DISPATCH TRAVEL
Finding love …or not quite in rural France
WHO hasn’t dreamt of escaping the middle-class hamster wheel of expensive schools, large mortgages and 70hour weeks?
Having spent an amazing year abroad in Paris when I was studying French at university, I had always fantasised about moving back with my husband, Robert, and our two young children. In 2003, after a trip to Bordeaux, I convinced him to make what was intended to be our “forever” move.
My vision of France was never quite the bucolic idyll of Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence (who died last Thursday), but his 1989 ode to the slower pace of life in Provence inspired thousands like us to follow in his footsteps, in pursuit of a simpler, sun-drenched life.
Our children, then aged six and eight, were excited to learn a new language and experience a different culture. Robert planned to work as an actor for six months of the year and enjoy long lunches and aperitifs with neighbours for the rest.
But the French dream got off to a rocky start before we even left home.
We found the perfect house near Bordeaux that ticked all the boxes: in the countryside but with a community feel.
Taking the plunge, we sold our home and pulled our children out of their school.
But in the car on the way to the airport, the French estate agent called us to say the house had been sold to cash buyers the day before. We’d lost our dream home and had to move in with my parents for two months, while the children missed school.
Perhaps I should have seen it as a warning sign.
The next house wasn’t as easy to find and, in the end, we went for a quirky property in a hamlet near Roquecor in Tarn-et-Garonne, not far from Toulouse.
I immediately put it on my “No” pile, but Robert loved it.
A 300-year-old farmhouse built into the side of a hill, it was on a fiveacre plot of land, with an old coach house and swimming pool. It wasn’t the traditional maison de maître
(old merchant’s house) of my dreams, and was strangely decorated in a colour best described as “baby poo” yellow. But it had a unique charm. Virginia Woolf’s great niece had painted a stained-glass window in the guest cottage and the living room had a 21-foot cathedral ceiling.
Under pressure to find a new home and leave my parents’, we bought the house. It wouldn’t be ready for a few months so we moved into rental accommodation nearby in January 2004.
Like Mayle, I’d been dreaming about the sunny climes of the south of France. Bitter winter evenings hadn’t figured in the picture, so our first night in Tarn-et-Garonne was a shock. The rental home was freezing and when we tried to turn on the heating the electricity cut out. Eventually, the four of us climbed into one bed together, to sleep fully clothed.
That was the first harsh winter in France, with many more to come.
Once we were finally settled into our new home, things got easier and, I’ll admit, I started to enjoy myself. The area was beautiful, with rolling hills. The village was awash with fetes and markets in the summer, and I enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere; even if Mayle’s tales of “the farmer next door, the mushroom hunter and the lady with the frustrated donkey,” never quite chimed.
Everyone in our village was friendly, but it wasn’t easy fitting into the tight-knit community and we made more acquaintances than we did friends.
When the summer months passed, the area completely shut down and the long winters were very isolating. At one point, when Robert was away filming, I realised the person I spoke to the most was the village shop owner. The lack of facilities in our rural area meant I practically lived in the car.
My biggest bugbear was the schooling. You hear wonderful things about the French education system, but my children were in a primary school of just 20 pupils and one teacher. It was very traditional and rigid, with a lot of copying from the board and filling out worksheets. There was hardly any creativity or organised sport until they started college at 13.
In my son’s second week at the school, a teacher slapped him on the back of the head for a minor fault. I was astounded. Nevertheless, my children took to France and within a year they were fluent.
Life ticked along and we became settled enough to want to stay, despite the hiccups. Then, in 2008, the financial crash hit and the walls crumbled around us. Robert’s work dried up and our savings crashed overnight, along with the exchange rate. For a year we ate our way through the children’s university fund, before deciding we would have to sell and move back home.
Easier said than done; the market crash meant people massively slashed their house prices. Because we still had a mortgage to pay, we mistakenly decided to rent the property to an American family of nine and move back home.
Well, they were a nightmare from the get-go. In two years they paid six months’ worth of rent, while subletting the guest cottage and taking the money.
It’s illegal to evict tenants with children between November and March in France, which made it difficult to ask them to leave. When they eventually did go, they owed us an obscene amount in rent and had caused an even greater amount of damage.
Even after the repairs, we weren’t able to find a buyer and mortgage arrears racked up.
The bank eventually repossessed the house and sold it without telling us. We only found out when we sent another estate agent around, to find a new family was living in it.
The bank then sent us a bill, saying they had sold it in a government auction at a rock-bottom price.
Our marriage didn’t last a year after the French house was repossessed. As they say, when money troubles come in through the window, love goes out of the door.
We’d had a nice life together, but we couldn’t move beyond everything that happened. So we split in 2013 and moved to different cities.
We’re certainly not the only family to have naively burnt our bridges to escape to a French idyll – and won’t be the last. Despite everything, I have no regrets. Without the inspiration of Provence, I would never have become a published author. The children are both bilingual and studying dual degrees with French at university. And we do go back to Tarn-et-Garonne for my daughter’s drama school, and to visit the friends we made who, unlike us, will always be there. —