Hello from the UK. I'm not a newbie, but I haven't been around for a while. I have a note to explain my absence... settle in, it's quite a long one.
Last year, in the middle of the pandemic, we decided to look forward. This may have been a decision borne of selfishness, or indulgence, but it was also borne of necessity.
I’ve been ill for a while. I’ve had a few years of poor health – nothing life-shatteringly serious, thankfully, just one illness after another, keeping me ‘down’. My husband and I are getting on in years and “Before it’s too late” is becoming a mantra and that mantra is only increasing in volume and importance. We decided to look at buying a retreat, a holiday/vacation home, a sanctuary where we can go to get away from it all, to rest, recharge and relax. Eventually, the plan is to move there permanently and retire.
Our friends Andy & Reina live in France. They moved over there half-a-dozen years ago and have nothing but wonderful stories to tell of how great it is, keeping it ‘real’ with smatterings of amusing tales of things going not quite to plan.
We’ve always been people who look before we leap – but we don’t seem to look too hard or for very long when considering the next adventure, and before we knew it, we decided to look into a really BIG move. Bearing in mind that we both moved out of our parents' homes into the one we’re living in at the moment – 36 years ago – so we have a LOT of crap to shift when/if we do decide to move.
So we started looking for a place to buy – oh, I don’t mean flicking through pages of houses we’d buy if we won the lottery, I mean we really started looking at places.
France was the most obvious place to look at, if only for the safety-net of Andy & Reina’s proximity for help and advice, not to mention companionship. When we started looking at France as a country to move to, however, it’s a lot bigger than I’d realised.
We started to seriously look at France as our next home – a country we’d only ever passed-through briefly on our travels on motorcycles.
1981 – Motto Guzzi Le Mans Mk II - Trev and I started seeing each other in April and by the end of July/beginning of August, we were in St Tropez on our first holiday together. We stood in the South of France sunshine and watched a television in a shop window as Prince Charles and Lady Diana got married. Then we went on to Rome, Pizza, and made our way back via San Marino.
1982 – Still on the ‘Guzzi - we stayed a little longer in Cap d’Agde on France’s Mediterranean coast, made a ‘real holiday of it’ and made our way back home via Andorra.
1983 I took a stand (and regretted it) with a package holiday in Spain with aunts & uncles. I guess I imagined I could recapture or recreate some of the holidays I enjoyed as a kid, but it didn’t quite work out like that. Back to the drawing board.
1984 – Kawasaki brought out the world’s fastest production motorcycle and Trev bought one. In May of that year, we took the new GPZ900R ‘for a spin’ and to run-in the engine, he had the bright idea of travelling to Europe to do just that. We went to the wettest places on the planet, many of which were entirely submerged – or at least, that’s how it felt on that ‘wonderful’ ‘holiday’ – which, of course, I’ll never forget (much as I want to).
We passed through France briefly, on our way to the Black Forest of Germany, on to see Denmark and the Little Mermaid. A whole 5 days out of the 7 that we were out of the UK was spent in the same clothes in which we’d set out. It was TOO cold, wet and miserable to get undressed, and so, we didn’t. Of course, it didn’t help that I had been so uncomfortable on the marathon trip over (he promised we’d stop as soon as it was suitable, but never proved suitable) and the throw-over panniers we used as luggage rested on the exhaust and melted, ruining my underwear (lesson-learned, I now pack each case with half-and-half his clothes and mine). What an adventure and what a thoroughly miserable time we had!
Moving on!
Later that year, we travelled to 11 different countries in 18 days and had more adventures…
So you see, France has never been THE one country we always dreamed of moving to.
I spoke with Reina a lot, and the more we spoke, the more sense it made. Moving to France is not only possible, it’s also an exciting prospect.
So we started looking. Andy & Reina recommended a couple of Estate Agents – Leggets and Greenwoods and we also found Cle France, and we also followed a lot of websites and started watching television reality shows such as Escape to the Chateau and A New Life in the Sun.
Andy & Reina - two better friends you couldn't hope to meet
Our first plan was to buy a cheap renovation project – the criteria of: run-down, not derelict, needs some work; with land. Then our plans evolved – the question of time arose.
Would we have the time to do the necessary renovations, bearing in mind the 5 weeks holiday time Trev gets per year?
The answer of course is ‘Non’. So why not buy a place that’s ready to go and just enjoy our holidays?
We upped our budget and continued to look, filtering in ideas as we went. Initially we kept our focus on areas close to our friends, but eventually, our scope widened and we found somewhere that seemed perfect for what we wanted.
Now, before you get all excited and want to see what we found, I have to explain some things.
Nothing is as simple or easy as it appears. Just because somewhere seems ideal doesn’t make it so. We had to hone our detective skills and go above and beyond and read between the lines.
Initially a place took my fancy. A farmhouse that needed a little work. Lots of outbuildings, loads of land (70 acres) and massive potential. Looking deeper, there was a reason it hadn’t already been snapped up – asbestos… OK Moving on!
We’re so lucky to have Andy and Reina on our side. They offered to keep an eye out for suitable properties as well as helping with our efforts. They have been and looked first-hand at a few properties we were interested in and reported back with a good idea of what renovation work would be required. Andy is a clever chap and has a career in building to back him up. Reina is smart and savvy too and they have been invaluable in this adventure.
Andy & Reina
“Don’t forget, if you buy lots of land, you also have to take care of it.” Words of wisdom!
The websites we scoured were also riddled with pitfalls and contradictions. One property would seem perfect, but the agents were slow to send details – probably because it was already sold, we soon came to realise. Another property appealed to us, but the only pictures were just different angles of the same room. The search proved to be more difficult than we’d first hoped.
We made a bit of a game of it. “I’ve found this one,” I’d say to Trev. He came over to look through the gallery of pictures and we’d try to figure out the hidden meanings behind them.
One had small movable radiators and heaters in each room – that one is difficult to keep warm and therefore, will be difficult to keep cool in the summer heat.
One had and intriguing angles for all the pictures and when we looked at the floor plan and map, we found out why. The property had obviously once been part of the farm as a whole and then split up – probably into three separate dwellings. One part of the house adjoined another property (we only wanted detached properties) but until you delved deeper into the information, none of this was clear. Then that property also had a mysterious field adjoining… with a well in the field. That interested us because it had its own water supply, but when we found the property on Google Earth, we realised the field may have belonged to the property we were interested in, but the well itself belonged to another property! We saw electric cables going into the well and a pipe coming out of it. The electricity was supplied by the house adjoining the field on the other side and I could imagine that would get complicated fast!
On one of the later searches, we believed we’d found the absolutely most perfect, idyllic property and started to make moves to making an offer. Once again, Google Earth came to our rescue.
The villa was magnificent in the agent’s pictures. The gardens spectacular and the land a dream! Inside and out, the property was superb!
Google Earth showed a lot more than the spectacular gardens, however. It also showed, a little further up the hill from the property, a sewage or water-treatment plant. I bet it smelled delightful in the summer, especially when the wind was in the right direction… MOVING ON!
Never has the phrase ‘Buyer Beware!’ been more apt!
Not only did our requirements change and develop, so too did our plans. Watching television series on how people moved across to France and Spain, funding their new lives by working, buying a new business – many without previous experience in that field – gave us pause for thought and we knew we had to do more research – MUCH more research before we made any decisions.
We looked into existing and potential business properties – gites, B&B, small hotels and even the potential for AirB&B. To be successful in that avenue, we’d not only need land, we’d also need a property with a pool and so we changed vision again.
At last, our efforts were rewarded and…
WE FOUND A PROPERTY!
Although… I’ll continue with the story tomorrow…