The Bugle Dordogne - June 2021

France celebrates Eurovision success Fans of the contest were still celebrating as Barbara Pravi came agonisingly close to the >> Page 4 country's first win since 1977.

Quarantine for British visitors

Fears over the Indian variant have led to a ban on non-essential journeys from the UK >> Page 8

November 2016 - Issue #85

Dordogne

Your local newspaper for life in France

June 2021 - Issue 96 - FREE!

No Brexit forms for visiting Brits

>> continued on page 7

Bordeaux space wine to auction for €1m - pg 9

Eurostar investment secures future - pg 12

Bear cub triplets born in Pyrenees - pg 13 @Gendarmerie (Twitter)

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can take up to a month to process and also require supporting documents from the host such as proof of address, income and right of residence. Once stamped, the form must then be forwarded to the guest before they travel so they can show it at the border, where officials are entitled to ask for it.

Only one form is required for a family, but groups of friends would need one each.

Spanish expats are even more upset: the equivalent forms in Spain cost €74 each. Further requirements are proof that you can fund your trip, a valid return ticket and an insurance certificate covering all medical and hospital

Major victory for breast implant victims - pg 5

Dordogne manhunt ends as armed fugitive shot - pg 3

Expats had been facing significant costs and complex forms when hosting friends and family from the UK, but it has now been confirmed a letter of invitation will suffice. here has been anger and confusion in recent weeks as it emerged that expats living in France would need to pay €30 for an official certificate every time friends or family visit from the UK. According to the government’s website, anyone in France hosting non-EU nationals who do not need a visa, must complete an attestation d’accueil (accommodation certificate) and submit it for approval at their local mairie.

The forms are not new and have existed for many years, but Britain leaving the EU has theoretically placed visiting Brits under these requirements. The attestations cost €30 each,

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2 ♦ IN THIS EDITION

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o near and yet so far.

After mentioning last month the possibility of the in-laws visiting for the first time in a year and a half and so ensuring that this editorial writes itself for at least one month!

- two contradictory headlines have made this both slightly easier and simultaneously impossible. On darker days, it really does feel like this is the pandemic that keeps on taking.

There was a lot of chatter online and in the press about the need for expats to apply for a special attestation at their local mairie every time they had friends or family to stay (see our lead story).

Not only would this have required numerous pieces of documentation and proof of income, it would also cost €30 a pop. Fortunately, it has now been confirmed that an official form is not required and that a simple letter of invitation should be enough for British visitors. Still a minor inconvenience, but one that I personally can live with.

And then, with flights starting up again and the in-laws both fully Microsoft-enabled by the NHS, summer plans slowly began to crystallise. Then came the news

that along with a number of EU countries, France was stopping all non-essential travel from the UK due to the rise of the Indian variant across the Channel (see page 8).

Tourism and visiting a second home both fall under the “nonessential” banner.

Without going into the politics of it all, it really does feel like the UK has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on this one by letting the Indian variant in. I just pray that it does not lead to a new wave of hospitalisations and deaths. The irony now is that the UK, despite having had such a huge head start on vaccinations, may well face greater travel restrictions this summer than the majority of the EU which will be free to holiday across the continent. This is of little compensation to those of us who had been so looking forward to seeing friends or loved ones... or even in-laws... from the UK over the summer.

There is still plenty of reason to be hopeful. As I write this, France has just vaccinated over 725,000 people in a single day and almost 40% of the country has now had at least one jab. By the time the summer holidays begin in a month’s time and the final restrictions are

lifted, a significant proportion of the population will have had their first injection and all the signs suggest the country is well on track to acquire herd immunity by the autumn (see page 7).

It is frustrating not to be able to make plans to see friends and family from the UK, but it does seem the sensible path to take in the short term to ensure we don’t relive the mistakes of the past. If the UK can get on top of the Indian variant in the coming weeks, I’m sure that authorities will be desperate to welcome British tourists back into the country over the summer, given their importance to the economy.

The light at the end of the tunnel may not be burning all that brightly, but it is there.

Elsewhere this month, I may have inadvertently made a Eurovision shaped rod for my own back. I’ve never been the biggest fan of the song contest, but I do always remember it being on every year when I was growing up. I’ve realised that I remember quite a few of our entries from back in the day and Terry Wogan’s arch commentary always made the viewing experience a fun one. As an aside, Graham Norton appears to have picked up that particular baton and run with it!

When the children came along, the 43 minutes of free time I would typically get every week was rarely invested in Eurovision and I can’t remember the last time I watched it. This year, for some reason, the kids were still awake and asked if they could stay up a bit. I naively said ‘yes’, forgetting just how bad some of the songs always are and that the whole camp spectacle lasts for hours and hours... and then

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But we did have an awful lot of fun and I’d completely forgotten that the voting is the best bit by a mile. In the interval between singing and voting, we decided to print off all the countries, put them in a hat and share them out, with a bar of chocolate the prize.

We did this relatively quickly, without realising that there is a one hour gap at this point. By the time the first set of judges performed their 10 seconds of pre-scripted “banter” with the hosts, it was already nudging midnight and I was nervously waiting for the bad parent alarm to sound.

But there was no school the next day, so what the heck, we’d already invested three hours in this, what was one more! As the results ebbed and flowed, the excitement and despair followed suit. At each mention of Malta, my daughter would leap off the sofa and punch the air, cheering for a country that she had not known existed earlier

that day.

It was a few hours of escapism that the kids loved and I must admit that their excitement was infectious and carried me along for the ride.

The only slight downside is that we may have created a family “ritual” for future years.

I also realised that they are more than happy to pick and choose their nationality when it suits them, abandoning the British “nul points” train early doors and proclaiming themselves citizens of the Republic as France battled for the win.

Until next month...

Steve Martindale, Editor www.thebugle.eu facebook.com/The BugleFrance

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FRENCH NEWS ♦ 3

JUNE 2021 ○ THE BUGLE ○ www.thebugle.eu

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he Dordogne was the scene of a huge manhunt at the end of May when an armed ex-soldier went on the run following a shoot-out with gendarmes. The drama finally came to an end on Monday 31st May when the fugitive was detained by specialist forces. The department’s prefect, Frédéric Périssat, told a press conference that the suspect had been shot and wounded after exchanging fire with police, and had been taken into custody. The former soldier had been on the run near the small town of Le Lardin-Saint-Lazare for over 24 hours.

The drama began at about midnight on the Saturday when 29-year-old Terry Dupin turned up at his former partner’s home, with whom he has three children, despite a restraining order following four previous domestic violence convictions, the most recent of which came in February. He then allegedly struck the woman and fired a Winchester hunting rifle at her new boyfriend, narrowly missing him. Dupin was wearing an electronic tag that informs police if he approaches his ex-partner, but which does not function as a track-

ing device.

When gendarmes arrived on the scene a short while later, Dupin fired at them before escaping into the nearby woods with the rifle, an unknown amount of ammunition and a hunting knife, sparking the huge manhunt. A photo of the suspect, who was described as armed and dangerous, was released by authorities and the 1,800 residents of Le Lardin-Saint-Lazare were ordered to stay indoors. Elite tactical units and 300 gendarmes, backed up by armoured vehicles, helicopters and sniffer dogs, sealed off the local area and surrounded the four square kilometres of dense and rocky woods where the fugitive was believed to be hiding.

Despite making contact several times with Dupin, who served in the French army between 2011 and 2016, shots were fired at the special forces and each time he escaped back into the dense terrain. “Contact had been established several times, but was followed by gunfire.

Every time we have had contact with him, he’s opened fire,” the prefect said. “We are faced with a tough, experienced individual, who is used to living autonomously for several days in the wild.”

@Gendarmerie (Twitter)

36-hour manhunt ends after fugitive is shot

The hunt came to an end on the Monday when the suspect left the woods and came towards a unit of the GIGN, the elite tactical unit of the Gendarmerie, apparently with little regard for his own life. “On contact with the GIGN, the man fired several shots towards them.

A member of the unit returned fire, neutralising the suspect,” explained General André Pétillot,

commander of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Gendarmerie. Sources are reported by Sud Ouest to have said the man was shot through the throat before being evacuated by helicopter to Bordeaux hospital in a “very serious condition”.

One local, who knew the suspect, had no doubt that Dupin had been attempting to commit “suicide by police”. “I’m absolutely convinced

that Terry wanted the police to kill him,” the man said. “He finally realised that his ex was never going to take him back and that his life was over.”

Fortunately for everyone else concerned there were no injuries to gendarmes or members of the public, although a police helicopter and several cars were struck by bullets. ■

4 ♦ FRENCH NEWS

www.thebugle.eu ○ THE BUGLE ○ JUNE 2021

France celebrates rare Cryptic tweet reveals Eurovision success new Lupin episodes

the congratulations: “A huge bravo and thank you to Ms Pravi for achieving this crazy dream.

This mad dream to make France shine at Eurovision. Tonight, it is also a mad dream to be able to celebrate together again, as Europeans.”

“Barbara was an excellent choice. We were all behind her,” enthused the secretary of the Barbara Pravi fan club. “I was in the arena, there was nothing else to say. It was magnificent. It was our culture. That was the image of France that we wanted to show when abroad, and we are totally satisfied.”

“To come in first is not something you expect, so obviously, when I was so close, I started to tremble and think: ‘Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s me.’

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But to come in second, I am thrilled,” the singer said after the event. “In this competition, from the start, I have done what I wanted. I decided on the scenography, the staging... so I am thrilled, thrilled, thrilled.”

The contest was being held against a backdrop of Brexit, and while everyone was at pains to distance the competition from politics, it was notable that there were fewer songs in English than has typically been the case – the top three songs from Italy, France and Switzerland were all sung in their respective national languages.

And spare a thought James Newman: the British singer was the only one of the 26 participating countries to receive the dreaded “nul points”! ■

credit: Emmanuel Guimier/NETFLIX

Screenshot (France2)

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he Eurovision Song Contest has often been a painful experience for the larger European nations in recent decades as “smaller” countries vote politically for their neighbours and the public gets behind novelty acts. Germany did win the competition in 2010, although only for the second time in its history, and the UK has not made the top three since 2002. France has fared even worse, however, with their last win coming all the way back in 1977.

Those “43 years of hurt” almost came to an end this year when Barbara Pravi came agonisingly close, finishing as runner up despite being awarded the highest ever song contest score for a French song.

Her Edit Piaf-inspired ballad, Voilà, earned 499 points in total – 248 from juries and 251 from the public. There was hope for French fans at the halfway stage after the jury voting, with their song in a strong second place, just behind the surprisingly popular Swiss entry. Despite overtaking Switzerland and holding off third-placed Malta in the public vote, the Italian entry jumped all three to take the trophy.

French Eurovision fans were quick to celebrate the achievement, with Emmanuel Macron leading

I

t is one of the biggest hits of the year so far and now fans of the Netflix series Lupin can finally look forward to the next instalment of the mystery thriller. The show amassed more than 70 million views in its first three weeks when it was released in January, beating records set by other smash hits such as The Queen’s Gambit and Bridgerton.

When the first five episodes dropped, Netflix promised that the remainder of the first season would be made available “in the summer”, leaving fans waiting to see what lay in store for the titular hero as he appeared to face certain arrest. In keeping with the feel of the show, the streaming service announced new episodes online with a typically enigmatic tweet. “If you are wondering 'when', it is because you have seen but not looked”, the tweet read, alongside an image of the lead character on a roof top. Internet sleuths were quick to notice that the tweet was sent at 11:06... the new episodes will be released on 11th June.

The character Lupin, a suave “gentleman thief” who regularly outfoxes the detectives chasing him, was created by writer Maurice

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Leblanc in 1905 and appears in 17 mystery novels and multiple short stories by the author. The current adaptation has been set in the modern day, but the other significant change made by producers is to cast Omar Sy in the lead role. Not only has a black actor been cast in what has traditionally been seen as a white role, the lead character regularly uses racist bias to his advantage, successfully disguising himself as a janitor, a food delivery driver, and a prison inmate to steal what he needs to settle a debt.

In the contemporary setting, Omar Sy plays Assane Diop, the son of a Senegalese immigrant who was wrongly framed for the theft of a priceless diamond necklace and took his own life in prison. As an adult Assane uses his sharp wits and sleight-of-hand skills to seek revenge, inspired by his childhood hero, Lupin.

The first five episodes are currently available to watch on Netflix in French, with English subtitles, or with an English dub. The show has been so successful internationally that there are already rumours of a second series being planned. ■

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FRENCH NEWS ♦ 5

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PIP implant victims win major legal battle

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housands of victims of the PIP breast implant scandal were celebrating in May following a significant win in their longrunning battle for compensation.

The case in Paris was brought by 2,700 women who said they had suffered long-term health effects after receiving implants manufactured by a French firm which were filled with cheap, industrialgrade silicone.

While the implants hadn’t been cleared for human use, they had been certified as safe by Germany company, TÜV Rheinland, which was first brought to court a decade ago over its role in the scandal. The appeal court upheld a previous ruling against the company, which had maintained its innocence, arguing that it was responsible only for monitoring the manufacturing process and not the content or quality of the implants. TÜV Rheinland now faces significant compensation costs against the victims.

The company at the heart of the scandal, Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP), filed for bankruptcy in 2010 when news of the faulty implants first hit the headlines.

PIP's founder Jean-Claude Mas was later given a four-year prison

sentence for his role in the fraud.

He died in 2019. At the height of its powers, PIP was the world's third largest supplier of silicone breast implants, but cut costs for over a decade by using an illegal concoction of industrial and agricultural silicone not fit for use in humans. At around €5 per litre, it was seven times cheaper than medical-grade silicone - a costcutting measure that saved the company millions of euros per year.

The scandal came to light after surgeons warned authorities there was an abnormally high rupture rate among PIP implants. Gendarmes searching the business in southern France then found cans of industrial silicone in a van.

Soon afterwards, the company was closed and its products taken off the market. A subsequent investigation would reveal that the implants had a rupture rate as high as 30%, far higher than the industry average.

The most recent legal victory involved more than 500 British victims, but paves the way for compensation for many more. As many as 400,000 women in some 65 countries have been affected, including almost 50,000 in the UK. “It’s been a very long jour-

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ney,” said Jan Spivey, who was given PIP implants after she had a mastectomy following a breast cancer diagnosis. After developing aching joints, pain and fatigue the implants were removed at which point it became clear they had been leaking silicone into her body. “We’ve been in and out of court, and that’s been really difficult for women. We’ve got health issues and we’ve got lots of other responsibilities too. PIP has had an impact on the whole of our

lives.”

“We are delighted with this outcome which definitively puts an end to the doubts about TÜV’s responsibility,” said Olivier Aumaître, the lawyer who represented the women. “After 10 years of waiting and fierce combat, the German certifier will have to fully compensate the victims.”

Silicone has been found to have even leached into the bodies of women whose implants had remained intact, with victims re-

porting cases of auto-immune disease, cancer scares and prolonged anxiety. The PIP Implant World Victims Association (PIPA) has reported that rates of autism among children who were breastfed by mothers with PIP implants were far higher than normal rates.

A first ruling on compensation is expected in September, but PIPA has said damages ranging between 20,000 and 70,000 euros were being sought for each victim. ■

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6 ♦ FRENCH NEWS

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FRENCH NEWS ♦ 7

JUNE 2021 ○ THE BUGLE ○ www.thebugle.eu

No forms required Herd immunity by for visiting Brits the end of summer >> continued from pg 1 expenses you may incur. “Sufficient funds” are defined by the government as €120 per person per day without a hotel booking, €65 with a valid hotel booking covering the whole of the trip, or €32.50 with an attestation d’accueil. How travellers prove these funds is not clear, but it is believed that a valid debit or credit card may well be sufficient in the majority of cases.

Second home owners visiting their property do not need the attestation, but may be asked for proof of ownership, such as a tax form or utility bill.

Many commentators were quick to suggest that while the forms were technically required, border officials were unlikely to ask for the documentation from travelling Brits, given their importance to the tourist industry. While this may or may not be the case – not enough people have travelled yet to build a reliable picture - the law is clear: non-EU nationals without a valid attestation travelling to visit friends or family in France could legitimately be turned away at the border if they do not have the correct documentation.

Following numerous requests for clarification, a senior spokeswoman at the Interior Ministry finally confirmed in late May that a simple “host’s invitation” could replace the attestation d’accueil in most cases.

The bureaucratic technicalities revolve around Annex 1 of the Schengen Borders Code (SBC), which says a host’s written invitation is sufficient for border checks on nonEU visitors entering the Schengen area to stay with members of the

public.

“The response I’ve had is that a host’s invitation can effectively constitute a document for private travel in the sense of the SBC’s Annex 1,” the spokeswoman confirmed.

“Even so, in this case people will have to show proof of having at least €120 per day of their stay. This is why it can be of interest for people with limited means to still ask their host to obtain an attestation d’accueil at the mairie.”

In any event, if you are hosting friends or family, it would be prudent and sensible to at the very least provide them with a short letter of invitation stating your name, address and contact details before they travel.

In better news for visitors this summer, the government has announced that it will be providing free PCR tests to everyone, whatever their reason for visiting France.

PCR tests are often required before returning home and France is one of the only countries in the world to offer them for free: they cost up to €120 in Spain, £100 in the UK and €300 in Sweden.

“We need and we want to continue to be the first tourist destination in Europe and the world, in safe conditions,” announced Europe Minister Clément Beaune, although he did not specify how the free testing would work for non-residents. France already offers some of the cheapest PCR tests in Europe: many testing centres offer tests for free while others, particularly pharmacies, charge customers a fee, which residents of France can fully reclaim via their carte vitale. Testing prices are capped at €54 for PCR tests, €38 for the rapid result antigen tests and €6 for home-testing kits. ■

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s the recent spike in Covid cases recedes and the country gears up for summer, there is increasing optimism that the beginning of the end of the pandemic is well and truly in sight. Coronavirus will almost certainly never fully disappear and it is likely that the elderly and vulnerable may need annual jabs, but according to leading scientists, France is on track to achieve herd immunity in the next few months.

Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, a leading virologist and president of the comité scientifique sur les vaccins anti-Covid-19, recently said that the country ought to achieve herd immunity “by the end of the summer”. As France set another daily vaccination record of 672,000 in late-May and with vaccinations now opened up to all over 18s, the scientist asserted: “If we continue at this pace, we really are on the right track.”

There is no fixed definition of herd immunity, but the term is used to define when a population is effectively protected from a virus or disease through natural immunity, vaccination, or immunity from prior infection. The medical consensus is that when 8090% of people have one of these forms of immunity, the virus can not spread through the population, effectively giving everyone immunity.

Key in the next step of the battle is to vaccinate the younger generations. While they may not suffer severe side-effects, young people do catch, carry and transmit the disease, keeping it alive in the wider population. “We need young people to want to be vaccinated because we need 80% of the population to be vaccinated to achieve this herd immunity, which would almost completely prevent the virus from circulating,” Dr Marie-Paule Kieny explained. “For that to happen, it is not just the elderly who need to be vaccinated, it has to be young people. So, if young people understand that to be able to go out, to be able to go back to a more normal life, they have to get vaccinated, I think that's very good.”

There was further good news when the Institut Pasteur research centre revealed that new modelling data suggested that the UK variant – currently the most dominant variant in France – will not result in another spike in infections. The scientists have concluded that, if the vaccination campaign continues at its current pace, there will be an “acceleration of the decline in the epidemic” and that there will likely not be “a significant uptick of the epidemic due to the B.1.1.7 (UK) variant”.

While the mood is increasingly positive as the country heads towards the lifting of all restrictions at the end of June, other factors could still throw the country off track.

Potential problems include a reluctance or refusal by the public to be vaccinated, or the emergence of new variants such as the Brazilian or Indian ones – neither is currently established in significant numbers in France, or presents a major threat. ■

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F

rance has become the latest country to place restrictions on UK travellers due to growing fears over the Indian variant of Covid-19. Clément Beaune, the French Europe minister, announced that from Monday 31st May, travellers arriving from the UK who are not either French nationals or residents will have to demonstrate an essential reason for their journey. Leisure travel and visiting a second home are not currently considered essential.

The government’s official spokesman, Gabriel Attal, had earlier said that there was “a new situation with the progression of the so-called Indian variant in the UK”, adding that Germany had already imposed strict controls on visitors from Britain and that France was taking “similar measures”.

From June, anyone arriving from the UK with a valid reason must provide a negative PCR test taken no more than 48 hours prior to travel and then self-isolate for 7 days on arrival at a predeclared address. While there is no obligation to go into a hotel,

self-isolation will be closely supervised by police and anyone who is not at their registered quarantine location will face a fine starting at €1,000.

There has been anger in the tourist industry at the move, but the decision to exercise caution has been welcomed by most experts, especially given the impact the UK variant had on the situation on this side of the Channel earlier this year. The numbers were very low in France, but when the significantly more transmissible UK variant took hold in France, numbers shot up and quickly led to the most recent lockdown.

“If there’s one thing we’ve learned today, it’s that the lessons of the past have not been applied to the present,” a spokesperson for Brittany Ferries said. “The unwelcome move

by France to tighten travel restrictions is a direct consequence of the failure of the UK to put India on the red list immediately following the emergence of the terrible and urgent health crisis unfolding in India.”

“There are also indications that this variant spreads a bit more

credit: Benoit Tessier

France places restrictions on UK visitors

easily than the previous ones. It’s unclear exactly how much, but it looks like it’s a bit more transmissible. So, altogether it seems a bit worse so I can understand why the French authorities want to limit importation of it in order to progress with the vaccination programme,” said Dr Marc Baguelin, an infectious diseases specialist at Imperial College

London. “Things may change once we know more about the variant and once France increases its vaccination coverage sufficiently to take that into account. If cases remain very low in the UK then they would probably revise their position as well.

There is an economic element to consider as well – there’s a fine balance between not want-

ing a resurgence of a bad variant and at the same time it’s not in [France's] interest to block travellers coming indefinitely. It’s really a race between vaccinating and opening up the economy.”

There has so far been no indication of when the restrictions on UK travellers may be lifted, or what conditions would need to be met. ■

FRENCH NEWS ♦ 9

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Bordeaux space wine to auction for €1 million

A

bottle of Bordeaux red wine which spent 14 months aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is due to be auctioned and is expected to sell for as much as €1 million.

Auction house Christie's confirmed that it would be putting the Château Pétrus 2000 under the hammer, with the proceeds of the sale going towards funding further space experiments.

“We've had quite a lot of inquiries,” said Tim Triptree, a wine expert at the famous auctioneer, who added that the bottle will appeal to both wine connoisseurs and those with a keen interest in space. “This is just a unique piece of space history. It's a one of a kind opportunity.”

Not only will the lucky winner become the proud owner of extra-terrestrial wine, but they will also be able to house the bottle in a custom-made trunk complete with a decanter, glasses and a corkscrew made from a meteorite. Designed by Les Ateliers Victor, the trunk is the result of more than 900 hours of work and designed to include “a secret vault hidden behind a solar system inspired by Jules Verne”, according to the company’s CEO, Benoît Miniou.

A run-of-the-mill earth-based Pétrus 2000 would usually set you back around €6,000, but the rarity of the space wine accounts for its eye-watering price tag. The bottle was one of just 12 that spent 440 days aboard

the ISS before returning safely in January this year and is the only one that will be sold to a private collector. Three of the bottles were opened for private tasting by experts earlier this year and the remaining 8 will be part of studies in Bordeaux to investigate the effects of zero-gravity on agricultural products.

At the blind tastings held in March, experts were invited to sample the space wine alongside another glass of the same variety that had stayed on terra firma, but were only told which was which after the event. The consensus among the experts was that there was a noticeable difference in the character of the wine after orbiting the Earth in zero gravity for more than a year.

“I found there was a difference in both colour and aromatics and also in taste,” concluded one member of the group, wine writer Jane Anson, who believed that the adventure had added a few years to the wine's maturity. “It just felt a little bit older, a bit more evolved than the wine that had remained on Earth. It's hard for me to say if it was better or worse, but it was definitely different. The aromatics were more floral and more smoky - the things that would happen anyway to Pétrus as it gets older.”

SpaceX launched the bottles of wine into space in November 2019 as part of an experiment run by the start-up Space Cargo Unlimited. The bottles were later joined by

320 Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon vine canes and spent 14 months orbiting the Earth. “Our goal is to tackle the solution of how we're going to have an agriculture tomorrow that is both organic and healthy and able to feed humanity, and we think space has the key,” said Nicolas Gaume, CEO and co-founder of Space Cargo Unlimited.

THE GREAT PHOENIX BOOK FAIR

NEW DATE

Saturday, July 3rd 2021

Château Pétrus is the most famous winery in the Pomerol Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC), an area outside Bordeaux known for its production of Merlot-based fine wines. The Château Pétrus estate only produces around 30,000 bottles of wine a year, and is consistently ranked among the most expensive in the world. ■

CHANGE OF DATE - 3RD JULY

D

ue to the continuing Covid restrictions, the next Great Phoenix Book Fair will now take place on Saturday 3rd July in the grounds of the salle municipale, Campsegret, on the N21 just north of Bergerac. All existing Click and Collect orders will be carried forward. If you wish to change an existing order or place a new one (English language fiction only), please send details of the books you would like to buy to geoff.hall@orange.fr by 5 pm on Wednesday 30th June.

Books can be collected at Campsegret on the day of the Book Fair or from our book store facility in Bergerac (43, rue Rodolphe Bruzac) on Friday afternoons during July.

For those coming to the Fair, you will find over 20,000 used books in excellent condition – fiction, non-fiction, children’s, French, Dutch, antiquarian, collectibles, cookery, history and many more. You’ll also find DVDs, CDs and vinyls, jigsaws, children’s games, bric-a-brac, plants and cards. Prices start at 1€.

All proceeds from the Book Fair will go to the Phoenix Association to continue the work of caring for and rehoming animals in need. ■

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Belgian farmer redefines French border

credit: David Lavaux (Facebook)

F

ears of a border dispute between France and Belgium were short lived recently after authorities on both sides of the frontier saw the funny side of a potential diplomatic incident. The border between the two countries was fixed 200 years ago following Napoleon's defeat at the battle of Waterloo, and the 620-kilometre boundary is marked by a series of engraved stones.

One of these huge stones was moved recently by a Belgian farmer, increasing the size of his country by several metres and shrinking that of France.

The farmer had apparently grown frustrated at the stone getting in the way of his tractor and had moved it out of the way, along with his own boundary fence. He might have got away with the annexation it if it wasn't for a local amateur historian. Taking a walk in the forest near the Belgian village of Erquelinnes, the enthusiast noticed that the stone dating back to 1819 had been moved 2.29 metres.

The Belgian farmer could theoretically face criminal charges after making Belgium bigger, but local offi-

cials were quick to downplay the land-grab. While amused by the enlargement of his town, David Lavaux, the mayor of Erquelinnes, gently encouraged the farmer to move the border stone back, adding that it would be best “not to create a diplomatic incident”. “We have no interest

in expanding the town, or the country. He made Belgium bigger and France smaller.

It’s not a good idea,” Lavaux told the French TV channel TF1. “I was happy, my town was bigger. But the mayor of Bousignies-sur-Roc didn’t agree. If the farmer shows goodwill, he won’t have a

problem, we will settle this issue amicably!”

Although unlikely, should the farmer decide that he does not want to replace the border stone, the case could end up at the Belgian foreign ministry, which would have to summon a FrancoBelgian border commission.

Dordogne canteens lead the way serving local, organic school meals

Cité scolaire Alcide Dusolier / @EcoAlcide (Twitter)

I

n recent years the Dordogne has led the way in placing a greater emphasis on the quality of the food eaten by its students. In 2019, the Pierre-Fanlac collège in Belvès became the first canteen in the country to serve 100% local, organic meals at lunchtime and in May, the cité scolaire Alcide Dusolier in Nontron – which comprises both a collège and a lycée - became the first establishment of its type in France to also receive the prestigious Ecocert cuisine 100% bio award.

Work has been under way for over a year to build direct partnerships with a dozen-or-so local producers, as well as other local businesses and associations. The result is that on one recent menu, endive in walnut oil, mustard-roasted veal and eggs Mimosa were on offer to the 600 hungry mouths the canteen serves each day, with all the ingredients both certified organic and locallysourced.

Furthermore, quality does not need to come at a price. By dealing direct with the local producers, the prices at the canteen have not gone up this year. In fact, there is a separate, ongoing project to bring the cost of a meal down to just €1.

“It has been a wonderful adventure involving a huge amount of work,” explained Véronique Labarre, secretary of the canteen. “The kitchen staff had to learn to cook in a very different way so that ingredients are all in season and none are prepacked in plastic. We introduced the change to the pupils very rapidly, in January. They have taken a little time to get used to the new-style menus, but they are beginning to really appreciate them.”

One student told Franceinfo: “Three years ago, it was more industrial, more chips, more frozen meats. Now everything is good, tasty.”

In total, 30 schools across the department now have the Ecocert award and authorities are working with all schools towards building healthy, local and sustainable menus. The only other Ecocert cuisine 100% bio canteen in the department belongs to the Jean Rostand collège in MontponMénestérol. ■

The commission has not convened since 1930, and would need to uphold the conditions of the Treaty of Kortrijk, signed in 1820 after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo five years earlier and which defined a border that has remain unchanged ever since. ■

Three lakes awarded Pavillon bleu flag Three swimming lakes in the Dordogne will be able to raise the prestigious Pavillon bleu flag this summer. The awards are handed out each year to beaches, ports and lakes that not only have quality water for swimming, but also a sustainable tourism project that respects the environment and local populations. In order to win the right to fly the coveted Blue Flag, an area must meet a strict set of criteria including frequent water quality tests, the regular cleaning of beaches and banks, a sufficient number of bins and suitable entertainment for children.

It was mixed news for the department as the lac de Gurson at Carsac-de-Gurson regained the award, but the lakes at SaintSaud-Lacoussière and SaintEstèphe lost their accreditation.

Le Grand Étang at La JemayePonteyraud and l’étang de loisirs at Tamniès retained the Pavillon bleu flags they held last year.

The internationally recognised award has been in operation for 36 years and provides a guaranteed boost to tourism, both from within France and further afield.

The swimming lake at Tamniès was the first in the Dordogne to be awarded a Pavillon bleu flag in 2011. ■

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FRENCH NEWS ♦ 11

12 ♦ FRENCH NEWS

Trump supporters want waxwork head

Facebook (Come to Paris)

Eurostar secures future with significant investment

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E

urostar, the operator which runs passenger trains through the Channel Tunnel, appears to have avoided financial ruin after securing a €290 million investment. The company, which had been on the verge of bankruptcy, said the funds provided by shareholders and banks would “secure Eurostar’s future”.

Eurostar has continued to run a skeleton service between France, London and Belgium during the pandemic, but with severe restrictions on international travel, revenues have plummeted. The train company typically transports 11 million passengers a year, but this dropped by 95% post-pandemic resulting in an annual decrease in revenue from €1.1 billion to just €220 million in 2020.

The London-based company has struggled to access government financial aid due to its ownership structure, with both the British and French governments reluctant to assume sole responsibility for bailing it out. The operator was launched as a joint venture between the French and British governments, but whilst

the French state operator SNCF today owns 55% of the company, the British part was sold off to private investors, the largest of which is a Canadian institutional fund manager which has a 30% stake. This has made statebacked aid almost impossible to secure in the UK – the company is British registered, but “foreign-owned”. At the same time the French government was reluctant to give help to a UK company when Brexit meant that guarantees available under the European Union were no longer valid.

According to the company, the recent injection of capital will help it meet its financial commitments in the “short and medium-term” and there are plans to start running more trains between Paris and London over the summer.

The company also said that it will use part of the refinancing package to restart the proposed merger with the Thalys rail network, called Green Speed 3. This would allow single ticket bookings between Eurostar and Thalys trains, which run much further afield between France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany. ■

A

campaign is under way by supporters of Donald Trump to buy his waxwork head from a Parisian museum. When the Grévin Wax Museum re-opened to the public in May, visitors were greeted by a grinning President Biden and further down the hall could be found a serenely smiling Barrack Obama, with Trump conspicuous by his absence.

As is customary for former American presidents, the wax statue had been removed from display in January when Trump's term in office came to an end and was placed in storage. Since opening in 1882, the museum has featured every US president since James Garfield, but when their term ends, their statue is usually taken down, with the heads and bodies kept in separate crates in the building's cellars. “We have kept Obama, as a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize; the others are in storage,” a spokesperson for the museum said.

The curator of the Musée Grévin, Yves Delhommeau, came to the attention of Trump supporters after a series of tongue-in-cheek comments about the waxwork. After initially joking that the statue had “taken a lot of hair” to create, a subsequent suggestion that the museum may re-use the statue as part of a Hallowe'en display drew anger from pro-Trump followers on Twitter. This led to numerous unsolicited emails and telephone calls from people wanting to buy the statue. “Some even managed to find the telephone number of my home, including one Englishman who was very determined!” the curator said. “The museum does not sell its statues. We do not play politics.”

Among the museum's 250 or so celebrities and historical figures, political leaders are relatively rare. French President Emmanuel Macron is present, as are German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping, but British Prime Minister Boris Johnson does not feature. Former French President François Hollande is no longer on display, but his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy is, but only because he appears alongside his model and singer wife Carla Bruni. ■

Compulsory black boxes for new EU cars from 2022

T

he European Parliament has voted to make black boxes compulsory in all new vehicles from May 2022 and in all second-hand cars from May 2024. The recorders, which are in reality a small chip inside a crash-proof box, can not be deactivated; they will be installed in an area inaccessible to the car owner and will record a number of measurements for the 30 seconds before and after any crash.

The data recorded includes the speed of the vehicle, the angle of the steering wheel, whether the car was accelerating or braking, if seatbelts were being worn and the GPS coordinates of where the accident occurred. Unlike the black box recorders in airplanes, no audio will be recorded at any point.

Privacy campaigners were quick to denounce the new law, but the European Parliament has specified that only police have the right to access information from the black boxes and that no information can be passed on to third parties, such as insurance providers. Furthermore, the boxes will not have identification numbers that allow

them to be linked to a specific vehicle or driver.

The new legislation will save “thousands of lives” according to the Polish MEP Roza Thun who backed the changes: “It's great news and goes further than we had hoped.”

Typically, when both parties contest the facts of an accident, several experts costing many thousands of euros each will have to submit detailed reports, an expensive process that can take years and still not come to a definitive solution.

“Following an accident, the new chip will be able to give us evidence and not theories,” argued Philippe Courtois, a lawyer from the National Road Victims Federation. “We will know, in the absence of witnesses, if a driver was going too fast or did not break in time. This will stop victims being falsely accused and may also lead to drivers lifting their foot a little bit.”

Integrating the black boxes into new vehicles should be relatively cheap and simple, but there are fears that the cost of retro-fitting them when selling second-hand vehicles from 2024 will add significantly to the sale price. ■

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FRENCH NEWS ♦ 13

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t has been a pledge in the last three Conservative Party manifestos, but the thorny issue of Votes for Life could soon be finally settled after the British government included the policy change in its recent Queen's Speech. When the current rules are changed, some three million British expats living abroad for more than 15 years will finally have the right to vote in UK elections... and referendums!

The victory is particularly sweet for 99-year-old World War II veteran Harry Shindler, who has fought for expat voting rights for 20 years, taking his case before the High Court in 2016 and the European Court of Justice in 2018. The tireless campaigner revealed he had received a “nice, friendly letter” from Boris Johnson in January telling him he planned to make good on the promise made in three Conservative Party election manifestos. “He said many expats worked very hard for their

country and have retired abroad and decided to finish off their days somewhere else, but that they had made a contribution to their country. He said to me: ‘You, among others, fought for your country and to take away your voting rights is a bit much.’

He was really frank and did say the law would be changed and we could all vote in the next election. My 100th birthday is in July and I’d hope it will be over by then, but we’ve been patient for 20 years and can be patient for another couple of months if necessary.”

Although the change has been included in previous manifestos, the way the parliamentary cycle operates in the UK means that any legislation that has not passed when parliament is prorogued and a new session begins, is dropped and must be put forward again. With the Votes for Life pledge now in the Queen's Speech, and with Chancellor Rishi Sunak setting aside money for the change, it looks

very likely that this time voting rights will indeed be restored for millions of expats. “The government is providing an additional £2.5 million to remove the limit preventing British citizens who live overseas from voting after 15 years,” the chancellor confirmed earlier this year while announcing the budget.

The move has been cautiously welcomed by campaign groups, although some are unhappy that the change is being bundled in with a separate one which will require voter ID at polling stations. Opponents argue that this move is designed to make it harder for already marginalised people to vote and could disenfranchise younger and poorer voters who do not have passports or driving licences. “We fully support modernising the UK voting system, which is a hot mess of contradiction and inconsistency,” said campaign group British in Europe following the news. “In principle, measures that expand the franchise to in-

credit: www.gov.uk

Longterm expats to finally get Votes For Life

clude UK citizens or residents of voting age are long overdue and welcome. Restoring our votes for life would be the first step towards recognising the pivotal role that we can play. Furthermore, what happens in the UK affects us. 80% of the 1.2 million British nationals in continental Europe are working age or younger. Many of us pay or have paid taxes and national insurance in the UK, meaning tax and pen-

sion changes affect us equally.”

“However, as supporters of expanding the franchise we have huge concerns about the purported content of the Electoral Integrity Bill,” the group continued.

“This contains measures that appear to be designed to make it harder for certain groups of the UK population to vote. Getting our vote back matters hugely: but not at the price of other people’s ability to vote at all.” ■

Bear cub triplets Rare eagle-owl released in Creuse born in Pyrenees

Martin Mecnarowski (WikiCommons)

A

nimal rights campaigners were celebrating recently following the news that a bear introduced into the Pyrenees in 2018 has had three cubs. Sorita, a brown bear who was brought to France from Slovenia, was captured by an automatic camera with her three young children, which experts believe will have been born in January or February of this year.

The identity of the bears' father is unknown, but three mature males are known to currently be living in the northwestern Pyrenees: Rodrigue, Néré and Cannellito.

Scientists will now attempt to recover samples of excrement or fur to establish the genetic line of the new cubs.

It is not Sorita's first experience of motherhood; she did give birth to two cubs shortly after her arrival in the Pyrenees, but these were killed by Néré, probably out of jealousy because he was not the father.

Although bear numbers have been steadily increasing in the Pyrenees in recent years – there are currently believed to be 64 on both sides of the border – these are the first bears to be born in the northwest of the mountain range on the French side since 2004. It is also the first time three cubs have been born together in the area since the 1970s.

Although once common in the mountains, by 1995 there were as few as a dozen brown bears remaining in the Pyrenees before concerted efforts began to re-establish the animal in its once native territory. The government initiative has often put it at odds with the local farming community who complain that the animals kill “hundreds” of their sheep each year. It is illegal to shoot bears in France, but there have been three deaths in the last year, at least two of which were found to be from gunshot wounds. ■

L

cal lovers of wildlife in the region have been celebrating the heart-warming story of the rare eagle-owl nursed back to health thanks to a member of the public, a generous local vet and an HauteVienne based charity. The story began on 2nd April when a resident of Cressat, Creuse found the owl trapped in barbed wire while out walking – the bird would almost certainly have died without the anonymous person's intervention.

With wounds to its wings, the bird was first taken to a veterinary surgery in Guéret, which treated the injured male for free before handing it over to the centre SOS faune sauvage in Verneuil-sur-Vienne just outside Limoges.

Once virtually extinct in the area, eagle-owls are the larg-

est nocturnal birds in Europe, with a wingspan of up to 1.6 metres. “It's a very rare species,” said Jérôme Yvernault, an agent from the national biodiversity office. “Today there are perhaps between 10 and 15 mating pairs in the department. In the 1980s there were only a couple of birds, it was very nearly extinct in the area.”

After a successful recovery at the charity's wildlife centre, the bird was brought back to Cressat before being released back into the wild on 17th May. The location was a good one for eagle-owls, whose ideal habitat are rocky outcrops, or, as is the case with Cressat, open quarries.

The birds have a varied diet, but will feed mainly on small mammals such as voles, rats, mice, rabbits and hares. ■

14 ♦ FRENCH LIFE

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W

Summer Strawberries

by Julia Watson

e’re in the pink! It’s come around again, strawberry season. The Dordogne may lay claim to strawberries understandably, given they’re accorded DOC status. But they were first bred in Brittany, in the 1750s. Up till then, wild strawberries were the common fruit.

It’s an ancient one. Roman literature mentions it in reference to medicinal application. What diseases they used it to cure isn’t known, but from the 1600s on, the entire plant was applied in the treatment of depression. It appears in 15th century illuminated manuscripts by European monks.

It shows up in works of the same period by English miniaturists and in paintings by Italian, Flemish and German artists. Charles V, who ruled France from 1364 to 1380, had 12000 strawberry plants in his royal garden.

The gourmet who came up with the heavenly combination of strawberries and cream was an archbishop, Thomas Wolsey, cardinal of the Catholic Church, controller of the affairs of state of the English court of Henry VIII and eventually charged with treason, a regular habit of that monarch. Luckily for Wolsey, he died on his way back to London to answer the charges.

A common garden fruit, strawberries are, uncommonly, both masculine and feminine. The very first species was the wild woodland strawberry, Fragaria vesca. Originally, these male woodland strawberries were crossed with the male Fragaria virginiana from the state of Virginia in north-east America to cultivate a larger fruit than the wild variety.

F. virginiana is one of the two great New World ancestors without which we wouldn’t have the strawberry of today, and the many varieties found across south-west France. The other ancestor is the female Fragaria chiloensis, the beach strawberry, brought from Chile in 1714 by AmédéeFrançois Frézier, French military engineer, mathematician, spy, and explorer, whose

name is now theirs, albeit spelled differently.

(This is for those of you who enjoy pop quizzes.)

The Mapuche and Huilliche Indians of Chile had been cultivating strawberries with female flowers, which is the plant the Europeans brought back to cross with their own fruit. They had little success, until the middle of the 18th century when gardeners around north-west France noticed that when woodland strawberries and Virginian strawberries, both male, were planted in between rows of female Chilean strawberries, the latter would produce large and abundant fruits.

These days, though, it’s Fragaria x ananassa with its scent of pineapple which is prime in cultivating species for commercial production - none of which you need to know for a pop quiz. But what might stump your competitors is the fact that the strawberry isn’t a berry at all. It’s what’s called ‘an aggregate accessory fruit’. You may have wondered, biting into one, why a strawberry’s seeds are on the exterior of the fruit, not inside. Each of those tiny seeds is not, in fact, a seed. It is one of the ovaries of the strawberry flower with a seed inside it. The fleshy part of the fruit is simply a receptacle to hold these ovaries.

For your final pop quiz question: which country, in a business where, in 2017, global production of strawberries was 9.2 million tonnes, is the world’s top producer of strawberries? Clue: it is not anywhere in Europe. It is - no surprise, really - China.

Strawberry shortcakes, generally considered an American classic, are originally British, great with a game of cricket and a jug of Pimms. Basically, they’re scones. So use your own recipe if you prefer.

Julia Watson has been a long-time Food Writer for newspapers and magazines in the US and the UK. She writes 'Tabled', a weekly food blog at juliawatson.substack. com

Ingredients 400g strawberries, washed

300g flour hulled

and

300ml thick cream for whipping

85g + 3 tablespoons cold butter

1 egg yolk, beaten with 1 tbsp milk

Preheat oven to 220C. Grease a baking sheet. Quarter the strawberries. Put a third into a bowl with 30g sugar and crush roughly with a fork. Fold the cut strawberries into the mush.

Sift flour into a mixing bowl, whisk in remaining sugar, salt and baking powder. Grate in cold butter then rub into the dry ingredients until it turns into coarse breadcrumbs. Stir in 160ml of the cream to form a soft dough, adding more if needed.

Knead quickly until just smooth, tip onto a floured surface and roll to 5mm thick. With a 6cm cutter, cut

06 04 17 80 93

out 8 rounds. Set half on the baking sheet, melt the 3 tablespoons of butter and brush the tops of the rounds with it then put other halves on top of them. Brush those with beaten egg, bake 20 minutes till risen and gold.

Pull them apart. Brush middles with any remaining butter. Set aside to cool on a rack.

Pour the cream into a large bowl and whip to soft peaks. Put a scoop of cream on four bottoms. Spoon the strawberry mush generously over each, then lay the remaining scone halves on top and serve.

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2 ½ teaspoons baking powder

30g + 1 tablespoon caster sugar

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readers each month

¼ teaspoon fine salt

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FRENCH LIFE ♦ 15

JUNE 2021 ○ THE BUGLE ○ www.thebugle.eu

Mini Digger

with Driver for Hire

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See Facebook page: "Tres Jolie Milhaguet"

The wines of Bergerac - Château Le Fagé

credit: Château Le Fagé (chateau-le-fage.com)

by Martin Walker

A

fter twelve generations in the same family Château Le Fagé can claim to be one of the Bergerac’s oldest vineyards and it boasts some of the classic terroir. Looking south from Bergerac, you see across the river Dordogne the long ridge, dominated by that Renaissance gem, the Château de Monbazillac, then as the eye moves to the west you see the stone tower of Malfourat and less than two miles further west stands a discreet but charming chartreuse, Le Fagé.

These north-facing slopes on the left bank of the Dordogne are the classic terrain for the sweet and golden wine of Monbazillac for which Le Fagé is renowned. I was one of the judges who awarded Le Fagé the first prize at the concours of Monbazillac wines in 2019. Another year, I was a judge when Le Fagé took three of four places in the semi-finals.

There is hardly a prize their wines have not won. In last year’s Concours Général in Paris, two of its Monbazillacs, the Grande Réserve (22 euros) and the Cuvée Pierre-Louis (16 euros) each won a gold medal. And so did its Cuvée Prestige Bergerac red wine. The Grande Réserve also won gold at the Concours of the Independent Winemakers of France. The year before that the Cuvée Pierre-Louis won gold at the Independent Winemakers and the Bergerac Cuvée Prestige red (12.50 euros) won gold at the Paris Concours. The standard Bergerac red (8 euros) won a silver medal.

These are extraordinary results, displaying a consistency of quality in red wines as well as Monbazillacs. And did I mention that their Bergerac Sec white wine (7.50 euros) also won a gold at Paris? Or that they have won more medals from the Independent Winemakers than any other vineyard in France?

Benoît Gerardin, with his trim build and iron-gray hair, is a fit and palpably healthy and energetic man in his forties, who seems incapable of making anything but very fine wines indeed. On a recent visit, I tasted my way through the whites, the rosé, the reds, the Monbazillacs and there wasn’t a wine that was not just very good indeed but also

they were inviting. Whether it was the freshness and balance of the white wine, or the soft and slightly spicy reds, or the majestic Monbazillacs, they seemed unpretentious and welcoming but also serious. That is a rare and very pleasing combination.

“I call it drinkability,” he told me (buvabilité was the word he used). “Anyone can make sweet wines but it needs to have freshness, too, a lightness of heart. That’s something unique to our Monbazillac region. The Sauternes don’t have it.

“Wine has to be about pleasure, conviviality, sharing good moments at the table with food and friends, a glass of white wine to open the appetite and the conversation,” he went on.

“But this is also a business. I have wages to pay for six full-time employees, and since I’m an independent winemaker, not part of a cooperative, I have to make wine that sells. I need to find that balance between the wines we want to make and the consumer. In a way I think we’re lucky not to be in the Bordeaux where the prices have gone so high that they have lost touch with the customer. That gives us an opportunity.”

There are 39 hectares of vines at Le Fagé, two-thirds planted in white wines, mostly Sémillon (75 per cent), with 20 per cent Sauvignon Blanc and five per cent Muscadelle.

For the first time, thinking about the growing challenge of climate change, they have planted some Sauvignon Gris and some Chenin as an experiment. If the hot summers continue, Benoît thinks, he may have to think about planting some different varieties, perhaps Syrah or Grenache.

“One of the problems of Covid for me is that we have not been able to attend the usual wine salons, particularly those with the independent winemakers, where usually we chat about the various challenges we face and learn what other colleagues have tried and how well it works,” he said.

“You can learn a lot at these sessions, and my father was a passionate supporter of the association of independents.”

François, his father, launched the independent winemakers in the Bergerac region in 1986 and became president of the national association in the years before 2000 when

Benoît decided to join the family business. He began learning the trade with three years in commerce, working for a big négociant in the Bordeaux, learning the commercial side of the business, and came back home full of ideas.

His biggest project was to transform the watering system and the drainage to be sure that the vines had only clean rainwater. He pulled out some old vines and planted new ones, modernised the chai where the wine was made, bought new oak barrels and invested heavily in the future.

Château Le Fagé now makes almost 250,000 bottles a year, is evidently prosperous but Benoît says he has no idea whether his young children will follow him in the family business that began with Protestant ancestors just as King Louis XIV launched a new round of persecutions. It drove some 300,000 French Protestants into exile, in Britain and Holland and left at least as many fake ‘Catholics’ behind trying to save their skins. At least their exile drove a new wave of marketing for their Monbazillac wines.

The family prospered in the 18th and 19th centuries, building the chartreuse in the time of Napoleon III, but then came the vine-killing plague of phylloxera and only in the 1920s did the place stop being an all-purpose farm, with crops and cattle sharing space with the vineyards. It was Colonel Albert Géaud, coming home from the trenches after the 1914-18 war, who began bottling his own wines in 1921. He went on to became mayor of Pomport but tragically lost his son in WW2. His daughter Francine, married Maurice Gerardin, a former WW2 pilot, and they renovated the chai and began planting red wines. Benoît is their grandson, planting new laurels on a fine family tradition in one of the great vineyards of the Bergerac. ■

Martin Walker, author of the best-selling ‘Bruno, chief of police’ novels, is a Grand Consul de la Vinée de Bergerac. Formerly a journalist, he spent 25 years as foreign correspondent for The Guardian and then became editor-in-chief of United Press International. He and his wife Julia have had a home in the Périgord since 1999 and one of his great hobbies is visiting the vineyards of Bergerac.

16 ♦ DIRECTORY

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Business Directory

Your indispensable guide to finding local businesses & artisans

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ADVERTORIAL

Vulnerable UK expat clients and their UK advisers left short by lack of Professional Indemnity cover! - Rosemary Sheppard, International Financial Adviser

B

rexit has led to many unintended consequences surrounding financial services for UK expats living abroad. The main one being that most UK financial advisers will not now be able to advise or manage their clients' UK financial products such as pensions and investments whilst their clients are living in the EU. Now the latest hurdle UK financial advisers are facing is Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII)

which will not extend to UK expats resident in the EU. With passporting rights being a thing of the past, PII is not going to cover any of their EU-based clients and means that both clients and their UK financial advisers are effectively in limbo.

This lack of PII also stops cross-border advice; however, this does not apply to global firms with worldwide cover such as Blacktower.

Put simply, this means there should no longer be UK-based advisers with EU-based clients. So where does this leave you and who will service your plans and provide the right kind of protection? This might not be all bad news and could actually be good news, since French compliant products

are better for UK expats living in France as they can offer significant savings with regards to income tax and inheritance tax.

You may currently have a non-French compliant investment contract such as an Investment Bond, for example, or a UK Stocks and Shares ISA. If a fund within these investments needs changing, or you wish to take income from your investment or UK pension plan or make some other change, then you will potentially not be able to receive advice from your existing UK-based adviser. In addition, any changes would not be covered on their PII insurance.

This means now is the time for you to act and have

your UK investments appraised and, where necessary, reinvested into French compliant investments covered by an effective Professional Indemnity Insurance policy. We can provide this to all UK expats resident in France, Spain and across Europe. We offer French compliant investment products and pensions and our clients benefit from good tax and succession planning, amongst other advantages.

You can rest assured that Blacktower is a truly global leader in financial services and carries Professional Indemnity Insurance to cover and protect all of our clients.

Blacktower will be by your side both now and

in the future, we are here to help you. To arrange a professional and impartial consultation please contact me by email: Rosemary. sheppard@blacktowerfm. com, visit our website www. blacktowerfm.com or call me on 06 38 86 99 70.

This article is based on the opinion of the financial adviser and author, and does not reflect the views of Blacktower. The above information is based on current legislation which is subject to change and does not constitute as investment advice, or investment research and you should seek advice from a professional adviser before embarking on any financial planning activity.

Blacktower Insurance

Agents & Advisors Ltd is regulated in Cyprus by the Insurance Companies Control Service and registered with ORIAS in France.

Blacktower Financial Management (Cyprus) Ltd is regulated in Cyprus by the Cyprus Securities & Exchange Commission and is registered with the AMF in France.

Advertising in The Bugle Business Directory Advertising your business couldn’t be easier. Text only, boxed listings are available in our Business Directory from just €12.50/month.

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ADVERTORIAL

Harlequin Satellite TV

A

s some of you may know, after many years, Stuart from The French House Satellite TV has recently moved on to pastures new. For the past few months I have been working alongside him, and I'm happy to say that I am now the installer approved and recommended by The French House to continue looking after clients old, and welcoming clients new.

The range of services remains the same: • • • • • • •

English Free to Air Satellite TV... Freesat French Satellite TV... TNT English Subscription TV Full installation service DIY Kits Dishes realigned or upgraded Trouble shooting

I am based in the north of the Haute-Vienne (dept 87), and will cover dept's 16, 23, north 24, 36, east 86, and 87. Meanwhile, The French House will continue to provide a full service to dept's 17, 44, 49, 79, 85, and west 86.

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Large Directory Ad 46mm x 71mm (Actual Size) 45 words max Small Directory Ad 46mm x 46mm (Actual Size)

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18 ♦ DIRECTORY

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Building Services General

WiFi Anglais

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DIRECTORY ♦ 19

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20 ♦ WHAT’S ON

www.thebugle.eu ○ THE BUGLE ○ JUNE 2021

Experience castle life in the Périgord!

This unmissable event offers you the unique opportunity to enjoy exclusive, festive, fun, cultural, educational, sporting or even gastronomic experiences with family or friends at some of the most beautiful castles and manoirs in the Dordogne and Lot-et-Garonne. For more information visit

Crédit graphique : ©Frédérique Bretin

www.chateauxenfete.com

Artistic journey combining contemporary art and heritage in the Dordogne valley: 7 artists, 6 sites, from 3rd July to 30th September.

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