Tour de France

We took a day off to visit Tour de France 2008 in Montlucon - here is what we got up to:

Take a video tour around the village

Courtesy of our neighbours, you can now take a virtual drive around the village and surrounding areas and find out about some of the strange things the locals get up to. Choose one of the videos below:

Look ma, no roof!

The builders had started work before our arrival in France, but where a little behind schedule. As you can see from the photos, they had stripped off the old front roof and had begun replacing the structure with new wood in preparation for re-tiling.

Officially Owning the Property

We received notification that we became the official owners of the property on Tuesday 17th June. We immediately made arrangements for the electricity to be connected and an engineer called at the house today and reconnected the supply. We have increased the supply to 12kW to cope with the needs of a more modern house (which we hope ours will be once it's finished). The water supply has also been connected, so we have all the necessary to start work.

Our builder, Jacky, has also started work on the house. He is repairing part of the roof and putting in concrete floors down in the kitchen and new bathroom.

We too have been busy in the UK - B&Q have had a 10% day, so we've purchased some of the things we need to take with us, including a flat-pack kitchen and some tiles, amongst other things. It's a good job Steven is driving over in his van this summer! We have more things to buy yet, so dad will be accompanying me back to B&Q on a Wednesday to make full use of his 10% Diamond Card.

Another Visit to Creuse

Whit week was spent in the north of Creuse negotiating with builders, carpenters and the Mairie. The Notaire advised us that he is now ready for us to sign the acte de vente. We stayed in a Gite in the village with a British couple, Jeanette and Ken, who made us feel very welcome.

We met the Mairie and talked about what improvements we hope to make to the building. We need to apply for permission to make some of the changes, so we were furnished with the necessary blank forms and told to complete them and provide more plans and photographs and to send 5 copies of everything!

During the past 3 weeks the back garden has turned into something resembling a rainforest. The rain over the past week has done nothing to help things. A quick dose of weedkiller should do the trick!

Here are a photos of the surrounding area:

More Pictures

We got round to downloading all the pictures from our camera today. These help to give a clearer idea of just what condition the building is in.

Viewing and Buying

After looking at several properties in the northern area of Creuse, described by estate agents sales pitches as "a renover" and one experience of being pipped at the post by another purchaser, we took another trip to the area to view another small selection of properties.

This time we fell across an old forge. Disused for several years, we were informed by the estate agent that it belonged to an old woman with dogs. Clearly it has not been used at the village forge for many years and had not been lived in for some time. However, apart from one small area, the roof was in good order and the walls sound.

The estate agent had lined up a local builder to give us quotes for the repair of the roof and for other ideas we sprung on him during our inspection visit. The property required quite a lot of work to bring it into good order, however, we could see there was a mains sewer cover right outside the property and the builder and estate agent assured us it would not be a problem to get the property connected to the mains sewer. There was already running water and 3-phase electricity to the site, so this would not be a huge task to get reconnected.

After deliberating over lunch we decided to make an offer on the property, which was immediately accepted. Having been caught out on a previous purchase we decided not to wait a moment longer and signed on the dotted line of the comprimis de vente.

The proud prospective owners of a property in France, we stayed overnight in a local hotel and then embarked on the journey back to the UK, satisfied that our trip had been fruitful and we were now on course to being owners of a property in France.