I originally planned to turn this into a book, similar to the ones by Peter Mayle but from a woman's perspective, but the publishers weren't interested. .
I was woken up early this morning (OK, so it was 8 o’clock) by the sound of the running engine of a large bus. For one awful moment I thought I was back in England, in the dreadful flat we had bought prior to moving to France almost six years ago. The engine belonged to the school bus, collecting two children to take them to the nearest school for the day. When we first moved here there was a small mini-bus, this has grown to a full 54-seater coach. The coach is due to leave at 8 and nothing in the world is going to make it leave before that time, so it just runs its engine until 8.
The flat we bought before moving here was sadly situated at the terminus of the Portsmouth bus route and despite many pleas and even notices posted by the bus company on the bus stop poles, the buses arrived and ran their engines for sometimes up to half an hour, ensuring that no-one could get back to sleep – the service started in the wee small hours and ran almost to midnight. Luckily we were not to stay too long in the flat, it was just a means to an end. We had a large house close to a castle and had sold that and bought the flat and a new home in France, which we intended to retire to. As it turned out, Hubby, Andy, was offered early retirement and I decided to quit work shortly after him.
At the time I started to write this, England is in recession, the snow is over a foot thick and the country can’t cope, with schools closed and public services not running. My small pension has been cut by around a third because of the Euro exchange rate and Andy does not get his State Pension for another three years. So, would we be going back to the UK? Would you?
Hopefully this may inspire you to up sticks and move here. I recommend it highly but you must learn at least some French before you do. If I use any French words, I will try to spell them phonetically as well, but I hope not to use too many.
Two Years Before We Moved
I was taking a home language course in Italian at the time and looking forward to the day I could stretch out on the sunny Italian beach and be able to understand what the locals were talking about. I used to commute to work in the Portsmouth Naval Base, on the bus, complete with headphones, murmuring phrases in Italian, complete with all the Italian hand-signals, much to the amusement of fellow passengers. Andy persisted. He suggested we look on the Internet and see what was available. We also decided to buy a French Property magazine for a few months, just to see what type of properties were available.
At the time there was a programme on TV which took people to France to find them houses there so we applied to go on the – A Place in the Sun.
We had to submit a video of ourselves, explaining why we wanted to move to another country, so we arranged for Laura, a friend of our daughter’s, to film us with the video camera she had received for Christmas. As we were getting on a bit – both nearing retirement age – I thought it might be a good idea to stick a large piece of card to the garden fence behind Laura so that we would be able to remember all the points without looking too thick! The film was a disaster, to say the least, we looked frumpy and old and even with the ‘prompt’ sheet, still got a bit tongue-tied. When we saw the result it was obvious we were reading a script.
We introduced ourselves, mentioned our huge collections of 300 vintage wireless sets and over 6,000 Avon perfume decanters.which were out-growing our current home, and said that we would like to move to France where the houses appeared less expensive than in the UK and that hopefully there would be room to open a little museum for them The whole film was extremely stilted and looked dreadful. We sent it anyway and the reply came back that France was no longer being included in the programme as they were now looking for people who wanted to move further afield. It could have been that the producers took one look at us and decided ‘enough was enough’ and that they wanted younger, more aesthetically pleasing people to film for their programme. Sensible idea I supposed, as the make-up department would need more Polyfilla than foundation to make my lines disappear. I have always been a happy person and it showed in the ‘laughter’ lines – not so much a ‘lived-in’ face, more a ‘squatted-in’ one.
Whilst going through the French Property magazines for a third time, Andy found an advert for an exhibition in London for people considering buying abroad in France and Spain and so we went for a quick nosy around. Andy was obviously impressed, far more than I was – I took a couple of days to get over the shock of paying almost a fiver for a beef-burger – the drink to go with it was way out of my price range! It was quite a high-class affair and most of the people looking round seemed rather more affluent than us. Of course, there were a few there who had obviously just gone for a day out and had no intention of buying property – they also did not buy the burgers! The houses on offer were rather more expensive than we had in mind, but most of them were ready for moving into and we would have preferred something a little less ‘up together’. We did however find the addresses of several companies who had agents in France so decided this would be our next approach.
We eventually signed up with a company in London who were exhibiting at the show and who had estate agents (or Immobilier) in many areas of France, and decided to go over for a couple of days to look at some properties, just to give us an idea of what we could afford if, and when, we ever really ‘took the plunge.’ I was still not too keen to leave the land I had been born in, even though it had changed a lot since I was young. I originally only went along with it for a holiday break. When we were newly married, England still had the £10 emigration to Australia deal and I had believed that there was where our future lay. I had not realised it at the time but Andy had only gone along with me for the ride! Like Andy was with France, so I was with Australia, full to the brim with enthusiasm.
We duly received appointments with two Immobilier. One was in Vire, in the Department of Calvados, quite close to the ferry port, and the other a bit further south. We were assured that they were both expecting us and that they each had several properties ready for us to inspect. We were also told they would drive us round to view the properties in their company cars.
FIRST TRIP
As was almost always to be the case with the ferry company number one, the ship was delayed by about 2 hours.
For one of our future trips, I won a return ticket with the same ferry company by completing a sponsored fun-run around the Naval Base and getting the most sponsorship. For one of our future trips, I won a return ticket with the same ferry company by completing a sponsored fun-run around the Portsmouth Naval Base, where I worked as a Medical Secretary, and for getting the most sponsorship. It was funny, as I am overweight, a moderately heavy smoker and ‘fit’ is not a word I know, so everyone thought they were on to a good thing and I was heavily sponsored. I was obviously the last to finish the run – actually, the Marshals had all gone back to the office and I managed to do an extra circuit as there was no-one left to tell me the correct route. Eventually, the organisers sent a motor-cycle policeman to find me and escort me to the finishing line. As we turned the last corner, he told me that they had put the tape back up and that everyone was waiting for me at the finish line and I would have to run the last 100 metres! I was dressed in a furry Bugs Bunny costume and it was decided my costume was the best so I got a small plaque for that too. I received the plaque from the Commodore of the Naval Base but kept my rabbit mask on, as I was totally purple underneath!
On drinking our complimentary coffee at the ferry port in Portsmouth, Hampshire, (you are always offered a complimentary drink when the ferry is not on time – must cost a fortune in coffee!) we fell into conversation with a middle-aged couple who had bought a dilapidated farmhouse in France, which they had restored and moved into, and who had been back to Wales to check their UK property was still OK. They spent most of their time in France, returning to their UK address as, and when, they needed to. They could not wait to return to France. As we talked, they told us about this wonderful woman who had acted as their agent when they bought their French property. She sounded fantastic, quite the ‘Fairy Godmother’. She had found their house for them, done all the translating all the way through, sorted their driving permits, their health insurances, cards etc and had become such a good friend that she often spent Christmas with them. As the couple had not been married at the time, Fairy Godmother had even suggested they ‘tie the knot’ and promptly arranged their wedding for them, even arranging the catering for the reception. This lady we had to meet. We gave the couple our card and asked them if they would ask Fairy Godmother to contact us. (It eventually turned out that the Fairy Godmother vanished in a puff of smoke after we bought the house having promised to help us with everything, like the taxes, meeting the mayor, gardeners, house-sitters, etc etc.)
The channel crossing from Portsmouth to Cherbourg is about 7 hours long and we visited the gift shop, the Duty Free shop and spent the rest of the time in the bar playing cards and other travel games, which I always packed along with passports and tickets. There was a quiz and a game of Bingo on board and I won a small cash prize. I eventually started to win prizes for the quiz too as they used the same questions every time!
The ferry docked at Cherbourg in Northern France and we made our way through the town of St Lo, not realising at the time that there was a route which by-passed the city. We inevitably got lost and asked several people for directions. We managed to ask correctly, but could not understand a word of the replies, so finally went into a large petrol station to see if anyone there spoke any English. Luckily, one of the staff spoke a tiny bit of English and told us we should go to ‘Carrefour’. As I remembered passing a Carrefour hypermarket, we returned to it and turned left as instructed. ‘Carrefour’ also appears to be French for other things. After several twists and turns, we ended up back at the petrol station and tried again. This time they told us to go to ‘total’. This time we imagined ‘total’ to be the end of the road – no, it was ‘Total’ another petrol station! We eventually figured it all out and eventually found ‘Vire’ on the road signs. Actually, after several journeys to France we have discovered that the road marking are incredibly easy to follow. Normally you just follow signs with your destination on. If these are on the right hand side of the direction boards, you are on the right road. When the destination becomes the bottom name on the sign, you take the next turn-off. Easy,unless there is a deversion. The make-shift signs say ‘detour’ so you follow them until they suddenly stop and you are in the middle of the country side without a clue where the next sign is going to be.
We finally arrived at the first Immobilier, in Vire, only to be looked at over the top of the man’s spectacles and asked, “What do you want?” We explained we had an appointment to view some houses and we were given the old ‘Gaelic shrug’ and sent outside to look in the window to see if anything interested us – some system! We selected just two houses in our price range.
I asked if I could use the bathroom as we had travelled for some time and was directed to the public WC across the road, where I was confronted with the obligatory ‘hole in the ground’. Wearing tight jeans, I decided it was a physical impossibility and returned to the shop to ask if I might use the office one. When we finally moved to France we visited a fair and I saw what I thought was a row of Portaloos. Amazingly they all had the ‘hole in the ground’ and I looked in several of them and came out again. Some French ladies saw my problem and kindly showed me how to use them. Really quite simple once you know how.
Comfort regained, the agent drove us grudgingly to the first house and told us we couldn’t actually go inside (as we weren’t ready to buy) but could just look round the grounds. Never, ever, tell a French Estate Agent that you are ‘only looking to see what you could afford’. It was a lovely, large, bungalow with a terrace all round, a sensible sized garden (neither of us being Percy Throwers) and it had an underground garage and even a vegetable plot and a chicken run. Absolutely perfect. The village in which it was situated had one of each type of shop – grocer, baker, butcher, doctor etc, even a pub! We were already smitten with France.
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