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Les Fragnes Llamas

Stephanie tells Pont Noir why she and her family moved from Ireland, where they had literally built a home for themselves, to run Llama treks in the Creuse.
Our move to France was our second international move. We left England for Ireland in 1992, but 15 years later, we were ready for a change. We'd always enjoyed our holidays in France and had toyed with the idea of moving here, but the time was never quite right. In 2006 with a redundancy looming, one child about to start secondary school, another about to start primary, and our eldest a year away from major exams, the time was definitely now.
Tough Start
So we left our beautiful new house which we'd built ourselves, and came to Creuse - to one barn, two hovels, three lakes and seventy-five acres. Looking back at photos of the hovels when we arrived, well, I really think we were mad. They were in a ghastly state, with one tap, two plug sockets and two light bulbs between them. One hovel has become a house and the other is about to start being transformed into a gîte de peche.
The children have settled in well. The first six months were tough going, not only at school with the language difficulties, but also at home. Chris had gone back to Ireland to work, not something we'd planned but an unexpected offer came up that could not be refused. So Dad wasn't around. Our living conditions were pretty spartan and that got the kids down, especially once the dark mornings and evenings set in. It was a cold winter without central heating. Thankfully, that's behind us now, and they are all fluent and very happy here.
Fishless Fishery
The reason we bought Les Fragnes was the lakes. The idea was to establish a carp fishery, and that's what we've done. It was a bit of setback to discover that all three lakes had been entirely emptied of fish when we arrived, especially as we'd asked them to be left in. A fishless fishery? We restocked with some excellent quality carp and now have plenty of healthy fish ready for a fight.
Llamas?
We always knew we'd need more than just one activity to keep the wolves from the door, so we also have the llamas. Why llamas? No-one can actually remember how that started. Possibly there'd been something on the telly about them. Anyway, I think at some point I jokingly promised Benjamin, our eldest, that if we came to France he could have a scooter and a llama.
Once we were here, we set off to visit a llama farmer. Having met these gentle, inquisitive, but none-too-bright creatures, we were hooked. A few weeks later we hired a horse box and borrowed a friend's 4x4 and collected four male llamas. We bought some females last summer so that we can breed trekking teams for the future.
We initially intended to have the llamas purely as a hobby, but I began to look into using them for trekking as a tourist activity. I went on a very inspiring llama management course, given by some well-known French llama breeders. Now suitably informed, I began to train the bold boys (As the males became known).
Trekking
We offer an hour long trek around our farm for families, with a choice of routes. There's the Little Cria (baby llama) trail for little legs, and the Grand Llama trail for older kids and adults. There's a fun quiz to do on the way round and posters showing flowers, animals and birds to look out for. But the llamas will be the centre of attention, and they love that. We're confident we'll keep our visitors entertained. For more information, please see our website.

Hard Work Pays Off
Chris and I are busy all the time. It's a very active, physical life that we have now, quite a change for Chris from managing computer quality systems and for me from writing children's books and working as a freelance editor. It's not stress-free - far from it. We've had plenty of downs getting to this point, but we feel it's much more rewarding working for ourselves and being more in touch with the world by being out in it so much.
We love the changing seasons. In Ireland it was grey and damp all year long, literally. Now we get crispy autumn days, thunderstorms, blizzards, lakes frozen-solid, heat-waves - interesting extremes! Life is more inspiring here, and the future definitely brighter for our children in France.
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 [ Add Comment ] Reads: 1109 Posted: 11 May 2008 (12:57)
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Re: Les Fragnes Llamas
by Creusebear on 11 May 2008 (13:02)
I'm looking forward to visiting this original addition to the Creuse countryside. Smile
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Re: Les Fragnes Llamas
by Annik on 11 May 2008 (13:01)
Stephanie - what lovely tale - and congratulations on sticking it out through spartan times to get to the point where everything fell into place. When our grandchildren are old enough to spend their holidays in France (not long now) we will be straight round for one of your llama walks! They know all about alpacas because the person who ran their nursery had a couple and the children were allowed to pet them. One has what looks like a wig in that unnatural bright red chestnut colour that French ladies of a certain age dye their hair...

Good luck.

Annik