House-hunting: Puy-de-Dome farmhouse
To be an ‘Auvergnat’
Reunited with a woman he met 25 years ago, Tim Noble decided the perfect place to start their new life would be the Auvergne
Question: What does an early-retired teacher do when, reunited in love with a woman he met 25 years ago, he discovers she wants eventually to retire to France with him?
Answer: Sign up immediately for a year’s subscription to FPN and get two tickets to the French Property Exhibition at Olympia.
Fast re-wind. The hired car skids alarmingly as Peter Newbury, my Wiltshire-based builder/surveyor, and I try to negotiate the single-track road through the dense pine forest. It is early January 2003, in the depths of the Livadrois forest, in the heart of the Auvergne.We are nearing 870m above sea level and snow and ice predominate.
Arriving, finally, at the third highest house in the little hamlet of La Ramie, we peer into the dark, locked farmhouse, looking for our potential vendor. He is not at home. Out on the horizon, 45 miles away, the sun is blazing down in redshift colour behind the volcano chain of Le Puy, its last cold light catching the shuttered bedroom windows of the farm – as it will every night of every year. Even without Peter’s qualified support, and despite the altitude and apparent ‘inaccesibilty’, I know instinctively I’ve found our dream home.
Research first
To be fair, we’d done what all the self-help books tell you to do: stick to a chosen location; find a really good (preferably English-speaking) immobilier from a reputable advertising source; set up the visits well before you arrive; view your French houses in their worst season; take someone along who understands house construction; and be decisive if you spot that real heartwrencher of a property.
With regular Olympia exhibitor, Pierre Chretien of JB Transactions, showing us six properties in three days around his base in the sous-préfecture town of Ambert, we were in expert hands. He also predicted correctly that, we, like other English clients he has found houses for, would probably be making a decision that week. It is simply the difference between the nationalities, he explained.
My partner, Joanna, flew out for the weekend to view the shortlist of two, but there was no beating the old farm at La Ramie. Peter concurred; and our vendors were clearly pleased to pass on their beloved house to keenies.With incomparable views, nearly an acre of land and 73 trees, a barn, five bedrooms, all semi-renovated, and only an hour and half from St Etienne airport (only 80 minutes from our local airport of Stansted) it was unbeatable. I kept thinking of English Dales or Lakes prices. Sitting having coffee under the towers of the ‘black cathedral’ in Clermont Ferrand that Saturday marked the turning point of our lives.
Getting established
We would find all our establishing needs answered in the pages of FPN: moneyholding by Halewood; French legal work by Susan Busby; The Woodstove Shop for Bosky and Hunter stoves; removals by a family firm based in Essex; and Central Construction Ltd builders in Norfolk for structural removals and the stunning internal transformation of the property – thank you John Duty.
We moved furniture from two (sold) houses in England in June the same year, buying outright for €113,000 cash (including Pierre’s tranche and notaire’s fees), which made life easier. I took the old Renault out loaded to the limit, with a trailer, and waited for the 25-ton removal truck. This had blocked our road in Leigh-on-Sea for several hours, earning us many minus Brownie points from neighbours; I wondered idly, as I put up new lights, how he would get up the hill on the three miles of single-track road.
A sudden urgent shout from my next-door neighbour, René, alerted me to an impending disaster. Unable to negotiate the first hairpin, the truck had had to reverse all the way, only to catch and tear down René’s telephone line, 70m below the house. While the lads carried the furniture for two hours, René, watched by the four other inhabitants of La Ramie, insouciantly nipped up a ladder held by me, retied the line to the pole, called to his wife to check they had a connection and laughingly squeezed my arm, saying not to worry. Only in France, we began to realise, could friendship be established in so unique a way; thus started our retirement home and life in France.
Fast forward
La Ferme Roulante (so named by our daughters because of the distinctive rounded southern end, around the bread oven, against which they laid a wagon wheel) basks in 40OC summer sun.We have recorded a temperature range of 52OC over the years, but the arm-deep granite walls, aided by the cave built into the hillside help keep it cool inside.
Taking a loan from our French bank, CA Britline in Caen, we have completed the renovation, fitting out a modern kitchen with a state of the art Bosky wood cooking and central heating stove and moving the somewhat spartan bathroom upstairs, losing a bedroom in the process. A huge fitted picture window in our bedroom – hidden behind the original hay loft double doors – opens onto the silent forest behind, while newly fitted double-glazed windows throughout keep us snug in winter and aerated in summer. The views of Le Puy from the inflatable swimming pool in front of the house are other-worldy – indeed, almost as good as they are from the bath upstairs.
Neighbours have been unbelievably generous in spirit. Armand, from our local village of Vertolaye, who drives up regularly to maintain his mother’s house, is always ready to help fix or advise on things. Giraud and Monique bring us mushrooms from the forest, ply us with invitations to drinks and cut our grass for us as a neighbourly act. French neighbours can be among the best in the world, and the more effort we make to talk at length in French, the more they encourage us.
Since Ryanair stopped flying to St Etienne, we no longer need to keep the old Renault at the airport, but we’ve got used to the seven-hour drive from Essex. For short breaks, we use Grenoble airport some 2½ hours away.
On snowy days, the house is effectively cut off without a four-wheel drive, but French road services are incredible: a snow plough powers right up to our parking place, at the end of tarmac, and we can nearly always get to our commune HQ, Marat 8km away, to enjoy marvellous food in the two-star restaurant. Ambert, 22km south down the Dore valley, features regularly on our Thursday trip to market. Although only holiday visitors at present, we know many people well enough to greet and already feel a part of local rural life. Pierre Chretien continues to be a good friend, always available for tricky advice.
Reading through the manuals and FPN regularly, I see that finding a concierge is also pretty high on the list if you want to stop worrying about your empty holiday home.With the help of Hans from Maison Neuve, across the valley in Grandval, we have had the shutters stripped and resealed, the floors resanded, wood and grass cut regularly and the house inspected once a month and countless other little maintenance jobs completed.
Planning for the future
We chose the Auvergne because I remember it from idyllic boyhood holidays on a similar farm with my ‘Tante’ Marie- Therese, making cheese and picking myrtles. In 2003 it was cheap, quiet and relatively undiscovered by the British; beautifully isolated but full of working villages and perfectly placed for trips to the Atlantic, the Pyrénées or the Alps.
We have had mini-breaks from the farm in Paris, Carcassone and the Ardèche, but there’s a lifetime of riding, walking, skiing and exploring the sights and culture of our own region still to do.
Today, prices have risen, but Pierre tells me the British have temporarily deserted him, choosing central Europe instead, it seems. If we had double what we had four years ago, however, we would be buying properties as fine and dignified as anywhere in the more popular parts of the rest of France.
Years ago, mountaineering in Arctic Norway, I used to go ‘overnatting’ – staying in little log cabins overnight before moving on. Now, as Jo and I look forward to the prospect of finally pulling up sticks when our youngest flees the nest in eight years’ time, we are threatening the girls to throw ourselves into clog-shod traditional folk-dancing lessons, so we can perform at the annual Myrtle Festival on Col du Beal.We can’t wait not to be ‘overnatting’, but to be fullyfledged resident Auvergnats.