We moved to France in august 2003 in the middle of a blistering heatwave (46 degrees) on 31 July/1 Aug which also happens to be the start of the French national holiday and consequently about the only day in
France when is in their car on route to their holiday destinations….welcome to France!.
After a military career spanning 23 years and three or four other fill in jobs to follow we decided to have the overseas posting that never materialised in all of our years in the RAF
. So a short holiday with friends in the South west of France and a couple of days with the local immobillier (estate agent) and the decision was taken, although the exact location hadn't been finalised !, We returned to the UK, set things in motion and told our friends, albeit to a bit of a mixed response, c’est la vie, it’s what we wanted and all the TV programmes made it look so appealing and frankly pretty easy too !.
We had decided to do it all the hard way, buying a 400 year old barn in a pretty ragged state, which is to be honest a bit of an understatement actually, as it was totally uninhabitable without water or electric, doors windows and in some areas walls and roof !, never the less when we finally all arrived in dribs and drabs having found it all too difficult to keep the convoy together separated on route we sited the caravan ran an electric lead under the road to our obliging neighbour and settled in to our ’new home’ and waited for the removals van, which actually was a week behind us.
The photos tell a better story than I can write, we were the proud owners of a picturesque little farm building in 10,000 m2 surrounded by sunflowers exactly as it was in the postcards. All we had to do was turn in into a dwelling and relocate our family into another culture and country and by the way none of us could speak the lingo, but hey how hard can it all be !.
Well jumping right up to date (5 years on) yes its been difficult at times but extremely rewarding, we haven't sweated blood exactly but do have a few scars and plenty of aches and pains and more to come no doubt. But I wouldn’t have changed a minute, its been every bit the adventure and change of lifestyle that we hoped it would be.
I’ll put more meat on the bones as the blog progresses (that’s if anyone's interested, time will tell I suppose).
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