Moving to France - Life in the Limousin
As I walked home from school in 1998, I was expecting to be greeted by a slice of a mouth-watering tarte aux pommes courtesy of my mother’s return from France. I wasn’t, however, expecting to see a crumpled sheet of A4, which looked suspiciously like house details.Yep,mum had gone on a day trip to France and, instead of taking the conventional option of filling the boot with cheap booze, had bought a cheap house instead!
Well, I use the term ‘house’ in the broadest possible sense. In fact she’d bought a house with grenier, attached barn and further barn in a remote hamlet in the Limousin. Everything, in short, that we at French Property News repeatedly advise against: buying remote, uninhabitable property on a whim.
In the following years, while I was beavering away at my GCSE and A-level examinations,mum installed mains water and electricity in the main house, laid the base-layer of concrete flooring on the ground floor and put in a fitted bathroom on the ground floor.
Love at first sight
It wasn’t until my first year at university that I planned my first visit to the house. Mum’s repeated insistence that the place was very basic and remote fell on deaf ears; it couldn’t be more basic than university halls, I reasoned.
I travelled by train and at each station, I marveled at the efficiency of French public transport. The prices were ridiculously low (especially with my étudiante fare), trains ran on time and polite staff manned each platform, helping older ladies with their luggage and drafting young men to the cause wherever possible. It was so far removed from my experience of UK stations, where an overpriced ticket usually entitles you to at least one serious injury from the jostling commuters determined to get on the train a nanosecond before everyone else, a rude and patronising attitude from ‘officials’ and standing room next to a particularly noxious public toilet – not to mention the ubiquitous replacement bus service. The welcoming cry of “Je peux vous aider, madame?” was a wonderful antidote to the invisibility of London life and it was at that moment that I truly fell in love with France and the French way of life.
Although the journey had been smooth, it had taken almost six hours to get to Bussière Galant Gare (the nearest train station to our house) and, as I scanned the crumpled sheet of directions, I realised it wasn’t over yet. I braced myself for the long uphill walk to the house – with the bulging suitcase that weighed more than me, reluctantly following behind. After the first uphill climb, the road became increasingly rural, the late afternoon heat beating down on the dusty tarmac road, which was lined by surprisingly green fields dotted with lakes and small copses. It was stunning.
I must have presented quite an odd sight, a lone Londoner lugging a huge suitcase far into the countryside and, sure enough, the first car that passed ground to a halt and politely asked me where I was headed. When I mentioned Montcigoux (our hamlet) the young couple giggled indulgently with a muttered “Anglaise folle” and piled me and suitcase into the back of their Renault. They dropped me at the foot of a gravel track that inclined steeply around a hairpin bend. As I climbed this last hurdle, there was our corner of Montcigoux in all its glory. The remaining sunshine glanced just shy of the main house, leaving the warm stone bathed in a red glow. The dilapidated shutters and front door were a soft grey blue and tufts of clover and grass sprouted from the front steps. It was beautiful, and I could see at once why mum had felt compelled to buy it.
The accommodation was indeed very basic; the two ground floor rooms were plastered and furnished but the first floor was completely untouched, with a makeshift staircase leading to the grenier – which stretched the length and breadth of the building, lit by tiny, unglazed windows. But I thought it idyllic and Limousin’s insect population firmly agreed with me. I stayed two weeks, friends joining me for one, and a substantial scrubbing brush and several over-sized beetles to keep me company for the remainder.
After a slow start, the renovation project was revved up a gear when mum finished restoring our thatched cottage in Hampshire and decided to move to France full-time.
She set off with my younger sister and the cat in the autumn of 2001 and initially moved into rented accommodation while the basic renovation work was carried out. When we received planning permission for two skylights to the rear (the French are very strict about windows overlooking other people’s property), the grenier was partitioned into four bedrooms and an upstairs bathroom, beams and staircase replaced, ceilings fitted, new windows, shutters and doors installed and the re-pointing and re-plastering of all the walls begun in earnest. At each visit, no journey was complete without a detour via the bricolage to order a new door, or pick up some more plaster-board.
All change
It wasn’t just the house that was changing; on each visit I noticed small, positive changes in our quality of life. Despite living on a glorified building site for the majority of the time, we all had more time for each other and were less preoccupied with the superficial things in life. This was most evident in my younger sister, who was 10 when she moved to France. In stark contrast to the suburban primary she had attended in the UK, here she was enrolled in a tiny village school where there was one class, catering for all age-groups among the 20-odd pupils at once. The small, rural community had little time for the fashion and popular culture that had so concerned her peers in the UK, instead horses, yoyos and dogs were in.
We lent our field to a friend’s horses and bought two puppies and soon my little sister was running wild from sun rise to sunset, the dogs and friends in toe, bronzed limbs glowing with health. Through the move, we had bought my sister a precious extension to her childhood.
Of course, it wasn’t all rosiness and light.We had no central heating and the winter was torturous at times. It was hard for mum on an intellectual level too; she’d traded a thriving career and several close friends for long, isolated days of manual labour, dirt and dust. The bureaucracy was unbelievably frustrating and at times, the rigid opening hours for shops and restaurants felt restrictive after the UK’s 24/7 attitude.
The end in sight
By the following summer the house was taking shape, to the extent that my returning friends could barely believe the transformation. Not one to rest on her laurels,mum had also bought a neighbouring cottage and installed a pool in the interim. The cottage was still in the formative phases of renovation, but we soon made it serviceable in-between swims.
Sadly, a year later, circumstances dictated that we had to return to the UK full-time and, in the summer of 2003, I flew out from Italy (where I was living at the time) to help mum pack up our French dream. It was with heavy hearts that we drove away: us, plus three chickens, two puppies and the cat all tucked into the Volvo.
Our adventure may have been cut short, but our love affair with France and French property has lived on. Mum sold the house, barns and cottage at Montcigoux to our English neighbours, but it wasn’t long before she confessed to having bought another property, this time within striking distance of Perigeux, near Thiviers.
The house had a working bathroom and kitchen this time, but was in much need of TLC. Everything on the ground floor was thick with grease, the floorboards in the downstairs reception room had collapsed in one corner from damp and the overriding decorative theme seemed to be day-glo seventies wallpaper – a rather odd choice in a classic French farmhouse. Several tons of elbow grease and some judicious stripping later and the house’s naturally elegant proportions were soon in full evidence. The outbuildings were semi-derelict and the land overgrown, but the potential was clear, especially with our neighbours’ house as an inspiration, a perfectly restored version of our house and garden.
When we visited in autumn, amber quinces glinted at us temptingly and it was easy to dream of quitting the rat race, restoring the orchard and laying out a proper kitchen garden. In summer it was also idyllic – the sun warm on our backs as we lay on a rug on the long grass nibbling fresh croissants.
However, with all of us back in the UK full-time, we had neither the time, nor the money to complete the project and sold it on. Luckily for us, our adventure inspired several members of our family, and my grandma, uncle and cousins have all moved permanently to France – so we haven’t had to wave goodbye to the Limousin for good.
My mum has definite plans to retire to France and I have whiled away many happy hours here at FPN ‘researching’ properties that would provide the perfect antidote to London life. A bientot!