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Published: September 26th 2006
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sauveterre
side of house with patio, you can see ruined back section!! Well ladies and gentlemen.
That's it, the final deed is done, we have just returned from France where we met with the notaire and signed the final papers. We are now officially french house owners!!! Very exciting and the adventure will continue again in November when we travel back out for good.
We flew over on Sunday the 17th September to Pau where we picked up a hire car and drove to Biarritz for 2 days prior to the signing. We tried to relax there but I think the excitement was too much. We had also packed plenty of wet weather gear as the BBC weather reports for the area were no looking good - HOWEVER when we got there we only had about half an hours worth of rain and then the rest of our stay there was spent basking in 30 - 31 degrees of sunshine! wonderful. topped up the tans a little bit!
Biarritz is the second nearest airport from our new house, it's a fantastic seaside resort, lovely cafe's, good shopping (helen managed to pick up 2 new handbags!!) and there are also plenty of surfer types all over the place, it's quite a mecca apparently
sauveterre - garden
helen standing at the house end of the garden - loads of room! for the surfers - we watched a few of the maniacs bombing into the shore!
From Biarritz we headed back to the wonderful town of Navarrenx where we were booked in to stay a couple of nights in the hotel there. This was the town where we spent most of our time camping whilst house hunting. We stayed at the a great camp which is run by an lovely couple. We stopped by to catch up and have a good old gossip with them. If ever anyone is in the area and is looking for a good place to stay for camping or caravanning I would highly recommend this site and it's hosts. www.beaucamping.com
A heady morning later after a night of plenty of catching up!!! we headed into Sauveterre to meet the owners of the house to go through a few details with him, stop cocks, electrics etc.... Helen breezed through with her knowledge of french and I nodded gracefully along! Looks like the time away hasn't degraded Helen's vocabulary. The viewing of the house before the signing reminded us how big it actually is and also how much time and work we are going to have
sauveterre - garden2
really catches the sun, will be great with a pool. to put into this project to be able to reap the rewards. It will be worth it, going back to the whole area just made the both of us giddy (or was that the wine!)
finally the day arrived, we arrived early at the notaries and spent the waiting time feeling a little ill - buying a house in france certainly gives you the same feelings as buying a house in the UK! Eventually everyone turned up and we all go down to business. This basically involved us going through all of the papers again to make sure we understood everything. About half way through the notaire picked up on the legal side of our marriage. In france you see we are not considered legally married in there eyes until we are married on french soil. This can have enormous repercussions legally to our possessions if anything were to happen to either of us. Won't bore you with the details but a bit of a shock the notaire disappeared to see his clerk and cam back clutching a few sheets of paper, we signed them and hey presto we were married again!!! that now makes it 3 times we
sauveterre - inside
this is part of the middle sectoin - the house is split into 3 very different parts, with the middle section being the up to date part. The other two need a fair bit of graft!! have married each other - GREAT!!! No need for further wedding gifts!!!!
papers signed, keys handed out and general congratulations tossed around all over the place we headed to the local PMU bar for a celebratory drink with the previous owners. Sat on the terrace there over looking the mountains and basked in the the glorious sunshine we both felt that we have certainly done the right thing. Anyone that comes over to visit, we'll pop to this bar and sit you down on the terrace, I promise you'll wont have a better view from a bar terrace anywhere else in the world.
Next day we had to fly back to blighty - but not before running to the house to take quite a few photos for you all to see.
Everything is fitting into place, house bought, business plan on course, branding happening, land-rover being built. It really is a big adventure and it's only going to get bigger before we can finally sit back and take in all that we are achieving, but that day will come when we finally sit down and look at the finished article (and we will).
love to you all
sauveterre - inside
looking back from the kitchen area and keep an eye on this space as very soon there will be land-rover pics and a few more stories before the site finally kicks off again when we venture out there in early november.
be seeing you.
Kind regards from Bonjour64
www.bonjour64.com
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Veysey
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Bugger
.....I'm so envious, I could take to drink. You've both done incredibly well. As ever, any and all support - except cash, obviously - is there if you need it. Much love to you both. V.xxxxxxxxxxx