I haven’t blogged for a while but, having moved to a village out in the eastern Jura département, I think I’ve come up with a few insights into French rural life that are worth writing about, so let’s see if that interests anybody, shall we?

First, a few words about the Jura – not the Hebridean island, as I had to explain to a Scottish friend who kindly offered help in establishing myself there, along with a puzzled “Why there?” – but the French département, which is not all that well-known to English-speakers (although you all know about the Jurassic Age, which takes its name from geological discoveries made here).

It’s a beautiful area, mountainous in the east where it stretches over the Swiss border. At a slightly lower altitude, there’s the “petite montagne”, an area of lakes, waterfalls and meadows, where the cows that provide France’s favourite cheese, Comté, graze. Then comes the revermont, a sharp descent to vineyards and villages, and then the Bresse jurassienne, a large, flat, fertile plane that extends into Burgundy.

Parisians are convinced that the Jura is a frozen tundra – they don’t tend to come here except for winter sports in the mountains. France’s coldest village, Mouthe, “la petite Sibérie française”, is in the Jura mountain range, although actually in the neighbouring Doubs, which has the distinction of being France’s coldest département. Mouthe enjoys 176 days of frost a year and is said to have experienced -41.2°C on 17 January 1985.

But that’s up in the mountains. Down here on the edge of the Bresse temperatures are not so different from those in Paris and, as elsewhere, getting warmer on average, even if my neighbour Jacques, of whom you will hear more, tries to frighten me every winter with claims that temperatures in our village sometimes go down to arctic levels.

Life here is quiet compared to the multicultural bustle of the Paris banlieue and I don’t go on reporting trips any more, so no more being robbed at gunpoint in Afghanistan, watching shootouts in Iraq or witnessing the humiliation of an entire people in the Palestinian occupied territories.

But it’s not boring if you enjoy watching the seasons change, hearing the local gossip and learning about the region’s history. And rural life enjoys a special place in the French imagination. So I have some things to tell.

I’m going to start with a look at the sort of French foods that Brits and Yanks tend to turn their noses up at, item 1 being frogs’ legs. So watch this space.