Nous habitons en France

2012 is proving to be a big year for us Buckleys. In the space of just a few months, I finally completed my PhD, Andy was awarded a Research Fellowship by the Royal Society, we found out we were expecting our first baby and we upped sticks and moved ourselves to France, where Andy is taking up an Associateship at CERN for a year (technically, CERN is in Switzerland... although part of it is in France, as it crosses the border... but more of those border complications later).

We're living in Logras for the year - a small village just outside Peron, about 10 kilometres from CERN on the French side. Since I'm not working while we're here, instead dedicating myself to be the very best CERN wife I can be (which so far largely seems to involve doing the paperwork, producing tasty meals and growing a baby), I thought I would blog about the year's experiences.

It's been a good start so far, although not quite the French dream I had expected. As we drove all the way from Edinburgh and made our way through most of France, I anticipated a scenic drive in the late-August sunshine through sleepy French villages, beautiful vineyards and stunning countryside, with the occasional stop en route for a freshly-baked pastry and a jus d'orange. It turns out that the drive from Calais to Logras is essentially one long and very boring motorway. France is really big. And most of it is made up of fields. We drove through the rain for 6 hours along one péage after another (toll motorways, for which we paid around 50 EUR for the privelege) without any notable change in the scenery. Finally, out of sheer bordeom we decided to detour through the Jura mountains for the final couple of hours. Even though we were exhausted from two days of travelling, it was a good decision as this was a beautiful route, if a little hard on the fuel consumption as we climbed to around 1000m and navigated the many hairpin bends. We saw plenty of vaches with their jangling cow-bells around their necks, wound through the sleepy villages I'd hoped for several hours earlier and stopped at the oddest pizza restaurant I've ever come across in Champagnole (www.bigbenpizza.com), where we were served (after a lengthy wait) by an unfriendly proprieter who had dedicated his restaurant to rock memorabilia of the strangest kinds.

When we finally arrived in Logras at c. 9.30pm (having left Dover at 7.30am that morning), we were too tired to really take everything in. But we appeared to have agreed to rent a mansion with more rooms than we could possibly need and a basement as big as our house in Penicuik. It looked more than a little daunting for us to fill. We woke up the next morning to heavy rain and the realisation that we live in a whole new country with neighbours who don't speak a word of English.

But we're not complaining. Our village is a true French mountainside rural idyll, with winding streets that amble up the hillside, tumbeldown barns, old stone water fountains at the crossroads, just one small cafe that only opens at 5pm each day, an antiquated, disused train station, and views of Mont Blanc on a clear day. We have a acre's worth of garden with a small stream running through it, four different types of apple tree, plus cherry and walnut trees, with goats and chickens in the next-door neighbour's garden and mountains looming over us in the background. It's really beautiful and we think we're going to like it.