The Start of Our Adventure…
After our friends bought a holiday home in the Mayenne, we realised that it could be possible for us to realise our dream to renovate an old cottage and have a piece of land. Two years of saving every penny we could by working extra hours (7 days per week for hubby) selling all we could at boot fairs (me) and using the time to do as much research as I could about life in France, (I even found out if we could be cremated!) culminated in us making a trip over to look at a property.
We travelled in our Toyota Litace van and threw a mattress in the back plus a primus stove and a few provisions. We looked at the property we’d found
in a French property paper, property is a fairly loose term as it was a ruin with a one room house attached!
After leaving the estate agent and promising we would be back the next morning we parked the van in the chateau car park and cooked our supper.
A passing French man shouted “Bon apetit!” I felt a thrill of excitement!
We lay on our mattress talking and talking, at 2am we were going to make an offer, at 4am we were going home to think about it.
We returned to the agent’s and said we were going home to think about it, which we did, but I think we both knew that we were going to buy it with
it’s huge cracks in the gable end wall, green, slimy walls in the one room, a huge bramble growing up the chimney and a blackbird’s nest on the mantel shelf! (I think it was the blackbird’s nest that swung it!) Our adventure had started!
To be continued….
Guest Blog by Fruitcake @barjan
Can’t wait for the next episode Fruity
In the pipeline HJ