When we quit the rat race to live a quieter, less stressful life in rural France, I hadn’t realised quite how busy my new life would be!
Several months of battling with a mountain of paperwork has seen my business established, my property finding web site up and running and a number of articles written.
The culmination of all this frantic activity saw me rushing towards London for The France Show by TGV from Poitiers and Eurostar. Taking less than 6 hours, this is an amazingly quick and efficient service. (On my train the staff apologised several times because we were – are you ready for this- a whole 3 minutes late! British rail operators please note).
There was a real buzz at the show and it was great to meet up with colleagues from FrenchEntree as well as estate agents from my own area in France. It was particularly interesting to have conversations with Jan Reid (Agence2immobilier) and Amanda Froome about some of the great bargains that can still be found in our area (if a little more expensive than chatting over here as they only live about 20 minutes away from us!)
I spoke to quite a few people who are determined to make their dreams of owning a French property a reality this year. A number of these potential UK buyers mentioned that they were interested in the South Vendée and Deux Sèvres area because they want somewhere with better weather than England but they also want to be within a day’s drive of Calais so that they- and their families- don’t waste too much of their precious holiday travelling. I totally agree. Time spent in the car when it could be spent watching the sun set on your own terrasse while sipping a glass of chilled rosé and sampling some luscious local cheese, really is time that is wasted.
The weekend flashed by and it seemed only hours later I was getting off the TGV (on time as it happens) in Poitiers. Away from the noise and traffic of London and back to my own peaceful French country home complete with large and small cats snoring before a roaring log fire (well, it is January) and husband pouring a well earned glass of wine. As Frank Sinatra once sang: “ It’s so nice to go trav’ling but it’s... so much nicer to come home”. Salut!
