The end of an era.

Monday 28th November 2022

In July 1981 we purchased an old property in the Dordogne region of France, it was an old farmhouse or “fermette”. It had been empty for many years, the roof was caving in over the house, there was no mains water, just the well and the electricity fed 2 light bulbs and one socket. We purchased it with 1,000 sq metres of land.

Well I like a challenge and learning new skills so over the past 31 years I, Michelle, Matthew and other family members plus many friends have contributed to its development and modernisation.

A year or so after it’s purchase we acquired the adjacent field and a small wooded area making our total land to just over 10,000 sq metres. That bought a new dimension to our life there and over the years lead to me wearing out 3 sit on mowers until eventually I bought a proper tractor with a grass cutter.

View across the field to the house, all the trees were planted by ourselves.

The house started with one bedroom, a combined kitchen( joke) dining room and living space all theoretically heated by an open fire, there were a further 3 small interconnecting rooms to the rear of the house that had polished clay floors.

At the time of the sale it had grown to 4 bedrooms, two lounges, a large dining kitchen, two bathrooms and a utility room plus an open verandah on the end of the house which we used most of the year round, a workshop and a mower store. There were two wood burning stoves plus an open fire and electric heaters in most rooms. In all we had 10 rooms which Michelle took great delight in redecorating on a regular basis.

It’s a sad decision to take to sell after all this time but a combination of rising costs, both upkeep and travelling to and fro, Brexit restrictions on the time we can spend there and finally age is catching up with me and I find keeping up with the maintenance harder and harder. We are pleased that a young couple have bought the house and we are sure they will improve it further and enjoy living there.

After we left the notaires office having signed all the legal papers and began the journey home I did a quick calculation and worked out that if I averaged 3 visits a year( sometimes more) at 1,080 miles return journey for 31 years then we have travelled over 100,000 miles in that time.

So what now, well we believe it’s time to upgrade our current motorhome and and knock up a few more tens of thousand miles exploring amongst other places, FRANCE👍😊🍷🥂🌞