Why this part of France ?
We started looking at Languedoc-Rousillon and the areas of France that John knows and likes. Montpellier is too expensive so we looked in a rough triangle between Beziers, Narbonne and Perpignan and went as far west as Carcassonne. This is wine country in recession and tourist country so, sadly, it’s dead in winter. We hit two main problems. Affordable houses were in dying hamlets and no houses at our price had gardens. The houses are stone and attractive – part of once semi-fortified villages on rocky hills and outcrops but all required very hard and major renovation work.
Nothing seemed right. In desperation we moved our search north and west to the Charente where we hit a week of arctic weather, van trouble and snow and ice. The property here was much more what we were looking for but the area though beautiful, didn’t feel right for us. This may sound strange, but it was too provincial and too French especially by comparison with the South of France which has a mixed community into which we felt we might assimilate better.
Absolutely by chance we had stopped in Tarbes, a place that meant nothing to us, to see friends on our way to the Charente. They sang the praises of the Tarbes climate and the local house prices but as it was dark when we arrived in Tarbes we had no idea at all about the appearance of the town or the region until we drove out the next day imagining that we would not be back.
We had, however, established contact with an estate agent in Tarbes and were sent some properties to look at that seemed promising. Our Charente shortlist still hadn’t given us ‘le coup de Coeur nécessaire’. We were cold and the van was b***d so we went back to Tarbes, looked at some properties and are still here enduring ‘les tempêtes’ and waiting to see if the place we like may become ours at some happy future moment.
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