Hello dear Readers,
Today I am writing a requested post for Paulita from
http://paulita-ponderings.blogspot.fr she is planning to move to France this year and wanted to know how we chose our house and why we came here.
After being here for a bit over 8 years it is not easy to recall why, the when is easy, we came in January 2009 after having made a visit at Christmas and making a very quick decision to do so, we went back and from then we had about 19 days to pack our house and belongings up and get over here.
The why is not so easy as it is a very long story, we came here 25 years ago on a holiday with friends and fell in love with the country, from that day on we were hell bent on coming here to live, you know if you want something enough you can get it.
We had one failed attempt to come over as we had a promise of work which turned out to be a figment of a friends imagination, it was destroying to find that we had sold our home and came over with a promise that was in the head of someone who had mental issues, but we are survivors and went back to UK to re group, it was to be 14 years later that we came over on a visit to view some properties when we found this one, it was nothing like we wanted but it was so cheap that we thought we couldn't miss it and at least we could renovate it and then sell it on, needless to say we are still here and now wonder if we have left it too late to move now.
Our love of France as I have previously touched on was the instant love of the country, it somehow felt like I had come home and I have always felt at home here, also the peace and tranquillity that is rural France is so relaxing for us when we returned to UK it always felt like a rat race, there are places in UK that you can find this same peace and tranquillity but we would never be able to afford such a place, here we have a property which is well over 200 years old but we bought it for pennies back in the day when the French didn't know the value of properties, they have since realised and put the prices up but they are still not what you would pay back in the UK, I can't call it home as home is now here for us for as long as we are able to stay here.
There have been many stories along the way which you can read through old posts on this blog.
One thing that we noticed as soon as we got here were the seasons, we really hadn't noticed them so much in UK (too busy running the rat race) but now we embrace them one and all.
Life in rural France is just as it was in UK 50 years ago when we were children, everyone speaks to you in the street, children are polite and family is so important, it is safe to let your children out to play, safe to walk the street at night, so as you can imagine it is very difficult to pinpoint a reason for coming here because it is lots of little ones that when put together become the reason.
My advice to anyone thinking of coming here to live, live in an area to see if you like it before you buy and really look at a house for a long time to make sure it is what you want. and learn the language it is so important to your complete happiness.
If you are making the move to France please tell us your reasons
