Our first viewing

We woke up on Wednesday morning very late. The first thing I did was draw the curtains to see where we were. From my bedroom window, I saw was a large field surrounded in pine trees and a house and church steeple poking up from the back of the landscape; it was beautiful. I woke stu up and we made our first cup of disastrous tea. We had been clever the previous afternoon and made sure that our last fuel stop was in a big service station where we could buy bread and milk. Milk, in France is really different to milk in England. Firstly, it doesn't seem to be fresh, it is all in long-life cartons and not refrigerated, once you've found it you then need to choose from entier, demi-ecreme or just ecreme - none of which really meant much to us, so thinking we were chosing somewhere in the middle, we bought our carton of demi-ecreme milk. Being true brits, when we woke up on our first morning we wanted a cup of tea to wake us up and get our day started properly, the fun bit was boiling the kettle on the stove and waiting for the whistle, how basic, this is a good start. Our lovely owners had also put some tea in the gite so teabags were not a problem either, so we were very dissapointed when we poured our demi-ecreme into the mug and found a creamy milk with bits in! Yuck! A glass of water would have to do until we got to the supermarket and started the challenge of choosing our milk all over again.

I unpacked (most) of our bags into the 2 bedrooms, covered the shelves in the bathroom with a million and one products, most of which we don't really use and then spread some paperwork out with the laptop to feel as though I had a bit of office space. Then I found all of Stu's birthday cards and our leaving cards and dotted them all round the place to put a bit of us (and you) around. Once the gite looked a little more homely we set off round the twisty foresty roads to find the local supermarket. Very well prepared I proudly packed our goods into my Jute Tesco re-usable bags and confidently said 'non' to the lady when she asked if I had a club card, or at least I hope that is what she asked - I generally work on the basis they all ask the same question at that point so I can pretend to understand them and offer them a really confident anwer....hmmm hope she wasn't asking me if I was having a good day...

We put our curry on the stove for a couple of hours and then went over to see Cally and Rob as agreed at 7.30pm to go over some bits of info they had for us regarding our bins and what to do when a storm comes in etc... We were interested to learn that as it has been heard that a french woman once saw a ball of lightening come through her bedroom window everyone now closes their shutters through a storm - crazy! We enjoyed a couple of drinks with our hosts and then made our excuses to go back to our dinner and relax together for our first proper night in our new home.


On Thursday we did our first house viewing. This house is in a place called Beaumont du Lac, only a few kilometres from Lac de Vassiviere; a truly magnifcent lake in the heart of the Limousin. We agreed to view it as it is an established B&B with 6 en-suite rooms as well as separate living quarters. We knew it didn't have enough land, but agreed to see it anyway as it offered a lot of potential for the money.

We met Natalie, a young, trendy french girl that we had met on our last trip. She was very friendly and helpful and remembered us and our crazy 'pig plans'!

Stu hated the house on first sight as it sat right next to a church and we could see the land was small, but I was intrigued by the layout and number of rooms and as we went from room to room and floor to floor we both became more interested in the possibilities. We told Natalie it didn't have enough land and she said she may have a parcel close by for us for 6000 euros.

We have many more to see but won't rule this one out just yet.