Just a thought but have you spoken to the local chambre d'agriculture (and your mairie about the accommodation) to see if they're ok with your plans and the MSA to get an idea of your cotisations for your charges sociales? Just a heads up as things work very differently in France! ;-)
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I live in the Dordogne and this evening I have to do watering again. Less than 10km away it has been raining considerably. I am not sure what the point about caves is, most of them created by the retreating glacial melt hundreds of thousands of years ago, but they are a useful place to be able to go in wet weather ;-)
Delighted that I messed up and booked the family in at Garden karting that day as OH very much wanted to watch the Tour at Monbazillac. La Douze was perfectly dry ....
But the situation is complicated by the Pyrénées with very large differences in rainfall in for example Biarritz and La Rochelle ;-)
Anywhere in the west which will get weather coming off the Atlantic will be wetter, as in the UK.
Hi, have a look at http://www.whatstheweatherlike.org/france/dordogne.htm. I have been there for two weeks in July and it has been raining 10 days, maybe just a bad summer and they have dozens of caves there.
Regards
Bernie
it's also the three hours east/south-east that makes so much difference ;-)
But there are those that wish to move their little bit of the UK to France refuse to integrate and live in little enclaves, now where have i heard that before about parts of the UK
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Give up Dordogneshire and head south to Pau and the BĂarn - more sun plus the Pyrenees!(and fewer English).
We live about 3 hours south in the Tarn and temperature differences from minus 18 to 44 one day walking around in Tshirt and shorts next day woolly pullys and snow in April. This year has been the worst summer i can remember with frequent monsoon downpours friend nr to Bordeaux tells me the worst July in the 40 years she has lived here, i have given up in the veg patch its now damage limitation to wet to do anything and by the time the sun comes out its waist high in weeds and the field is a law unto itself the goats were struggling to see above the grass but as i say three hours 200 miles makes a huge difference
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Not even 30km from you but we have had to water a lot despite the rain which has seldom been as much as needed. How much that varies is that the day of the Tour de France we went to Monbazillac to watch with friends. At first driving in a 40 minute cloudburst saw me travelling at about 5kph, fortunately using the tail lights of a police car in front for much of the way I was going. Then we stood in steady to heavy rain for several hours when we went to watch. When we went home, OH who had been there a large part of the day said there had not been a drop whilst she was there. That was less than 20km apart as the crow flies but entirely dissimilar.
Two of our cherry trees did spectacularly well, another was late but fine and a young tree really grew fast with the wet spring but has needed help. Early plums were a glut but the ones now are all full of worms. Friends about 12km away tell us almost the reverse story. The point is that variability is enormous at times in even what appears to be one patch of the department.
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I live on the edge of 24 and 33 and a short distance from David and will say that
winter was mild and summer a touch eccentric.
Not needing to water the land to keep it green....and not a great year for
the cherries.
We still manage to get around and do the things that are special about summer
in the countryside of France.
I did not come here for the weather.
In fact, the differences between say Nontron, Bergerac and Sarlat can be vast. We have basked in pleasant sun in February here between Bergerac and Sarlat whilst Nontron has been 'sub-Arctic' , Bergerac hidden by thick fog and Sarlat a solid sheet of ice but brilliant sun. The geophysical properties of this part of France and the different climatic conditions dictate that there is no such thing as a Dordogne meteorology that can be defined.
This site gives some pretty interesting detail. As others have already said, that part of France is somewhere between the UK and the Med but you need to come a lot further east to escape the effects of the Atlantic and to really escape it you need to get behind some hills, big hills! again as others have said - things seem to be changing everywhere - never seen such a bad summer before :-O and just take a look around at the vegetation and that'll tell you a lot ;-)
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Hi Paul and Jackie. Late response I know but only just discovered this site!
I bought a former fermette just north of Hautefort last summer so have had just over a year to experience the various turns in the local climate (not full-time yet unfortunately!) I have a 1ha plot on a fairly level site on the top of a hill (exposed to the east only) and absolutely no issues with flooding. The house is also of red sandstone (brasier) and the soil appears to be a light loam (red in colour) which is free draining. Seems very fertile and indeed it's quite a challenge keeping nature at bay. The rate of growth from April to July is staggering by most UK standards! Perhaps marginally acidic judging by the native plants growing here. Some of the old fruit trees that were left here seem to be flagging (cherries in particular) but that could just be due to neglect over the past few years. Walnuts (of course) thrive here as do apples, sloes, figs and blackberries (just to give an idea of the range). I am intending to attempt permaculture when I move here full-time and the site seems ideally suited to that.
One word sums up the local weather: variable! On the whole warmer and sunnier than either Suffolk (where I moved from) or London (where I work). Yes it is cold in the winter but no more so than southern England outside of the big towns (which benefit from the heat island effect). Of particularly importance from a horticultural perspective though is that the growing season is longer i.e. the summers are real summers and the winters relatively short. The older houses are well adapted to the local climate of course and maintain a fairly even temperature inside (this can be regulated using the obligatory shutters).
The main climatic hazard here is in fact from thunderstorms (orages) particularly those accompanied by hail (orages de grĂȘle). The thunderstorms threaten your electrical supply but the hailstones can damage not just plants/ crops but property; in fact a number of roofs were damaged in the area around Hautefort as a result of last summer's storms (hence the proliferation of green and blue tarpaulins!) Fortunately we just managed to avoid them.
Overall I think it's a noticeable improvement on the UK without being markedly different (like the Med).
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My waterproof shoes for dog walking have given up the ghost it is so wet.
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Wow!! That is a fantastic response Mike. I would gather from your detailed data on the weather that you are something of a weather enthusiast? The information you have given us is extremely helpful as it helps build up a picture of what the climate is like. As we intend to partly live off the land and also grow plants for sale to the public it is important that we gather as much detail as possible. In the UK there are many amateur weather enthusiasts who have their own websites with detailed and reliable data about long term weather and climate. We have found it hard to obtain this sort of data on a local scale for the Dordogne. If you know of any websites with historic weather data for the Dordogne (maybe you have one?) then that would be very helpful.
As for this winter, well it has been a shocker in the UK and is looking to be one of the mildest and wettest on record. In parts of Kent we have had 200% of normal winter rainfall and as for the south west, I am sure you have seen the weather reports from the UK with all the floods.
I believe most of Europe has been having a much milder winter than normal and the huge pool of cold energy over the USA (record breaking snow and cold) could be responsible for all the vigorous Atlantic weather fronts. Seems from the various replies to my thread that the Dordogne has not been spared the deluges!!
From a growing point of view, the verdant landscapes of the Dordogne suggest we will have no worries. We just have to choose the site carefully.
Regards Paul
Hello David.
We have not neglected this area of our research!! At the property we viewed last weekend near Hautefort, we took various small soil samples from around the seven acres of land!! These have been posted to our friend who lives and works in Lausanne. He is a soil scientist! From my knowledge so far the soil at the site appears to be a reddish clay and the local stone of which the cottage is built looks like red sandstone. Therefore I would expect the soil to be fertile but maybe slightly acidic, but I'm no soil scientist
According to the 'Atlas de La Dordogne' the geology around Hautefort is "Permien" era and the soil type is on ancient sediments or "sur sediments ancien."
We have also checked out the rainfall averages for the area (1981 to 1990), which comes in at 950 to 1000mm a year. Possibly climate change is affecting this, resulting in higher and more intense periods of rainfall and warmer temperatures. But who knows?
We have also recorded many of the tree and plant species at the site to get an idea of the plant communities present.
Paul