viewings.

Kind regards, Peter.

You may not find your perfect property on your first viewing trip as Peter has found out following his recent trip to Brittany BUT you have to start somewhere and statisitcs tell us that most people buy on their 2nd viewing trip anyway, so good luck to Peter next time and don't worry we have thousands of properties for sale and your choice will only get better with time!

Jublains is a very pleasant little village on the road between Mayenne and Evron. You could almost be excused for sailing right through it without stopping or noticing that it has an amazing wealth of Roman history hidden from the main street. It was, in fact, a Roman fort and town of some importance. The fort is not large but the amazingly thick exterior wall are still standing and a number of the internal buildings are evident. The fort has a small but new state of the art museum attached to it and contains many of the implements and artefacts that have been dug up over the years in and around the old town.

After a visit to the fort and museum a gentle walk of about five minutes will lead you to the church in the centre of the town beneath which, and now well excavated and lit up, is a complete Roman hypocaust. About a quarter of a kilometre to the west of the church lies the remains of the Roman temple (to whom is not yet understood). Here the outline of the outer and inner walls are still just visible but the alter is in fairly good condition. Next to it and heading towards the church, in what is currently a pasture field, the vague outline of a street and little houses can be seen.

About the same distance east from the church is the amphitheatre still in remarkably good condition considering the amount of stone 'recycling' that has gone on over the centuries. Here you can sit on the old stone benches and imagine the comedies and tragedies being acted out by itinerant groups of troubadours that wandered the Roman empire in days of yore.

If you want more? then follow the links above, in the images, where you can buy Fraser's published books.

Fraser Blake, 70, author of 'Dear Chips' and 'A Rant Too Far?' grew up in Africa, was at school in Scotland, and worked for the British South Africa Police in Southern Rhodesia. He has taught English in Saudi Arabia and sold and renovated hundreds of properties in Northern France.

In 1998 Fraser was selling houses in the Mayenne department of the Pays de la Loire region and so was the obvious choice, when Cle France was started, to be their first agent on the ground in France. In retirement he writes, blogs, cooks, drinks wine, and hosts to dinner unlimited numbers of ex-pats.

Always on hand with a viewpoint, Fraser is going to share his views on France, the French and the British, and other people who buy in France. Sometimes informative, sometimes funny, painfully true, outrageously opinionated but always entertaining so we hope it adds a slightly different dimension to the usual normality of searching through the fantastic properties for sale on the Cle France website.

Watch out for more rants and opinion next week or buy the book today for a rollicking good read.

Hi Everyone,

Will write properly when we have basics like electricity and telephone - but thank you for all your invaluable help and support.

Very best wishes and thanks

Linda.

Buying a renovation project in France can be exiting and Linda has just spent her first night in her new house in deepest Lower Normandy, no doubt we will hear more as the project moves on a pace but for now we congratulate her at the start of what we are sure will be an amazing journey.

Hi Sharon,

Thank you so much, you have really put our minds at rest.

Thank you for all your support and guidance throughout this process.

Tom.

The buying process can be complicated but Cle France understands it inside-out so we find it easy, Tom has had a few questions to check his understanding throughout the process and Sharon has been able to guide and steer him through the process and in a few weeks time Tom will be sitting in his French Hoilday home in Normandy.

I guess you read French Property News, Living France, A Place in the Sun magazines etc. I hope you even enjoy reading the Cle France Newsletters! but to really learn more about life and living in France a French newspaper can not be beaten.

Continuing our look at French Newspapers - Part 4

Thank you for joining me once again as we review a selection of the most widely read newspapers in France.

In part 1, we had an overview of the different sections found in a typical newspaper that will help you navigate its contents.

In part 2, we learned about Le Monde and Le Figaro.

In part 3, we looked at Le Nouvel Observateur and Libération. Today, let’s delve into two more journaux (newspapers) that grace the racks of most newsstands in France: L’Express and l’Humanité.

L’Express :

Originally printed as a supplément hebdomadaire (weekly supplement) to the economic newspaper Les Échos in 1953, L’Express morphed into the first french newsmagazine by 1964.  Columns written by Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and André Malraux among others lent prestige and a certain validity to L’Express that readers had been seeking in other news outlets of the day.

The transition from supplement to full-fledged newsmagazine in 1964 brought with it some changes. Plusieurs journalistes quittent L’Express pour fonder Le Nouvel Observateur (Several journalists leave L’Express to found Le Nouvel Observateur). As a result, the magazine becomes less politically centered which leads to a tripling of its readership over the span of just three years.

In 1995, L’Express forged a new path in the emerging world of digital news when it launched la première version électronique (the first electronic version) of a weekly french newspaper. Today, lexpress.fr is one of the most frequented french news websites avec plus de deux millions de visiteurs par mois (with more than two million visitors a month).

l’Humanité :

One of the oldest french newspapers still in circulation, l’Humanité began informing readers in 1904. Ce journal quotidien (This daily paper) was founded by Jean Jaurès, a french socialist who believed in “la communion avec le mouvement ouvrier” (“agreement with the labor movement”) and for nearly seventy-five years was guided by le Parti Communiste Français (French Communist Party). Similar to L’Express, l’Humanité became a paper for intellectuals thanks to columns written by such illustrious characters as Aristide Brian, Léon Blum, et al.

Because of its communist/socialist leanings, l’Humanité’s popularity waxed and waned over the course of several decades and with the stream of world events, namely the two World Wars and the Cold War. L’Humanité supported la libération nationale à travers le monde (national liberation throughout the world), a practice that generated considerable controversy pendant les guerres d’Algérie et d’Indochine (during the wars of Algeria and Indochina).

In 1996, l’Humanité launched its website at humanite.fr containing archives of columns from its physical newspaper dating back to 1990. Visit la Boutique on the web où vous aurez accès à une sélection d’abonnements (where you will have access to a selection of subscriptions) in both digital and paper formats.

Join me next time for our final instalment in this series on french newspapers. À bientot (See you soon)!

Original text from the French Language Blog.

Blog submitted by: Alex at The French Property Network - Cle France.