Our Journey

We left Maidenhead, England on Tuesday 25th August 2009 at 8am. We had packed up the car the night before with 4 suitcases of clothes, tent, cooking gear, food, medical provisions, paperwork and chocolate (all the essentials!). Mum, dad, Kel and Josiane all got out of bed to see us off. We kissed everyone in turn and hopped in the car, they all stood in their dressing gowns waving us off, mum had a tear in her eye even though she had told us the previous evening not to be dissapointed as she wasn't going to cry! I hung out of the passenger window waving and shouting that I loved everyone as Stu drove up the driveway. As soon as we pulled onto the A308 I heard supercalafrajalisticexpealadocious, which is the special ring tone I have for mum, I answered and she said "you've forgotten your flask of coffee and bottle of water", we quickly turned around and pulled back into the driveway waving like mad again and telling everyone that we had had a good trip! Mum was already concerning herself with why we had turned left out of the driveway and weren't going up the M4, which is the obvious route.

Finally we were on the road, it had felt like a huge build up leaving our home, packing our worldly belongings into storage, leaving our jobs and then seeing as many of our friends and family as we could before we left. We didn't know what to say to one another for a while, I just wanted to discuss what we may or may not have left behind, and what it was that we still needed to organise. Stu wanted to play the music and keep his thoughts to himself. We were unsettled. The drive to Folkestone was easy, and so was the Eurotunnel crossing although delayed. Once in France, we hit the road playing our driving tunes full blast and taking in the fact that we had arrived in a new country and were staying there for quarter of a year.

Other than one mishap entering Paris from Rouen, where we did a sight-seeing tour of Versailles, our trip was fairly un-eventful. It was dark by the time we pulled off the A20 in the Correze region of the Limousin and took to the eery, dark roads that windled their way through the forest towards Madranges. We were intrigued, where were we going? What would our new home look like in the flesh? Will we like it? We had no real idea of our surroundings, with no street lighting we followed our headlights oblivious to the stunning scenery around us. Stu read the directions we had been given step by step and finally we found Madranges and the last left turn into a long, slightly over-grown driveway, where a large house stood facing us and behind sat the beautiful cottage that was to be our new home. It looked lovely and we breathed a sigh of relief.

Our hosts/the owners, Rob and Cally came outside to greet us; It was nice to see some friendly faces. We sat down in their living room and had a drink and a chat, we met Ash their beautiful black labrador who was very excited to see some new faces and we exchanged bits of info on our love of france, where we had all worked in England and how our trip was. It felt like we could have chatted all night but we had to get some formal bits of paperwork done and then they led us into our cottage. Rob was very proud of his hard work and achievement and keen to tell us lots about the work he had done, but it was late so they said goodnight and we agreed to chat more the following day. We didn't have the energy to unpack the car, so we found our washbags and snuggled into bed. Lovely!