Sunday 21 October 2012

The 'before' time: 2006 / 2007


2007

My house search on the Internet was gradually providing us with an idea of the type of property we, in theory, could buy, and I found one which looked as it if might fit. It was old but looked in quite good condition.....

Then on a shopping trip to the local supermarket I bumped into Jeral, a fellow student from the French language course I had been half-heartedly attending. Nearly two hours later we parted company, after an interesting discussion about how he got his home in France by remortgaging his house....methinks I was meant to bump into him because it sparked off an idea that perhaps we could do the same. I don’t know why we had not thought about that previously, but we hadn’t. 

So off home I went to present the idea to Lester, that we could remortgage our house, find a French house, then commute between the two for a year or so while we find our feet out there. 

Then other options presented themselves: sell our present house, I go to France, Lester to stay here and carry on working while I roam France looking at houses to buy. Or sell up here, we both go, we both roam France together househunting. Or remortgage this house and stay here for a while, during which we could both go and look at houses in France on our holidays. 

I wondered which of these options would work out, but not really, after all there were far too many obstacles to negotiate, far too many difficulties.....

But one thing was happening, which was that France was being cemented into our future somehow although I did not know it, and no matter where I looked, the south west region of France always pulled me back, particularly the inland border of Aquitaine, not the coastal region. 

February 2007. 

We thought it would be a good idea to have a look at that area of France to which I kept being drawn, so we booked a holiday for early April. We thought we would find an estate agent and see if they would show us around some houses. Just for curiosity really. See what we were going to get for our money. 

Still looking at houses, but looking forward to a holiday although did not have any expectations in regards to houses. Just going to have a look around, that is what we were going to do, and I had managed to find a camp site an hour's drive away from that area of France, Aquitaine, which was forever pulling me to it. 

I think, in truth, that I thought that by going to that area that somehow the reality of being there would throw cold water on my urge to live there. 


A couple of weeks later, and another weekend spend having a look for possible houses on the Internet had left me saturated with the theoretical house hunt project.  It was now Monday morning and  I needed to do other things on my PC. But no, my best intentions were not to be realised as running straight across my mind came an urge to have another house search, and with this urge came the words, ‘Houses for sale. Gascony.’ 

‘Oh, for crikey’s sake, I thought, ‘Now what’. First Aquitaine, and now Gascony. But I put up a search on Google anyway, knowing full well that if I didn’t then it would just stay on my mind until I did. 

A new estate agent’s web site came up, one that I had not looked at before. It had Gascony as a region to look at. So I did. 

And thwack, the breath was knocked out of me. This is no exaggeration. My heart was pounding, I could not breath, and I felt in a state of shock as I stared fixatedly at the screen, at the second house down on the list, on the one which we were to buy. 

This was the one. 

And it was not quite what I had expected......

It was a ruin, or almost. The roof on one side had collapsed. There were no window frames in the windows. It was covered over with ivy. It was dying. But it had five hectares of land, with a river on one of its boundaries. 

And it was the one. 

I called Lester in to see it. He took one glance at the photos and went straight on to the phone to book an appointment with our mortgage company, something which he would have normally left as a job for me to deal with. Yes, well, we probably wouldn’t get a second mortgage anyway, that is what we thought. It was all theoretical anyway, this going to France. I know I keep saying this, but it was. 

Most surprisingly we were offered a second mortgage, if we wanted it. France, it seemed, was becoming less theoretical. 


This took us in to March, and time to pack for the holiday. 

Off we went, this time travelling across the Channel via Dover to Calais. It was a long drive down. Lester was not happy about travelling such a distance. Typical of most motorways, the countryside did not really seem to change much. I was not particularly happy either. But the house had been found. And do you know where it was? Right on that border of Aquitaine! Yes it was! First the house had jumped off my PC screen at me, then we looked at the photos, then we went into shock about the state of the house, and then I looked at where it was. Aquitaine. On the borders of the Gers and the Haute Pyrenees. This I kept in my head as we took that first long drive down. 

A day or so on the camp site, a bit of a tangle with Estate Agents, (which is a bit complicated to go through here, just to say that we were involved in a squabble between Estate Agents and it was not pleasant), but we did see the house. It was exactly as shown on the photos. Half the roof down, the rest tottering. The interior was jammed full of rubble apart from the room to the left of the hallway, and that was dark and damp, with a small pile of belongings suggesting someone was camping out there. It was beautiful, though. 

Fiona, our Estate Agent lady, tried to get us to buy elsewhere. She could not see why we would want to buy such a place, but it had ‘spoken’ to us, so that was that. This was the one. There was no electricity apart from some bare wires hanging loosely on a side wall of the Tall Barn, there was no running water, apart from a cold water tap by the Front Porch, there was no loo, well actually there was but it was laying on its side in the middle of the rubble in the back of the house, so no facilities did it have. Surprisingly we were not fazed by all of this. This house had told us that we were to be her new owners, and, as I say, that was that. 

Fiona phoned her partner, a builder, and he came and had a look at it. Said that it was do-able. Well he would. He was a scammer, but I shall tell you all about that in a few pages time. 

I saw in my sixtieth birthday parked up in a motorway services area near Calais. I remember jumping out of the cramped space of the campervan, still in my tracksuit pyjamas, feeling excited, very excited, as I trotted off to the loo, but was left with a feeling of great sadness as we boarded the ferry to cross the Channel and left France, not knowing when we would return.

Back home all that changed, because I went into a panic about the state of the house in France. At this advanced age of sixty, did I not deserve proper facilities, like a proper loo and shower, like central heating, like carpets, like hot and cold running water, like a roof, windows, and proper doors. And where would I put my stuff, and where would we sleep. My comfort zone would be shrunk considerably if we went to live in that ruin, indeed, there would not be a comfort zone. For two weeks this panic lasted. Lester was the same, although more concerned about carrying two mortgages. If I had given in to this panic, then we would have shelved the France idea for good.

Ah, but that house had spoken to me. Of all the houses we had looked at, both on the Internet and in France, this was the one which had impacted on us. 

Time was running out on the mortgage offer. To do, or not to do. 

So we did. We signed. We took the leap. 

5 comments:

Diane said...

Your searching sounds much the same as ours. We spent hours on the computer!! We eventually came over here for two weeks holiday and the day before we left we put a deposit down! On returning to the UK, we discovered that the sale on our house over there was in jeopardy as our buyer had lost her buyer. So much for chains! We of course went into panic but more about that later :-)
Loving this blog Vera. Diane

Vera said...

I did enjoy shopping for houses on the Internet, although it did become very addictive! I have not connected with your history blog yet, but am saving it up for a spare hour. I will, however, definitely have a read of it, and I so appreciate your comments. It is nice to know that someone else has trodden the same journey as we have!

Sol said...

wow I think you have written half of my life down here. we haven't yet made the plunge to buy. how is the house progressing?

how exciting

Vera said...

Hi Sol, and welcome. This blog is not going to go further forward than this because I have written a book about our first year instead! But the Labartere blog tells of our ongoing adventures here, and I shall let you know when the book is ready - will send you a ebook copy, because you have visited this blog, and because you are wanting to go somewhere else in your life as well. Blessings to you.

Gayle said...

Hi, I just found your blog and really enjoyed your story so far. Will you post any more, or is there another blog you are using now? I hope to come to France this year (in the fall) and am interested in this area too. Thanks for your great pictures!