Why did we set up a website on France ?

Can I read your thoughts…why did you set up a website on Pays-de-la-Loire in France ?

As I had said in my previous blog, Iain was up a high ladder at the beams, when I heard a loud crash and I turned round to see him on his back on the tiled floor. He was lucky he didn’t kill himself falling from that height. Anyhow, fate has it on this one, his time is not up. He suffered much bruising together with broken ribs on his back. So rest obviously was in order, with all the work hanging over us at that specific time, we knew rest would not come easy…. and knowing I could not continue without him – we chose to do some computer work.

Although one reason was to take our minds of the situation, and give us something beneficial to do, as we had been used to working every day, we also felt that many people must arrive in France and go through what we went through and we thought we could make it easier for people if they had the correct information. We found a lot of sites but unfortunately, they were not always correct, and in fact giving us incorrect information made it harder for us when we got here, so we thought we would deal with actual facts and spent several months researching the information. Then we set up the site, and we have been researching and adding to it ever since. Our latest addition is naming and giving a description on every make of French cheese.

www.joinusinfrance.net

My next blog is getting to the point where we cannot continue with the house……

Lets leave England

In 2004, due to my partner and myself being made redundant from our jobs, myself from my Admin position in Social Services (they were amalgamating with the NHS) and Iain whose IT company was restructuring and moving. We decided now was a good time to start a new life in France. Like so many English we were dissatisfied with the way the country was going – to the dogs – as we say !

So we came across to France for a holiday and to look around, we fell in love with a large house in the country with two and a half acres and decided it was for us. The house looked lovely, it had full central heating and electric shutters and although it needed a lot of work, we felt the basics were there. So we ploughed forward and made the giant leap and bought the property. Made sure we had an English translator and English speaking Notaire and thought everything went rather smooth.

The house had a woodburning stove, a cooker and some kitchen units… our first surprise after buying was – all of these had disappeared…. Our first encounter of the term in France “buyer beware”. It seems that the French will remove anything and everything from the house before leaving. Not much of a problem for us, we thought, as we knew we would have to renew them anyway – we just thought they would have been handy for the time being.

The house had oak beams downstairs and these had been painted over for many many years with white paint etc. we thought our first task was to remove the paint. The second problem was when we checked the wiring in the walls, most of it had burnt out (it is not common in France to have a surveyor and one could not have detected what was behind the walls) – and the third problem was we were informed it had mains water to the house. Alas, misinformed – we had well water and the mains came in to the edge of the land. OK, we can tackle this, it’s not out of our reach to sort it, and anyway we had bought by this time and put it down to experience.

Sold up and came over to France with a caravan, our dog and our four cats.

Here the nightmare and hard work began………….