Quick update

Well guys, I thought I would put a post up with a quick update.

The french house-buying process is similar to the UK and normally takes around 3 months to complete. There is a kind of equivalent to exchanging and completing, the searches need to be done and here they will check for termites and asbestos as well as the usual stuff. There are some 'oddoties' (not sure how to spell that!), for instance the local mayor type of figure (the Mairie) will need to sign a document to waive all rights over our property as they do have the power to decide that they would rather use it for the community even though our offer has already been accepted! Given that we are approaching November fast, it could be late January/February until we are close to signing any completion docs - aarrgghhhh!

As we have no real reason to be in France now, we have decided to go home a couple of weeks early. So we are meeting my mum and dad in La Souterraine on Thursday to show them the house and meet the bank and then we are all off to Switzerland for a short break. Then Stu and I are going home via Paris for a couple of nights to celebrate our 1st wedding anniversary before arriving back in the UK on the 8th November.

We may not have any more updates for a while but rest assured the story has only just begun. I will continue to document our adventure and am hoping to be telling you about picking up the huge old fashioned keys very soon!

General Photos

Verve & Nibbles

Anniversary Walk in the Forest

Band at the Chamberet Autumn Fete/ Farmer Strike in Limoges City

Car Washing/Collecting Logs

Pompadour City of Horses/Bike Ride

The Offer!

We drove up to the house ready for our 11am appointment, we were only a few minutes away at the campsite but still arrived early; we just couldn't wait to get there. When driving on the road from the campsite we realised that if you stopped a few hundred yards before you arrived at the house, we had a great view of it and all it's buildings and land from across the valley. We just looked at it imagining that it might be ours.

We drove the last few hundred yards and parked up outside the barn, we got out excitedly and started walking up the lane to look at the land just like we'd done everytime we'd visited the property. We loved it and we both knew it, there was no doubt in our minds. Still, we had tried to be sensible and had made a list of specific things that we felt we hadn't explored enough like how many openings/windows were there in the big barn, we couldn't remember but it would have a big impact on our budget if we had to create lots of windows and doors. We hadn't been into the attic of the house either, and needed to have a good look at the roof and walls up there; we couldn't leave any part of the house unturned.

Our agent arrived, this time with a little old lady from the hamlet who was in charge of the keys. She was very old and very small, she came right up to us and shook our hands with a huge smile on her face before going over and opening the front door. She took her job very seriously, she was keen to ensure that our agent was selling the place to us properly and although the house hadn't been lived in for quite some time and was a bit of a mess inside, she spent the whole time sweeping and cleaning it with great pride.

We headed straight for the big barn, which would be our main gite project and climbed a ladder to look up at the first floor. The roof looked good as did the beams, Stu noticed one beam which was quite low, this was something we hadn't taken into account and needed to make a mental note of, there were no openings upstairs but 6 downstairs. We took in the details this time, where the main door was positioned, how the electricity came across from the house, the level of the land at the back (as it was built on a hill) and the damp that was there as a consequence, the views from the land and where the sun was - it was great to fill in the gaps in our minds. We then went across to the main house and had another look around there; the upstairs needed more work than we remembered, the downstairs was better than we thought.

We finally walked out into the garden with the agent to confirm all the boundaries and which bits of land would be ours, we asked her again about price and she made it clear that the lady already wanted more than the agent had told us it was on for, so anything less than the asking price was sure to be rejected. We stood there all three of us looking out over the valley and not making much eye contact with one another, all with our own thoughts, but no-one saying anything. After some time, the agent said 'you don't need to make a decision now, why don't you go away and think about it and call me later' - it was exactly what we needed to do and so we did.

Back at the campsite we set out our chairs and made a cup of tea (the only thing to do in a situation like that), we knew we were going to offer but we couldn't decide how much. The salespeople in us couldn't possibly offer the asking price, but equally we didn't want to insult the lady and had it in mind that she wanted more for the house than the agent said it was worth, also it hadn't even been put on the market yet and she had already moved, so time didn't seem to be a problem for her or a bargaining tool for us. We picked some figures out of our head mulling it all over and discussing what each other thought, finally we agreed that as we were buying an extra piece of land from a different farmer to make the barn a viable proposition to become a gite, we would make an offer that allowed for that purchase. It would be a serious offer and only a few thousand less than the asking price. I put the call in and the agent sounded positive, she said she would contact me only when she had an answer. That was it, we'd done it - we'd finally found a place that we loved enough to commit to and we were now actually trying to buy it. We were so excited that we didn't quite know what to do with ourselves.

We had to go out, it could be days before we got an answer, so we went to find all the local beaches and pretty hamlets. It was a lovely afternoon driving around the countryside trying to make sense of where we were and everytime we found somewhere really lovely working out how close it was to 'our' house. We sat on a beach for a while and looked over a beautiful lake, we stopped in a beautiful little place called La Celle Dunoise and watched the old men fishing in the river and then a few hamlets along had a beer and sat in the sun for a while chatting.

On our way back to the campsite my phone rang and would you believe it was 901, my answerphone - we had actually missed a call earlier in the day, horror of all horrors! I pushed the button and tried to listen while stu was driving, we had the windows open and the signal was going in and out, I got some words and not others, there was a long convoluted message...something about furniture, someone was worried...then there was a congratulations...something about dates and then the call dropped out. Stu had stopped the car by this point and the windows were up. I put the phone done in silence, 'what' stu said looking at me with raised eyebrows and sheer anticipation on his face, 'hun..what was it? what did she say?' he went on. I looked at him and said 'I couldn't really hear properly, but I think we may have just bought ourselves a house!' - we both went mad and hugged and kissed in excitement, it was a great feeling. I played it back and listened again, our offer was accepted, the lady was very happy that someone wanted to buy it but she was concerned about how she would get all of her furniture out....the offer really had been accepted. We drove in silence for a while, both thinking that the offer had been accepted too quickly and perhaps we should have offered less, but what was done was done and we both felt in a strange state of shock.

Camping in Fleurat

We said goodbye to Karen and Brian on Tuesday and then had to re-adjust to the house being quiet again. It was odd, we had no viewings, no guests to show around, we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We had to throw ourselves into buying a house and focus on the reason we were here. We sat down and made a list of all the questions and worries we had in our minds about the house and then emailed the agent, we also alluded to the fact that we may put an offer in and tried to sound her out in terms of where a negotiation might start. She put our minds at rest with answers to our questions and very clevery skirted around the subject of price. We agreed to meet once again at the house to look at the roofs and attics to explore better in the areas that we hadn't looked at previously and also to meet a local farmer to had promised to sell us a small piece of land that we felt was necessary to buy to give one of the barns (the one that would become a gite) a small garden. Friday at 11am, it was done but still no discussion on price.

Stu and I agreed that the 2 hour drive was getting a little boring and quiet intense to do it twice in the same day, plus we wanted to use the time up there to explore the local lakes and beaches so we started hunting online for somewhere to stay. Would you believe that we found a campsite run by a wonderful english couple the next hamlet but one along from our potential new home, they were minutes away from the house and we decided that if we stayed with them it would be a great opportunity to chat with locals who already knew the area and had dealt with the local mayor etc. I rang and spoke to Neil, a middle-aged sounding guy with a northern lilt, he seemed friendly; 'come whenever you like', he said, 'just don't leave it too late, you don't want to be pitching your tent in the dark'. It was booked, I put the phone down very excited and went to bed.

The next morning, Stu packed all of our camping kit into the car whilst I pulled all the food together that we needed to eat and started packing the cool box. Fiary Liquid, Tea Towel, Bottle Opener, Cutlery, Rubbish Bags...what had i forgotten - we weren't pros by any means! Packing the car wasn't a five minute job, although we decided the more we did it the better we would get. After the last pillow went in, the boot on our large 4x4 would hardly shut; we'd been hoping we might be able to go camping on the motorbike at some point, but realised we were a long way off; I'd need to either talk Stu into buying a motorbike with side car and tow bar for very full trailer, which would do nothing for our street-cred or marriage or we'd need to ensure we only ever went camping with friends, who would have to be driving a large enough car for all of their stuff as well as ours...hmmm...we'll have to see what we can cut out of the packing; perhaps we could do with only one bottle of wine instead of two, or maybe not.....well, we'll go back to the drawing board on that one.

Finding the campsite was easy, we knew the route to our potential new home only too well and we had driven through the hamlet where they are based many a time. As we pulled up, Neil's wife Linda came out to meet us. A very quiet, gentle lady, she was smiling away and extremely welcoming, we walked up through their grounds as she pointed out the gate down to a woodland walk which ended at their private fishing lake, 'you can go there anytime' she said, 'it particularly nice at dusk', she pointed out the chicken and the sheep and the well marked out camping areas, there were 2 large caravans and 1 huge tent already pitched. She told us not to worry about the markings and that we could pitch wherever we liked the look of - under the tree, in the sunny spot, she didn't mind. Then she showed us the loos and showers and a fridge in their office which was there for us to use. The whole set up was so relaxed we felt at home straight away. We had of course practised putting up our tent at our leaving party in the UK to ensure minimal embarrasment at the point at which we had now arrived; putting up our tent in front of all the people sat out quietly enjoying the sun. As the old saying goes, 'Practise makes Perfect' and the effort we had put in at home had paid off, it went up quickly and easily; surely they would have scored us ten out of ten had they all been given cards. Happy in the knowledge that our base was sorted, we went off to do some more exploring and to buy some chicken breasts...oh and a washing up bowl...and a cooking implement...and some loo roll!

Our first night in the tent was great fun; we had a lovely chicken stir fry, I drank red wine out of a metal camping cup and stu sat comfortably in his camping chair with corona firmly in hand. We watched the sun set causing the bright blue sky to drop into the deepest oranges and pinks and finally into darkness when the moon shone brightly above us and the stars twinkled all around. It was truly beautiful and so calm, we felt very happy to be there and the only reason we finally zipped into the tent was because the temperature was dropping and we were getting cold. When I unzipped the tent the next morning it was wet from rain overnight and the fields around us looked a little frosty, but by the time we had cooked our fry up and drank our tea the sun was back out warming our cockles and giving us the energy and bravery we needed to go and see the house at 11am and perhaps to make an offer.

http://www.campinglesboueix.com/

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.