We drove to the aiport leaving ourselves enough time to not only find it, but also to find the right car park and look around the airport. We got there easily and as we pulled in we realised we didn't need to leave ourselves anytime to look around; there really wasn't much to see. The car park had a very posh shiny new barrier and ticket machine, but the parking area itself was just a dusty old area of rubble filled mainly with english cars, many of which had grass growing around the wheels as they clearly hadn't moved in a long time, one car had a tax disc from 2006 in the window. Nevermind, it would cost us 80p to park for up to 3 hours and we could see the car from the airport. The airport building was small, but new and modern - there was one shop with a bar in and a huge choice of magazines and papers, some of which were English, but you would pay around £5 for an English mag and £2-£3 for an English paper and there was a restuarant upstairs. We got a coffee from the bar and sat outside in the sun pretty much next to the runway, eventually we watched their Ryanair flight from Luton land right in front of us and we stood waving madly as they walked down the steps and across the tarmac into the building. It was lovely to see some familiar faces.
We chatted all the way home, proudly showing them bits of Limoges city, then discussing how great the motorways were and finally pulling off at our exit and pointing out the farms, the cows, woodland, views and the beautiful stone houses as we passed through hamlets. We had a BBQ planned for dinner and enjoyed our first evening together out on the patio cooking, eating, drinking and chatting.
We had a busy schedule planned and were up early the next morning ready to drive up to Bourganeuf for our first viewing of a property that was in our new and improved budget. When we arrived there had been a mix up with the time of our appointment so we had half an hour spare to wonder around the local market and have a coffee in a bar we had visited before. The house we viewed was an old watermill, it was hidden away in a little corner of a village opposite a lake. The house hadn't been lived in for years and needed a lot of love but could have been beautiful, it also had a large barn and a workshop and the land sat mainly behind the buildings and to the side, it's boundary was the large stream running all the way into the lake in front. It was lovely and offered a lot in terms of its location because of the lake, park, children's play area and tennis court all right there. We all looked around, Stu and Brian spent ages looking at the land and stream, discussing drainage and pipework. Karen and I walked over to the lake where a strange looking man pulled up in a car and got out. He was probably only in his late thirties/early forties but he looked weathered. He was scruffy, wearing an old Ferrari jumper that needed a good wash, I think he may have been a tool short of his tool box, but we got chatting and he told me he had lived there all his life and that it was tragic that the water was drying up in the lake, there used to be lots of Trout etc. he went on and on some of it I understood, some I didn't. I asked him if he drove a Ferrari but he laughed at me and pointed at his beaten up old VW polo next to the lake. It was nice to chat to a nutty local and my lack of French and his lack of English didn't seem to make too much of a difference.
We decided we needed some lunch and when we got back in the car I noticed that we weren't far from the long house that we both liked that we wanted to turn 90 degrees so that the land worked for us. Karen and Brian said they would love to see it, so we made our way up there. As we pulled through the hamlet of Cessac we stopped and pointed up to the house which sits tall just at the end of the hamlet, they both gaspped and said how lovely it was, in a strange way we were quite suprised by their reaction, we had always loved it there but we weren't expecting them to feel the same. When we pulled up outside and they were both amazed, we showed them around the land and pointed out the buildings telling them what we would do with them if we owned it. Brian had been silent as he took it all in and when we asked them what they thought we were astonished by their response, Karen had a tear in her eye and said it felt perfect there and Brian said he would buy it if we didn't. We thought they would just see old buildings, but they had also felt what we had; it was quietly perfect.
When we left we took them via Lake Vassivere and found a restaurant to have an early dinner overlooking the water. We had a glass of wine and some food and chatted about our first day and what they thought of the houses and the area etc. It was fun to have them their to share in the evening debate that we always had over the properties we've seen that day.
On Thursday we had found a completely different proposition, it was a cheaper smaller property that we could live in, which would leave us enough budget to buy a small cottage to hire out as a gite. This house had been an old school 60 years ago and was just outside a town called Argentat, which has the Dordogne river running through it. The town is very pretty and further South, a sunny spot that we had always liked the idea of. Before we met the agent, we found a beautiful setting on the river to have some lunch (and a little bit too much alcohol considering we had a viewing to do), if you read anything on Argentat it will tell you that you will find lots of old Barges on the river and men building the boats too, I must tell you there was not one boat on that river all day!
We all said 'wow' as we pulled up to the school, it was stunning. It sat in it's own walled garden which would have been the playground with huge gates on in it's day. The large school bell still hung on the end of the building and the main room would have been the classroom with huge windows almost floor to ceiling in height, it had some fabulous features and could have been turned into the most beautiful family home. But having seen such a stunning building that we loved so much and didn't really want to leave, it taught us another vaulable lesson; our search couldn't be all about the building, we were put off by not having enough land, the outside space, the part of the dream that included animals and a veg patch and barns and other buildings to play with was a very important part of our dream; the plan of 2 separate properties wasn't really likely to work for us.
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