It all started...

It all started after a holiday to France in 2001.

On our return we settled back in to day to day life, one 6 year old and one 1 year old.  OH is and electrician and plumber, I strived (and failed on a daily basis) to be the domestic goddess.

Friends of ours had run into money difficulties and had re-mortgaged their house to free up some equity. 

On a fit of,  well if they can do that, why can't we (re-mortgage, not get into money difficulties that is) we decided to do likewise and buy a holiday home in France.  As you do.

On our old dial up modem we would scour the sites of the few immobiliers that were on line at the time and the properties that they had to offer, not even having a real clue as to where we wanted to be.  Initially we thought of Normandy, it would be easily accessible and so we could come across on a regular basis.

On a chance reading in a French Property paper, someone had written about their home in SW France and we spotted those magical words 'Micro Climate'. Realising that this would be a do-able in one day car journey, we changed our destination, and so surfing in a new region began in earnest.

We were drawn to 2 houses in particular, one being a one bedroom, that the OH really liked and a 3 bedroom that appealed to me. Six months down the line we had the funds in place, a rendez-vous with the immobilier and our holiday booked to come and visit.

Oh how naive we were.  We booked near the coast at St. Hilaire in the Vendee, a mere 2 and a bit hour drive to the area we wanted to buy.  I suppose we thought that the kids would enjoy being near the coast and that there would be nowhere anywhere near to book into in rural France!

We saw a grand total of two houses, and bought the second one.  Just like that! The estate agent was in a state of shock herself.  On November the 5th 2002 we had it, all sealed and signed for.

For the next four years we spent every school holiday coming over to our little place in heaven.  Slowly doing it up room by room - every six weeks pulling up the jungle of weeds that had grown in our absence. It got harder and harder to return back to England, we lived in a pretty village in the south but it was getting more and more built up.  For every house that got demolished, a block of 12 maybe more flats, sorry, apartments, went up, the road became a rat run as the main roads got busier, life in France really was La Bonne Vie for us.  We used to say we were going home to France and just going back to work when returning to England.

It all came to a head the summer in 2004, we had made the decision to stay for the whole 6 weeks of the summer holidays.  Mistake.  Big Mistake.  We really didn't want to go back.  As soon as we did, the house was on the market, OH looked about the feasibility of transferring his skills over to France and we told the children.  The only person I didn't tell was my mum. Yes I am a coward, I just didn't know how to. 

Without boring you about the huge amount of fun we had (not) when we sold the house, we finally moved over on 21st December 2005.

That's when the fun started.