Our journey to make a new life in Haute Vienne, Limousin, France

Destination Haute-Vienne

We've met many British ex-pats whilst visiting France, including some who would resent even being referred to as that, as they now consider themselves fully fledged French citizens. Each has a story to tell, a reason why they fell in love with France, why they chose the life they live. For some it's a direct route perhaps a lifelong affinity for France derived from childhood holidays spent in the Dordogne. For others like me it was a more circuitous route.

 

I grew up in deepest Lancashire, about three hundred miles from Calais. It might as well have been three thousand. Foreign travel was a terrifically rare experience when I grew up. My Grandad had been abroad and said he hadn't cared for it much. It didn't matter that his only time abroad had been on French soil avoiding enemy artillery and trying to prevent himself being scattered over a wide area, he simply hadn't enjoyed it.

 

His experience was hardly conducive to making a considered judgement but seemingly his travel review was as good as anything Judith Chalmers could muster. It was good enough for my family and therefore we didn't go. Consequently a fortnight in Cornwall or a week in Wales would be as close as I came to travelling abroad when I was growing up.

However, when I reached my teens new opportunities arose. At the time, like most sulky teenagers, I was going through a musical epiphany of sorts. Paul Weller had left my favourite band The Jam to form a radically different group called The Style Council.' Dismissed as being 'poncey' by many of my friends, I was hooked straight away.  Much of their early sound, fashions, cover art and music videos were oozing with French influence and as an impressionable young lad they fired within me a burning desire to discover France for myself. After several unsuccessful sales campaigns, I eventually managed to talk my parents into paying for a school activity holiday to Brittany (including a day in Paris) and this visit confirmed to me, that by an accident of birth I had in fact been born in the wrong country. I decided there and then that one day I would live in France.

 

Despite that enthusiasm, ambition didn't translate into action.  I put the same amount of effort into my French classes as all my other subjects combined - absolutely none whatsoever. 

 

I was born and raised in a small mill town where most people ended up working in shoe and slipper factories. The general attitude to education there in the early 80's was of just getting through it and in truth I only just managed that.

 

I was still fascinated by what I learnt in French but I thought I was too cool for school and refused to throw myself into speaking and learning the language in case I made a fool of myself. Whilst I was obsessed with all things French, I vividly remember thinking "When will I ever need to speak this nonsense?" Little did I know?

 

I visited France on holiday many more times over the next 25 years for long weekends and summer breaks each trip re-enforcing my love of the country. I loved the food, the people, the attitude towards family and society, the beauty and variety of landscape and nature.

 

In 2006 I met Melanie who is now my wife. She and her family were also utter Francophiles and keen cyclists who travel to watch the Tour de France most years. We met in March and quickly became inseparable. However, I had already booked a holiday the following month with an old friend of mine to indulge in another of my great passions in life - Carp fishing.

The Limousin is one of the leading destinations for carp fishing in Europe and we had booked an amazing place called Birch Pool Retreat near a little town called Meuzac in the Haute Vienne department. We spent a fantastic week there catching enormous carp but more importantly I discovered the Limousin region and for the second time in two months I had fallen deeply in love.

 

On my return I bored Mel senseless with tales of what I had seen and how beautiful the area was. We discussed buying a place together; somewhere we could renovate and eventually live. The following March we booked a five day trip to look around properties in the region. We viewed something in the order of fifteen properties in different parts of the Limousin but typically for us, put in an offer on the first place we saw near a town called Chalus in Haute Vienne. NB history buffs please note it was here that Richard the Lionheart was fatally wounded. The town is not the prettiest in France but it does have a charm of its own. 

 

The 17^th century farmhouse had been partially renovated, the main house was completely liveable but the outbuildings were in need of complete renovation which offered us the development opportunity that we had been looking for. It had some land but not too much, I'm not the most gifted horticulturalist though I am a keen learner. Most importantly it was sufficiently remote to give us the peace and tranquillity we love but close enough to access anything we might need.

 

We got married in May 2007 and returned to the Limousin in June for our honeymoon after I somehow managed to persuade Melanie to spend 10 days carp fishing! I'd asked her what she wanted to do; she replied that as long as there was plenty of food, drink and sunshine she didn't mind. Therefore a return to Birch Pool Retreat was booked before she could protest.

 

Whilst on honeymoon we spent lots of time exploring the region and thankfully our decision to buy there was validated ten times over. We returned to the UK following a fantastic 10 days and immediately set about completing the purchase of our property. We became the proud owners of 'Gouhaut' in July 2007.

 

Two years later we are approximately halfway through our renovation project. We still live in Manchester working hard to fund each new phase of the project. We have had the barn demolished and re-built and are planning to complete the work by the end of 2010. We could not have foreseen the global economic crisis when we bought our house in 2007 but the last few years have been really tough particularly as the pound/euro exchange rate has changed so dramatically, inevitably delaying our progress. However as Mel keeps reminding me our race is a marathon not a sprint and we try and take each setback in our stride.

 

We are both learning to speak French and both lamenting not trying harder learning it at school. We spend as much time as we can in the Limousin and have made some fantastic friends on our many visits. There are so many things we enjoy about our time there, the open roads free of congestion, twisting and turning through the extraordinary backdrop of beautiful nature. Or the weather, like an exaggerated version of the UK, warmer in the summer, colder in the winter, more dramatic in autumn and spring. We love the huge variety of wildlife, from birds of prey and kingfishers to deer, coypu, stag beetles and of course my beloved carp.

 

We don't know when we will move to France, there is still so much to do and so much to be earned to pay for it. Also, though we will rent our converted barn as a holiday home we know we will need other income and for that we will need much better language skills than we currently possess. However, we are working hard to get there and when we do we will know it's all been worth it. Until then, we'll enjoy the journey.

 

 

 

 
Posted by: Alan Leishman on 10 November 2009