A wet Sunday afternoon walk...

The next few days we kept coming back to the conversation of 'well I would buy that house now, would you?' There was nothing stopping us, we knew we loved it everytime we saw it, we had worked out that we could renovate the barn on the other side of the lane into a gite, so the problem of the house having all it's garden off to one side became less of an issue. It offered us all of the land we wanted and was in a good location. On Friday we drove up to see some friends in the Vienne region. They had lived in France for 5 years and were established in their community and were working and earning whilst renovating. It was great to see a sort of picture of where we could be in 5 years time and they were loving it. Their two children were naturally bilingual, they had land with chickens running around as well as a bouncy boxer dog called Banjo. We told them all about this house we found only an hour away from them and they said 'so why haven't you put an offer in then?' Why hadn't we? We were procrastinating; we had done our research, met lots of agents, seen lots of houses, done our figures and set a realistic budget and then we had found a house that met all our criteria. The time had come.

We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing (as well as seeing through our last couple of viewings). We enjoyed a lie-in on Sunday morning and then bought a few bits for a roast before all the shops shut at midday. Then we decided to go off for a walk in the woods before we started cooking. The sky was a little cloudy but it was dry so we all set off in our t-shirts planning to get warm as we walked. We turned right at the bottom of the driveway and walked up through the hamlet waving at the local farmer and stroking the lonely horse in his field on our way. Past the Mairie and the old house for sale that we looked at every day and then right off the main road up into the woods, we commented on how dark the sky was getting but carried on anyway. Karen had picked up a long walking stick and was entertaining us by pointing at every bit of flora and fauna possible and describing what it was, where it comes from and how good it would look in our garden. It was fun and added a whole new dimension to just going for a walk. Just as we reached the tree line the heavens opened and we ran into the woods for cover. There were little Christmas Trees everywhere - my idea of heaven! I couldn't resist it, I just had to pick one and try and keep it growing, so I emptied my very expensive camera out of it's case (much to Stu's sheergrin) and gave my Christmas Tree a new little home.

The rain was getting heavier and wasn't going to let up and if we had started walking back, we would have been drenched by the time we reached the gite, so we took a vote and sent Stu back on his own to get the car. We dressed him up in as many items of clothing that we had with us to keep him dry (including my pink Gillette) and off he ran out into the rain. Me, Karen and Brian started collecting fire wood and pine cones to keep us busy while we waited and then eventually I heard a car coming fairly quickly towards us through the trees. He saved us! We stayed relatively dry and had collected a good amount of wood for the fire, Stu on the other had was very wet and had pulled all the muscles in his legs from such an instant sprint back to the gite, but he was our hero, which made his day - so that made up for everything.

A new plan and some visitors

We were very excited on Monday as we had Stu's parents coming to stay with us for a week, so we went food shopping and cleaned our gite and made their beds and put some magazines in their room. We wanted some fresh flowers so on Tuesday morning, before we went to the airport, we went into our local village Treignac and went to two florists only to find that cut flowers are not that easy to come by in France. We had a choice of silk flowers and plants, neither of which we wanted but I learnt a bit more vocabulary and another oddity of France so we left it at that!

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.

A decisive week

We had a few days to relax before a busy Wednesday with 2 viewings booked. Our first viewing on Wednesday was at 10am back in Cessac near La Souterraine where we had previously viewed the house from the outside and decided it was a contender and we wanted to see more. Cessac is a good hour and a half away from our little gite in the Correze, so to err on the side of caution, we left just after 7.30am. Our bodies were not used to the early start, waking up in darkness seemed truly strange, we had a quick bowl of cereal and made a flask of coffee to help us come round to some sort of wide-awake normality by the time we met the agent.

We pulled up at the house 15 minutes early and so stretched our legs and had another look over the land. Very quiet. Very peaceful. Beautiful views. It was calming. Eventually our agent pulled up with a very small old man sat in the passenger seat. He was under 5 foot, wore dark blue trousers that looked like the bottom half of a cheap boiler suit, an old brown shirt with navy blue jumper over the top, a hat (of course), not a beret but a flat cap and had a walking stick - not rubber-end-handle-nicely-sawn-and-vanished type of walking stick, more of a found-it-in-the-woods-and-chopped-the-end-off kind of walking stick. We shook his hand and said 'Bonjour Monsieur' as politely as we could, his face was weathered but he gave us a very kind smile. Our agent told us that he had a very traditional accent that stemmed from Spain and that he rolled his r's so much she could barely understand him. He staggered around the land using his stick to help him and showed us in and out of the house and the millions of barns, garages and cellars moving the cobwebs out of the way with the end of his stick so we didn't get dirty. When we got to the orchards we all stopped and picked plums from the trees for a quick snack; they were delicious.

The downside to the house was that it had a small lane running in front of it and the same at the back, so all the land was off to one side and you really wanted to just simply swivel the house 90 degrees...hmmm if only it were that easy! You entered the house through a central door and on your left there was a big kitchen with huge fireplace and small utility space with a sink and larder beyond that, to the right was a lounge with a fireplace that had been concealed but each end of the stone mantel was still poking out from the wall, next to that a small bedroom that would be better opened up to make a larger lounge. At the back there was a loo and shower before you went up the stairs to 2 bedrooms and another room that was untouched but which had a ladder up to the huge loft space. It had potential but a few walls would need to be moved to get there! The house was attached to a huge barn and another small house which would make great gite potential. Opposite the house was another huge barn with a small parcel of land next to it. The rest of the land went off to the side of the main house with another small barn, what would have been a walled vegetable garden, an orchard, a field and then over the lane another plot for animals. It had everything we could have wanted. The best bit was it was 40,000 euros cheaper than the house we really loved.

We went on from there to another viewing which was a dead loss and then finished the hour and half journey home discussing the pros and cons of our first love versus this cheaper option that offered us more land and just as much possibility for much less money. It didn't matter how much we talked about it, we both felt instinctively that we loved 'our first love' more.

When we got home we decided to put pen to paper and finalise all of our costs and seriously consider putting an offer in on this house we obviously loved so much. The result was a bit too much for either of us to bare. It was clear that we had let our hearts rule our heads and even at the price reduction we could only really afford to buy the house with little budget for renovation and certainly no money left over to get a business up and running and feed ourselves too. We had to agree that this property was still out of our reach and we needed to take a good hard look at our situation to make sure we were viewing properties that were genuine contenders. We weren't happy.

When we woke up the next morning, we both had a slightly more positive view on things. We could move on from all this undecisiveness and start viewing things that were the right for us and that made us feel good. Also we realised that to make our business brilliant we had to have the right budget behind us, I got on with my business plan in the early hours of the morning and then we spent the afternoon in Limoges window shopping in a busy town with lots of young trendy people. We sauntered in and out of shoe shops and clothes shops, really trendy expensive ones dreaming over Ed Hardy t-shirts and Harley Davidson biker boots. We looked at books and bought birthday cards, we popped into the post office and ran some errands. It helped us, we had a lovely afternoon in the city sun; a small injection of 'normality', it was just what the doctor ordered.

The weekend off...

When I woke up on Thursday morning I was extremely excited, we were meeting mum, dad & Falky 3 hours away at the Magny Cours Race Circuit. Woo hoo! Stu and I had a lovely lazy morning with a cooked breakfast and then packing a bag, making some sandwiches and packing the car up. The journey from the Correze up to the Bourgogne region is a great one; it took us 20 minutes or so to get on the wonderful open quiet motorway. I can't quite believe I am describing the motorway as a beautiful road, but it was; wide and smooth, no other cars, stunning views winding their way out of the Correze and into the Auvergne - mountains, volcanoes, tree-topped hills, little villages below huge viaducts - stunning! We headed for Moulins where we would stop for a bite and could see a river on the map which would make the perfect spot. When we pulled up we found a beautiful park where a few old men were spending their afternoon in a shady corner playing Boules, there were Kayaks racked up and a small restaurant closed as the summer season had shut down, we knew it would have been busy there a few weeks ago. But we didn't want busy, we layed our picnic blanket out on the grass by the river, Moulins stood proud right in front of us on the other side; a mix of new and old with modern apartments in the forefront of our view and beautiful old steeples standing tall at the back, beckoning you in to an older more telling Moulins behind. We relaxed for a while staring up at the blue sky, Stu was teaching me to find shapes in the clouds and then just laughed hysterically at me when I said I could see something that he didn't think was there. He believes he is the King of that game, but I practise secretly when he's not around.

Eventually we found the holiday Inn which sits in an industrial estate on the edge of Magny Cours race circuit. The hotel was wholly uninviting, but that wasn't the point - mum and dad would be getting there soon and that very much was the point. We were early, so unpacked and walked up to the circuit, then came back and got a drink in the bar, finally I got a text 'deux bieres et un vin blanc s'il te plait', it was my mum's best french and I knew they were close. We went outside and stood up on a wall where we could see them coming and waving madly as the roar of the Ferrari and the sneeze of Puffing Billy came into earshot. The funny bit is we only saw them two weeks ago, but it was fabulous to have them right there with me. We had drinks in the bar catching up on all the bits we hadn't already said in texts and emails and then dinner - thankfully as we are in France, the food was good which seems to be the case no matter where you are.

The next morning we met for breakfast at 8am keen to get out to the circuit but the heavens had opened and the circuit wasn't looking like such an interesting option. When we got there we had a quick look around the pit, some serious boys testing their two porsches with a full team wearing all the same clothes, diagnostics, truck etc., a fabulous Aston Martin - again serious bit of racing kit, a few people like us that looked slightly less professional but were attempting to appear professional at all times and then there was us; we ran in the rain back to Graham's motorhome, where we proceeded to spend the next two hours drinking tea and chatting; much more civilised! We had a viewing booked that day, so after lunch mum, stu and I got in the car and left dad and falky to fathom out what to do about the weather.

I had been keen to see this property as, although it was well over our budget, it was offering a four bedroom gatehouse which was fully renovated and ready to move into with a gigantic mill house that needed total renovation and a three bay, two storey garage area with pits. It seemed to me on paper that we could perhaps sell off the gatehouse and then work our magic on the mill house, which of course had a river running along side it and use the garage space well for the business of running bike tours. When we got there, my heart sank - the buildings were far more on top of one another than I had pictured in my mind. The owner, a strange english man who spoke and acted as though he was old, but who probably wasn't that old - but that could have been because his hair was blonde but definitely looked like it should have been grey, anyway - him, the old but not so old owner showed us around in a very frantic kind of way, it was all a bit...well...strange! The house was functional but boring, 4 huge bedrooms with wooden floors and fireplaces, big windows - all the features, but we just didn't take to it. Although there was a fair bit of land it was in small sections all over the place, up steps here and down steps there, which left no one piece big enough to kick a ball around on and then there was the mill. The Mill was HUGE, four or five floors, i couldn't really be sure, very wide, very deep tonnes of windows and doors everywhere. It still had some of the old workings and they were just stunning, we knew we had enough vision to incorporate these workings into renovated rooms, but it was big and dark with holes in the roof and drips running from top to bottom. We could see the potential, but you would need a million quid and then you could turn it into a boutique hotel. It was out of our league.

We drove back to the circuit, Dad & Falky were already back at the hotel as the circuit had shut and so we all freshened up and then met back in the bar. We had another nice meal and then moved on to the upstairs pool area, which we had all to ourselves. It was the kind of room that with it's leather sofas and oak beams should have been lovely, but it was cold and empty and we had to make it our own, I moved the furniture around, Falky went and got his laptop so we had some 'tunes', we ordered our drinks and felt much better. Game started, we bet centimes whilst sipping our drinks and had a thoroughly lovely evening. I was rubbish, there's no denying it, mum turned out to listen and learn quickly and made some beautiful shots, dad managed to beat Falky every time, by fluke mainly, but in a cool way that only dad could (and then came down to breakfast the next morning quietly singing about his victory kind of under his breath but still loud enough so that falky could hear), I also managed to beat falky unfortunately it was due to his error and definitely nothing to do with my skill, but nonetheless (like father like daughter) I did mount the table and shape my thumb and forefinger into the 'Loser' position on my forehead just in case anyone had missed that I was the winner of that game, and then there was Stu - he was the king of pool (just like the clouds), unlike the waters, he was much more subtle and quiet about being a winner. Well, come on, there isn't room for two people like that in a relationship!

The next morning we set off in convoy to our second viewing in the Allier region. Our big diesel peugeot tank led, followed by either falky in Puffing Billing or mum and dad in the Ferrari depending on who had overtaken who. Stu had set the cruise at the speed limit on most roads and when Falky drove along side us waving his arms in a 'get a move on' kind of way, we knew we weren't going fast enough for him. We, or rather our 'convoyers' caused rather a stir as we drove around the edge of Vichy, through the market. As we left Vichy and started climing the twisty roads up towards the village we were looking for I had to remind stu that the little boys waving on the side of the road were not waving at us, it was the Ferrari that had made their day and us revving our engine really didn't have the same effect as dad dipping the clutch and blipping the throttle. I reckon mum and dad will have made a lot of people happy during their road trip, the passion for the Ferrari is something to be seen to be believed. The house was too isolated and not for us, so we made our way back down the twisty roads into Vichy, where we parked up in a very grand street we could have been in Chelsea or Manhatten, then walked along the river and found a restaurant for our final lunch.

Falky was travelling east to Grenobles, mum and dad were going north towards Paris and we were going South West towards Brive; we decided we would be like the red arrows as we all drove off. We said our goodbyes and we followed the Ferrari out of Vichy towards the motorway; we trusted their Sat Nav more than my map reading skills to get us out of such a large town. As we drove through the peage, they went north and we went south and mum's little arm stuck out of the window waving to us. We were driving with no convoy again, it was sad, I turned to Stu with a tear in my eye and said 'All good things come to an end'.

Our first love...

Well actually it is our second love. In February this year we came on our first viewing trip and we fell in love with a very grand house on top of a hill in a market town called Felletin, that truly was our first love. So, to be honest, Meilhards is our second love.

We viewed it in May for the first time with Cally who is the owner of the gite we are staying in. It only has 8000sqm of land and on paper that wasn't enough for us so when we first viewed it we were dissapointed by the land, but as we were looking around it we just couldn't get away from the fact that it felt great there. The land was very well laid out with a long driveway leading up to the house (a little dream of ours), a field at the back of the house and along side the driveway, then at the end of the driveway, you turned right and parked in front of the house which had a workshop attached to it's left and two barns and a bread oven attached to it's right. The great thing was that is had a small but very well established garden with trees in front of it and then a detached barn that faced the same way that the house did with another peice of land in front of it, which would be ideal as a private garden for the gite. The 'gite' barn had a great roof and structure, with cute little stable doors and windows, which potentially would make the gite build reasonably simple.

The house itself was lovely, with a Kitchen ,Lounge, Dining room & 3 bedrooms and as it was attached both sides there was lots of potential to add to the house. The location was great being only 20 minutes from the Motorway and the house was easy to find, when we went exploring we found a tennis court and football pitch across the road less than 2 minutes walk from the house and a beautiful lake 5 minutes away by car. We liked the feel of the place, it had all the potential we were looking for plus the location, but we couldn't afford it. It was a good 20,000 euros (if not more) over our budget and Cally had told us that she didn't think there was much movement on the price. That day, we drove off to the stunning city of Brive-la-Gaillarde and found a shady spot under a tree in the park by the river and just dreamt of owning that house. Then my phone rang and it was Cally, I remember so clearly her saying that she really didn't want to ruin our day, but that she had just received an offer on the property at 20,000 euros less than the asking price, they were in a good buying position and it could be off the market in the next hour. We decided there was nothing we could do and that fate would play it's game. She rang back 10 minutes later and said the offer had been declined; all it had really done was prove to us that we definitely couldn't afford it as the sort of offer we would have had to make, was not acceptable to the vendors. Our only hope was that it wouldn't sell over the summer and the exchange rate would play to our favour and we still liked in later in the year...and...and...and, again we had to put our faith into 'what is meant to be is meant to be'.

We had had a glass of wine with Cally & Rob the day after we arrived here, and during our chats she had mentioned that not only was Meilhards still on the market, but the vendors (an English couple in the swings of a messy divorce and already back in the UK) were getting quite desperate to sell and that she now thought an offer of 20,000 euros less than the asking price might be acceptable. I nearly choked on my wine, could this lovely house still be in the runnings.

On Tuesday, we were itching to get over there, we had written a list of all the questions buzzing around our minds: could we knock through from the workshop into the house? did we really see a fireplace in the workshop? was it a load-bearing wall inbetween the two bedrooms? how good was the roof on the second barn? how busy was that road running in front of it? did I really love the kitchen on visiting again? what was the extra bit of building on the end of the bread oven? Everytime we wrote one question, another popped into our heads. We investigated and explored, discussing the details of where we could put a staircase and what sort of flooring we thought would be appropriate in a room not even built yet - we were both floating away into a dreamy world, mentally creating our family home, business, garden & workshop and it was lovely!

We came home having agreed that we could turn the house into the home that we wanted and we could quite easily turn one of the barns into a gite business, the land did everything we needed it to, even if it didn't quite provide us with acres of dreamy woodland we wanted (there was a wood opposite that would have to do), but could we genuinely afford to spend all of our pennies on this quite expensive property? Next on our agenda, sums, sums and then some more sums....