Total Immersion: Ten Years in France

By Stephanie Dagg

Total Immersion: Ten Years in France is the sequel to Heads Above Water: Staying Afloat in France. It picks up where the first book left off, namely with us about to start earning our living from our holiday cottage, three fishing lakes and team of four laid-back trekking llamas. But despite all our thorough groundwork and careful preparation, things didn’t go quite as planned. We hurled ourselves enthusiastically down dead ends whilst simultaneously tripping up over red tape. We faced new and unforeseen challenges all the time, such as milking llamas, delivering stuck lambs and surviving five continuous weeks of severely sub-zero temperatures, to give just a few examples. It’s true to say there have been very few dull moments over the years. But with cheerful optimism – at least most of the time – we blundered on, and we’re still here. Not drowning, but waving.
Total Immersion shares with you the fun, faux pas and frustrations of the expat experience in rural France whilst running a business, bringing up children and generally grappling with life in a foreign language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephanie Dagg
• Release date: Feb 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781310234385

Stephanie Dagg

I'm an English ex-pat living in France with my family and a lot of animals, including llamas and carp. I was a bestselling author in Ireland, where we lived for 15 years before we moved to our new home here. I've recently relaunched my writing career, but this time as an indie ebook author and publisher. It's the twenty-first century after all!

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Total Immersion: Ten Years in France

Stephanie Dagg

Total Immersion: Ten Years in France

© Stephanie J Dagg 2018

Copyright Stephanie J Dagg 2018

Published by Stephanie Dagg

This edition first published in 2018.

The right of Stephanie Dagg to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Acts. All rights reserved.

Cover artwork by Roger Fereday, with typography by Caitlin of editing.zone

Editing, layout and formatting by editing.zone

Disclaimer

This is a work of non-fiction that recounts real events and experiences. Some names, places, conversations, identifying characteristics have been changed to preserve anonymity of those concerned.

Table of Contents

2008: The Year of the Alpaca

2009: The Year of the Fox

2010: The Year of the Sheep

2011: The Year of the Cat

2012: The Year of the Pig and the Huarizo

2013: The Year of the Piglet

2014: The Year of the Dog

2015: The Year of the Turkey

2016: The Year of the Kangaroo

2017: The Year of the Flying Fox

Authors note

2008: The Year of the Alpaca

Amethyst Gîte opened its doors in early July 2008 – and we threw ourselves through them into the deepest depths of the murky sea that is the hospitality trade. We truly had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for.

Over the years, and long before we ever dreamed we’d be doing the same thing, we’d seen plenty of those reality TV shows about people buying property and starting a new life abroad. Many of these people were couples, sometimes with children, setting up in France as a gîte (holiday cottage) or B and B. And many of these couples ran very late with their preparations and were literally finishing some crucial job – putting a bed together, for example – as their first guests rolled up the drive. Chris and I would look at each other sorrowfully and tut. How could they make such a mess of things? How could they be so disorganised when it came to something so important? Could they not plan adequately? Had they no sense? Pfft. We shook our heads, smug in the knowledge that we’d have done a far better job in their shoes.

On that day in July, Chris and Benj were finishing putting the bed together as our first guests rolled up the drive. I sent Caiti and Ruadhri to stall Monsieur and Madame Harbin at the doorway with bilingual pleasantries whilst I made the still-being-made bed.

We had worked ourselves into the ground, and beyond, getting the gîte ready. It had been a lengthy, strenuous affair turning a long-neglected hovel into a beautifully renovated holiday home. Harry and Gaston, the builders, had predictably run rather late with one or two things, such as the roof, the stairs, the electricity, the plumbing, the gas, the kitchen — in other words just about everything we’d hired them to do. Chris and I had done all the unskilled stuff ourselves to save money but there was a limit to even our parsimonious enthusiasm.

The weeks hurtled by and so much remained to be done. Summer, and the start of our inaugural letting season, loomed ever larger on the horizon. We must have been working eighteen-hour days the last few weeks, but still we had to do those last-minute crucial jobs with our guests on the doorstep. I could now fully sympathise with the rental property owners on TV we’d been scathing about. I can’t apologise to them enough.

We’d originally intended to give ourselves more time to get the gîte ready, trusting that income from llama trekking would keep us tiding over nicely. That didn’t prove to be the case. Handsome, exotic and amiable as our camelids were, and fascinated as people were to see them, not many of them wanted to shell out to take these zenful creatures on a stroll through the countryside for an hour or so. Which really was a shame as llamas exude calm and contentment. Spend time with a llama and everything is soon all right with the world. Your troubles wither up and die with this graceful, noble being gliding along beside you, banana ears constantly twitching, huge, long-lash encased eyes blinking serenely. Add the occasional gentle hum and inquisitive snuffle from a velvety nose and you’ll never need to read another mindfulness book in your life.

I think it was the walking element that put people off. Lots were very keen to mount the llamas, as in sit on their backs. I felt I should clarify that. You can’t sit on a llama – it’ll collapse, either before or after its very pointy backbone has sliced you in two. These tall animals are remarkably spindly and can manage loads of up to 30-40 kg only. Which rules out most people, apart from children. We’d come across pictures on the Internet of South American children perched on wooden saddles on the backs of llamas. We decided against offering rides to the junior public as this would bring all sorts of responsibilities and possibilities for disaster in its wake. Besides, I’d priced up the wooden saddles and they were fiendishly and prohibitively expensive. However, I was intrigued to see if we could train Denis to give rides to Ruadhri.

Back in Ireland, we’d gone riding as a family every Friday evening at a stables outside Bandon run by the very pleasant Basil and Siobhan. We loved it, and adored the ponies with their very different characters, apart from the endless docility and patience they all had in common. We cantered and jumped, with the exception of Ruadhri (Rors) who was only four. He sat on the extra-bombproof pony Magic, and walked slowly around, led by Siobhan. He claims he fell off once, but he didn’t. Magic had done that puffing-her-stomach-thing-out that ponies do sometimes when the girth strap of the saddle is being done up. Consequently, when she stopped holding her breath, the saddle was now on rather loosely. And so a little later the saddle slipped round, taking Ruadhrí with it. Siobhan grabbed his ankle and Rors clung onto the saddle, now beneath Magic’s belly. I slipped off my pony Pepper and handed his reins to Chris, and then helped extract Rors from between Magic’s legs. She stood there the whole while with a slightly wicked grin on her face.

Possibly it was because of this experience that Rors wasn’t more enthusiastic about the idea of jogging around on Denis. Denis had preselected himself for the role of potential steed as he was the most laid back of our four bold boys. These were the four mature male trekking llamas we’d bought. Their names were Bernard, Oscar, Larry and Denis, hence we called them the BOLD boys. Bold means cheeky or naughty in Ireland, where we’d lived for fourteen years after moving from the UK and before moving on to France in 2006. And these lads could be both cheeky and naughty, apart from Denis who was calm and stoic. He became a crazed madman around female llamas, true, but that’s another story.

I found a cheap second-hand pony saddle on Ebay. It was specifically designed for young kids and had a handle at the front they could hold onto. It duly arrived and we put it on Denis. He stood there patiently as we strapped it on. Or tried to work out how to. Llamas have a very deep, broad ribcage in front of a very narrow stomach. With the saddle in the perfect position, the girth wanted to go exactly where these sections of llama meet i.e. on a contour. A few inches forward and the girth would be snugly around the ribs, but would inevitably slip back as the animal moved. A few inches further back and the girth would sit around the smaller stomach, but again would slip. (It’s for this reason custom llama saddles have two girths.) You couldn’t shift saddle and girth any further back as Denis was a male with the appropriate tackle and there was no way I’d be fumbling with girth buckles near that. We therefore shoved the saddle as far forward as we could and hoped the girth was now far enough away from Denis’s waistline as to be secure. We, and especially Ruadhri, didn’t want a repeat performance of his hanging-upside-down-from-the-saddle trick, although he did now have this convenient handle to grab onto if that did happen.

We put a hard hat on our youngest and carefully sat him on Denis’s back. Denis blinked in surprise but that was all. However, llama legs are longer than small pony legs, and Rors was quite a way off the ground. He didn’t like that feeling and so, after a few more brief tries, we abandoned the ride-a-llama idea. The saddle still sits on a beam in the barn gathering dust.

Once people phoning up to enquire about llama trekking realised they wouldn’t be riding a llama around à la pony-trekking, but be keeping closer to the dictionary definition of ‘trek’ by making a journey on foot, with a llama on a lead beside them, enthusiasm rapidly waned. However, we did get a good few visitors and they all had a great time. They enjoyed our trails with their questions to answer en route (we’d made wooden posts with carved llama shapes on the top) and fell in love with our beautiful boys. They also spent time meeting our other animals after their trek. I began to suspect that some of our smaller visitors enjoyed cuddling the cats and guinea pigs more than the camelid encounter itself. Some seemed a little nervous of them.

I pondered this. Then one day I was out in the garden with Rors and we wandered over to the gate of the llama field, where the four boys were lined up watching us. I crouched down next to Rors for some reason, and looked up. And up and up. It was a long way to a llama’s head from here. No wonder our young guests were somewhat wary of an animal that took on giraffe-like qualities to them. Thus began the search for alpacas. Alpaca trekking would be more child-friendly than llama trekking.

Alpacas are fiendishly expensive. Llamas aren’t exactly cheap but they’re nothing like as dear as their smaller relations. It took a while to track down a couple of alpacas we could actually afford without having to sell one of our children first. We eventually found two young males for sale up in Brittany. They were being advertised as mini-llamas. The farm specialised in diminutive everythings, from mini-cows and mini-sheep to mini-rabbits and mini-goats. And alpacas, under this new identity. Chris and Benj spent an exhausting day making the long drive to the north-west of France. They spent about thirty seconds at the farm. They handed over the balance of the money (I’d paid half as a deposit) to the vendor, who picked up the alpacas by the scruffs of their necks and plonked them in the boot, waved goodbye and strode off. The lads had hoped for a cuppa, maybe a quick leg stretch and a look at the other animals and, at the very least, the offer to use the loo, but that wasn’t to be. This was a totally business-orientated deal. None of the usual niceties you get when parting with over a grand on a purchase.

Brendan and Seamus were six months old. Brendan was chocolate brown and Seamus was a sort of caramel colour. They had had huge black eyes, long lashes, divinely soft woolly coats and were tiny. Well, in comparison to a llama. We’d got used to towering camelids around us so we were having to scale down now. They were good little chaps. They’d been no bother on the drive home, kushing down politely on the hay in the back of the car (poor Chris, this car had been his pride and joy back in Ireland) and occasionally raising their heads for a peer out of the window to see where they were and surprise the bejayzus out of passing motorists. They remained well-behaved at the farm and proved easy to halter and trek train. All our camelids had collars – handy to grab them by – and so we needed collars for the two newbies. The llamas wore broad, hard-duty nylon webbing affairs with disappointingly feeble plastic clips that never lasted long. We now needed something less chunky for the alpacas. I found some smart dog collars with bandanas in a hardware slash garden store: blue for Seamus and red for Brendan. The boys looked great in these and the cheery bandanas gave them real personality. Seamus needed the most help here as he was a very sweet but incredibly dim alpaca. Brendan was the natural leader of the two and a tad feistier, but only in the way that a slug is feistier than a pebble. In later years, when lady alpacas entered the scene, the feistiness went up by a lot of notches. For the time being, however, our alpacas were exactly what we needed to add even more child-friendliness to our trekking business.

We once got an unannounced visit from the Department of Investigating Riding Stables. They’d got wind of our trekking, which at least shows that someone saw our various brochures and adverts, and thought it meant the sit-on-an-animal type of trekking. Only registered stables can do this, and we weren’t registered, hence their swoop. They were decidedly dumbfounded when I explained that no one ever rode llamas in our establishment, and having seen them for themselves, they quickly realised why. However, anxious not to appear obsolete, they duly took away various documents I photocopied for them, and we never saw them again. I don’t imagine they ever looked at that paperwork again either.

But even with our two new little boys, and even with being a Creuse en Famille-approved tourist attraction, we were still only getting a handful of trekkers a week. Creuse en Famille was a local initiative to promote tourism in Creuse, which isn’t a hotbed for holiday-makers, beautiful though it is. They had an annual do at a tourist attraction in Creuse where you could have a stall for free to promote yourself for the coming year. We went to two of these. The first was at the Wolf Park in Guéret. It was quite fun but extremely cold. We bravely put up with it, me all day helped by the kids in shifts. We were beneath an awning on a windswept hilltop. The day hadn’t started well as I’d asked for and been promised access to a plug which we needed for a super Scratch computer game Caiti had built about what llamas liked to eat. Give the llama onscreen grass and he was happy. Give him water, same thing. Give him pizza or a fizzy drink and he spat a huge splodge of green spit that spread across the screen. It was brilliant. However, someone else had requisitioned our all-important socket so we weren’t able to use our game. Big disappointment. We made do with the llama wool crafts and South American musical instruments I’d brought along. However, when the wind began blowing snow sideways onto us in the late afternoon I gave up and went home. We didn’t appear to get any business as a result of attending. We had one more go a couple of years later with the same non-result. People who seemed interested and promised they’d come for a trek never turned up. Our llamas and alpacas only worked a few hours a week. The cheap souvenirs in our shop remained unsold, not that we’d have made much out of them anyway.

What was the problem with our llama trekking? Was it just that people didn’t like physical exercise? Or was it our pricing? Were we too expensive? We started out with a blanket fee of €25 per trek, no matter how many or how few came along. We’d always bring out at least three of the boys, usually four, so this meant four of us came on the trek too. We had two leads on each llama: one we held, and the other we gave to the trekker. We’d never considered letting folk loose with our llamas, not after I’d been on my llama management course. That covered llama trekking as a business, and our instructor told us tales of llamas left at the tops of mountains or tied to trees in the middle of nowhere which their owners had to spend hours retrieving. Plus, despite llamas being inordinately good-natured, like any animal they can be pushed too far. Admittedly it would take an awful lot of pushing for most llamas, but some folk seem to take it as a challenge to provoke docile creatures into a furry fury. We repeatedly told our trekkers that llamas don’t like being stroked or petted. They’ll maybe give you a curious sniff, but it has to be on their terms. But whenever our backs were turned hands went out to pat and poke. We’d catch the movements out of the corner of our eye, but the usual giveaway was the martyred, wincing expression on the llama’s face. Don’t stand or walk directly behind the llamas, we’d say, purely as a precaution as after ten years of owning them I’ve yet to be kicked by one. No one would take a blind bit of notice, and merrily danced behind the llamas as often as they could. Llamas don’t like sudden movements or noises, we’d say as well. Our visitors would nod sagely but allow their kids to shriek and jump around. One Parisian lady suddenly put up an umbrella, and it wasn’t even raining. It was one of those telescopic ones that whizz out on their own, and the nearest pointy rib ended up about an inch from Denis’s right eye. Bless him, he flinched but stood firm, although it was a few minutes before we could get him to move again. Mind you, Denis did that quite regularly, even without being terrified first. Mid-stride he’d suddenly stop. We’d coax, push, pull, threaten to never let him near another lady llama for the rest of his life (Denis liked the ladies) but he wouldn’t move, for up to five minutes. Then he’d reboot and carry on as though nothing had happened.

We changed our pricing structure after a while to €10 per adult and €5 per child. We weren’t especially keen to do so since we’d invested quite a bit in llamas, leads and halters, matching polo shirts for ourselves to wear on treks, signage, advertising, souvenirs, that saddle, not to mention the overheads of insurance, the petrol for the tractor to keep the trekking path clear, and so on and so forth. This was most definitely not a get-rich-quick scheme. There wasn’t a resulting sudden surge of new clients but a new trend emerged. Most of our trekking occurred during the summer holidays, the time when Mamie and Papie – grandma and grandpa – are frequently left looking after the kids. They’d phone up and book a trek for themselves and however many grandkids they were stuck with. But, when they arrived, Mamie and Papie suddenly decided they wouldn’t come on the trek with us; they’d have a sit down on the bench in the garden and wait. So three or four of us would be childminding and llama/alpaca trekking for a couple of hours for a handful of euros. This was very not worthwhile.

For a while we tried open mornings on a Tuesday from ten till twelve, involving a free walk around the llama fields and a few activities for the kids. This was popular, and even the press came along, but despite us giving our guests an interesting and active couple of hours, they were loath to part with more than a couple of euros on the cheapest of our cheap goodies on sale, and sometimes not even that. Ruadhri did quite well though. A shameless salesman, he pushed his rock monsters (20 centimes) and painted horse mussel shells from our lake (30 centimes) and earned a good few euros in total. Possibly more than we did with the llama treks!

So, we weren’t going to get rich any time soon or even break even with the llamas and alpacas, although we had some great experiences. We did free visits for several groups of special needs adults and these were incredibly rewarding. They were entranced by the llamas and loved stroking all the smaller animals. They were so gentle with them. Unlike the group of local senior citizens we had round once. These were charming people, fascinated as equally by us as foreigners as with our llamas, but one of the old ladies had a ruthless streak. The guinea-pigs were out on the lawn in their run with plenty of shade and a length of drainpipe to give them somewhere to go for burrow-like security. Well, the old biddies swooped with glee on our unsuspecting cavies. Seeing the grey-haired horde descending, with a clatter of walking sticks and creaking of joints as accompaniment, the animals sensibly dashed into their drainpipe for safety. Our resolute old dear wasn’t having that. She grabbed hold of the drainpipe and began waving it around, using pretty significant G-forces to try and dislodge the critters inside. They must have been spread-eagled, bracing themselves against the slippery sides of the drainpipe to try and stay put. I leapt forward and managed to prise the drainpipe off her, fortunately before she sent guinea-pigs flying through the air and landing on her colleagues’ heads as living wigs or splattering against the house walls and windows. The kids quickly distracted G-force Gertie and her cronies with the more easily accessible and robust kitties. I peered into the pipe at its shivering, hyperventilating, traumatised inhabitants, frankly amazed they were still alive. The guinea-pigs got over their shock, eventually, but I’m sure those concerned passed on the horror story to their youngsters (of which there were a lot, despite our best efforts to the contrary) on dark, moonless nights to scare the living daylights out of them.

Around Easter every year I’d start getting calls from teachers of junior schools who had realised they couldn’t put off organising the yearly day out for their pupils any longer. In the last week or so of term, it’s a tradition for the children to have a jaunt. Rors has had some excellent trips over the years. His first one was to a paper mill and then a ragondin farm in the Auvergne. Ragondins are coypu, the mortal foe of any lake owner. They don’t eat the fish as they’re herbivores, but they dig ginormous burrows that wreck banks and can breach a dam. They’re officially vermin (nuisibles). We were somewhat concerned that our son was off to see a farm of them where you could stroke them and feed them. These things are giant rats! However, after dithering for a while, we gave the required parental authorisation and off Rors went to frolic amongst the large rodents. The day passed without incident and it turned out the majority of the ragondins were white ones. The only incident was when Rors threw up the moment he got off the coach. He’s always been a bad traveller. A few seconds earlier it would have been on the bus and therefore the teacher’s or bus driver’s responsibility to clean it up. But no, this was on neutral territory so it was my job, so off to the school cloakroom we went to mop him down. He’s also been to the amazing Beauval Zoo twice with school. This is a fantastic place and the ideal outing.

There have been some less-than-ideal ones. An overenthusiastic young