A New Adventure in France

We decided when looking for a house in France that it would be our permanent home rather than a holiday house, so we will be relocating our furniture and belongings from the UK to France and supplementing as required. There is administration to deal with to get set up in France and paperwork required to move everything from the UK, so we need to get our ducks in a row to make it all come together. The removal company requires proof of address such as a utility bill for customs formalities. To set up an account with a utility company you need a bank account to provide direct debit details, and to open a bank account you need proof of address – you get the picture! However, everyone we’ve dealt with so far has been charming and helpful, particularly if we’re prepared to deal with them in French. The 2 hours with the bank manager at the bank in the village – when did most of us last actually meet a bank manager in person? – were well worth it and we left with all the information to keep everyone happy for the time being.

Our plan is to spend a few weeks here to get familiar with the house, get paperwork sorted and return to the UK to get packed up there. The previous owners have moved all their furniture back to the UK so we were reconciled to camping on the driveway, so to speak, sleeping in the campervan overnight and using the facilities in the house during the day. There are several local online forums for English speaking expats selling furniture and other items and we were fortunate to find some very nice bedroom furniture from a gite owner who is selling up. That is all set up so our stay here has become much more comfortable.

Apart from admin tasks, we’ve been exploring the house and getting to know how everything works. We had a brief handover the day before completion and hopefully we’ll remember everything we need to. One of the main criteria for a property was an outbuilding to house vehicles and equipment, including the campervan, trailer, Joe’s motorbike and vintage Jeep. The barn is ideally set up for that and, like the house, is in great restored order.

You can still see how it must have operated as a working farm with the original animal feed troughs on one side and the imprints of cows’ hooves in the concrete ramp – the cows would have been driven in when the concrete was not fully set to create a non-slip surface.

The barn also houses an item which the previous owners sold to Joe – the ride-on tractor mower, which Joe has already tried out. There are no fences around the borders of the property because we are in an agricultural zone, so we have a lot of ‘borrowed’ landscape but fortunately don’t have to mow it all. Nevertheless, it is a job to be tackled in stages, not on one day. I fancy going the biodiversity route for part of the land at least, and creating a wildflower meadow that can be left to grow.

Being in such a rural area we will have to get used to wildlife of various sorts. We have house martins and another bird nesting in the barn and spotted a deer on the adjacent field in the late evening. Apparently we can also expect to be visited by badgers and wild boar!