"What are we going to do?"

highoffleystud.co.uk


 Not an easy question to answer!

The buyers had seemed interested in our house, spending time and money on re-visits and surveys. The estate agent reassured us that all was well and there shouldn't be any hold ups as their finances were being dealt with by the agent's own  financial advisor.

So when we received the call from the agent telling us the buyers were unable to raise the money, we were to say the least surprised! It turned out they were trying to get a mortgage on fictional figures and bluff. The advisor who had assured us of their solvency kept a low profile , backtracking on his previous cheery claims.

We were now back at square one, but this time with very little income. A deposit paid  for a six month lease on a house in another country, parents who had sold their home of forty years to join us and a new estate agent who had mentioned that the market was on the turn on his first visit!
 My reaction was to chase work leads in France and try to create a run of work for when we arrived, that would at least pay our mortgage and the new rent. It was against this backdrop that our new agent appeared with a middle aged couple looking to move into the area.To say we had lost faith in estate agents was an understatement, but this time round we had chosen well, he proved to be a shining example of professionalism in a much maligned business.

The couple were interested in two properties, ours and a bungalow two roads away, our agent kept us informed, and finally presented us with an offer ! I could have kissed him ,we accepted and surveys and searches got underway again.This time everything went well, and a completion day was set for the day before we left for France.

We had held off from booking the ferry for as long as possible, and now found we couldn't' travel on the same boat. Olivia and the children would arrive with the car at St Malo , while I had to take the truck on the Cherbourg crossing and meet up with them before setting off for Josselin. After all we had been through this seemed a minor inconvenience and were just glad to have a ticket.

The days flew by, I closed my business, the children finished school, and packing became our mission. My days were spent travelling between our houses and a local  Lock n Store. We had decided to leave most of our possessions in Poole as the gite we were renting was fully furnished. We would take what we needed for the six month stay on my pick-up and return for the rest once we had found a house.
On paper this seemed very straightforward ,but in practise it was a different story. Items that were important to one person didn't have the same attraction to others, so a debate that would have rivalled many at the U.N. took place, and the small space on the truck was filled.

July 29th arrived, it felt strange that a date we had mentioned continually for the previous weeks was finally here.I left Olivia and the children at a friends house where we had stayed the night before, and headed to the port .Emotions had been running very close to the surface for all of us in the weeks prior to our leaving but it was a  short text from a friend that nearly tipped me over the edge,

"Miss you mate"

I waited to board my boat knowing that Olivia would soon be setting off to meet her's. I had time to think- Were we doing the right thing? Would I be able to support us in another country ? Would the children be accepted, or bullied for being different? .With these thoughts still circulating the line infront started to move and I boarded the ferry.

First steps .

"We are going to live in France."



Josselin, Brittany     unevacanceenfrance.com



 A simple statement, one we began mentioning to friends and family, but it took many more nights at that table to come up with what resembled a plan. To start, we booked a two week 'holiday',staying in a friend's gite in Brittany, to get a feel for french life, make a tour of  Morbihan, the department we intended to live in, and assuage the increasing fears of the children.

Ferry crossings are often described as mini cruises, mainly by the ferry companies to be fair, but if the sun is shining and the boat is effortlessly plowing through a peaceful sea well you could almost be anywhere in the Caribbean . Unfortunately for us we had high wind and seas, and there was no doubting that we were in the middle of the English channel, with no escape for four hours.

The holiday went well, we glimpsed a life we could have, trying our french out on bemused neighbours, hearing "Comment?" for the first time, but unfortunately not the last. We shopped at the local market,the children were surprised to see baskets of live chickens watching the world go by as their sisters spun lazily on the spits alongside. Huge pans of couscous and paella tempted us ,a vast array of fruit and vegetables and olives of every description, amazed us.

Sausage galettes , racks of trousers cropped to finish at shin height ,cobbled streets, bells ringing in the distance , this was France for us.......and we loved it!

Our tour of Morbihan took us from Vannes to Carnac, up to Lorient and across to Pontivy, we viewed a number of properties ,some within our price range, others not, all offering something ,but mostly just hard work.We still hadn't found a town that made us want to live either in it or near it, we were looking for something, something that was difficult to put into words.....and then we arrived at Josselin.

Josselin is a medieval town that sits beside the Nantes -Brest canal, it is well known for its Chateau and Saturday market, well known to everyone but us! We arrived on a Friday afternoon, knowing we were due back on the ferry the following morning and this would be our last sortie.

Whether it was the first view of the Chateau ,stunning in the sunshine upon an outcrop of stone,or the beautiful little town that was beyond  that made up our minds we never knew, but what was apparent, as we strolled around the bustling streets, was we had found our town.

The ferry back to Poole found us in good spirits, not just because it wasn't lurching like an elderly bronco, but also we had achieved some of the goals we had set ourselves before departing two weeks prior.Life returned to normal, I carried on with my jobs , Olivia continued with the hospital shifts and the children returned to school, but it was different now, there was a cut off point, and in five months everything would change.

It was at this time that Olivia's parents, Ernie and Anne, decided they would  come with us, they had both recently retired and as Olivia was their only child , the thought of the separation from her and their grand children would be too hard to bear. This was wonderful news for us, Olivia had been having the same thoughts, and although it came as a surprise, it felt like the last piece of the puzzle had been put in place.

With both houses on the market, we started to trawl the French property web sites, firstly to find a place to rent for six months .Ernie and Anne would arrive each evening, with news of viewings, and questions on all aspects of french life, I suggested a visit, just to get a feel of France, a place they had decided to spend the rest of their lives in ,but a place they had never visited!

"No, no Steve, we trust you, no point wasting the cost of the ferry"

By the beginning of May we had a buyer.

The schools were informed that the children would not be returning in September, Olivia handed her notice in and I started to give the names of rival landscaping firms to new clients,so I could concentrate on finishing the work I had already had agreed to. We had found a place to rent  near Josselin, and sent our deposit, planning to move in at the beginning of August.

May and the first half of June was a busy time, the logistics of moving from one country to another took up all of our spare time, Ernie and Anne now had a buyer as well, so they joined us in the turmoil of surveys, form filling , packing, and worrying. I was battling the weather, and clients who wanted extras, while I was there!
Trying to tie everything up ,close the business and leave enough time to move most of ours, and my in laws belongings into storage, became my unwavering goal.
 I knew I was stretching our finances to beyond breaking point, all the extra expense and a massively reduced income,had wiped out our savings, but with the house sale just around the corner, clearing the rapidly mounting debt would not be a problem.

Then, in the second week of June, we lost our buyer.

Living the dream ?

 "Maybe we should move to France?"

It was a thought that had been going around inside my head for a while.We were sitting at the table in our house in Poole, glasses of wine infront of us, a busy day over, just relaxing.

 At that time I was running my own landscaping business, working predominantly in Sandbanks,once a quiet, residential  area that had become a magnet for footballers and developers. I was part of that re-development in a small way, breaking out and removing old gardens and front walls, and replacing with new stonework, creating ponds, patios, waterfalls and rockeries, slowly destroying the fabric and eventually the community that had once existed. Now new money was coming in, and many of the old residents were moving out ,selling to the highest bidder and making a new life somewhere that having a Porsche on the drive wasn't a basic necessity.

Olivia, my wife, was nursing full time, we really were ships that passed in the night, childcare was the baton we passed ,between us, our parents , friends and to be honest anyone else we could draw into a frenetic world.
We had decided to move from our two and a half bedroom end of terrace house into somewhere bigger to allow the children a room each, which as they were boy and girl was becoming an issue.

We had the house valued, and the reality of the Sandbanks effect hit us ,it was now worth double what we had paid for it just a few years earlier, great....but so was every three bed roomed house we looked at, not so great!

So what to do, either submerge ourselves into a larger mortgage, work longer hours, maybe ask the postman to drop the kids off at school. It was a path most of our friends were taking, ok, maybe not the school run postman part , but was there another way?

My brother had moved to France a few years before,I had moved him towing a heavily laden caravan behind an equally laden truck. I remember asking "Are there any steep hills between Cherbourg and your new house in Normandy?"

"No" he said.

This conversation came back to me as I changed down into first gear, the truck screaming as we crawled along at five miles an hour up the seemingly never ending climb from the french port!
We arrived some hours later to what can only be described as a shell, in fact the farmer ,who had owned  it  explained his reasons for sale as,

 "Not suitable for the cattle anymore"

This was my first experience of the British obsession of potential , looking past the ruin that sat before them , and seeing how the property could be....after a huge amount of time and money had been lavished upon it.
It was something the French had picked up on , and now what would have been a store for hay became a 'petite maison' perfect for renovation!

My brothers hay store, boasted lovely views and seclusion, but unfortunately no power ,running water, or drainage. To shower there swiftly climbed up the list of necessities , after returning  a couple of times on the ferry looking and smelling like we had been living ....well in a cattle shed for a week ! We solved the problem by pulling alongside the toilets in the village, running a hose in , and filling a water butt as quickly as possible, while trying not to look to shifty. Then away we went laughing like naughty schoolboys, back to the house, and with a generator, pond pump,and shower head.... voila... clean, if a little cold.

We worked on the house, for me it was when I had a few spare days, for him it was full time, and we transformed it into warm, secure, home. My brother began to take on small renovations for friends,and if there was stonework required I would arrive at Cherbourg with a bag, of hammers and chisels, never easy to explain at customs,  and work on the jobs with him. They were good days, and I began to see France not as a tourist but as another working environment, and also another life.

These thoughts and ideas stayed with me, surfacing if life in Poole became tough, and then burrowing back in during the good times.The house was the final straw ,it triggered the same response from both of us, maybe there was a way out ,maybe we could live the dream, a larger house, garden, plenty of work and quality family time.We weighed the pros and cons and decided....yes we were moving to France!