It probably all started in 2016 after Mum died. All of a sudden my core reason for being in England was over. I found myself talking more and more to my friends about my dream of living somewhere warm and ‘free’. I guess I was always more orientated towards the south of France given that I am indeed French. And so for two years I basically talked a lot, dreamt a little, and did even less, until finally at the end of 2018 all my talk started to come in to action...
I guess it all began in earnest when in May 2017 Ivor and I took a little holiday, renting a gite in Le Somail. And from that time on the seed of the thought of the idea to perhaps, maybe… live in the South of France started to germinate.
Indeed the following year (April 2018) he and I returned to France - this time to the Dordogne area (and a little side trip to the Ile de Ré) - to continue the inspiration.
That September I must have been getting serious - I decided to drive from Bordeaux to Marseille...
Down the Atlantic coast along the Pyrenees up into the Gers through the Languedoc and into Provence. By November I was on my way! And with all my talk Karl and Madelain were keen to meet me for part of the journey. I guess at that time I was more interested in checking out the vibes of each of the regions rather than specifically looking at houses.
I think K and M might have been a bit frustrated that I wasn’t more organised with estate agents.
We covered a lot of ground and saw a lot of cities and towns and even visited Le Somail again. I thought then - wouldn't it be great to buy that house with the blue shutters right on the canal.
I later found out that it has been in the same family for seven generations and definitely wasn’t for sale! But is was available - as a gite - which three months later I would rent for a week during the time I was signing the papers for La Bergerie.
I spent Christmas Day 2018 as usual with Mike and Jo and the family at their place in Wiltshire and of course over Christmas lunch inevitably the conversation gravitated towards all my talk of a place in the South of France. And this I think was when the rubber began to seriously hit the road. Because that was the day I invited Mike to join me in March to help look for this mysterious dream house! Between December and March we set up the trip - we’d fly in to Toulouse and then motor through Longuedoc looking for likely spots - I of course had rather low expectations and was more orientated towards just continuing my ‘vibrational’ search, never intending to seriously engage with estate agents. But in only the way Jo and Mike can I got the message I should definitely set up the trip to do some proper searching. In fact I was so intimidated (not their fault - purely my projection onto them!) that for only a 5 day trip I set up meetings with agents to see 12 houses!
I had met an agent (Fiona Barron from Languedoc real estate owned by Freddy Rueda) the prior November, and so we started with her. She agreed to meet us in St Genie de Fontedit to see two houses and on from there towards Le Somail where we would meet up with Richard Pullen to have a further look amongst his listings. (I’d met Richard the first time I was in Le Somail - Ivor and I spent a very pleasant morning checking out what was available at that time).
The second house Fiona showed us was a close neighbour to Freddy her boss. A barn, really well designed and executed - a superb garden and living room but alas with bedrooms you needed to duck under the beams to get to! Nevertheless walking in to the house was magnificent and Fiona suggested the owners were keen to sell, so even though they were asking €550,000 I offered €400,000 all in (including the olive oil in the cupboard!) - Cheeky! Not 4 hours later they’d responded that they’d accept €480,000!
So that’s when I started to backtrack. It seemed to me they were just a little too keen and anyway on reflection I didn’t fancy having to duck every time I went in and out of my bedroom! The other thing that really did come clear to me is that if I had bought the place then on the first day I would arrive, crack open something to drink, plonk myself down on the couch, look around and think to myself “now what??” It seemed to me there would be nothing to do other than get old and die! Such was the finish of the place and such was how quiet and closed up the village felt! Clearly the search needed to continue…
And continue it did all that day with Fiona showing us a load of houses, some close and some less close to the Canal. We went back to the one I’d looked at in November that I thought might be quite good as a shop and a restaurant, but none really turned my crank.
I’m not quite sure how I managed to contact Caroline Stemp the Leggett agent - I think I must have just been looking at houses on FrenchProperty.com and La Bergerie was one that came up. I’d written (painstakingly) the appropriate email in French to set up a meeting, so I was quite surprised to find that she is totally English!. In fact she brought her son Ashley who is also a Leggett agent and who the owner particularly likes- they made a great team. We looked at a couple of houses, La Bergerie first, and then one other - a rather nasty gite in the middle of Le Somail on the main road.
La Bergerie - How it was in the beginning as we found it...
Immediately Mike was very keen on La Bergerie, and I too was impressed with its potential. We had a good look round and more and more I knew I wouldn’t be buying the house in St Genies de Fontedit.
The old 'location, location, location' edict certainly rang true that day - if nothing else La Bergerie is in a GREAT location. 20 minutes by car and 2 hours by bike (all on bike path by the canal) from Narbonne, 20 minutes from the seaside, 100 meters from the Canal, 2 hours from skiing in the Pyrenees, 40 minutes from Carcassonne, within from 40 minutes to 2 hours from 6 international airports served by proper airlines as well as cheap and cheerful ones. And La Bergerie is only 150 meters from the centre of all the action in Le Somail. Certainly not a boring place to live and not boring for guests either. And oh yes it’s slap bang in the middle of the vineyards of a famous French organic winery - so no chemicals either!
And the house certainly needs fixing up - so I will have lots to do!
But I get ahead of myself because Mike and I were sufficiently level headed that we continued to visit more houses, this time with my friend Richard Pullen who showed us a couple of nice places, but….location? Nah.
By the end of the week, on Friday, Mike and I were still as keen on La Bergerie as before so we organised another look through but this time we took my new laser measurer so that we could start drawing up plans and dreaming a little.
Within literally an hour of getting back to Le Soquetto the B&B we were staying at, Mike had the rough plans on his computer!
We showed Mel the owner of the B&B - she gave encouraging noises - High praise indeed because I really liked what she had done to her place. In fact I think I’m going to take quite a lot of inspiration from what she has done - especially the bedroom I was staying in.
Already it was Saturday - time to head back to the UK, but still time to throw in an offer! - They were asking €399,000, so I offered €350,000. Anyway after not much haggling we settled on €372,000 (my rationalisation was that €372,000 + the taxes and fees I will be paying will get me up to just shy of €400,000 which was their going in price, so I thought it was fair). Subsequently Richard Pullen and Fiona Baron both told me they thought I’d got a good deal. And actually later on Fiona showed me another house that wasn’t nearly as good for the same price thinking I could be persuaded to change my mind. So all in all I feel pretty good about it.
I got back to England on the 18th and I would stay there til I returned with Gaby on April 4th. In that time of course I told everyone about what I’d done and I was surprised by the many blessings and positive response I got from pretty well everyone. Karl was particularly excited and said he’d drive up from Malaga with his tools to help me!
The real estate agent contacted me to say that the signing of the papers would take place on Friday 12 April at the notaire’s office in Narbonne just inside the time Gaby and I were due to stay in France. Gaby needed a holiday and we wanted to go somewhere warm, so when all this house buying palaver came up it seemed like just the right thing to go stay somewhere close to the house and have a chance to visit again, meet architects and generally figure out what life will be like living in Le Somail.
We’d been looking for a place to stay but couldn’t find anything nice on Booking.com or airB&B and then just by chance Gaby found that the very house I had originally wanted to buy right on the Canal du Midi was available to rent through homeaway.com! We were staying 10 days but the place would only take us for 7 so we decided to take a couple of nights in Carcassonne in a little Gite that turned out to be excellent. Nestled just under the walls of the old Cité. Kind of old and mod at the same time - I really liked the bathroom. The shower walls were made of tadelakt (it's become an inspiration for my future bathrooms at La Bergerie). Carcassonne was great for a bit of tourism but cold! In fact the weather generally during our time in April was way colder than the period I spent with Mike at the beginning of March! Finally we got to stay in the house with the blue shutters on the Sunday night. The owners Nicole and Michel - who will become my neighbours in August! - are very pleasant and extremely helpful and informative. So on the Monday morning we were due to meet André Van de Marel a Dutch architect that I had found through a website on google just randomly looking for help in the building trade in France. findatradeinfrance.com. My dealings with him have been very good actually. He seemed very efficient and his website (villasophie.eu) was attractive. He gave me his quote for all drawing necessary to get permits before I even met him! (I had sent him the plans and a description etc). Mike and I had discussed that I needed an architect who was proficient and would be agreeable to work with - I thought this guy would fit the bill! And Indeed he did. I liked him instantly when we met and he seemed to be very much on my wavelength as we looked around. It was great to go over the house again and look at everything in detail. It was Gaby’s first time through so she was pretty keen. And M. Beltran couldn’t have been more hospitable. The meeting was so successful I offered André lunch in one of the local restaurants. It was delightful to sit outside in the sunshine right next to the canal.
But soon it was time to get back in the house again to meet Laure Aerts a designer that Mike had found on the net who’s web site he liked. After such a good mornings meeting with André I guess it was never going to be that easy for Laure to impress me. And right from the get-go I didn’t really warm to her. Gaby could tell and was actually quite supportive of her but really in all aspects she didn’t quite feel compatible. It's a silly thing but I think asking me to pay her €150 euros to come and see the place (and she came from pretty well exactly the same place as André - around Limoux) wasn't a good way to start! And also I was not sure she would perform on time and to a budget. I asked for her proposal before the end of that week and she insisted on the following Monday but actually didn’t deliver til the Tuesday. Whereas André had quoted €4,500 including all expenses to deliver plans for permits and manage the process, she went in to a whole song and dance of how she would deliver builders plans and help manage the job (which I didn’t want her to do!) all for a mere €37,500 plus all expenses. You can guess which of the two got the job!
During our week in Le Somail Gaby and I did some exploring and general checking out of the sights nearby. We checked out the local ice cream shop and had lunch on the Sunday with Richard and Chitra. We visited Narbonne market and explored the backstreets, we went shopping in Montpelier and found out how grotty Sète is. And we found out how wonderful Collioure is and even found the same road Ivor and I had taken two years earlier - still fantastic. We visited Spain and saw how easy it was to get there, and we had a rather cold and damp day exploring the hills and the Gorge de Galamus.
Finally on the Friday before we had to leave it was time for the official signing. I asked Gaby to come. I felt it was important for me to have a ‘witness’. And it did feel important. I’d never done anything quite like it before.
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