My brother visits the Clunysois EVERY summer, and has done for years and years! We have been over a few times and thoroughly enjoyed it! Glad to hear that you enjoy living there as well! How far from Cluny are you? and roughly speaking which direction? :-)
We love living here in the Clunysois of southern Burgundy. The countryside is magnificent and the people are very friendly and we have been well accepted and are invited out often.
We wanted to live in the countryside and we are used to the planning involved in shopping etc.
I felt that the energy in this particular place is very positive and waking up to the view is good for my soul.
thats a really good philosophy Jackqueline....
Just had a count of houses I have lived in over 65 years and it is 17. That is enough. Coming to France 6 years ago was a last big adventure. Moving is really expensive, stressful and with the amount of stuff we have accumulated, really hard work. There is no more money to be earned (we are retired)so moving cannot be done on a whim. I know I can't take the money with me when the grim reaper beckons but I would like enough to enjoy myself while I'm here. Just had an operation that has given me the use of my legs back - 10 years younger in essence - so I will go visit all the places I might have moved to in France now I can walk round them and enjoy coming back to my not so perfect location.
That made me laugh Jacqueline.....but certainly I know of a few ex pats not able to sell who are not so much in the vinegar bottle...but most certainly in the wine bottle...for too many hour a day!
Sympathise Fiona...thats pretty much our situation...we have a flat in the UK where I spend much of my time working and a huge pile of stones in the Dordogne...if we reversed that we would be delighted! Sorry to hear the apartments are not self funding...certainly what you would hope and expect. Our apt. in St Cyp keeps itself and gives us petrol money for our trips to it...several times a year (5 hours drive south)...if it didnt, we would have to get rid of it too. Wish you luck with the sale...not a whole lot moving at the moment...and like us, you have a big property to shift.....hope Brian is correct that the housing market above 200k is beginning to move at last.
Hi Nick....I think the weather foxes many of us...we feel complete dolts for 'assuming' the Dordogne, and we are on the Dordogne/Lot border in the furthest south/west corner....would be warmer generally than the UK, we didnt bother checking...and were horrified to find out that the exotic plants I wanted to nurture wouldnt survive in the minus 15 temps in winter! also too many days of 40 plus this summer....extremes...when we were hoping for an early spring and late autumn and a lovely warm 28 - 33 summer temps....serves us right for not making sure. Our holiday place in the Languedoc has much better temps for us...being on the sea..never so hot and never so cold.... Do you rent your home out if you go to Spain? we are getting to the stage where I am spending most of my time in the UK working and OH stuck looking after our huge pile of stones in France.... we are just very lairy of renting in case we get a whole new pile of problems...
We rented in this area for 3 months before making the decision to buy. Then we met the locals, and one in particular had combed the area for years before settling here. She showed us neighbouring towns; our realtor, John Wall, searched a wider spectrum from Montpellier, up towards the Cote D'azur, high into the Pyrenees Mountains, and all over Aude.
Between the two, we made a well-suited decision. Great schools for our young children, touristy enough to pull a small income off our B&B, big enough to be alive year round, and lastly, close enough to bigger cities and sites to keep us interested and exploring. It suits our lifestyle but it is not for everyone.
Our apartment in Budapest Hungary in the complete contrast (which we rent out when we are not there) located right downtown within walking distance to the areas we love and know. Here we take in shows, lovely restaurants, throw parties, and enjoy the busy city life.
Country mouse meets city mouse ideal, except we do not have to pick, and with Ryan Air’s cheap flights, we can go home as often as we like.
Our dream life is on a smaller scale. Sure buying a big old farmhouse with property and a huge renovation project is everyone’s dream, but return is not always the best and picking the prefect location is key. We made a few sacrifices to make our dream work.
Do I have any regrets? Just one…I wish we had a bigger garage for my husband to tinker in. Is it a mistake big enough to sell off our little home to look for the perfect house? Not right now. However, life is long.
Up side: we bought under budget, in a family oriented neighbourhood making it easy for the kids to assimilate, and our life is within walking distance to stores, their school, their activities...
Anyone looking for a life here in France should take the time to really think it through. My best advice is to hire a person to search for you. It costs you the same in the end; the difference is that they initiate any house viewings, usually going to the listing agent first and they get paid through a % of the sales commission. They do the legwork with their knowledge of France working for you, and you reap the benefits.
We holidayed for 5 years in France, touring different regions/departments, and in the end picked on the Cantal as it was rural, central, few Brits, beautiful countryside, close to a golf course (my passion) and cheap - the latter being particularly important. We found a lovely ruined farmhouse overlooking a lovely valley in a small friendly hamlet and the local village with basic amenities only two kilometres away. We renovated it with local artisans and its great - can you feel a BUT coming on ? One of the major reasons for our move to France was for better weather/longer summers. Unfortunately after 5 years we've decided to move South because we want to be warmer/longer. We are now up for sale (very little interest) and house-searching the (Eastern) Ariege and the (Western) Aude departments. Luckily we are still very happy here in the Cantal as our neighbours are great and the countryside is beautiful so we will leave it to fate to decide how much longer we stay. In the meantime we've decided to take advantage of very cheap winter rental prices in Spain !!
Right area, wrong house!
The brats are happy at their schools, especially youngest son who is autistic; after two years of faffing around, he is now in a small group at the IME and is making very slow progress, but is happy and settled which is the most important - I couldn't bear to put him through any more upheaval!
The scenery is stunning, we like having proper winters with lots of snow, 15 minutes from skiing etc, 20 minutes from a town with everything, a few friends which is enough for us (we aren't the most sociable bunnies in the warren), and Calais is about 6 hours drive away, and Basel/Mulhouse airport about an hour and a half so we can get about when we need to without too much trauma.
However, the house is too big and too expensive. It's divided into 3 apartments - we live in the biggest one, and the other two are holiday lettings - the plan was that the apartments would be self-financing but they're not! Tim works in Luxembourg where the salaries are significantly higher than in France - we need that money just to keep us ticking over - we'd happily have less income if he could come home every night, but that ain't going to happen while we have to service the mortgages on this place.
So the grand plan is to get the jobs finished here (mainly cosmetic but there's a lot of them!), put the house on the market at a sensible price, buy a lump of land and build a house that works for us, and doesn't have any nasty surprises lurking in the corners - we call this house "10 Jobs" because you have to do 10 jobs in order to do the 1 job you actually planned. And then we can review how we earn our crust so we can actually live as a proper family .... it's our 4th anniversary since we moved here on 23 Oct, and we have never lived together full-time, which is rather sad.
Say it quickly and sounds reasonably straightforward!
Pleased with where we bought for many reasons - and at the time they were good reasons and it worked well! (ie in the country but with some basic shops in the village, and essentially, a primary school!) Now - seven years later - still love where we are. But Primary school no longer any use to us. Final year of Collége this year for the youngest, and he will (I hope) become an Interne at Lycée in the "County Town" which is about 45 minutes away. So - although we still love the village and the people and the quiet - practically speaking it is no longer as convenient as it was!! For now I would prefer to be on the outskirts of our County Town so that the teenagers would have access to public transport and therefore more independence to do the things that teenagers want to do! HOWEVER, I also acknowledge that in 3 years time, when the youngest is about to leave Lycée I will have different thoughts about where it would be good to live!! Certainly I have found that the "perfect" place doesn't always remain perfect for no other reason than that family circumstances are changing!
Not sure if we will stay or move - and IF we move not sure where we will go .... That is a whole different question for us! :-)
My husband has a habit of getting me in the car for a longish journey and as I am trapped begins to talk about one of three subjects, one is golf, the second is money and the other is the 'what ifs'. The what ifs are always about the choice of house, location, we did it too quickly, we are stuck because it is not now worth what we spent on it and what if we won the lottery - 5,000€, 1,000,000€ and so on. I don't mind the dreaming bit but I can't stand the regretting. We have a great house near friends in a wonderful part of France - OK, it could be improved but it's like the fairy tale about the women who lived in a vinegar bottle. She was given so many wishes that eventually after none of them were satisfactory she ended up back in the vinegar bottle. Vinegar bottle? Charente? I know where I would rather be. Je ne regrette rien.
Narbonne is lovely, old but vibrant we wanted just outside as we have lots of friends in the area but at the time we just couldnt find a place to our liking and the agents thought that being British we were desperate to buy and were showing us the most awful piles of stone you could imagine
Well thats true Carol living in a city would kill me very quickly, seems the one thing my son and i have in common, we both married little gold diggers, daughter says the same as yours she is only 38 and loves her job and is on the move upwards so no thoughts of running away to live in the backwoods of France just yet
Narbonne is lovely....certainly an area we were aware of...but chose before we got there...shame...Im sure it would have suited us better! good luck Corinne with your search....good to take time anyway and get it right if you can first time...
We only moved here, (to a quiet village near Lodeve in Herault) in April. My husband has just left the army and so we are coming from an army quarter in Germany. We decided to rent down here at first, so we can explore the area and take our time deciding where exactly to buy. All our money is in savings at the moment and we hope to have a nice deposit next year, the biggest problem I fear we will come across is getting a mortgage for the rest of the money. (Our bank said we need 3 years accounts here before we get a mortgage, anyway that's another story....
Renting here in such a lovely peaceful village has made me realise, yes it's beautiful but I miss being near the buzz of a town, having shops, parks, bars, restaurants etc to walk to. And PEOPLE lol.
We recently met up with a fellow SFN friend in Narbonne, and that is somewhere that is now appealing to us...Hopefully we will make the right choice when we buy!
sounds like my kids John...two live in Dubai...one in London....two of our kids cant see the attraction at all... the other...our daughter acknowledges the loveliness of the countryside...but admits at 32..she could only live where we do for holidays...our kids were brought up in a rural area of Hampshire...but love and live in cities... each to his own eh?
wow...knew you had moved a bit Catharine....didnt realise you had moved that frequently! well all I can say is you have a lot of energy...moving is such a pain!
Hoody bleck!
We are on 7 houses in 8 years in various areas....